Spurgeon: June PM
* 06/23/PM
"Waiting for the adoption."
--Romans 8:23
Even in this world saints are God's children, but men cannot
discover them to be so, except by certain moral characteristics.
The adoption is not manifested, the children are not yet openly
declared. Among the Romans a man might adopt a child, and keep
it private for a long time: but there was a second adoption in
public; when the child was brought before the constituted
authorities its former garments were taken off, and the father
who took it to be his child gave it raiment suitable to its new
condition of life. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it
doth not yet appear what we shall be." We are not yet arrayed in
the apparel which befits the royal family of heaven; we are
wearing in this flesh and blood just what we wore as the sons of
Adam; but we know that "when He shall appear" who is the
"first-born among many brethren," we shall be like Him, we shall
see Him as He is. Cannot you imagine that a child taken from the
lowest ranks of society, and adopted by a Roman senator, would
say to himself, "I long for the day when I shall be publicly
adopted. Then I shall leave off these plebeian garments, and be
robed as becomes my senatorial rank"? Happy in what he has
received, for that very reason he groans to get the fulness of
what is promised him. So it is with us today. We are waiting
till we shall put on our proper garments, and shall be
manifested as the children of God. We are young nobles, and have
not yet worn our coronets. We are young brides, and the marriage
day is not yet come, and by the love our Spouse bears us, we are
led to long and sigh for the bridal morning. Our very happiness
makes us groan after more; our joy, like a swollen spring, longs
to well up like an Iceland geyser, leaping to the skies, and it
heaves and groans within our spirit for want of space and room
by which to manifest itself to men.