We're not doing a good thing

Sometimes the Christian gospel, or the central good news of who Jesus is and what he did, is often misunderstood by our culture, and even sometimes by the Christian Church, protestant or otherwise. I don't want to sound pretentious, as if I have it all down, but as you'll read, that's not what the gospel is about either.

The gospel is this: We are all born into, and live out of a heart (motive) that is sinful and spiritually dead. Our desires are for anything but God. (See Ezekiel 36 and Ephesians 2) We were, as humans, created for God, children of God. But sin has made us orphans. We're born spiritual orphans. The gospel is this, that even though we are born into and live in our sinful state, the God of the universe sent his son, Jesus, to live the life we could never live (read sinless) and die the death that we all deserve, and raised him to the new life that he has for all who trust in him.

There it is.

There's no "live the best you can and hope that it pleases the Lord." There's no "I've got to do more good things." There's no "I feel better about my standing with God because of all my charity."

There is only, "I trust what Jesus's did for me on my behalf for my standing with God." There is only, "I am crushed under the love that Christ showed in giving his life to take on my sin and death that I deserve." There is only, "because of Jesus I choose to love or give in this way."

So, what's the point? How do we think this applies to our adoption?

The point is that our adoption has two motives: gospel and missions.

Our adoption is a nice thing to do. But that's not why we're doing it. Maria and I are so taken with the love that Jesus has for us in adopting us into the family of God, we're going to do the same with our daughter. She will be either born, or made an orphan, but we will, God-willing, take her into our family with all the rights and standing as my sons.

Now, if we left it at that, we would be stuck with a beautiful metaphor for the gospel. But as there is in another beautiful metaphor for the gospel, marriage, there's a missonal aspect. We are adopting out of a love for Jesus and to add to his Kingdom by raising our daughter up (as we have our boys) in the teaching of the Lord. By God's sovereign plan for this girl, he will use her adoption to redeem her, grant her repentance and faith, and in turn teach her children about the love of Christ.

By God's grace, our adoption is motivated out of what God has done for us and what he has asked us to do. Namely, advocate for the helpless orphans and raising up our children in the instruction of the Lord.

Sorry for the long post. I've been doing a lot of reflecting and reading.

Thanks for reading.