Genesis 3: 8 – 15; Galatians 4: 1 – 5
I wonder if anyone here is adopted, or has a friend or relative who is adopted? My sister has three children; two sons and a daughter. Her daughter is adopted. There is, of course, no difference in status or family relationships between the two boys and their younger sister. In fact, she even looks quite like one of her older brothers – although she is extremely lively and much more interested in sport than the rest of the family. This has taken a little getting used to! It’s only the way that she became part of the family that is different.
In our reading this evening from Galatians, Paul uses two different images related to children and families to try to convince the Galatian Christians that their faith truly gives them freedom. It seems that non-Jewish Christians in Galatia were being put under pressure to be circumcised and the obey the ceremonial law of the Jews. Paul wants to make the point that as Christians they are free from these requirements because Jesus has done everything necessary to bring them into relationship with God.
Paul’s first image is about heirs who are still minors when they inherit. Before the coming of Christ the whole human race was like an heir who must wait until the age of majority to inherit his father’s property and power. Some were bound under the guardianship of the Jewish law, others – the Gentiles – were instead in bondage to the ‘elemental spirits of the world’. Then Paul changes the metaphor to talk about adoption. Jesus has come to redeem those who were under the law so that they may now be adopted as children. So as Christians they have become part of God’s family and can truly address God as their heavenly Father just as my niece has truly become part of our family. Nothing else is necessary once the adoption process is complete.
Paul’s images become even more vivid if we can think ourselves back into first century Roman society and the customs around children and adoption. This was a society where there were not only the kind of class distinctions we might recognise but also a deep divide between free citizens and slaves. A slave had no rights and was entirely at the disposal of his or her master. A child’s prospects would be vastly different depending on whether they were born free or as a slave, although some did make the transition from slavery to freedom. Adoption was common at the time Paul was writing, although usually only for boys. Several of the Roman Emperors were adopted, including, most famously, Augustus. For the upper classes adoption was a way of ensuring succession and cementing family alliances. It could be a less costly alternative to raising children of one’s own or a way of mitigating child mortality. Slaves were all regarded as illegitimate, but slaves could be and were sometimes adopted as sons by affluent but childless households. The adopted child had all the rights and rank of the family into which they had been adopted.
For us, the process of adoption is centred on the needs of the child for a loving home. Great care is taken to ensure that the adoptive parents will be able to provide this. In Roman society children had few automatic rights and were entirely at the disposal of the head of the family. The focus of adoption was therefore on the benefit to the family as a whole. As is the case for us the adoption brought the adopted person out of his previous state into a new father-son relationship with his adopting father. The legal consequences were as follows:
The person adopted passed into the power of the person adopting. The property of the person adopted also passed into the possession of the person adopting. Any debts or personal servitudes of the person adopted were extinguished as a consequence of his old persona being extinguished by the adoption. A father could disown his natural son, but could not disown an adopted son. The bond once made could not be broken.
Adoption could be an expensive arrangement for the family adopting, (although, as I’ve said, less expensive than rearing a child of one’s own) as a sum of money would be handed over to ‘redeem’ the child from his natural parents. (Presumably this did not apply where a slave was adopted). So when Paul says that God sent His son to ‘redeem’ those who were under the law he is referring to this adoption payment. The picture suggests that by His life, death and resurrection, Jesus has therefore ‘paid the price’ for our adoption as children by our heavenly Father. Paul is making the point that because God sent Jesus into the world we no longer have to live in slavery to anything – neither the Jewish Law nor whatever we might think of as the ‘elemental spirits of the world’ – perhaps the prevailing spirit of the age; nor even the fear of death. We were minors or slaves, but Jesus has bought us and set us free. We no longer need to be afraid of God or hide from Him as we heard that Adam and Eve did in our first reading this evening. Just as the adopted child brought everything he was and owned into the new relationship with his adopted Father, so we bring everything that we are, our full humanity, into our new relationship with God.
And we can take comfort too from the fact that an adopted child can never be disowned. We are always good enough for our heavenly Father. He will never send us away. Just as my little niece is absolutely a part of our family. As we say to the newly baptised when we welcome them into the church “We are children of the same heavenly Father”.
Amen