66: Adoption (Belief-Based Identity, Part 6)

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God. Season 1, episode 66. Today we are continuing to look at our new covenant identity.

Hello, Father.

[00:29] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. This is going to be fun talking about identity and adoption.

[00:36] Stephanie: Yes, we’re getting into adoption today. But first, today’s icebreaker is courtesy of a listener and they want to know about some of our favorite family traditions. And I wanted to just kick it off by saying this week our illustrious podcast producer is turning twenty three. And when I think about family traditions honestly, no matter what time of year it is, one of my first things that I think of is going to Stuckey Farms. And we’ve had this tradition of celebrating Ben’s birthday there. It doesn’t happen every year anymore, but when he was a child especially, we would go to the orchard and pick apples. And it was a good time.

[01:20] Marcus: It’s a nice thing about having a late September birthday. We would always go to this pick your own apples, apple orchard and fill up with apples and get apple cider. And we’d come home and we’d usually get cake from Costco. Let’s face it, they have the best chocolate cake.

[01:38] Stephanie: It’s so good, I know. And then when I think about apples, mom would always have a basket or a bowl of apples that were usually what we picked from the orchard just sitting on the island. And I always loved coming home from school and getting an apple. Anyway, Happy Birthday Ben.

[01:56] Marcus: Yes. Happy Birthday Ben.

[01:57] Stephanie: We love you. How about you?

[02:02] Marcus: I love him, too. That’s not what you’re asking, I’m sorry.

[02:17] Stephanie: Favorite family tradition. I’m glad you love Ben. Thank you for that affirmation.

[02:22] Marcus: Favorite family traditions. Honestly, when I think of family traditions I think of things like watching Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe kind of at the beginning of the Christmas season. There’s a lot of things we do. We’re not like the season doesn’t start until this happens, but we have a lot of things that we do that are fun. I know that I always look forward to it.

[02:52] Stephanie: I love it. Definitely if not at Thanksgiving then at Christmas, we like to marathon The Lord of the Rings Extended Editions and have a party for that.

[03:05] Marcus: Some of our favorite things have been birthday party themes. That’s been one of the fun things we’ve done.

[03:11] Stephanie: Yes. For my 13th birthday party, you and mom threw me a Lord of the Rings themed birthday party. And that was pretty epic.

[03:20] Marcus: It was, that was a lot of fun.

[03:21] Stephanie:  She made shepherd’s pie.

[03:23] Marcus: Yep. I dressed up like Tolkien.

[03:27] Stephanie: Yes, you did. That was lovely. Happy birthday, Ben. And now we are going to talk about sonship. So you know, it works.

[03:36] Marcus: Sonship works.

[03:38] Stephanie: All right. We are in the new covenant portion of our identity series. Last episode, we talked about the “P” of PACT. This episode, we’re going to dig into the “A” of PACT. But first, do you want to just give us a brief reminder of what PACT is?

[03:52] Marcus: Yeah, PACT is a summary of the identity statements in the New Testament. Because there’s not a single passage on the new covenant that just lays the whole thing out, you kind of have to go searching for what does the new covenant give us? What are the legal terms if you will be in the new covenant? And going from the premise that if there is an “In Christ” statement in the New Testament, like in Christ you are in Christ, you are, then that constitutes a term of the new covenant. So I’ve organized those into four buckets, if you will.

The first ones are all the terms related to pardon. That would be like justification, redemption, sanctification, and purification. The A is adoption. C is citizenship, things that have changed there. And then the last one is we’ve given a new title, we’re saints. So all of these also are legal terms because the covenant is a legal document. So we’ve been emphasizing what our legal identity is in Christ.

[04:50] Stephanie: Huzzah! So to get us going into adoption I wanted to read a portion of scripture, and then we can dialogue with it from there.

[05:02] Marcus: Yes.

[05:03] Stephanie: All right. So this is Romans 8:12-17. I’m going to read it in the ESV. “So then, brothers, we are debtors not to the flesh to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 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. The Spirit himself bears witness with our Spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”

[05:50] Marcus: All right, there’s just a little bit there.

[05:52] Stephanie: Just a little bit there. So I just wanted that to kind of set the tone, but I also thought you could give us some look into what adoption meant in that culture.

[06:08] Marcus: Before I dive into that let me just point out that there are two elements of our family that are connected here. One is adoption and the other is new birth. And you’ll notice that this is talking about the spirit of adoption and being born of the Spirit which brings us back to John 3. And so whenever we’re talking about “I am a child of God”, there is this legal part which is our adoption and there is this, what I call living part. Which is that we have been born again, we’ve been born of the Spirit.

And so this passage beautifully brings those two things together. And that is those who are born of the Spirit walk in the spirit. And in fact you can’t walk in the spirit if you haven’t been born in the Spirit, right? So you’re stuck walking according to the flesh. As we talk about adoption, then that kind of cements it.

And what covenants do is they define our identity. They define our relationships and so they define our identity in terms of our relationships. So marriage covenant defines my identity in terms of my relationship. Adoption does the same thing, it says legally I now belong to this family. In the Roman world, back to your question, right?  In the Roman world the most famous adoption that everybody would have known of then was Julius Caesar adopted Octavian Octavian then became Caesar Augustus. When he was adopted there were several things that automatically came about. He had access to the family. Julius Caesar now had a relational connection they didn’t have before and it gave him access to Caesar in a way that he wouldn’t have had before. It gave him authority to operate in the name of the family.

It gave him this inheritance. He immediately became the richest person in the Roman Empire. It gave him all kinds of things which set the stage for him to become the successor of Caesar. So in the Roman world adoption was a very real tangible thing. It completely changed how things were done. And it was not uncommon in that culture for there to be multiple witnesses of an adoption. In fact, I heard from William Barkley in his commentary that there were always twelve witnesses.

I haven’t been able to corroborate that, he’s the only one I’ve heard say that but that there were twelve witnesses at an adoption ceremony. That way no one could ever say no, that never really happened. There were eyewitnesses or a lot of eyewitnesses because the impact was so significant, because you can now have control over family assets. You were now given money in a will, you were now given land. You were given an awful lot of power and influence through this adoption. So it is almost more significant if you will, in the Roman world that is informing this text than it is even in our world today, because it just was so expansive in the implications.

[09:05] Stephanie: Well and adopted children had certain things that even the natural born children didn’t have.

[09:16] Marcus: Again, according to William Barclay, I haven’t been able to corroborate this, but he says very clearly in one of his commentaries that a Roman father had what was called the Pater Potestas. So it’s the Latin meaning the power of the father. And that meant that he could literally have life and death control over his children until they got married or until they were out on their own at some level. As long as they were part of his household it meant that he could literally order them killed. And there were no repercussions. That was not murder. That was him executing justice in his family. He could not do that to an adopted child. He could also disinherit a natural born child. You could never disinherit an adopted child. So there are actually greater protections in Roman culture for adopted kids than there were for birth kids.

[10:09] Stephanie: That’s fascinating.

[10:10] Marcus: Yeah.

[10:12] Stephanie: So adoption brings us into the family of God. Do you want to talk more about the practical realities of what that means for us?

[10:21] Marcus: So in our family you’ve got an aunt and an uncle, my brother and sister who were adopted and they went through an adoption process. We’ve got an interesting family history. My mom, your grandmother, was married and had two kids with a man named Elmer Neuenschwander. He was tragically killed by lightning on a golf course. Just suddenly died leaving a four year old little girl and a nine week old baby boy. About a year later my mom married Timothy Warner, who is my dad and your grandfather. And so my dad had to go to court and do a legal transaction in which he officially adopted my half brother and sister into the family and their names changed from Neuenschwander to Warner.

And he had to say, I will make them equally heirs of any fortune I may amass in my life. Now my dad did not amass a huge fortune, but he did pretty well and he passed on equally to everybody. It was actually written there. So it was a very concrete idea that there is this legal reality, this legal action that takes place called adoption that changes your identity in terms of your relationships. And now it is defined that their identity significantly changed. But even my identity as their brother, our relationship was now defined by law and with that came rights and responsibilities.

[11:54] Stephanie: I love my aunt and uncle, and my aunt who is also your sister. You have three siblings, they are fabulous. So let’s talk more about if you are in Christ and you are adopted into God’s family, what does that look like?

[12:16] Marcus:  The new covenant what it does is, and I kind of hinted at this in the story, but it does several things. In fact, I think I list four of them in the book A Deeper Walk, and one of them is that it gives us access. So I got to alliterate. We got access, we have authority, and we have what’s the other one, remind me?.

[12:36] Stephanie: Acceptance.

[12:36] Marcus: Acceptance. Thank you. I don’t know why I forget that one. Authority, acceptance, and access. All right, so now that I confused everybody we’re going to do this in reverse order. So we start with access. My favorite picture when I think about…..

[12:50] Stephanie: Okay, wait, there are four. This is your “AI” identity because the fourth one is an I.

[12:57] Marcus: Yeah there are four.

[13:00] Stephanie: Access, acceptance, authority, and inheritance.

[13:04] Marcus: Very good. So those are the four. So the first one was access. So when I think of access, the picture that always comes to my mind shows my age. When I was born John F. Kennedy was president and he was unique in that he was a young father in the White House. And so there are all these pictures of his kids playing in the Oval Office at his desk. And I always think of that when I think of access. They had access because they were his kids. I had a little bit of that. My dad was the president of a college and at age seven I could walk right into the office of the president of the university and nobody stopped me because I had access.

[13:50] Stephanie: I had some of that too when you were the senior pastor. And my school met for a time in the building of the church. I might have been a little entitled to just wander wherever I wanted in that building.

[14:03] Marcus: So Hebrews puts this access into the words that we come boldly. We have confidence to come boldly before the throne of grace. And so that’s describing the kind of access that we have. And Jesus himself said, I’m not even saying I’ll ask my Father for you. You can go straight to my Father and ask Him for whatever you need and ask Him for whatever you want. So that’s the kind of access that we’re talking about. So that’s number one.

[14:31] Stephanie: Number two is acceptance.

[14:33] Marcus: All right, so acceptance. My dad used to walk people through a question that went something like this. Let’s take these words authority, accountability, affirmation, and acceptance. Most of us who are fear bonded to God, in fact, probably all of us who are fear bonded to God, start with the idea that God is the authority to whom I am accountable. And because I’m accountable to Him if I do well he’ll affirm me. If I don’t do well he won’t affirm me.

And if I am affirmed then I’ll be accepted. But if I’m not affirmed I won’t be accepted, I’ll be rejected. And so we live with this fear that we aren’t going to live up to the standard by which we will gain acceptance. We are stuck with what many people have called performance based acceptance. My dad said, “Well, what if that’s actually the opposite order?” And he would lay this out.

What if it starts with acceptance and that says, because you are my child I accept you. As my child I affirm you and I tell you I love you, and I tell you that you’re my delight.  Now, I’m asking you to be accountable to my authority. What if it goes in that order? I remember my dad showing this to missionaries and showing it to people in full time Christian ministry and just having their minds blown.

They realized, you know what? I have been approaching my Christianity upside down and backwards most of my life because I have not been starting from a place of acceptance with God. I’ve been trying to earn acceptance. And that usually happens because I feel like I’ve had to earn love from other people. I felt like I’ve had to earn whatever I get in life. And we have a hard time with unconditional love anywhere. But that’s really what we mean by acceptance. It’s the unconditional love of God. So that would be the second thing that comes with our adoption. Third is, remind me.

[16:31] Stephanie: Authority.

[16:31] Marcus: Thank you. Because I’m obviously brain dead today.

[16:34] Stephanie: We’re very tired.

[16:36] Marcus: Authority is the right to represent the family in business. So you go back to the Roman world and an adopted child could go and negotiate contracts on behalf of the family. They have the authority to do that. In our case we can do things in the name of Jesus. If I’m doing it in the name of the family or in the name of Jesus then there is something that is recognized as authentic in the court by this. Now demons know that we have this kind of authority.

So what I found in spiritual warfare is that a lot of times they’ll push back to see if we believe it. But as soon as they know that we know what kind of authority we have and that they can’t mess with that, then they back off. But they will push sometimes just to see, do you really understand who you are and what kind of authority that you have? Because I know it, but I don’t think you do. And so I’ve seen this multiple times through the years.

And every now and then you just remind them that I am a child of God. I am seated with Christ in the heavenly realms at the right hand of the Father, and you are not my equal. You are beneath me. And I am speaking to you as one with authority. It’s not that I’m more powerful than you, because authority is the right to represent power. In this case I have the right to represent the power of the kingdom of God. So I’m not saying I am stronger, wiser, smarter, or anything than any demonic power.

What I’m saying is that I have more authority because I can represent the authority of Christ and his kingdom against them, and that puts them at a level below me. And so it goes beyond that too. Because whatever we’re doing in the name of Jesus we’re doing basically in the name of the family, in the name of God’s heavenly family. So those are the first three, right?

[18:32] Stephanie: That’s awesome. As you were talking about it we are in this extended series on identity and we started with attachment based. And we’re in the beliefs based segment right now. And so you have the attachment, you have the relational connection, and now we’re working on the beliefs. Okay, do you believe what you said about the demons? They are like, yeah, we know that you’re related, we know your attachment, but do you believe your attachment? And it all works together.

[18:59] Marcus: It does. It all connects together. And even the covenant is about attachment. It’s about defining that attachment. And we see this still coming up. I’ve got access to God so I can come boldly into his presence and just tell Him I have a need. I don’t deserve to get this need met, but this is a throne of grace. So I’m coming here asking you as your child. We can represent the family and the family business using the name of Jesus. And we also have this acceptance that starts from a place of acceptance. It’s not something we’re trying to earn. That brings us to our fourth thing, right, so this is the I. As you like to say, we have AI. Artificial intelligence. Maybe artificial identity is not the case here..

[19:45] Stephanie: That only goes so far doesn’t it?

[19:46] Marcus: It does. So this is inheritance. And again, in the Roman world this was one of the main purposes of adoption. It was to determine who got the inheritance and where it was going. It was interesting for instance, we talked about Julius Caesar. He had a natural born son with Cleopatra named Caesarean. So there was this huge legal battle over who gets to represent the family. Who gets the authority, who gets the inheritance, and who gets all this? Octavian or Caesarean? Now Caesarean was a baby so it was his mother Cleopatra who was representing him.

[20:23] Stephanie: There’s all sorts of complications right there.

[20:25] Marcus: There are all sorts of complications right there. And so it helped that Caesar never actually married Cleopatra. And so Caesarean didn’t have the same level of rights. The adoption of Octavian was to clarify that this is where I want it to go. And so we saw this among a lot of the Caesars who would actually adopt their heir and bypass their natural children to put their adopted son on the throne as the next emperor.

[20:52] Stephanie: And historically that tended to go better.

[20:56] Marcus: That tended to go better. They had what they called five competent emperors. Yeah,  I got that from somebody. Five competent emperors and those were the ones who were adopted. And then Marcus Aurelius, who’s considered this genius, decided to skip that and let his son come. And his son is Commodus. He has the word commode in his name and he flushed the Roman Empire down the commode.

[21:32] Stephanie: All right, this is into the weeds with the Warners.

[21:36] Marcus: Welcome to conversations around our dinner table.

[21:41] Stephanie: I love it.

[21:46] Stephanie: As we said, we are tired today guys. You were talking about inheritance and then also wrapping up and  maybe bringing all of the four together.

[21:55] Marcus: So that’s inheritance in the Roman world. As Christians when we’re talking about inheritance Peter reminds us that we have an incorruptible inheritance that cannot spoil or fade. Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, don’t store up for yourselves treasures here on Earth, store up treasures in heaven because it can’t be taken away from you. This idea also is embodied in the New Testament idea of hope. And the idea of hope is directly connected to our inheritance. Now that your hope is in place and your hope is that you’re taken care of, in a sense, God’s like, go love other people. Trust what I’ve given you, that’s faith, and now go love other people knowing that you’re okay.

And that makes a huge difference because so often we’re like, well, if I love people well enough then God will give me an inheritance. If I have enough faith then God will give me an inheritance. But it’s kind of flipped. It’s like hope is the anchor. It’s the foundation of this. And because we’ve been given this hope now God’s saying, trust it, live in faith, and let that faith produce love as you love other people. There is a direct connection between this idea that I am taken care of and that I’m now free to love other people. And that’s what brings faith, hope, and love together. And as God says, the greatest of these is love. But I think the spring or the origin of those things is actually our hope.

[23:25] Stephanie: I love it. So could you maybe tie adoption and pardon together at all?

[23:32] Marcus: Adoption and pardon are doing very different things. Pardon is taking care of the obstacles that keep us from a relationship. It’s like, okay, there are some problems here that have to be resolved before I can adopt you and we have to take care of the sin problem. We got to take care of the sanctification problem. Pardon is kind of clearing the way for the relationship of reconciliation. Now we are affirming that reconciliation and we are codifying the reconciliation if you will. Not only are you reconciled but I’m going to adopt you. Going back to the Roman Empire on this one, one of the pictures that I love is that the slaves, when they were freed, often went through a process.

They were not only set free, they were given a plaque or a certificate or something that they could show people showing that I am a freedman, I am not a slave. And in the Roman Empire, slaves had nothing to do with race. This was just prisoners of war basically.  They would be set free but it was almost unheard of for somebody to only be given their freedom.

They were also given something that was often called grace. And the grace that they were given was the money for a new start, perhaps land, or perhaps the ownership of a business. They were given something that they needed to go start a new life. Now in response to the grace that they were given and their freedom, that would be like pardon. And then they were given their grace which is an opportunity for a new start. It was understood and expected that you would show loyalty in return.

Well, the Greek word for that loyalty is the same word we use for faith, you’ll be faithful to me because of the grace that I’ve shown you. And so you have this interesting interplay between grace and faith and the Roman culture that I think is informing part of what Paul’s talking about. God gives us grace and in return he asks for faith. And not just an intellectual belief, but a loyalty that comes out of that. You’ll be faithful to doing things his way.

And that’s why Paul says, even to the point of suffering, even to the point that now I’m not going to walk in the flesh anymore, I’m now going to walk in the spirit. That’s all part of faith, that’s living by faith. What I find interesting is that the apostle Paul in Ephesians talks about the lavish grace of God. And it’s like he says, God takes this whole process a step further. He says we were slaves of sin. In fact, I think the gospel is best explained not in terms of we were sinners separated from God, that’s fine, but I think it’s even better explained as we were slaves in a prison with an evil master.

In other words, our situation was like the Israelites under Pharaoh. We were being abused, we were being kept in abject slavery, and God showed up and did this miraculous thing. He brought us to freedom. So our freedom is an amazing thing and it’s completely undeserved. We didn’t do anything. He didn’t lead the Israelites in an uprising. He just saved them So it’s the same thing. God just sent his son and he saved us.

And he brought us freedom. Then in a sense, he adopted them. And In a sense he married them. So he entered into a covenant relationship with them. And so we could look at it this way, God not only set us free under the new covenant, but it says he has given us everything that we need for life through his great and precious promises, and then he adopts us. So it’d be like in the Roman world.

If I set you free and I gave you all of this, everything that you needed for life and then I adopted you and made you my heir. I gave you authority and gave you access. That would completely change your life. And this is the lavish grace of God that he has done for us. He has set us free, he’s given us everything we need for life, and he has adopted us so that we have our future set. Our access and all the great things that come with adoption.

[27:59] Stephanie: Hallelujah!

[28:00] Marcus: Yeah, it’s pretty cool.

[28:04] Stephanie: Understatement!

[28:06] Marcus: It’s lavish, to use Paul’s words. I think this is why Paul blurts out this fourteen verse sentence in Greek, the 14 verses of Ephesians one. Well, eleven verses from Ephesians 1:3-14, I think it’s all one verse sentence in Greek. And it’s all a doxology of praise where Paul just sort of blurts out, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who blessed us in the heavenly realms with every blessing that there is to be given.” And he’s just exploding with joy. He talks about what God has given to us in Christ and it’s all about, in Christ this is true, and in Christ this is true. And adoption is right at the heart of that whole thing that he’s excited about.

[28:51] Stephanie: Huzzah!. And we’re going to keep talking about it next week. We’re covering a lot coming to the end of the episode. I want to give a quick shout out to the October, 35th Anniversary conference where Dad is going to be talking about Breakthrough. Judy Dunnigan is going to be there, Dan Rumberger is going to be there, Juni Felix is going to be there, Chris Coursey is going to be there, and a whole bunch of the Deeper Walk staff. It is going to be fabulous. And you can come online if you’re thinking last minute, hey, I can’t travel that far. Or hey, the tickets got sold out or something.

[29:27] Marcus: We’re just about sold out.

[29:28] Stephanie: Yeah, but you can attend online and we would love to see you.

[29:32] Stephanie: So, yeah, quick shout out to that. Find more information out at Deeper Walks website. Father, any closing thoughts?

[29:42] Marcus: It’s really good to review this honestly. It’s like I said, I teach about adoption and identity all the time and then once I started teaching about it, I remembered how exciting this is. I was like, oh, this is such a good reminder. This is such an important thing because it’s so easy to slip back into this performance mindset and maybe I’m not worth that much after all, or maybe I’m a disappointment after all. And you’re looking at things and realize, okay, now this is good. It’s good to remind ourselves of what God has done for us.

And the word grace itself comes from the motivation, from what motivated God to do all of this for us. It was the graciousness of his heart that said, you know what? I’m going to set them free. You know what? I’m going to give them everything they need for life. And you know what? I’m going to adopt them into the family. I’m going to give them an inheritance. I’m going to give them access. I’m going to give them authority. It’s the lavish grace of God and it’s good to reflect and meditate on that.

[30:51] Stephanie: Hallelujah. All right, thank you all for joining us on the trail. Today Deeper Walk exists to make heart focused discipleship the norm for Christians everywhere. If you’d like to support this cause, you can become a Deeper Walk Trailblazer with your monthly donation of $25 or more. And if you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the On the Trail podcast, leave a review and share with your friends.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week. And Happy Birthday, Ben.