From Dan Cruver at Together for Adoption:
Adoptive love is incarnate love.
Don’t let that first sentence pass through your mind too quickly. Let it sit there for a few minutes. If you do, I think you’ll find that God’s adoptive love is both scary and assuring.
When God sent His Son to redeem us so that we might receive adoption as sons (Galatians 4:4-6), He did not send him as an outside-in observer. He sent him as an outside-in rescuer. God the Son became one of us. He not only clothed himself with our humanity, he also clothed himself with our need.
God the Son became poor. He did not merely observe our poverty. He wore it. Our poverty became his own.
Jesus became poor so that we might become rich. He entered into our need so that we might enjoy his abundance. In other words, Jesus became an orphan so that we might become children.
I don’t know what this truth about Jesus does to you, but it lays me low, really low. It levels me. I really don’t even begin to care for orphans like Jesus cared for me. For the most part, I care for them from a distance, as an outside observer. I don’t imitate God’s incarnate love very well at all.
When I consider what God’s adoptive love did to meet my need and give me a home, I’m convicted to the core. If I’m honest, I actually find God’s adoptive love to be very scary. It forces me to realize that I’m a whole lot less like Jesus than I think I am. My adoptive love is not nearly incarnate enough.
But the truth about God’s adoptive love does not just level and scare me. It also assures me. It lifts me up.
When Jesus became poor so that I might become rich, he didn’t come because he knew I’d finally get my act together by 2010 (or 2050 for that matter). He came knowing that I would never get my act together. He came knowing that I needed saving in every second of my brief life. Jesus did not just live and die for me at my worst. He lived and died for me at my best. Jesus wore both the “best” and worst of my poverty.
God accepts me not because I care for orphans like I should, or ever will care for them as I should. He does not accept me because my life finally looks like Jesus’. God accepts me solely because of what Jesus has done for me and in my place.
The good news that Jesus become poor so that I might become rich both humbles and encourages me at the same time. The gospel both levels me and lifts me up simultaneously. It levels me by reminding me of how far short I still fall and lifts me up by reminding me that God has already accepted me.
Therefore, only as I look to Jesus will I learn to better incarnate God’s adoptive love. Only as I see that God has already accepted me because of Jesus can I really face my failure to follow Jesus’ example and actually do something about it. I’m thankful that God’s adoptive love is both scary and assuring.
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