251
(ΕἸ1.). It is also to be noticed (cf. Mey.) that both in Romans (viii. 29) and in 1 Peter (i. 2) it is the πρόγνωσις, not the mpoopicpés, that is represented as antecedent to the election or as forming its ground. This Divine προορισμός, like the Divine ἐκλογήν has in the Pauline writings, in which it receives its loftiest, most complete, and most unqualified statement, not a speculative but an in- tensely practical interest, especially with regard to two things of most immediate personal concern—the believer’s incen- tive to live in newness and holiness of life (cf. ii. 10), and his encouragement to rest in the Divine salvation as for him an assured salvation.—eis υἱοθεσίαν : unto adoption. Or,as the RV gives it, follow- ing the adoptio filiorum of the Vulg., ‘unto adoption as sons’’. Itis a Pauline term, and conveys an idea distinct from that of sonship and explanatory of it. The sonship of believers, the fact that they are children of God, with the privi- leges and responsibilities belonging to such, finds frequent expression in the NT writings. But it is only in the Pauline Epistles that the specific idea of υἱοθεσία occurs, and there in five instances (Rom. viii. 15, 23, ix. 4; Gal. iv.5; Eph.i.5). In onecase it is applied to the special relation of Israel to God (Rom. ix. 4); thrice (Rom. viii. 15; Gal. iv. 5; Eph. i. 5) it is used of the present position of believers in Christ; once (Rom. viii, 23) it refers to their future consummation, the resurrection of life that will be the full manifestation οἱ their sonship. It is a term of relation, expressing our sonship in respect of standing. It appears to be taken from the Roman custom, with which Paul could not fail to be acquainted. Among the Jews there were cases of informal adoption, as in the instance of Mordecai and Esther (Esth. ii. 7). But adoption in the sense of the legal transference of a child to a family to which it did not belong by birth had no place in the Jewish law. In Roman law, on the other hand, provision was made for the trans- action known as adoptio, the taking of a child who was not one’s child by birth to be his son, and αγγοραίζο, the transference of a son who was independent, as by the death of his proper father, to another father by solemn public act of the people. Thus among the Romans a citizen might receive a child who was not his own by birth into his family and give him his name, but he could do so only by a formal act, attested by wit- nesses, and the son thus adopted had
252
in all its entirety the position of a child by birth, with all the rights and all the obligations pertaining to that. By “adop- tion,” therefore, Paul does not mean the bestowal of the full privileges of the family on those who are sons by nature, but the acceptance into the family of those who do not by nature belong to it, and the placing of those who are not sons originally and by right in the rela- tion proper to those who are sons by birth. Hence νἱοθεσία is never affirmed of Christ; for he alone is Son of God by nature. So Paul regards our sonship, not as lying in the natural relation in which men stand to God as His children, but as implying a new relation of grace, founded on a covenant relation of God and on the work of Christ (Gal. iv. 5 ff.). --διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ : through Fesus Christ; in this case not in Christ but through Him, That is, it is through the mediation of Christ that our adoption as sons is realised; cf. Gal. iii. 26-iv. 7. Elsewhere the ethical side of the sonship is expressed. For God not only brings us into the relation of sons, but makes us sons in inward reality and character,