Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families

By Russell Moore

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons,by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” –Romans 8:15

The paperwork is in order. We have been visited, called, chosen and bought with a price. The Spirit of adoption has been earnestly deposited. And yet it’s not complete. Christians are an adopted people, and a people longing for the completion of that adoption: “we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Rom. 8:23). All of creation along with our bodies, scattered and buried and dustified, is moving toward redemption, and that redemption is our adoption.

But if redemption is adoption, what does that mean about human adoption? Does it reflect the redeeming love of our God? And if so, should it be a priority in the church? Russell Moore does an outstanding job rooting the practice of adoption in the adoption, God’s adoption of his people.

Adoption is, on the one hand, gospel. In this, adoption tells us who we are as children of the Father. Adoption as gospel tells us about our identity, our inheritance, and our mission as sons of God. Adoption is also defined as mission. In this, adoption tells us our purpose in this age as the people of Christ. Missional adoption spurs us to join Christ in advocating for the helpless and the abandoned.

 Every time we pray “Our Father” as Jesus taught us we proclaim that God has brought us, the fatherless, into his family. We are united to his Son, and therefore we are sons. Some of us are also daughters, but all of us function as sons in his household, permanently taking his name and receiving full inheritance. This is the household we will never leave, our true home in our ultimate Father.

So adoption isn’t primarily for those who can’t biologically have children. Adopted is what we are, and adoption is something the church is called to promote. Of course not everyone is personally called to adopt, and Moore does a good job of not binding consciences where he shouldn’t. But, just as important, he also does a good job of rightly binding consciences and slapping false assumptions:

“Who is their real dad?” “Do you want your own kids?” “Are they real brothers?” “Do you ever want to know your true parents?”

We may as well ask who your real God is and if you think he’d like some children of his own! Because you know, you’re only adopted. No Christian talks like this about God, but we do talk that way, if veiled, about human adoption. Thank God baptismal water is thicker than blood! And that water flows out of Jesus’ side along with his redeeming blood.

Moore and his wife Maria adopted two boys from Russia, from the type of orphanage where the kids sit in soiled cribs and don’t cry anymore because they’ve lost hope it will get them any attention. They also have biological children and no illusions about the challenges of parenting any of them. In addition to casting the theological truth and beauty of adoption, Moore addresses all kinds of practical considerations from working through the paperwork and practical aspects of the process, to thinking about disabled kids and health concerns. Perhaps most helpful on a macro-level, he includes a chapter on how churches can encourage adoption. If you read that far, the question won’t be if, but how.

This book is compelling not because the Moore’s story is beautiful, though it is. It’s compelling because it’s God’s story, the good news given to a fatherless world, God the Father sending his Son to redeem us in his blood, and then sending the Spirit to bring it to fruition. This is the story of adoption.

When Maria and I first walked into the orphanage, where we were lead to the boys the Russian courts had picked out for us to adopt, we almost vomited in reaction to the stench and squalor of the place. The boys were in cribs, in the dark, lying in their own waste.

Leaving them at the end of each day was painful, but leaving them the final day, before going home to wait for the paperwork to go through, was the  hardest thing either of us had ever done. Walking out of the room to prepare for the plane ride home, Maria and I could hear Maxim calling out for us and falling down in his crib, convulsing in tears. Maria shook with tears of her own. I turned around to walk back into their room, just for a minute.

I placed my hand on both their heads and said, knowing they couldn’t understand a word of English, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” I don’t think I consciously intended to cite Jesus’ words to his disciples in John 14:18; it just seemed like the only thing worth saying at the time.