Abba! Father!

Phil and I were blessed with two children, a daughter and a son. Cypria and Keston are both thirty-something adults today, both awesome in their own character, talents and spirit. Both children have brought us our greatest joys in life, as well as our greatest hours of pain and strife. Both are equal in our sight as son and daughter. Our love for Cypria and Keston is timeless and unconditional. Both call us “mom” and “dad” with equal understanding and acceptance and love. We are family. We are one.

God put in me at a very young age the desire to be a mother. He wired in me the circuits of nurturing, so my heart was deeply set on being a mom…but becoming parents didn’t come easy to Phil and me. We struggled through years of infertility, surgeries and procedures in an effort to conceive. I’d had “female” problems most of my life, so it was no surprise that conceiving a child would be a challenge. At some point, we realized that adoption would be God’s option for our family.

Long story short (and it’s a great story of surrender and faith!) – God blessed us with two children: our daughter, through adoption and God’s miraculous timing – and our son, through conception and God’s miraculous timing. What a great God! My heart is still full of gratitude for the gift of motherhood and for the way our family came into being.

Adoption, after all, is God’s invention. His plan of salvation and eternal life centers around the concept of adoption. God’s word explains it: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So, you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” (Galatians 4:4-8)

The Greek word for adoption (huiothesia’) means “to place one as a son” and speaks of being placed in a position of a son or daughter who now possesses the same rights as a parent’s natural child. God the Father has one Son, Jesus, born of His Spirit into the earth, as a man of flesh and bone. Jesus could rightfully call God “Abba (dearest father), Father (paternal father),” as is his true relationship to God the Father, as his natural born Son. So where do we get the right to call God “Abba, Father”? Through adoption.

Adoption was common then, as it is today, and carried with it the same legal authority. My Bible commentary explains that adoption meant at least three things – all of which have spiritual parallels for believers – we who are now sons and daughters of the living God:

1. Adoption broke ties with the natural family and created a new family relation with all its rights, privileges and responsibilities. The adopted person was bound in every way to the new family and gained all the rights of a fully legitimate child.
2. The adopted son became an heir to his new father’s estate, equal and co-heir with other sons, no matter how many natural born sons the father had.
3. The old life of the adoptee was completely erased. All debts and obligations were legally canceled. The adopted son was regarded by law as a new person.

Wow! Just ponder that for a minute…

God sent HIS ONLY SON, to exchange places with us so we could receive the inheritance of the Father that by all rights belonged to the Son alone! And then, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ…” (Romans 8:16-17)

What a beautiful portrait of love, sacrifice, mercy and grace for all of humanity! It doesn’t matter who we are or where we come from. Regardless of nation, status, color or class…ALL are invited into the family of God, freed from the old life, all debt erased, adopted as sons, heirs to eternal life in the Father. What a great God!