More Review of Our Fountain Privilege

Yesterday’s message on the biblical docrtrine of adoption from 1 John 3:1a can be summed up like this:

The reality of our status as those born of God and thus belonging to Him as children in His family is owed entirely to the love He as our Father has bestowed upon us. With that love, an alien love in that it is other-worldly, there is a glory to be surveyed, a gift to be savored, and a grid to be secured.

When I blogged last night’s follow up post to the message, my wife asked me to review the five parts of point three, the grid to be secured. Seems I flew through them quite fast! Here is that section from my manuscript in case you may have missed some of those items as well.

He wants this grid, this way of thinking about ourselves, absolutely, positively secure. He wants us flabbergasted at the wonder/glory of the alien love behind it, like the prodigal in Luke 15:20, smothered by his father’s love upon his return from the pigsty.

He wants us anchored in a guaranteed certainty in hope of the future that with our adoption as children comes a promised inheritance of unspeakable eternal wealth (Romans 8:16-17).

He wants us solidified in our understanding that the ministry of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of adoption (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6) serves to make us realize with increasing clarity the meaning of our filial relationship with God in Christ, and to lead us into an ever deeper response to God in this relationship (Packer, Knowing God, p. 220).

He wants us sobered and gripped by implications of our adoption for our growth in Gospel holiness because as sons and daughters loved by God He disciplines us in order to produce a harvest of righteousness in us as ones so trained by that discipline (Heb. 12:6-11).

He wants us comforted, encouraged and strengthened in the assurance of our salvation knowing that the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children and that if children, then we are heirs (Rom. 8:16-17).

That, dear ones, is a grid. It’s biblical. It’s yours as adopted children of God. May it be secure as secure can be. Nothing matters more to your spiritual growth in 2010!