The Means of Adoption – By Jesus Christ

Ephesians 1:5

“…having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,…” 

There is an old saying: “All roads lead to Rome” with which we are all familiar. It refers, of course, to the time of the Roman Empire when Rome was the “center” of the world and governed or affected all men, pretty much everywhere!  The saying means that sooner or later, all paths lead to whatever we are referring to when use the euphemism. 

For the serious Bible student, and the disciple of our Lord, all roads must lead back to the cross and to the work of Jesus Christ accomplished there.  To any real Christian, the cross is central to all of life and all of living.

This is true of adoption as well.  It is wonderful to be adopted!  The blessings of adoption are many, and are marvelous.  We become sons, we will enjoy our inheritance, we will acts as sons, and all the rest that is the lot of those who are placed into the family of God as His children.  What could be better than being an adopted child of God?

Yet, we must come up short and remember that all of this is accomplished “by Jesus Christ”.  “By” is an interesting Greek word.  It is a preposition and can take on three different shades of meaning depending on the particular formation of the words around them.  Here, it takes its meaning from the words “Jesus Christ” which are in the Genitive, or possessive case. When used with the Genitive case the word takes the meaning: “through, by means of, with; during, or throughout”.  As you can see, it speaks of instrumentality.  We are made sons of God by the instrumentality of Jesus Christ.

This is not the way most people think of how they became children of God.  Most think of it in terms of something they did – whether that be an outright form of human righteousness or merit, or whether be a more properly Baptistic idea of my decision or my choosing to accept Jesus. 

Now, it is true that we must take action, and that this action is a part of the mechanism that God uses to bring us to Christ.  But we must learn, in our more lucid moments, to think in terms of what Jesus has done, and not in terms of what we have done.  What we do, we do because of what God has already done in our lives and makes our actions, our responses, possible.  The bottom line is that we are Christians because of what Jesus did for us as His chosen children, not because of what we did to be a part of the mechanism that brought that choice of God to fruit in our lives. 

That is why Paul makes mention that we are elect by God, predestined to the Adoptions of Sons “by Jesus Christ…”.  Paul thought it proper and needful for us to remember that this, when all is said and done, is why we are God’s children.  All human actions aside, they fit in, but only as a secondary cause.  The root reason is the work of Christ alone.  When all else is stripped away and we are left with salvation at its essence – that is what we are left with – the cross and the righteousness of Christ.  And that is the way it ought to be!