The Baptist Catechism

    A Commentary on the Shorter Catechism (1883), Alexander Whyte

    Question 34

    Adoption is an act whereby a man takes into his family one who was not originally a member of it, and gives him the standing and privileges of a son. “Neither is there only a natural, but also a voluntary and civil foundation of paternity; for the laws have found a way by which a man may become a father without procreation, and this imitation of nature is called adoption” (Pearson). Adoption is a scriptural expression made use of to set forth the sonship relation in which all true believers stand to God the Father on and after their union to His Son Jesus Christ. (See Cruden under the word; also Dr. Macgregor’s note on Gal. iv. 5.)

    an act—On such passages as Rom. viii. 23, 1 John iii. 2, the old divines have founded the distinction of adoptio incompleta or imperfecta. Compare what has been said above on justification as an act.

    received into the number—See Answer 20. They are “a multitude which no man could number,” but they are all well known to God. “The Lord shall count, when He writeth up the people, that this man was born there.”

    a right—At first sight it may seem strange to say that a sinner, even a justified sinner, can have any rights as before God. But if the matter is fully considered, it will be seen that the Catechism is true both to legal and domestic usage, as well as to Scripture, in so speaking. For a right at law can be established on proof of adoption as well as on descent; on a donation as well as on conquest, or a personal and original possession. For the scriptural usage and doctrinal ground see John i. 12, margin, and the Revised Version.

    Cf. Zinzendorf’s hymn:

    “When from the dust of death I rise,
    To claim my mansion in the skies.”

    all the privileges—“Liberties and privileges” (Larger Catechism). (For an admirable enumeration of the “liberties and privileges of the children of God,” see Confession, chap. xii., with Macpherson’s note.)

    the sons of God. “There is one degree of sonship founded on creation, and that is the lowest, as belonging unto all, both good and bad; another degree above that there is grounded upon regeneration, or adoption, belonging only to the faithful in this life; and a third above the rest founded on the resurrection, or collation of the eternal inheritance, and the similitude of God, appertaining to the saints alone in the world to come (1 John iii. 2). And there is yet another degree of filiation, of a greater eminency and a different nature, appertaining properly to none of these, but to the true Son of God alone, who among all His brethren hath only received the title of His own Son . . . Christ therefore hath called God after a peculiar way His own Father.” (For the full passage see Pearson, art. i.)

    Note.—The position taken up by the late Principal Candlish in his eloquent work, The Fatherhood of God, is this. The original condition and standing of man, with all its gifts and privileges, was not that of true sonship. It contained the germ and potency of sonship, and it would have issued in sonship but for the dreadful catastrophe of the fall. But as his hour of temptation found Adam, his standing toward God was still simply that of an honoured and trusted servant. It was as yet purely a relation of Creator and creature, Lawgiver and subject; it rested on divine and creative right on the one hand, and on human responsibility on the other. It was all embodied in a covenant of works, and a covenant of works is utterly incompatible with a full Fatherhood on the one hand, or with a secure sonship on the other. Man’s standing as constituted in creation was altogether noble, and “very good,” and over and above its present nobility and goodness it had in it the seed of sonship and the prelude of a Divine Paternity. But that seed was trodden down before it had taken proper root, and the yearnings of the Divine Fatherhood had to seek their scope in another object than Adam, and their sphere in another creation than that of which he was the high priest and the head.

    But the Fatherhood that embraces and possesses regenerate men is no figure; it is as real and true as that Fatherhood which eternally generates and lovingly embraces the Divine Son Himself. It is as real and true, for it is one and the same. The Fatherhood of God toward believers is grounded on, and indeed is nothing else than an extension of that Fatherhood that followed, and acknowledged, and sustained the descending and redeeming Son Himself. Our Sonship now is not figurative and fugitive, as it was in Adam; it is clear and full, safe and abiding as is the Sonship of Christ Himself. “I have not hesitated,” says Dr. Candlish, “to avow my belief in the substantial identity of the relation.” In his fifth lecture, “On Adoption as connected with Regeneration and Justification,” the same author says: “I think it of as much consequence to maintain the thoroughly unforensic character of God’s act in adopting, as it is to maintain the strictly forensic character of His act in justifying. All is legal and judicial in the latter act. If it were not so, there would be no grace in it at all. Nothing is legal or judicial in the other; if there were anything of that sort in it, all its grace would be gone.” (See the kindred note under “Justification,” p. 83 above.) The student who will do justice to that characteristically acute, original, and soaring book will be repaid with lifelong elevation and quickening of mind.

    Uses

    1. It is a law of nature that like produces like. And that law of a reproduction of likeness happily obtains in the new creation also. It is the heart and the mind that are made new in regeneration, and it is in the “renewed mind,” and in the “new heart,” that the new family features reveal themselves. It is in their actions, and in their affections, that the children of God discover themselves, and give evidence of their new birth and supernatural descent. Even a foundling, who cannot give an account of himself, may have his parentage traced by his features and his complexion; and a child of God will easily be discovered among the children of the devil by his holy actions and heavenly affections.
    2. In the Sermon on the Mount, assurance in prayer is grounded on the Fatherhood of God and the sonship of the disciple. (See also Question 100.)
    3. The Divine Paternity is also set forth as the proper ground of Christian patience (Deut. viii. 5; Ps. ciii. 13; Heb. xii. 9, 10).

    Questions

    1. Derive adoption: refer to two instances of this act in the Old Testament, and quote some leading passages in the New Testament where this subject is treated of.
    2. Explain the axiom: Sonship is a personal property, not a property of the nature.
    3. Explain the saying of Zanchius: Plus est nos esse filios quam esse sanctos (It is better to be a son than a saint).
    4. In what sense, and with what enlargement of meaning, is the term adoption used by the apostle in Rom. viii. 23? (See Pearson, above.)
    5. Explain adoptio incompleta or imperfecta.
    6. Do you know, or can you discover, anything about the Adoptionist controversy in connection with the doctrine of the Person of Christ?