Scripture makes clear that God actually begets us spiritually in His
own image-with the intention that we ultimately become the same
kind of beings He and Jesus Christ now are.
As this booklet makes clear, Scripture reveals that man's destiny is
to be fathered by God in an actual sense, with His Holy Spirit implanted
into our minds to engender us as His literal begotten children. Yet
a few verses from the apostle Paul have been interpreted to say that
God adopts us rather than directly begets us as His
children. What difference does it make? And what is the truth of the
matter?
As typically rendered, Romans 8:15 says that Christians "have received
the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father" (KJV). Verse 23
says that we "who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves
groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption
of our body." The next chapter says that Israel, God's nation, was given
the promise of, according to most English translations, "adoption" (9:4).
Similarly, Galatians 4:5 and Ephesians 1:5 in the New King James Version
both use the phrase "adoption as sons" for the standing God gives us.
A number of versions, however, instead use the term "sonship" or something
like it, as the New International Version does in Romans 8:15. In its
entry on "adoption," Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old
and New Testament Words (1985) explains that the original Greek
word here is "huiothesia. . . from huios, 'a son,'
and thesis, 'a placing,' akin to tithemi, 'to place'"-so
the placing as a son. Scholars have noted that this word was used a
few times in the ancient Greek world in reference to adoption, and that
is certainly fitting.
