They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator

Romans 1:25

The Ancient Gentile Wasteland

The Apostle Paul does not describe the Gentile nations as harmless peoples quietly searching for truth in their own sincere way. He writes with dreadful clarity: we were “separated from Christ,” “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,” “strangers to the covenants of promise,” “having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). These are not gentle words. They describe a humanity outside the covenant household of God, cut off from the promises, far from the Messiah, estranged from the people among whom God had set His name, and wandering beneath the dreadful darkness of divine judgment. This is the world from which we, the Gentiles, have come.

Our fathers were not merely cultivating different customs. They were not innocently decorating the world with cultural variety. From Europe to Africa, from Arabia to the Americas, from the great empires to the scattered tribes, mankind built temples, altars, priesthoods, myths, calendars, sacrifices, and whole civilisations of worship apart from the living God. Men bowed before Thor and Odin, Anubis and Ra, Baal and Molech, Artemis and Zeus, the spirits of the dead, the powers of nature, the gods of fertility, war, harvest, blood, and empire. They kissed idols. They carved images. They chanted before demons. They consulted the dead. They burned their children. They worshipped ancestors. They sanctified lust. They deified kings. They bowed before created things while refusing the Creator. This was not spiritual neutrality. This was a rebellion with liturgy.

The nations did not lack evidence of God. “His invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived” in the things that have been made (Romans 1:20). Yet man suppressed the truth in unrighteousness. He exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. He exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator. Therefore, God gave the nations over. He gave them over to dishonourable passions. He gave them over to a debased mind. He gave them over to the bitter harvest of their chosen gods. This is the heathen wasteland of the Gentile world: not empty of worship, but overflowing with false worship; not empty of religion, but enslaved to corrupt religion; not empty of gods, but without the true and living God.

The Modern Gentile Wasteland

And we must not imagine that this wasteland belongs only to the ancient world. The old gods have not vanished. They have simply learned to speak with modern accents.

Man still suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. He still exchanges the glory of the immortal God for images of created things. He still refuses the Creator and gives himself to the creature. The ancient idol had a carved face; the modern idol has a glowing screen. The ancient shrine stood in the high places; the modern shrine sits in the palm of the hand. Social media has become a vast liturgy of self-exaltation, envy, lust, outrage, vanity, false witness, and restless comparison. Men and women are catechised daily to curate the self, worship the body, perform virtue, despise authority, pursue desire, and measure their worth before the watching eyes of men.

The old Babel also rises again. The nations still seek to make a name for themselves apart from God. Through globalist dreams of unity without Christ, peace without repentance, justice without righteousness, and humanity without the image of God, fallen man labours to build one house while rejecting the Father’s house. He imagines a world healed by human management, technological control, economic engineering, and political salvation, yet he will not bow before the King whom God has installed in Zion.

The confusion of our age descends even deeper. When man rejects the Creator, he also rejects the created order. Male and female become burdens to be escaped rather than gifts to be received. The body is no longer regarded as a divine trust, but as raw material for self-definition. Sexual desire is enthroned as identity. Rebellion is renamed courage. Disorder is renamed freedom. Shame is renamed pride. Like the nations of old, modern man sanctifies what God condemns and condemns what God has sanctified. This is not progress. This is paganism with electricity.

From Rebels to Sons

From the beginning, mankind was created for sonship. Adam was a son by creation, made to live before the Father in obedient fellowship. But through sin, mankind forfeited the blessedness of that household life and became alienated from God.

Adam was made to live before God, under God, and with God. He was not created to wander through the world as an orphan, nor to build his own house apart from the Lord. He was made for communion with God, obedience to God, and life in the presence of God.

The wonder of adoption does not begin with the sinner seeking a home. It begins with the Father’s eternal purpose. Before the foundation of the world, God did not merely determine to forgive His people, nor merely to rescue them from wrath, nor merely to cleanse them from guilt. He predestined them “for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” (Ephesians 1:5).

This means that adoption is not an afterthought in salvation. It is not a decorative blessing added after the greater work has been done. It belongs to the very purpose of God in redemption. The Father chose a people in Christ not only that they might be pardoned, but that they might be sons.

This should humble us deeply. By nature, we were not sons drawing near, but rebels running away. We were not worthy children waiting to be recognised, but children of wrath deserving judgment. Yet the Father, according to the purpose of His will, determined to bring the far-off near, to give His name to the nameless, to bring strangers into His household, and to make sons out of rebels. Adoption restores more than Adam lost, because believers are brought into sonship in the eternal Son Himself.

The Blood of the Son

The Father’s purpose is accomplished through the Son. Paul writes:

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.

Galatians 4:4–5

The Son of God came into the world so that enemies might become sons. He was born of a woman, entering our humanity. He was born under the law, placing Himself under the very law we had broken. He obeyed where Adam failed. He fulfilled what Israel did not. He bore the curse that belonged to the guilty. He died outside the gate so that those who were outside the household might be brought in. The cost of adoption was the blood of the Son.

God did not adopt us by ignoring our rebellion. He did not bring us into His house by pretending that our idolatry, uncleanness, and guilt did not matter. The Father sent the Son to redeem those under the law, so that the guilty might be justified and the justified might be adopted. We receive the status of sons because the true Son stood in our place.

Christ is the Son by nature. We are sons by grace. Christ is eternally beloved of the Father. We are beloved in Him. Christ has the right of sonship in Himself. We receive the right to become children of God through Him.

The Son Makes Us Sons

This is why adoption cannot be separated from union with Christ. God does not become our Father apart from His Son. No man comes to the Father except through Him. The Father does not look upon the believer as an isolated individual standing on the strength of his own name, his own obedience, or his own worthiness. He sees him in Christ. The beloved Son brings many sons to glory.

This gives adoption its security. If our sonship rested upon our feelings, we would lose heart. If it rested upon our obedience, we would fall into despair. If it rested upon our ability to keep ourselves worthy of the household, we would never sleep in peace. But our adoption rests upon Christ. The Father receives us in the Son, loves us in the Son, names us in the Son, and makes us heirs with the Son. When the Father looks upon those who are in Christ, He sees sons.

The Spirit of Adoption

What the Father planned and the Son purchased, the Holy Spirit applies and confirms. Paul writes:

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’

Romans 8:15

The Spirit of adoption does not make the believer careless before God. He does not make the holiness of God seem small. Rather, He teaches the believer to approach the holy God rightly: not as a condemned criminal, not as a terrified slave, not as a stranger outside the door, but as a child coming to his Father.

This cry, “Abba! Father!” is not a shallow sentiment. It is the Spirit-wrought language of sonship. It is the cry of those who were once far off but have now been brought near. It is the cry of those who were once children of wrath but have now received the right to become children of God. It is the cry of those who know that the Judge who justified them is also the Father who receives them.

The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. He assures us that adoption is not fiction, metaphor, or wishful thinking. We truly belong to God. We truly have access to the Father. And if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.

Conclusion

Though there is far more to explore concerning the privileges of adoption, we may fittingly conclude with a hymn that captures the heartbeat of this great reality. Stuart Townend’s How Deep the Father’s Love for Us gives voice to the wonder of the Father’s love:

How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure
How great the pain of searing loss
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the Chosen One
Bring many sons to glory

Order of Salvation

Order of Salvation

Published in this topic

Ordo Salutis: Adoption

Ordo Salutis: Justification

Ordo Salutis: Conversion

Ordo Salutis: Regeneration

Ordo Salutis: Effectual Call

Ordo Salutis: Election