Quote:
Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah
Can we be careful because it is very much "like" that. We were poor, blind, sinners saved by grace. You can imagine the contrast when such a person is later appointed to rule and reign together with Christ and as part of the Bride of Christ becomes heir of all things.
You know what it is like?
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man, that thou visitest him?
5 For thou hast made him but little lower than [b]God,
And crownest him with glory and honor.
6 Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands;
Thou hast put all things under his feet:
7 All sheep and oxen,
Yea, and the beasts of the field,
8 The birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
Whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.
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If it helps to understand God's nature and the gospel, the Western orphanage view is not so bad. But it can easily be misunderstood to be referring to justification, and could lead to us viewing God as merely our adoptive Father. There is no sense in scripture of putting adoption and being born again on the same level. Many see adoption as an alternative way of looking at John 1:12-13, when it means something different. Why would we replace the perfectly adequate doctrine of new birth with adoption, when new birth is consistent from the Old Testament to the New and Paul was using a nice metaphor of Roman adoption to explain how wanted and loved the Gentiles were.
There are other analogies from modern society that we could use to explain "adoption" , we could even use the story of Cinderella. An unwanted woman despised by her sisters, ending up marrying a prince. But the mistake would be to think that God justifies us by inviting us to the ball and meeting a handsome prince.
At first glance, Roman adoption seems like a nice story to describe how God takes orphanages off the street and puts them into a home. But the reality was that Roman boys chosen for adoption were more like prized possessions, and they might sell the ugly ones to pay the adoption costs for the handsome ones.