Sermon: The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost- July 19, 2026

Romans 8:12-25

The Rev'd Cecil Patrick Perkins, The Rector 

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When we cry, Abba Father, it is the Holy Spirit bearing witness with our Spirit that we are children of God. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. How do you know whether you are a child of God or not? Well, that's the question that Paul is addressing in our epistle lesson this morning, and he doesn't answer it in the way that many of us would like or expect. First of all, he seems to suggest that not all humans are children of God, and honestly, that idea rubs me the wrong way. If God is the creator, all humans are his creatures and thus are in a sense the offspring, the children of God. God gave them life. Is Paul denying this? Well, I don't think so. It seems to me that Paul is talking here about another sort of sonship or daughterhood, a spiritual sort, and I want to take just a few minutes to explain. On Thursday of this last week, our pack to the brim doubt group took up a very good question. And the question was this If all people are the offspring of God, as Paul told the Athenians in Acts seventeen, how can Saint John say that Jesus is God's only son in John 3? We've got some good theologians in that particular class. It's a very thoughtful question. In this particular case, the answer was pretty straightforward. John didn't actually say that Jesus was God's only son in the sense that no one else could properly be called God's child. John in fact used a particular Greek word monogenes to describe Jesus' sonship. It's a Greek word that we all don't know, but you hear mono, which means one, and genes, which means of a type. And this was clearer in some of the earlier translations, like the King James, if you grew on that, where it says, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. The begotten part is very important. Because in the Bible, to be a begotten child is simply to share the same nature, substance as one's father. It's to be comprised of the same stuff. So for Saint John, the point here was that Jesus was what the Father was. That's literally what's meant by the Greek that lays behind, and the word was God. You know, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. Better way to translate it in Greek is what the word, what God was, the word was. So there is a type of identity of substance, but not an entire identity. So the substance that Jesus shared with his father in this case, and the way that he was a unique son was in divinity. So Jesus was not an only child. He's just the only son of a particular sort. God's only divine son, according to John. Now, if we turn back to our epistle this morning, Paul is making a similar claim about human beings. He's saying all people are children of God in one sense because God created them. But here Paul is not talking about humans having God as their existential or material source, but as their spiritual source. And this is an important distinction. Paul is suggesting here that it's entirely possible to be a child of God in one sense, but not necessarily in the other. Now you may find this claim shocking, but I can assure you that it's utterly biblical, and I want to show you by asking you a question. Have you ever wondered why in the Old Testament there are so many cases of younger siblings receiving the favor of God over their firstborn siblings? You see this all throughout. Abel over Cain, Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Judah over Reuben, David over the rest of the brood of his brothers. The younger is always coming out on top. Is that just a coincidence? I don't have the kind of faith to believe in that sort of coincidence. It follows, in fact, directly from a foundational line in Genesis chapter three, when God tells the serpent that I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers. He will strike your head and you will strike his heel. We could spend 45 sermons on that, but I can't pick every posey today. I'm just going to have to camp on one point. What's it about? Well, friends, it's not a claim that the serpent will go out from the garden, find a nice girl, and become the potter pamilius to a rival clan. The idea is not that Satan is going to become anybody's baby daddy. What's happening here, we can tell from the rest of Genesis. Look what happens in the rest of Genesis. The firstborn children who are customarily entitled to the birthright don't actually end up being the ones who get it. Instead, a younger, weaker, often less virtuous sibling ends up through many dangers, toils, and snares, coming to faith in God, and then that one becomes the focus of the story. Here's the point. When we talk about this seed of the woman and seed of the serpent thing that's going on there, the major conflict is within families. It's not rival groups, it's between siblings who share the same genetic serpent substance. The seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent are from the same family. And so the distinction flows from both being of the natural lineage, but only one being of the spiritual lineage. And this becomes really the architectural framework for Genesis and for the rest of the Old Testament. Actually, it's the way the story of the prodigal son works too. So, with all that in mind, fast forward now to Paul as he's writing Romans 8. In this passage, he's building upon this sort of upside-down family dynamics of Genesis. He's not talking about the natural relationships that all humans have with God as God's creatures. He's talking instead about the spiritual relationship that some humans have with God, not by accident of birth, but through a different sort of kinship, one that we could call a kinship of grace. Now, Paul uses a word that we all know to describe this sort of kinship. And he calls it adoption. Now, in our world, we don't end up adopting natural-born children. We would think that that makes no sense. But in the ancient world, that was something that could happen for other reasons. If you had a child who went off and was doing something that was not in alignment with what the family was doing, there could be a situation of disowning and adopting. Don't want to get into all of that kind of stuff, but just understand when Paul says this here, he's not making a contradiction in terms, but he's using a very good word that I think that we should think about for a minute. I want to ask you, have you ever really thought what it means to be adopted? If you are adopted, or if you have adopted a child, you probably have thought about it a lot, but most of us probably haven't really given it too much thought. Now, I know the dictionary definition. Adoption is the legal and permanent process where an adult assumes parental rights and responsibilities for a child. Ha. That's what you get. But that's legal ease. That's not what Paul's theological point is. For Paul to be adopted is simply this: it's to become family by choice and not simply by birth. Family by choice. And I love the implications of this. First, it means that God chooses us. God says, I want you to be my child, not just because I am your father, but because I want to be your father. I want to be close to you. Imagine that. The creator of the universe desires for us to be in close relationship with him. And secondly, but just as importantly, it means that we choose God. Certainly, many legal adoptions begin with a parent to be choosing a child before the child is old enough to exercise choice. Yes, that happens. But at some point, when the child comes of age, he or she must choose whether the legal relationship will become a lifelong relationship. Choice is in play at that matter. And you know that all the law in all the law books couldn't create a real and lasting family without mutual choice. And here is where it gets good. Paul is telling us in this context that God chooses us. And what is more, he tells us that we can know that God chooses us, and that deep down we can know that we choose God. He says this in verses 15 and 16 when Paul writes, We have received a spirit of adoption. Whenever we cry, Abba Father, it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our Spirit that we are children of God. I've read this thousands of times over the course of my ministry and have never really paused to think on it, on its implications as much as I have this week. But I believe it is one of the most beautiful statements in Christian theology. Because in essence it says, want to know if God has chosen you. When the going gets tough and you've done all you can do, if your heart of hearts cries out, Daddy, to God, then you know you have the spirit of adoption. That is to say, you know that God has chosen you. Additionally, it says, no matter how far you run from God and how long, like the prodigal son, you've lived in a faraway country, when you find yourself in the mud and muck of life and your heart just cries out, Daddy, then you know that down deep, something within you still chooses God. This is remarkable. This is what I like to call the Abba promise. And friends, it is the heart of the good news. It means that we don't have to sit around and be anxious all the time of whether God loves us or whether we love God enough. It means that that cry within our hearts tells us that the Holy Spirit is moving in us in ways that are deeper than words. So lest this sermon get as long as the one last week and the week before was. Many of us spend a lot of time wondering whether God really loves us. We may not mention it out loud, but we think about these things. We may worry that we aren't good enough or faithful enough really to be children of God. Well, if you struggle with this, then I have good news for you. Paul tells us that the fact that you want God down deep in your heart is the proof that God wants you. It's the Holy Spirit there working, and all you have to do is believe that. Others of us agonize over the fact that sometimes the choices we seem to make in life indicate that we prefer self and sin to God and others. And we fear that our desire for God may not prove strong enough or long enough for us in the end to become children of God. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard people say to me, I hope that I do well enough that when I reach the pearly gates, God will look at me and say, You're coming in rather than you're going south for vacation. If you have that kind of fear or worry, then I have good news for you. Paul reminds us here that if we want to choose God, if that is our desire to choose God, then we can know that God has already chosen us. It works just that way. Even if you fail, it makes no difference. If you have a desire for God, God has a desire for you, and God's desire and your desire is not going to be overcome. Believe it. And finally, some of us find ourselves in dysfunctional human families with whom we share fleshly relationship, fleshly kinship, but sadly from whom we find ourselves personally alienated. We spend our lives, if you're part of families like this, feeling practically orphaned from the families of our origin. You feel like you don't have a people. If this describes you, then I have just one more bit of good news. The implication of Paul's teaching here is that in the family of God, water is thicker than blood. Think about it. In baptism, we aren't only united to Christ, and we don't only become adopted children of God, we are brought into a new spiritual family that transcends all genetics. It transcends all the barriers that sometimes our human families will throw up and create dysfunction. We are brought into a new family, and all we are asked to do is to adopt the family into which we were already adopted. Now, I want to tell you, this won't heal all the hurt related to our birth families, but it will provide us with a people. A bunch of crazy people, often dysfunctional people, but people who love the Lord and love you and who will stick closer than a brother or sister. That's what I mean by the water of baptism is sometimes thicker than blood. God will provide us and people like us with a chosen family. And incidentally, a chosen family who gathers at their father's house and around their big brother's table every single Sunday, as we will in just a few minutes, for a weekly family reunion. Amen.