I do not crouch at thy feet as a slave before a tyrant, but exult before thee as a son with a father. Give me power to live as thy child in all my actions, and to exercise sonship by conquering self.
The crescendo of Romans Chapter 8 speaks to us of sonship, as do Ephesians 1 and Galatians 4. The biological aspect of sonship is not what is in view in these Biblical passages; though there are indeed other Biblical passages that speak to us biologically. These passages speak to us of the sonship of inheritance, the sonship of authority – rightly speaking they invoke the “placing of the son”. In Greco-Roman times adults were often adopted in order to inherit and continue the legacy of their benefactors – and when we read the English word “adoption” that is what is behind the Greek word – the placing of a son. We are born into the family of God; that is one operation of God in our lives (biological - the New Birth) – we are “placed” as sons and daughters in His family, given the signet ring; that is another operation of God.
A problem often is that when one discovers that he or she is not a worm but a son or daughter, that conquering self is seldom contemplated from that point on, with the result that the beauty of sonship is wasted on selfishness – on counting the treasures in the Father’s house without being a conduit of those treasures to others. Biblical sonship is about laying one’s life down for others – knowing the power of His resurrection is united with knowing the koinonia of His sufferings.
The creation is indeed waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God; the sons of God that the creation are waiting for are sons who come not to be served, but to serve and to lay their lives down for others.
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