By: Taylor Cain

On September 8th, 1991, my mom and dad flew over three thousand miles to bring me into their family. This day changed my life. I was born on June 24th, 1991, to a woman who was unable to care for me, so she chose to give me up to be adopted. My mother and father could not have children due to medical complications. They went through a few adoption agencies before they got a phone call about a boy with black, bushy hair in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. They did not think twice about what I looked like, my medical records, or how educated my birth parents were. They wanted a child. They wanted me.

Adoption has been a precious word and doctrine for me. The Lord has used adoption in my life as a way to sympathize with other people who have been adopted or with couples who are considering adopting. My wife and I desire to adopt. This was never plan B if we could not have kids biologically. Instead, we hope to adopt one day, wherever and whoever. The church ought to be known for spurring families to adopt. However, this is not the case, and many other institutions outdo the church in encouraging adoption.

My hope is that in the years to come, the church would be awakened to the doctrine of adoption, see it as precious, and stir Christians to action to support families who are considering adoption and adopt orphans themselves.

Here are four reasons Christians should be passionate about adoption in their local church.

 

Adoption is the way God makes us His children.

God’s plan to bring us into His family started from eternity: “ he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” (Eph. 1:5). God did not have a plan before this plan. He did not need another plan. Adoption was God’s plan all along.

If you are in Christ you were being pursued by God before you committed your first rebellious act against Him. In your filth, He picked you up, cleaned you up, gave you a new heart, and placed His eternal brand on you as His. For God, adoption was not a last resort, a backup if His original plan didn’t work. According to His perfect will, adoption was the greatest act of love, as He gave up His Son so that we could become children of His. 

Adoption is God’s mission.

In adoption God brings us into His home, shows you where to take off your shoes, points you to your bedroom, and gives you bath towels with “His child” embroidered on them. It appears that this home--this family--was prepared for you all along.

The mission of God is to bring people who are far from Him close to His chest through the blood of His Son. Adoption is how the church recognizes that everyone who has been purchased by the blood of Jesus is family.

We all have to be adopted in order to be a child of God. This is different from being an offspring. God is our Creator, but God is not a Father to every human being. Only those in whose hearts, “God has sent the Spirit of his Son” are able to cry out to Him as, “Abba! Father” (Gal. 4:6)! 

When my parents adopted me, my upbringing--how I would be raised and the rules I would have to follow--changed in an instant. I would no longer grow up honoring and obeying my birth parents. My new authority was my parents. This is the mission of our God: “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families” (Psalms 68:5-6a). God adopts us as individuals and then places us within His family, the Church, that we might worship, fear, and follow Him with our brothers and sisters.

Adoption is a picture of the gospel.

Since adoption is a part of God’s mission, it should be a part of the church’s mission to make the gospel known. Adoption is something that God highly encourages, if not commands, us to consider. Adoption helps others see the hope that is within us. John Piper has stated, “Adoption is the visible picture of the gospel.”

The gospel tells us that we were alone, sinful, undeserving, and wretched. Yet, the Creator of the universe chose us from the midst of our squalor and bestowed on us the rights of sonship, an inheritance beyond anything we can imagine or deserve.

When my mother gave me up, I had no way of knowing or doing anything about finding another family. God was working good out for me even while I was unaware of His providence. I could not search out a family to join. In God’s goodness, both in my adoption into my family here on earth and into His divine family, I was shown unfathomable grace.

Adoption gives us this clear view of the goodness and providence of God, and we should want to share the gospel, knowing there is nothing like being brought into God’s family.

Adoption is the ultimate demonstration of hospitality.

In an article in the Christian Post, Sean Martin,the senior director of Church Outreach at Human Coalition, says, “If one family in every 2.5 churches chose to adopt, we would not have any children waiting for a forever family.”[i] We may be shocked by the statistics that show the enormous orphan population in our own state, but it doesn’t spurr us to action. As long as someone else is working to care for parentless children in our country, then we--the church--act as if we do not have to take action. Or maybe we are unaware of the massive need for children to be adopted in this country. 

A part of God’s mission is to care for the “widows and orphans” (James 1:27). This is what our Lord calls, “pure and undefiled religion.” Friends, if we truly care about God’s mission, we would acknowledge that in the Scriptures, He commands us to care for not only life in the womb, but life that is three months old and life that is eighty-three years old. One way we care for life is to exhibit hospitality to children whose parents have died, been deemed unfit to care for them, or who have altogether abandoned them. God’s mission was to seek you out and pick you up from your evil ways, so we ought to have compassion on the most vulnerable in our society.

The church’s plan to show hospitality and care for orphans is to open our homes to the least of these and invite orphans to participate in a family cultivated in grace. Jesus, who had no place to lay His head, gave up His life so that we would have the bosom of our Father to rest ours on. Because of Jesus, you and I have an eternal home. A home without end. A home with a forever family. He has opened up His home to us. What is stopping us from opening up our homes to them?

 

Ultimately, through adoption, God makes us His children, builds His family, displays the gospel, and helps the church demonstrate to orphaned children the love that He has shown us. This is a precious doctrine and one we should emulate.

[i] https://www.christianpost.com/news/the-church-can-solve-the-adoption-problem.html