Adoption Is A Picture Of The Gospel

I’ve been on a long journey in my understanding of adoption. It’s gone something like this:

+ Adoption is the greatest, most beautiful thing in all the world and should be celebrated. To...
+ Adoption is formed out of loss and covered in brokenness and should be grieved. To...
+ Adoption is beautiful and it is broken, and it should be held in the tension of both the grief and the joy. To, finally and ultimately...
+ Adoption is the means by which we become children of God, which means—though it is born in brokenness—adoption is inherently sacred.
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Our very existence as God’s people is rooted in the reality of adoption. “Once [we] were not a people, but now [we] are the people of God.” Once we were fatherless, but now—through His adoption of us—we are the children of God.
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Adoption is a picture of the gospel. Born into brokenness, dead in sin, lost in our blindness. But Jesus—God Himself— stepped onto this earth and into our stories and spoke with Saving Grace, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” We experience restoration and redemption, we come to know God as Father.
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We must hold a well-rounded, educated, and compassionate view of adoption. We must examine all the sides and hold every one of the broken and beautiful pieces. But in the end, we’re left with a truth that trumps every other reality: we have been made the children of God through adoption and so, above all else, we hold adoption as sacred.
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(John 14:18, 1 Peter 2:10)