“Waiting for the adoption.” — Romans 8:23

Even in this world saints are God’s children, but men cannot discover them to be so, except by certain moral characteristics. The adoption is not manifested, the children are not yet openly declared. Among the Romans a man might adopt a child, and keep it private for a long time: but there was a second adoption in public; when the child was brought before the constituted authorities its former garments were taken off, and the father who took it to be his child gave it raiment suitable to its new condition of life. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be.” We are not yet…

arrayed in the apparel which befits theroyal family of heaven; we are wearing in this flesh and blood just what wewore as the sons of Adam; but we know that “when He shall appear” whois the “first-born among many brethren,” we shall be like Him, we shall seeHim as He is. Cannot you imagine that a child taken from the lowest ranksof society, and adopted by a Roman senator, would say to himself, “I longfor the day when I shall be publicly adopted. Then I shall leave off theseplebeian garments, and be robed as becomes my senatorial rank”? Happyin what he has received, for that very reason he groans to get the fulness ofwhat is promised him. So it is with us today. We are waiting till we shallput on our proper garments, and shall be manifested as the children ofGod. We are young nobles, and have not yet worn our coronets. We areyoung brides, and the marriage day is not yet come, and by the love ourSpouse bears us, we are led to long and sigh for the bridal morning. Ourvery happiness makes us groan after more; our joy, like a swollen spring,longs to well up like an Iceland geyser, leaping to the skies, and it heavesand groans within our spirit for want of space and room by which tomanifest itself to men.

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Producer: Todd Adkins
Voice Artist: Ian Cullen