Since becoming a father seven short months ago, I’ve started to learn about the love of a father firsthand. I’m certainly in the beginning stages. Still yet, I love having the title “daddy”, and I wouldn’t trade my baby girl for anything in the world. I find myself mesmerized by my daughter every day. Simply stated, I love being a dad. Really, in many ways, I think it’s pretty natural for me to feel the way I do about my daughter, as she’s my “flesh and blood.”
What about for those who adopt children? At least from the outside looking in, the kind of love from an adoptive parent to an adoptive child seems to have a different layer (or maybe multiple layers). I’m certainly not suggesting the love I have for my daughter or any parent for their own biological child is any less, but with all of the additional elements of an adoption, there are hurdles that must be crossed, which isn’t quite the case for biological parents. Let’s just consider a few of the obvious ones:
1. The child may not resemble you.
This has to be one of the most fundamental challenges that potential adoptive parents have to come to terms with. Perhaps the child has different colored hair or eyes than you. Not really that big of a deal. However, maybe the child is a different race than you. That’s a bit more obvious isn’t it? For some parents, it’s not an issue at all. However, others are very self-conscious about this, and even put in special requests for not just the same race, but the same hair color and eye color as the parent(s) too. They want the child to resemble them as much as possible.
2. The cost to adopt is expensive.
Another fundamental obstacle with adoption is that the cost to adopt a child can be extremely expensive. According to americanadoptions.com, the average cost of an adoption from 2012-2013 through an agency was nearly $40,000, while an independent adoption was only about $6,000 less. That’s quite a price to pay to provide an innocent child, who didn’t choose to be in this situation, a home.
3. You don’t have to do it.
While adoption is most definitely an incredibly selfless and compassionate act, the bottom line is: you don’t have to do it. As noted in the previous point, adoption is very expensive. Let alone, the psychological hoops you may have to jump through before deciding to go through with it. The truth is, you’d be taking on a responsibility that you don’t have to take on if you don’t want to. There’s no firing squad waiting outside your door if you choose not to adopt.
OK, now take all of those points and apply them from the vantage point of God and His willingness to adopt you, me, and anyone else who wants to be part of His family. When you really think about it, it’s incredible to consider:
1. We didn’t/don’t resemble Him.
I’m sure most of us know Romans 3:23 by heart, and in some ways we may take comfort in that passage, knowing that all of us have sinned. Certainly, we all resemble each other in a spiritual sense, but we don’t resemble God. Even in the flesh, Christ was sinless (1 Peter 2:22). God cannot and will not associate with sin. He hates it (Proverbs 6:16-19). He is holy (Isaiah 6:3).
We couldn’t look any more different from God in our sin. How comfortable do we feel about Romans 3:23 now?
2. The cost to adopt us was incredibly steep.
While the adoption of a child is most certainly a costly endeavor, there’s no dollar amount that can convey the price God paid in order to adopt us. To consider the fact that God hates sin, yet still loves the people who have committed the sins (directly transgressing His will) is just incredible itself. We all know John 3:16, that He loved/loves the world (mankind – His creation) so much, that He gave His only Son to die for us. As Paul stated in Romans 6:23, the payment for sin is death, yet God freely offers eternal life through Christ. If anything, we should be making payments to God for this adoption to take place, but He’s already paid for it.
As any adoptive parent would expect to receive their child’s love, appreciation, and obedience, God certainly expects the same of His adopted children, because the bottom line is…
3. He didn’t have to do it.
As much as we may say it from the Lord’s Supper table or from the pulpit or in our songs, I’m afraid I might (perhaps you do too) have an issue with entitlement. We live in a “hand-out” society and really the only thing we need to have our hand out for is to be smacked…hard. Shame on any of us if we live our lives believing we’re entitled to anything, and most especially salvation. As Christians, how quickly we may forget that we didn’t resemble God at all when we came to Him with our sin. He didn’t have to make His Son available and Jesus always had a way out (Matthew 26:53), but God’s love exceeded it all (Romans 5:8).
Christian, take joy in your adoption! Find humility, knowing that it’s obvious we didn’t resemble God in any way. But at the same time, have resolve, knowing that through the blood of Christ, we can work towards resembling Him in the way we live our lives for our Father each day. What a loving Father we have, who by adopting us, not only calls us His children, but heirs unto salvation (Romans 8:12-17)! “Praise the Lord, I am His child!”
