Inheritance & The Rights of Sonship in The Family Of God

Inheritance & The Rights of Sonship in The Family Of God

Those who have believed and are baptized are begotten/conceived by God the Father through the Holy Spirit and are truly His children… but the scriptures clearly indicate that there are elements to this process of being part of God’s Family that are still future.

To help the Greek and Roman people of his day understand the idea of maturing from a state of infancy to  becoming a mature heir in the family of God Paul used an example from Greek and Roman culture… Huiothesia.  Paul is the only gospel writer who uses this particular analogy.

It’s a 2 part word: Huio (son) + thesia (a placing or designating)… it was used occasionally in ancient Greek for what we call adoption but not typically. So the word adoption is a possible translation but not the only and probably not the best. As we shall see our 21 century ideas of adoption are not really compatible with the overall biblical teaching on who and what the children of God are. Note: the NIV & RSV for example have translated the word as sonship in an attempt to put across the larger idea of what huiothesia means… the formal designation of your son as heir, conferring upon him full rights of citizenship, voting rights, a formal role in managing the estate and so forth.

Paul’s use of adoption or sonship in the following places:  Rom 8:15, 23, 9:4; Gal 4:5; Ephesians 1:5. We’ll go through these one by one and I would like you to notice as we go through these verses that the larger context in each case is your future inheritance as a member of the family of God.

What’s the Problem With Using The Word Adoption?

Ask someone what adoption means and they will probably tell you something like: it means taking a child of other parents as one’s own son or daughter. Many people take this beautiful noble act of taking in an raising a helpless child and run with the idea extolling God’s love and care in adopting us. It sounds nice but its not biblical.

God does not adopt children conceived by other parents. God’s children are a spiritual creation begotten and conceived by Him through His Holy Spirit through… faith.

Adoption gets you away from the idea that you are actually a new creation conceived/begotten by the Father through the Holy Spirit. It implies that you are not necessarily of His kind and of His likeness, that you are not truly a begotten child of God… which is not true.

We are not of a different kind from Him… of different grade material… of inferior stock. We are to be of the same character, of the same spiritual essence, of the same kind as God.

Are We Exalting Ourselves To The Same Level as God?

We will share the same glory, the same mind, character, spirit essence, eternal life etc. However, there will remain different authorities or statuses in God’s Family but not essence, nature or substance.

I Cor 15:28 We are to be like Jesus and the Father but different in status… even as we see there is a different status between the Father and the Son. But as we shall see our inheritance involves a role with Christ in His dominion over all things.

The Context of “Adoption” is Inheritance

Gal 3:26—4:7 Note that in this explanation of sonship or adoption… the one receiving “sonship” or adoption here is already an infant child of the father, not the child of other parents. He is simply considered immature… supervised by a nanny, or a guardian…  and not yet considered by the parent/father to be mature enough to take on the full rights & responsibilities of sonship in the family… characterized here as being designated heir.

Let’s compare this to another of our key scripture and we’ll see that our fullness of maturity, our coming of age, our official designation as heirs is yet future!

Romans 8:14-25… we wait eagerly for… in hope… because its something you do not yet have.

Note: It appears that we come into this “fullness of sonship” and inheritance at the time we are resurrected, the redemption of our bodies, which takes place in the last days at the return of Christ. I Peter 1:3-5

Romans 8:16-17 Thus, the Holy Spirit “bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God”… those who have believed and are baptized are the actual children of God and members of his family, not yet fully mature, not yet come into their inheritance. Working their way through a process of maturing… which consists of many things… including specifically, suffering. The phrase “if indeed we suffer with Him” implies an as yet unfulfilled element to our sonship… BEING FULLY MATURE

Ephesians 1:5, 11-14 again the phrase adoption as sons is part of how Paul explains the concept of coming into an inheritance. The designation we now have as children of God begotten through the Holy Spirit is only a foretaste of the fullness that is to come… kind of like a down-payment on something now that you be a full owner of later…. A good example would be a mortgage on a house.

Because God has promised us this fullness of sonship and inheritance… if we endure… that means nothing can stop you, except you. Unless you decide you don’t really want to have it.

Lets Take a Look At What Our Inheritance Is…

Sharing in His Glory - I Thessalonians 2:12, II Thessalonians 2:14

Does Glory Mean We Float Around In Heaven All Day In Bliss?

The Children of God will share in His dominion over ALL THINGS including the entire universe... material and spiritual! We will share dominion with Christ our firstborn elder brother.

· Heb 1:1-3, 2:5-9 - heirs and co-heirs with Jesus Christ

· Ephesians 2:4-6; Rev 5:10 – involves positions of authority, judgment, teaching

· Rev 21:7

You Will Need To Have The Mind Of God

Humanity is now so limited its hard to imagine God ever giving all things to us… if your limited mind were looking up into the sky gazing at the uncountable numbers of stars you would only be seeing a fraction of what is out there… based on what we currently know about the universe with our gigantic telescopes and equipment there are so many stars out there that if you were to start counting them at 1 per second it would take you 1 trillion lifetimes to count… but the mind of God can take it all in!

· Psalm 147:4 – not only can God count all the star but he can call them all out by name

· Luke 12:6-7—from the vastness of the universe to the infinite smallness of the hairs on your head

· I Cor 13:12—we too will have the mind (and mental power) of God…

You Will Possess The Fullness of God

 Colossians 1:18-19 fullness of God in Christ Ephesians 3:19 fullness of God in you

How could you be filled with the fullness and glory of God be anything less than what God is? Yes, there will remain different statuses… The Father over all, Jesus the firstborn and pre-eminent, and the many children who will fill their places in the family that rules the universe. That is your inheritance as a mature spirit born child of God.