“He has not left us as orphans” by Sinclair Ferguson
“Sonship is characterized now by the tension between what has already been accomplished for us in Christ and what is yet to be accomplished. We already possess the adoption as sons and the presence of the Spirit of adoption.
But precisely because of that, we long for its consummation. Those who have the Spirit of adoption (the ‘firstfruits of the Spirit’) groan, says Paul (Rom. 8:23). Why?
Because enjoying the privileges of sons now, we anticipate the glorious liberty of sons in the future when we receive the ‘adoption as sons’ which Paul describes variously as ‘the redemption of our bodies’ and ‘the freedom of the glory of the children of God’ and being ‘glorified with Him’ (Rom. 8:23, 21, 17).
Sonship, then, has a retrospective and a prospective dimension. It recognizes what has already been accomplished: we have been adopted into God’s family and experience the access and liberty of grace.
But it also recognizes that more is still to be accomplished: we look forward to eschatological adoption, and the access and liberty of glory. The omega-point of Christian experience has not yet come for us. But it will; the fact that we are already children of God is the guarantee.
Sonship, however, is also centered in Jesus Christ. It is because he has entered our family that we enter the family of God (Heb. 2:5- 18). Only because he is not ashamed to call us brothers may we call his Father, ‘our Father’ (cf. John 20:17).
Indeed it can be argued that in Pauline thought the resurrection of Christ is viewed as his ‘adoption’— not in the sense that he became Son of God in the resurrection, but insofar as he was ‘declared to be [marked out as] the Son of God in power… by his resurrection’ (Rom. 1:4). He was ‘firstborn from the dead’, brought into the family of the new age by resurrection.
Through union with Christ, in which we are ‘raised into newness of life’, we too are adopted into that family. It is, therefore, only in Christ, in the family fellowship we have with him, that we are adopted children of God.
He has not left us as orphans, after all (John 14:18). He has given us the Spirit of adoption as sons (Rom. 8:15).”
–Sinclair Ferguson, “The Reformed Doctrine of Sonship,” in Some Pastors and Teachers: Reflecting a Biblical Vision of What Every Minister is Called to Be (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2017), 586-587.
