Evening, June 23
Go To Morning Reading
“Waiting for the adoption.”
Romans 8:23
Even in this world saints are God’s children, but men cannot discover them to be so, except by certain
moral characteristics. The adoption is not manifested, the children
are not yet openly declared. Among the Romans a man might adopt a
child, and keep it private for a long time: but there was a second
adoption in public; when the child was brought before the constituted
authorities its former garments were taken off, and the father who
took it to be his child gave it raiment suitable to its new condition
of life. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what
we shall be.” We are not yet arrayed in the apparel which befits the royal family
of heaven; we are wearing in this flesh and blood just what we wore
as the sons of Adam; but we know that “when he shall appear” who is the “first-born among many brethren,” we shall be like him, we shall see him as he is. Cannot you imagine
that a child taken from the lowest ranks of society, and adopted by
a Roman senator, would say to himself, “I long for the day when I shall be publicly adopted. Then I shall
leave off these plebeian garments, and be robed as becomes my senatorial
rank”? Happy in what he has received, for that very reason he groans to
get the fulness of what is promised him. So it is with us today. We
are waiting till we shall put on our proper garments, and shall be
manifested as the children of God. We are young nobles, and have not
yet worn our coronets. We are young brides, and the marriage day is
not yet come, and by the love our Spouse bears us, we are led to long
and sigh for the bridal morning. Our very happiness makes us groan
after more; our joy, like a swollen spring, longs to well up like
an Iceland geyser, leaping to the skies, and it heaves and groans
within our spirit for want of space and room by which to manifest
itself to men.