Sonship in Christian preaching emphasizes the believer's adoption into God's family, highlighting a loving relationship and the privileges of being His child. It often contrasts the roles of servants and heirs, illustrating patient faithfulness and the assured inheritance promised to God's children (Romans 8:15-17).
Adoption means loving someone and inviting them to live with you, like God does.
A small girl recently gave her definition of the word "adoption." "It is when you love someone and you ask them to come and live with you." Simplicity is still the best way to say a thing, is it not? God loves us too, and He wants to adopt us as sons and daughters-how about it? Would you come and live with Him?
True children of God patiently await their inheritance, unlike hirelings seeking immediate reward.
"A servant must have something in hand, he must have his pay from quarter to quarter, or from week to week. He is not expecting to receive his master's possessions, and, therefore, seeks a present wage; but an heir waiteth till the estate falls in to him, and looks not for present gains." Thus may we discern between the mere hireling and the true-born child: the one deserts the Lord's service when it does not pay down on the nail; the other never expects reward till glory shall crown his labours. It is a sad thing for any sort of people when Jesus can say of them, "Verily, I say unto you, they have their reward." They cannot expect to be paid twice, and as their account is discharged in full, what have they to look for? Blessed shall we be if we are enabled to imitate the example of the Lord Jesus, who served the Father in the spirit of Sonship. Love made him rise above all idea of present recompense:
he waited the Father's time, and he still waits for his complete reward till the hour of his Second Advent shall arrive. "A servant," according to Job, "earnestly desireth the shadow" of evening, when his task will be ended; "and the hireling looketh for the reward of his work": this is nothing more than natural, for they have no interest in the work beyond their pay. But the heir loveth his father, and worketh and waiteth patiently, for the father saith to him, "All that I have is thine." In serving the cause of God we are really serving ourselves, for we are partakers in this great cause, even as the interest of sons is one with that of their father. Can we not, therefore, "both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord"? HOUSES AND SHIPS PREPARED FOR US
Divine adoption surpasses natural adoption, granting believers sonship and privileges from God.
Betwixt civil and sacred adoption, there is a two-fold agreement and disagreement. They agree in this, that both flow from the pleasure and good will of the adoptant; and in this, that both confer a right to privileges which we have not by nature; but in this they differ: one is an act imitating nature, the other transcends nature: the one was found out for the comfort of them that had no children, the other for the comfort of them that had no Father. Divine adoption is in Scripture either taken properly for that act or sentence of God by which we are made sons, or for the privileges with which the adopted are invested. We lost our inheritance by the fall of Adam: we receive it by the death of Christ, which restores it again to us by a new and better title. J. Flavel.
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