The Family of God: Adopted Children from Every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation
My wife, Heather, and I just returned home from Ethiopia with our fourteen-month-old newly adopted daughter Waverly. While we were there I celebrated my 33rd birthday. On January 30th, 1983 my father held his newborn son as he sat in the hospital room beside my exhausted mother as they watched the Washington Redskins defeat the Miami Dolphins 27-17 in Super Bowl XVII. I have heard that story many times and even had baby pictures taken with a football in my hands to commemorate the occasion.
Here I am on Super Bowl Sunday 1983, and Waverly on Super Bowl Sunday 2016
Waverly will not hear similar stories about her birth. In fact, we don’t even know exactly when or where she was born. However, she will often hear about the first time her mother and father saw her beautiful dark brown eyes in her adoption referral picture and immediately loved her. She will often hear how her mom and dad prayed and prayed for 8 months that God would allow us to travel to a country far from home to see her, hug her, and kiss her for the first time. She will often hear about her first day at home with her brother and sister…and how we watched Super Bowl 50 together...as a family of five…finally. Waverly may not hear stories about the day she was born, but she will know about the joy she brought her family on the day she was adopted.
Waverly with her new family for the first time
The Bible paints a similar portrait regarding the family of God. God’s children were once separated from their Father as spiritual orphans, facing an eternity apart from the love of God as “children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (Ephesians 2:3).” But God – two precious words! – because of His great love for us, “predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace (Ephesians 1:5-6a).” J.I. Packer, in his seminal work Knowing God, wrote, “Were I asked to focus the New Testament message in three words, my proposal would be adoption through propitiation, and I do not expect ever to meet a richer or more pregnant summary of the gospel than that.”[1] By God’s grace, He determined to seek and save desperate spiritual orphans, making them “sons” through faith in Christ and, therefore, heirs to the Kingdom; an inheritance of unbelievably glorious riches that only Jesus truly deserves.
In Ethiopia, our adoption lawyer Dereje – a wonderful Christian advocate for adoption – informed us that the country is trying to emphasize domestic adoption. In fact, at one point many people said that they would be willing to adopt a child. However, they were then informed that the adopted child would be entitled to everything that a biological child inherits, and that once adopted the child could not be given back to the orphanage. Upon hearing these requirements for adoption, many once-enthusiastic potential parents declined to continue with the process. Thanks be to God that He is a gracious Father; willing to share the inheritance of Christ with us and promising to never disown us as His children as Ephesians 1:13 & 14 makes clear: “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”
As a result of this lack of zeal for domestic adoption in Ethiopia, many orphans have few options there other than being adopted by Christian families from America. There is something glorious about transracial, transnational adoption. It is a beautiful picture of God’s multi-cultural family in which He has determined to redeem and adopt children from every tribe, tongue, and nation on earth. God gives us a glimpse of our future Heavenly family worship time, when we will gather to sing to our Brother, the King: “And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.’ (Revelation 5:9-10)”
God has given his adopted children the privilege of taking the gospel to the nations with the knowledge that there are spiritual orphans in every corner of the globe just waiting to hear the call of their Father to come home. God Himself sacrificed so much – ultimately resulting in the death of Christ on the cross – in order to pursue us and adopt us. This is the heart of missions; loving our Father enough to sacrificially give our lives so that all His lost children may be found and able to give Him the love He alone deserves.
Waverly may not share the same DNA, skin color or nation of birth as the rest of her family, but she is no less a Winfrey. She is a constant reminder of God’s gracious adoption of His children from every people group on earth, and as we serve on the mission field with Reaching and Teaching, Waverly, a former orphan, will have the honor of being part of a family that is introducing spiritual orphans around the world to their Father, God.
[1] (Knowing God, p. 214)
