Our Heavenly Father demonstrated His heart and the Spirit of adoption through the birth of His son Jesus.
When we read the genealogy of Jesus, it’s not until we get all the way to the end, where His birth is recorded that there is a change in the way things are written. There are five women in His genealogy who we are given details about:
Tamar who was the mother of Perez, whose father was Judah. Rahab who was the mother of Boaz. His father was Salmon. Ruth who was the mother of Obed. His father was Boaz. Bathsheba, Uriah’s widow who was the mother of Solomon. His father was King David. Finally, there was Mary the mother of Jesus who’s Father was God but her husband was Joseph. (Read Matthew 1:1-12)
Jesus’ genealogy is not recorded by His mother Mary’s family line, but her husband Joseph’s who was not Jesus’ father.
In today’s generation, that would be unheard of. Even if the step-father loved his son, if the child’s father is not around then the genealogy would be traced back through the mother’s bloodline, especially in such an important record.
The Bible said Jesus would come from the root of Jesse and be the son of David.
These are Joseph, who has no biological claim to Jesus whatsoever people, not Mary his mother. Throughout the entire recorded genealogy of Jesus, it’s the father’s line that is documented and it’s no different when it comes to Jesus, even though Joseph is not his father.
Rom 8:15 says: For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”
Gal 4:4-7 says: But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father! So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
Jesus was grafted into a biological earthly family for God’s eternal purposes, that we could be grafted into to His heavenly family by the Spirit.
The Spirit of adoption was purposed for the church but demonstrated first through Jesus, the son of God. He was adopted and accepted by Joseph, mary’s husband to the degree that the only genealogy we see, the one we need is that of Joseph.
This is important because God, as the Eternal, Heavenly Father demonstrated through man the love He expects fathers to have for the children who they’ve been entrusted with, even if they are not their biological children. He takes it to an even higher order in that He adopts us into His eternal, heavenly, royal family and makes us accepted in the Beloved.
Throughout the Bible, God demonstrates His eternal plan first in the natural then in the Spirit.
1Co 15:46 says, “But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual.” For example, the physical tabernacle of the Old Testament was made from a heavenly pattern. Then later the spiritual reality was made manifest (Hebrews 8:5).
Jesus’ adoption was part of God’s eternal plan, which is why He had to demonstrate the pattern of heaven in the natural (through Joseph) before it could be a spiritual reality.
This stirs my heart because I thought adoption somehow a lesser part of God’s plan, added because it was the only way to redeem sinful man. Though everything god did was out of love, many things were done to break the curse Adam and Eve’s choices caused.
But Jesus’ adoption shows that it was from the beginning. Which to me means that adoption is more the divine counsel of God’s will but it is who He is. His character, the essence of His very being, the Spirit of adoption. This goes beyond His mercy and grace to His eternal plan.
Adoption is not second best in God’s eyes, it part of His eternal plan.
When we talk about God’s eternal plan we are talking about patterns of heavenly things that existed before time. God demonstrated the Spirit of adoption which existed before time through the line of Joseph before we became sons and daughters through this same Spirit.
When two people come together with children from other people, whether the man, the woman, or both the Spirit of adoption needs to be present for the family to work as God would have it.
As a woman who had a blended family, I know what it’s like for the Spirit of adoption to absent and for it is present.
Beloved, how much more should we, now that we are the children of God, knowing that Joseph who was not a son of God, but demonstrated the love of God through adopting the Son of God, be willing to demonstrate the Spirit of adoption to others with all the loving-care and acceptance God shows us.
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