Acknowledging our Adoption

Paul says in the fourth chapter of in his letter to the Galatians that Christ freed us from the law and revealed that we are all the adopted children of God.  The "law" referred to the Mosaic code; the lengthy regulations and rules that were required for proper Jewish belief and practice.

The meaning of Paul's statement about the law and adoption is best understood by understanding freedom from the law in the context of a statement that Paul makes in Galatians 3.13.  Here, Paul says that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by being made a curse for us, and references a text in Deuteronomy: cursed is everyone that hangs from a tree.

In Jesus' day, Israel perceived the law as a mechanism to gain God's favor; to be adopted by God and considered God's people.  Paul says that the law itself was not a curse--the problem was not the Mosaic code but Israel's perception of it and why they followed it.  In fact, Paul perceived the early Christian community as having Jewish and Gentile Christians side by side; Gentile Christians having freedom not to practice the requirements of the law and Jewish Christians having freedom to continue to practice it.

Being hung from a tree rendered someone defiled under the Mosaic law.  By being crucified on a tree, Paul argues, God freed Israel from its perception that the law was needed in order to be God's children.  Israel could never again say that the law was required to be accepted by God, because God in Jesus Himself would thereby be considered unclean.

Israel had gotten things backwards.  God did not bring the Mosaic law to Israel to create hoops for Israel to jump through in order to be adopted as God's children.  Before the law came into being, God chose Israel has His covenant people.  The law was a mechanism for Israel to be reminded of its adoption and to live in accordance with its status as God's covenant people.

We often get things backwards in the Protestant tradition as well.  We think that in order to be adopted as God's children, we too have to jump through hoops.  Too often in the Protestant tradition there is an implied theological understanding that in order to become God's people, we are required to have an emotional experience where we suddenly believe a set of abstract principles about Jesus, and then profess our belief in this set of abstract principles.  At this point, we are then adopted as God's children.

The entire human race is already adopted as God's children.  When we accept Christ as Lord, we do not become God's children.  Instead, we come to understand, acknowledge, and profess that we were always God's children.  We then begin to learn to live our lives as if we believe that we are adopted as God's children.

The Necessity of Baptism by Fire

At the beginning of Mark's gospel, John the Baptist says that the one who will come after him, Jesus, will baptize with fire.

The word baptize in its Greek context means "to submerge." John is telling us that if we choose to live according to the example of Christ, we will be "submerged" in fire.

We typically associate fire today with destruction, but in Jesus' day, fire was primarily associated with healing, restoration, and purification.  In the era before modern medicine, fire was used to heal wounds.  Fire was used to purify materials.  Fire was commonly used in connection with religious rituals to signify renewal and restoration.

God's agenda is not to destroy us, because God has important work for us to accomplish.  God needs our hearts and minds to be purified and healed of all our impurities so that we can be the people that God needs us to be to accomplish God's purposes: the redemption and transformation of the world.  To accomplish God's purposes, God cannot take use us as we are: God must take us out of the world and purify us so that we can then be in the world to fulfill the Great Commission.

God's mechanism for transformation is the Church, the community that seeks to live according to the example of Christ.  The Church exists as the conduit through which disciples are made; where our impurities and imperfections are removed so that we can be empowered to go back into the world to transform the world.

The Church too often seeks to accommodate human culture and to give us the things that human culture tells us are important.  If the Church is being faithful to its purpose, it will transform us so that we can see that our preoccupation with the concerns of human culture; of materials possessions and success, is a manifestation of our impurity.  If we are baptized by fire, we will see ourselves in Pauline terms as in the world but not of the world because we will see the world for what it is as we will also see God's plan for what it needs to be.