This Father would make to himself sons and daughters indeed—that is, such sons and daughters as shall be his sons and daughters not merely by having come from his heart, but by having returned thither—children in virtue of being such as whence they came, such as choose to be what he is. He will have them share in his being and nature—strong wherein he cares for strength; tender and gracious as he is tender and gracious; angry where and as he is angry. Even in the small matter of power, he will have them able to do whatever his Son Jesus could on the earth, whose was the life of the perfect man, whose works were those of perfected humanity. Everything must at length be subject to man, as it was to The Man. When God can do what he will with a man, the man may do what he will with the world; he may walk on the sea like his Lord; the deadliest thing will not be able to hurt him:—“He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater than these shall he do.”
God, whose pleasure brought
Man into being, stands away
As it were, an handbreath off, to give
Room for the newly-made to live.
He has made us, but we have to be. All things were made through the Word, but that which was made in the Word was life, and that life is the light of men: they who live by this light, that is, live as Jesus lived—by obedience, namely, to the Father, have a share in their own making; the light becomes life in them; they are, in their lower way, alive with the life that was first born in Jesus, and through him has been born in them—by obedience they become one with the godhead: “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.” He does not make them the sons of God, but he gives them power to become the sons of God: in choosing and obeying the truth, man becomes the true son of the Father of lights.
It is enough to read with understanding the passage I have quoted from his epistle to the Galatians, to see that the word “adoption” does not in the least fit St. Paul’s idea, or suit the things he says. While we but obey the law God has laid upon us, without knowing the heart of the Father whence comes the law, we are but slaves—not necessarily ignoble slaves, yet slaves; but when we come to think with him, when the mind of the son is as the mind of the Father, the action of the son the same as that of the Father, then is the son of the Father, then are we the sons of God. And in both passages—this, and that which, from his epistle to the Romans, I have placed at the head of this sermon—we find the same phrase, “Abba, Father,” showing, if proof were needful, that he uses the word νἱοθεσία the same sense in both: nothing can well be plainer, that needs consideration at all, than what that sense is. Let us glance at the other passages in which he uses the same word: as he alone of the writers of the New Testament does use it, so, for aught I know, he may have made it for himsef. One of them is in the same eighth chapter of the epistle to the Romans; this I will keep to the last. Another is in the following chapter, the fourth verse; in it he speaks of the νἱοθεσία, literally the “son-placing” (that is, the placing of sons in the true place of sons), as belonging to the Jews. On this I have but to remark that “whose is the νἱοθεσία” cannot mean either that they had already received it, or that it belonged to the Jews more than to the Gentiles; it can only mean that, as the elder-brother-nation, they had a foremost claim to it, and would naturally first receive it; that, in their best men, they had always been nearest to it. It must be wrought out first in such as had received the preparation necessary; those were the Jews; of the Jews was the Son, bringing the νἱοθεσία, the sonship, to all. Therefore theirs was the νἱοθεσία, just as theirs was the gospel. It was to the Jew first, then to the Gentile—though many a Gentile would have it before many a Jew. Those and only those who out of a true heart cry “Abba, Father,” be they of what paltry little so-called church, other than the body of Christ, they may, or of no otherat all, are the sons and daughters of God.
St. Paul uses the word also in his epistle to the Ephesians, the first chapter, the fifth verse. “Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself,” says the authorized version; “Having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself,” says the revised—and I see little to choose between them: neither gives the meaning of St. Paul. If there is anything gained by the addition of the words “of children” in the one case, and “as sons” in
