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"?
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."
Charles Spurgeon
