Homecoming is a difficult process.
This is my advice to any parent considering adoption. That day when you load the car seat and bring your child home is not their true homecoming day. My husband and I have adopted three times – twice we’ve welcomed slightly older little ones into our home. Our first was nine months old, and our second was two and a half years old. The day we brought each of those boys home was not the happiest day of their lives (although we wanted it to be): it was a day of separation from what they knew, a day of strangeness, and a day when an old identity began dying. While we knew that they were trading in warped coping mechanisms and dysfunctional behaviour for a family, true love, acceptance, and a secure future, it was clear that they had not had that realisation.
The fact that we received the Spirit of adoption and that we can indeed cry out, “Abba! Father!” is one of the most beautiful realities of the Christian faith.
Each time, I watched my sons grieved by freedom lost, by structure and discipline gained, and by the frustrations of two involved parents – something they did know they needed. Each homecoming was a battle that lasted months and, in each case, there was a moment when it began to dawn on us and on them: they have started coming home.
There is no shortage of inspirational quotes from Romans 8, especially verses 12-17. The fact that we received the spirit of adoption and that we can indeed cry out, “Abba! Father!” is one of the most beautiful realities of the Christian faith. However, we seldom preach the cost: Paul reminds us of the importance of submitting to God’s law, pleasing our Father (verses 7-8), putting to death the deeds of the body (verse 13), and suffering with Christ as our co-heir (verse 17). Our sonship comes through us being Spirit-led, obedient children, willing to put to death our former ways.
In the Greco-Roman world, adoption was not about the child, nor was it about remedying abandonment. Rather, adoption was about the father. It was a sensible way for prominent men without sons to ensure that they had an heir. Adoptees were hand-picked, often from what we would consider stable homes, and trained and equipped to become the son the adopter would approve of. This necessitated a change in identity: a new name, new destiny, and also new rules and discipline. To become who the father wants you to be, you had to put to death your former identity and act as a legitimate son within your new home.
Now, while Christian adoption is radically different from this Greco-Roman practice in the sense that our Father did not choose the most promising candidates (thank God for that), I fear that we have romanticised the passages on adoption and that we have made sonship merely about acceptance. The putting to death of our former identity and actions is often underplayed, leading to a misunderstanding of what it means to truly become sons. There is a legitimacy that comes with our Father’s discipline (Hebrews 12:7-11), and while we will never be sinless while we walk this earth (1 John 1:8-10), crying out “Abba Father” also means acknowledging His authority to change us, however painful that might be. Israel was not simply taken out of Egypt into Canaan; they were gathered to a God who made a covenant with them and constrained them within their newfound freedom to make a holy people of them. And, like my sons, they longed back to the luxuries they had while in bondage (e.g., Exodus 14:11-12; 16:3; 17:3; Numbers 11:4-6; 14:1-4; 20:5; 21:5).
I fear that we have romanticised the passages on adoption and that we have made sonship merely about acceptance. The putting to death of our former identity and actions is often underplayed, leading to a misunderstanding of what it means to truly become sons.
When we are adopted as God’s sons, there is a cost. The cost pales in comparison to the immense love of the Father and the eternal inheritance that comes with becoming His children. Still, we feel this tension as our former whims and ways are put to death and we learn what it is our Father desires from us. In Luke 3, we see John the Baptist preaching the cost of discipleship to various groups: he challenges the crowds to be generous (3:11), the tax collectors to be honest (3:13), and the soldiers to be content and to refrain from extortion (3:14). Luke identifies these and other exhortations as John preaching the good news (εὐαγγελίζω) to the people (3:18).
Homecoming is indeed a process. I have seen two sons trade in their former identities to become who their father and mother lovingly knew they could be. I have seen the pain, the rage, the disappointment, and the longing that arose as they gave up who they formerly were. However, I have also seen the restoration of brokenness, the rest that comes with love and unconditional acceptance, potential reached, and destiny born.
Likewise, there is a cost, a surrender, a death connected to becoming legitimate sons of God. We enter a new household and, while we become new creatures, we will inevitably find that tensions arise between our fleshly desires and our Father’s ways. When we allow our Father to shape us, legitimacy comes. However, the cost pales in comparison to the inheritance we gain. Unlike my sons, who initially struggled to grasp what they had gained through loving adoption, we have the assurance of God’s love for us perfectly revealed in His Son dying for our reconciliation to the Father. It is because of this great love that we can cry out, “Abba! Father!” knowing that, while our homecoming is costly, it is at this juncture of life and death, embrace and surrender, where we truly become sons and daughters of the living God.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” – John 12:24-25 (ESV)
