Sermon Tone Analysis

The idea of an orphan being adopted is a storyline we love — even in the most unusual of places:

Tarzan and Mowgli

Daddy Warbucks take on Annie

Pappa Elf takes on Buddy

Harry Potter — Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia — was truly adopted by Hogwarts

Luke Skywalker — Uncle Owen and Aunt Baru

Frodo — Bilbo

Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy — the Professor… Aslan… called sons of Adam and daughters of Eve

Dorothy Gale — Aunt Em and Uncle Henry… “There is no place like home”

It’s a story line we love because we all strongly sense our lostness… our homlessness in this world.

Even with bio parents who love and care for us, our souls long for a deeper sonship… we wonder who will take us on and take us in?

records the tender and tough moment when God removes Adam and Eve from the Garden...

While DISOWNING doesn’t seem or feel like what is happening here… something significant has unfolded as humanity is ushered to the door of “home” as the Father says, “You can’t be here or come back here any more.”

And then places a heavenly soldier with a flaming sword at the front/back/side door…

While DISOWNING doesn’t seem or feel like what is happening here… something significant has unfolded as humanity is ushered to the door of “home” as the Father says, “You can’t be here or come back here any more

“We aren’t in Kansas anymore.”

What we learn as the story unfolds...

The treason of disbelief and disobedience… sin… and the Lord’s commitment to bring all of his creation back into a full relationship with the Lord.

God sends the Lord’s “only begotten” son for the purpose of being able to fully adopt all of us as sons and daughters of God.

Five uses of the key Greek word for adoption — all used by Paul.

Three are found in Romans (8.15, 8.23, 9.4) — lets look at them.

Romans 8:14-

Gal 4:

A few key observations here:

Paul uses this term “adopted as sons/daughters only in letters to communities under Roman rule.

Paul himself was a Roman citizen and would have been familiar with Rome’s laws and customs.

So, it is reasonable to assume that when Paul uses the term adoption as a Roman citizen to communities/churches under Roman rule, there is some sort of parallel Paul is drawing.

So… what is known about how Rome understood and practiced adoption?

As the head of the household the paterfamilias was the one primarily responsible for maintaining peace and concord within his own family.

In all matters the paterfamilias’s authority (potestas) was absolute; indeed, the authority of the household head institutionalized in the potestas and exercised by the paterfamilias was so binding in the domus that it was not until he had died that married children were free to form a household of their own.

Stephen Joubert (1995: 215) states in regard to the father’s influence in the family, ‘The paterfamilias’ lifelong power over his slaves, adopted children and biological children formed the backbone of Roman society; it was a palladium of Romanism.’

The hierarchical structure of the familia, however, does not mean that ancient fathers were incapable of demonstrating affection towards their offspring.

Generally speaking, the Roman familia comprised a husband, wife and their dependents (natural children, slaves [freedmen, freedwomen]) and their offspring.

Thus the Roman familia was much bigger and wider than our twenty-first-century Western understanding of the term ‘family’ (the nuclear family).

Additionally, the familia embraced those who were sons by reason of having been adopted.

As we have observed, the family was of fundamental importance to Roman society, so much so that when it was under threat of extinction, adoption was a lifeline for a ‘family in danger of dying out’ (Crook 1967: 135).

This was usually due to the paterfamilias’s inability to have offspring of his own or because his own children had failed to live to adulthood; and so that he might have an heir, recourse was made to adopting a son from another family.

Adoption was a well-known practice in the ancient world and was not only of great importance in Roman law and society but was also a ‘treasured status’ (Finger 1993: 48).

This is because adoption was not only a safeguard against the demise of a family but also provided new opportunities for the adoptee that would otherwise not have existed.

Unlike twenty-first-century Western society, where children are the subjects of adoption, in ancient Roman society the subjects of adoption were already adults, by which time, according to Beryl Rawson, ‘the chances of survival were greater and the adopting father could see what he was getting as a son and heir’ (1986: 12; Williams 1999: 82 n. 130).

In the Roman world, adoption was primarily for grown men to fully enter and be adopted by another Roman family to preserve that family which included the blessing that all of the family’s rights, privileges, and resources were theirs forever… they became FULL Heirs.

As we read Paul’s writings on adoption, we see him continually appealing to this Roman reality… that when adoption happens into God’s family, God entrusts the adopted with the full inheritance of being an heir.

Annie gets the mansion

Buddy gets the book deal

Harry Potter rules Hogwarts

Luke Skywalker restores balance

Frodo gets Bag End

Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy get Narnia

Dorothy gets the farm house