Evening, June 23

“Waiting for the adoption.” Romans 8:23

Even in this world Christians 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 had his or her former garments taken off, and the father would give the orphan he took to be his child clothing suitable his or her new condition of life. “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.” We are not yet dressed 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 appears” who is the “first-born among many brethren,” we shall be like him, we shall see him as he is. Just imagine a child taken from the lowest ranks of society, and adopted by a Roman senator, saying himself, “I long for the day when I shall be publicly adopted. Then I shall strip off these plebeian garments, and be robed as becoming of my senatorial rank.” He is happy in what he has received, and for that very reason groans to get the fullness of what is promised to 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 who have not yet worn our little crowns. We are young brides whose the marriage day has not yet come, but because of the love our Spouse gives us, we are led to long and sigh for the bridal morning. Our very happiness makes us yearn 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.