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THE PERFECT ADOPTION #12

ADOPTING A KID RIGHT OUT OF JUVY

According to one comedian, when their kid protested, "I didn't ask to be born, you know," he popped right back with, "It's a good think you DIDN'T ask, ‘cause I'd have said no!" It's an amazing thing that God is willing to adopt us - not sight unseen - but with our lousy GPAs in full view.

If a wealthy millionaire got it in their head to adopt someone as the heir to their entire fortune — and could pick you, right now, with the resumé that you've got right now — would they do it? Would you be a good choice if Bill Gates could just leaf through a catalog and adopt anyone he wanted? So often parents who adopt a child pick up a two-day-old infant from the hospital, and the kid hasn't had much chance to prove themselves! It's pretty much a case of caveat emptor . . . "Let the buyer beware." Several of our staff members here at the Voice of Prophecy — our writer/producer David Smith, our development director, Phil Draper, Lynn Liers, our administrative coordinator, and David Coe, station relations director — they all have adopted children in various stages of teen or young adult tumult. "You get what you get" sighed one of them a few weeks ago, the day after her son bashed up the family pickup on the 23 freeway near here. Tongue in cheek, I should quickly add, because she's clearly crazy about the kid.

This is in contrast to a great classic story, the Christian epic by Lew Wallace, from many years back, where a young man named Judah Ben-Hur is accused of sedition against Rome and sentenced to row in the galley ships. Do you remember Charlton Heston, "Number 41," as the commander of the ship orders the drummer who beats out the time for the rowers to go faster and faster and faster? Pretty soon Judah is the only inmate still going. Quintus Arrius, admiring the raw survival instincts of #41, summons him to his cabin. When Judah gets there, Arrius has fallen asleep, and the prisoner silently stands over him. "You could have killed me," the commander says in awe, his admiration growing. Then when Macedonian pirates attack, Judah, left unchained, plays a key part in the fiery battle to protect the ship. Arrius, who is knocked overboard, begins to sink in his heavy Roman armor. Naturally, it's #41 who swims to the rescue and saves his enemy. Now Ben-Hur's stock is sky-high. And if you saw the great 1959 epic which swept out of Hollywood with a whole chariot full of eleven Oscar statuettes, you remember how Judah Ben-Hur, who now proves himself as an unsurpassed chariot racer in the great arena of Rome, is finally adopted by Quintus Arrius as his own son. There's a moving ceremony where the older man, this distinguished Roman with a vast estate to bequeath to anyone he chooses, puts his own family ring on Judah's finger.

Would you agree that, as a rule, adoption is a huge statement of love? This Arrius had his own mercenary reasons as well for adopting such a fine son, a man of such proven character. And yet it was still an expression of deep affection when he gave Judah Ben-Hur the family name of Quintus Arrius. Most of the time, the adopted child can say in awe: "Wow! They really love me a lot." And you know, for about a decade now here at the Voice of Prophecy, I've watched as my fellow employees I just mentioned have stayed up late with a sick child. Given up holiday time to go to school functions and plays and the proverbial soccer games. Trips to Dodger Stadium. Christmas shopping sprees. And through the thick and thin of crumpled Toyota fenders and times when the school principal called with bad news, these moms and dads have been incredible lovers.

As we continue here with our series on adoption, Dr. J. I. Packer now suggests that the Bible model of adoption — God adopting us — reveals valuable insights in five arenas of thought. And here's the first one he mentions in this great book, Knowing God:

"Our adoption shows us the greatness of God's love," he writes. He quickly adds: "The New Testament gives us two yardsticks for measuring God's love. The first is the cross; the second is the gift of sonship." He then quotes I John 3:1: "Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God!"

In an earlier program, we shared J. I. Packer's incredible assertion that adoption is actually a higher spiritual gift than even justification itself. And following this Bible promise of First John, he adds:

"Of all the gifts of grace, adoption is the highest."

A number of times throughout this book, Dr. Packer has a nice way of making his spiritual point by quoting the words of a great Christian hymn or gospel song. Charles Wesley comes in for more than his share, as you can certainly understand. And the writer leads into one such hymn when he observes:

"When you realize that God has taken you from the gutter, so to speak, and made you a son in His own house — you, a miraculously pardoned offender, guilty, ungrateful, defiant, perverse as you were — then your sense of God's ‘love beyond degree' is more than words can express. You will echo Charles Wesley's question: O how shall I the goodness tell, Father, which Thou to me hast showed? That I, a child of wrath and hell, I SHOULD BE CALLED A SON OF GOD."

That song, by the way, entitled "Christ the Friend of Sinners," we learned from a web site, is reported to be the hymn Wesley wrote the night he was converted to Christ: May 23, 1738. And he seems to feel, not like the triumphant Judah Ben-Hur being adopted in all his glory after stunning naval victories and exploits in the Circus Maximus of Rome, but adopted right off the rough wooden plank in that slave ship. Being taken directly from "Number 41" to the halls of heaven and the family banquet.

"A slave redeem'd from death and sin," Wesley writes in amazement, "A brand pluck'd from eternal fire." Then he concludes in joy: "[That I] should know, should feel my sins forgiven, Blessed with this antepast of heaven!"

Antepast being an archaic English word meaning "foretaste" — a sinner's foretaste of heaven, like the first course of a wonderful, sumptuous feast. (Don't worry; we had to look it up too.)

"In the ancient world," Packer confirms, "adoption was a practice ordinarily confined to the childless well-to-do." Like this Quintus Arrius. "Its subjects . . . were not normally infants, as today, but young adults who had shown themselves fit and able to carry on a family name in a worthy way. In this case, however, God adopts us out of free love, not because our character and record show us worthy to bear His name, but despite the fact that they show the very opposite. We are not fit for a place in God's family; the idea of His loving and exalting us sinners as He loves and has exalted the Lord Jesus sounds ludicrous and wild — yet that, and nothing less than that, is what our adoption means."

Friend, this is why we all sing "Amazing Grace" in church week after week. It's amazing that God wants to adopt US! It's an incredible expression of love that He actually desires to have us as sons and daughters, not as unproven, innocent babies, but as proven wretches and thieves! He sees the mess we are and He earnestly longs to adopt THAT!

"Adoption, by its very nature," Dr. Packer concludes, "is an art of free kindness to the person adopted. If you become a father by adopting a son or daughter, you do so because you choose to, not because you are bound to. Similarly, God adopts because He chooses to. He had no duty to do so. He need not have done anything about our sins except punish us as we deserved. But He loved us; so He redeemed us, forgave us, took us as His sons and daughters and gave Himself to us as our Father."

You know, people talk these days about human cloning and all the risks and ramifications of "playing God." Well, God doesn't have to play God because He IS God . . . but how easily He could have discarded this faulty race and cloned, by just speaking a word, a hundred perfect ones instead. He could have scrapped Eden and started fresh with a billion new galaxies in some other neighborhood. But instead He chose to rescue and adopt that sweaty, exhausted slave, "Number 41," and all of the rest of us sinners chained to our oars of iniquity and depravity. Isn't that the best news ever? Again, it's an expression of just how totally we are all loved.

We've all seen those achingly painful scenes where a child in the orphanage tries to "qualify" for someone to love them, tries to earn the approval of adoption. They smile their sweetest smile: "Please! Pick me!" But the Bible tells us we don't need any of that. We can't earn adoption. We can't qualify for love. But you do have to WANT to be adopted, and you have to believe in the kind Father coming down the corridor, and in His other Son. The Message paraphrase has a good way of rendering John 1:12:

"But whoever did want [Jesus], who believed He was who He claimed and would do what He said, He made to be their true selves, their CHILD-OF-GOD selves. These are the God-begotten." That's an interesting slant on "to them gave He power to become the sons of God."

Right now I have the tune from that praise song in my head: "Behold, what manner of love the Father has given unto us — that we should be called the sons of God!"

Isn't it great that Dad loves us so much?