Geo MacDonald: What the Apostle Paul Meant by 'Adoption'

In a sermon on Romans 8:15, George MacDonald says the following about what he believes the apostle Paul intended to say when he speaks of adoption:

"The hardest, gladdest thing in all the world is to cry Father! from a full heart. I would help whom I may to call thus upon the Father.

"There are many things in all forms of the systematic teachings of Christianity to block such an outgoing of the heart as this most elemental human cry...(one) such cold wind is the so-called doctrine of adoption."

MacDonald proceeds to explain that the word "adoption" is a poor translation of what Paul is saying about God and His relationship to His children. It is a good word for human transactions, but the problem in using it with God is that it suggests that God is not our original parent or that He was our father, then repudiated us as children and then took us again. MacDonald contends that this kind of view of God's fatherhood gets in the way of our being able to cry "Father!" from a full heart.

So he goes on to say he doesn't believe that the word "adoption" was what Paul had in mind when using the Greek word huiothesia:  "...the word used by St. Paul does not imply that God adopts children that are not his own, but rather that a second time he fathers his own...He will make himself tenfold, yea, infinitely their father...He will have them one with himself..."

"(Paul) means the raising of a father's own child from the condition of tutelage and subjection to others to the position and rights of a son...The idea is that of a spiritual coming of age. Only when a child is a man is he really and fully a son...To be a child is not necessarily to be a son or daughter. The childship is the lower condition of the upward process toward the sonship. It is the soil out of which the true sonship shall grow.

"No more than an earthly parent, God cannot be content to have only children. He must have sons and daughters...His children are not his real, true sons and daughters until they think like him, feel with him, judge as he judges, until they are at home with him and without fear before him because he and they mean the same thing, love the same things, seek the same ends.

"For this we are created. It is the one end of our being and includes all other ends whatever."