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Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Romans 8:15

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For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

15. have not received ] Better, did not receive; a reference to definite past bestowal. See on ch. Rom 5:5, last note.

the spirit of bondage ] of slavery. The verse practically means “Ye received the Holy Spirit not as a Spirit of (connected with) slavery, but as a Spirit of (connected with) adoption.” See Rom 6:19, where we have a seeming discord, but real and profound harmony, with this verse. The Holy Spirit’s influence leads the regenerate to “yield their members as slaves to righteousness;” but his method of compulsion (see ch. Rom 5:5) is such as to make their real subjection “perfect freedom,” because divinely filial.

again ] As in the old days of their “ignorance,” when they knew God only as a justly offended King and Judge. Cp. Heb 2:14-15 ; 1Jn 4:18. It is scarcely needful to point out the difference between the “fear” of the unwilling slave, or criminal, and the reverent and sensitive “fear” of the child of God; (1Pe 1:17).

adoption ] Same word as Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5. The relationship of God’s children to their Father is sometimes viewed as generative, for the change in their wills amounts to a change, as it were, of life and person a new birth (see 1Pe 1:3; &c.): sometimes as adoptive, in respect of the divinely legal redemption which procures to them this inner change, and also in distinction from the essential and eternal Sonship of Christ, the “Own Son” of the Father.

whereby ] Lit. in which; surrounded and animated by His influence.

we cry ] Whether in supplication, or in praise. Observe the change again to the first person, suggesting St Paul’s sense of the holy community of the family of God.

Abba, Father ] Same words as Mar 14:36; Gal 4:6. The first word is the Chaldee for “Father.” St Paul places the Gr. equivalent after it, not for explanation, (which was surely needless, in view of the well-known use of the word by the Lord,) but probably because in prayer and praise the Gentile Christians themselves did so. To them the Chaldee word would sound as a quasi-Name, and would be as it were supplemented by their own word; q. d., “Our Father Abba.” So Meyer; who suggests that the word “Abba” was already familiar in Jewish prayers, but now specially sanctified for Christians by the Lord’s Gethsemane-prayer. The present verse does not, of course, mean that the view of God as the Father of His People was unknown in O. T. (see e.g. Psa 103:13; Isa 63:16), but that the Gospel had both extended this view to others than Jews, and had intensified and glorified it by fully revealing the Eternal Son as the Firstborn among Brethren (Rom 8:29). The knowledge of the Father as our Father because the Father of the Son is among the greatest of the treasures of grace.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

The spirit of bondage – The spirit that binds you; or the spirit of a slave, that produces only fear. The slave is under constant fear and alarm. But the spirit of religion is that of freedom and of confidence; the spirit of children, and not of slaves; compare the note at Joh 8:32-36.

Again to fear – That you should again be afraid, or be subjected to servile fear – This implies that in their former state under the Law, they were in a state of servitude, and that the tendency of it was merely to produce alarm. Every sinner is subject to such fear. He has everything of which to be alarmed. God is angry with him; his conscience will trouble him; and he has everything to apprehend in death and in eternity. But it is not so with the Christian; compare 2Ti 1:7.

The spirit of adoption – The feeling of affection, love, and confidence which pertains to children; not the servile, trembling spirit of slaves, but the temper and affectionate regard of sons. Adoption is the taking and treating a stranger as ones own child. It is applied to Christians because God treats them as his children; he receives them into this relation, though they were by nature strangers and enemies. It implies,

That we by nature had no claim on him;
That therefore, the act is one of mere kindness – of pure, sovereign love;
That we are now under his protection and care; and,
That we are bound to manifest toward him the spirit of children, and yield to him obedience. See the note at Joh 1:12; compare Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5. It is for this that Christians are so often called the sons of God.

Whereby we cry – As children who need protection and help. This evinces the habitual spirit of a child of God; a disposition,

To express toward him the feelings due to a father;
To call upon him; to address him in the language of affection and endearing confidence;
To seek his protection and aid.

Abba This word is Chaldee ( abba), and means father. Why the apostle repeats the word in a different language, is not known. The Syriac reads it. By which we call the Father our Father. It is probable that the repetition here denotes merely intensity, and is designed to denote the interest with which a Christian dwells on the name, in the spirit of an affectionate, tender child. It is not unusual to repeat such terms of affection; compare Mat 7:22; Psa 8:1. This is an evidence of piety that is easily applied. He that can in sincerity, and with ardent affection apply this term to God, addressing him with a filial spirit as his Father, has the spirit of a Christian. Every child of God has this spirit; and he that has it not is a stranger to piety.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Rom 8:15

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage but the Spirit of adoption.

The spirit of bondage and of adoption

I. The spirit of bondage. Much of the bondage of our fallen nature is not the work of the Spirit of God at all. Bondage under sin, the flesh, worldly customs, the fear of man–this is the work of the devil.

1. But there is a sense of bondage which is of the Spirit of God. The bondage of–

(1) Conviction of sin.

(2) Assurance of punishment for sin from which there is no escape.

(3) The feeling of the inutility of the works of the law. By the deeds of the law there shaft no flesh be justified in His sight.

2. The result of this spirit of bondage in the soul is fear. There are five sorts of fears, and it is well to distinguish between them.

(1) The natural fear which the creature has of its Creator, because of its own insignificance and its Makers greatness. From that we shall never be altogether delivered.

(2) Carnal fear: i.e., the fear of man. From this Gods Spirit delivers believers.

(3) Servile fear–the fear of a slave towards his master, lest he should be beaten when he has offended. That is a fear which should rightly dwell in every unregenerate heart.

(4) If servile fear be not cast out it leads to a fourth fear, namely, a diabolical fear; that of devils who believe and tremble.

(5) Filial fear which is never cast out of the mind. This is the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom. When the spirit of bondage is at work there is much of servile fear. The Spirit of truth brings this to us, because we are in a condition which demands it. Would you have the bondsman rejoice in a liberty which he does not possess? Is he not the more likely to be free if he loathes his slavery?

3. This bondage, which causes fear, breaks us off from self-righteousness, and puts an end to certain sins. Many a man, because he is afraid of the consequences, leaves off this and that which would have ruined him; and, so far, the fear is useful to him; and, in after life, will keep him nearer to his Lord.

4. In due time we outgrow this bondage, and never receive it again. Because we are made to be the children of God; and God forbid that Gods children should tremble like slaves.

II. The Spirit of adoption.

1. The apostle said, Ye have not received the spirit of bondage. If he had kept strictly to language he would have added, But ye have received the Spirit of liberty. That is the opposite of bondage. But our apostle is not to be hampered by the rigid rules of composition. He has inserted a far greater word–Ye have received the Spirit of adoption. If the Son make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

2. The apostle said, Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear. Should he not have added but ye have received the Spirit of liberty by which ye have confidence? He says a great deal more, Whereby we cry, Abba, Father. This is the highest form of confidence.

3. The Spirit of adoption is a spirit of gratitude. Oh, that ever the Lord should put me among the children!

4. A spirit of child-likeness. It is pretty, though sometimes sad, to see how children imitate their parents.

III. The Spirit of prayer. Whenever the Spirit of adoption enters into a man it sets him praying. And this praying is–

1. Earnest, for it takes the form of crying.

2. Natural. For a child to say, Father, is according to the fitness of things.

3. Appealing. True prayer pleads the fatherhood of God.

4. Familiar. Slaves were never allowed to call their masters abba. That was a word for freeborn children only: no man can speak with God as Gods children may. Distance is the slaves place; only the child may draw near.

5. Delightful. Abba, Father–it is as much as to say–My heart knows that thou art my Father.

IV. The Spirit of witness. In the mouth of two witnesses this shall be established.

1. The mans own spirit. Gods own Word declares,To as many as received Christ to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name; now, I have received Christ, and I do believe on His name: therefore I have the right to be one of the sons of God. That is the witness of my spirit: I believe, and therefore I am a child.

2. The witness of the Holy Spirit, which works–

(1) Through the Word of which He is the Author.

(2) By His work in us. He works in us that which proves us to be the children of God; and what is that?

(a) Great love to God. None love God but those that are born of Him.

(b) Veneration for God. We fear before Him with a childlike reverence.

(c) A holy confidence. By His grace we feel in days of trouble that we can rest in God.

(d) Sanctification.

(e) Besides which, there is a voice unheard of the outward ear, which drops in silence on the spirit of man, and lets him know that he has, indeed, passed from death unto life. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The Spirit of bondage and adoption

I. What is meant by the Spirit of bondage?

1. A distressing apprehension of danger, arising from the conviction of sin, which is one of the first effects of the law upon the conscience.

2. A sense of our lost and undone condition. A sense of sin is generally attended with a sight of wrath, and a conviction of the worth of the soul; and where the one is deeply felt, the other is greatly feared. Hence the anxious inquiries of the Philippian jailor, and of the multitudes under Peters sermon.

3. Apprehensions respecting present judgments. Unpardoned guilt fills the mind with continual terrors (Job 15:20-24).

4. An habitual fear of death.

5. The expectation of future punishment.

6. The conviction of utter inability to extricate himself out of his present situation.

II. Inquire in what respects believers are delivered from this, so as not to be again in fear. Though believers are not wholly exempt from a spirit of bondage–

1. They seldom feel it in the same degree, nor do they feel it for long.

2. It does not arise from the same source as before, and therefore is not of the same nature. The terror which a sinner feels is from God, but that which a believer often experiences is the work of Satan, taking advantage of a constitutional melancholy, or of some adverse dispensation.

3. They are relieved and sustained by the hopes and promises of the gospel.

4. This servile spirit–

(1) Is by no means adapted to the present dispensation, and therefore believers cannot be said to have received it, as forming any part of their real or proper character (2Ti 1:7).

(2) Is also highly injurious to the practical part of religion. The more we walk in the light of Gods countenance, the more readily shall we run in the way of His commandments.

III. What is that Spirit of adoption which believers have received.

1. The Spirit of adoption is distinct from adoption itself, and is not essential to its existence.

2. Of those who enjoy the Spirit of adoption, some have more of it, and others less.

3. The same saints do not at all times enjoy the same measure of this Spirit, but differ as much from themselves as they do from one another.

4. Wherever this Spirit is received, it must be considered as the fruit of sovereign grace.

5. It more especially consists in the Holy Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. The Spirit is not only a witness to Christ without us, but to Christ within us; and therefore when our conscience bears us witness in the Holy Ghost, it is to be acquiesced in as a faithful and unerring report; for if conscience itself be as good as a thousand witnesses, how much more when its decisions are made under the influences of the Spirit of God.

6. The Holy Spirit in becoming a Spirit of adoption, imparts to the adopted a temper suited to that relation.

IV. The blessed effect arising from our having received the Spirit of adoption: Hereby we cry, Abba, Father. Prayer is the very breath of a child of God; the first effort of Divine grace in the heart. The cry of Abba, Father, now proceeds from the fulness of his heart, and this includes in it the following particulars–

1. Familiarity and holy boldness at a throne of grace.

2. A comfortable persuasion of the love of God towards us.

3. Reverence and honour (Mal 1:6).

4. Trust and confidence in God, as our Father and our Friend,

5. Great earnestness and importunity (2Ki 2:12). (B. Beddome, M.A.)

The Spirit of bondage and the Spirit of adoption

I. What is the Spirit of bondage?

1. There are many of you who love money, pleasure, vanity, sin. And yet there are times when you tear yourselves away to say your prayers–to come to church; to read a chapter in the Bible; but whilst engaged in these exercises you long for them to be over. But why do them at all? Because it is our duty. We know these things must be attended to; if we neglect them we shall go to hell. Then, I need not describe to you the spirit of bondage–you feel it.

2. But perhaps the spirit of bondage is still more strikingly displayed in those who are just awakened to a sense of their sins. And what does the poor trembling sinner do to mend his case? Labours with all his might to make himself acceptable to God; multiplies his prayers and duties; resolves to mortify his sins. And yet, alas! he goes about feeling that he has undertaken a work which is far beyond his strength. And why has the Lord so ordered it? Evidently to teach the humbling lesson of mans utter inability to save or sanctify himself (see Gal 3:23-24).

II. What is the Spirit of adoption?

1. Adoption is an act whereby one person takes another into his family, calls him his son, and treats him as such. Thus Moses was the adopted son of Pharaohs daughter, and Esther was the adopted daughter of Mordecai. Adoption, then, in a spiritual sense, is that act of grace whereby God chooses into the dear relation of His children every true believer in His Son. The very term implies that they were by nature not His children. No; they were strangers and enemies when He took them in.

2. But a man who adopts a stranger for his child cannot bestow on him a spirit suitable to that relationship. He may give him a sons portion, but he cannot give him a sons feelings. Now this is what the Lord does. He gives them the Spirit of adoption. He puts into them, by His grace, a fitness for their glorious relationship. They not only are the Lords children, but they feel as such (verse 16). Their former terrors drop away, for they view God now as their reconciled Father in Christ, and the uneasiness they felt at their inability to satisfy His law is now changed into a delightful confidence in the satisfaction which His Son hath wrought for them. And in consequence of all His love to them they love Him. They are followers–imitators–of God as dear children. His commandments are not grievous to them, for they have now both the power and the will to follow them.

3. Father is the first word the infant lisps; and how continually it is running to its parent with that word upon its tongue. In beautiful allusion to this the child of God is represented as crying to his heavenly Parent, Abba! Father! (A. Roberts, M.A.)

The Spirit of adoption

I. The gift which God confers on His children. Ye have received the Spirit of adoption.

1. The Spirit of God seals the children of adoption. This serves to mark the particular property God has in believers; to distinguish them from others of the human family; and to preserve them for the end of their election and faith, even the salvation of their souls.

2. The Holy Spirit is to believers the witness of their adoption (verses 16). It is reasonable that professors of religion should be anxious to ascertain their own state in Gods sight.

3. The Holy Spirit communicates to believers the comfort arising from their adoption into Gods family, i.e. He discovers to believers the path of light; qualifies them for their present rank; and supports them during their pilgrimage.

II. The Christian enjoys true liberty. Christian liberty is equally opposed to slavery and licentiousness. It is opposed to restraint and violence, but not to subordination and cheerful obedience.

1. They who are adopted into Gods family are delivered from the dominion of sin. They now walk at liberty. They feel that they are free to serve God without the fear of wrath. They delight in the law of the Lord after the inward man.

2. Christians are delivered from the power of Satan.

3. Christian liberty implies deliverance from undue human influence (Psa 119:45; Pro 29:25). Independence of mind, and courage in Christian behaviour, are desirable objects. He who attains to them, puts his trust in God, and does not fear what man can do unto him. In matters of right and wrong, the Christian claims to himself, and allows to others, the right of private judgment; but he neither claims to himself, nor guarantees to another, the liberty of contravening in a single instance, the commandment of his God.

III. Consider the expressions which we abe enabled by the Spirit of adoption to utter–Whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The repetition, Father, Father, also evidences the earnestness with which a Christian, feeling his deliverance from bondage, recognises his present delightful relation to God as an adopted son.

1. The believer approves of his relation to God in Jesus Christ. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.

2. The religious man is soothed in all his afflictions when he contemplates the compassion of his Father who is in heaven.

3. Gods children consider Him as their instructor (Psa 71:17; Isa 54:13).

4. Gods children submit to such chastisement as He thinks proper to administer (Pro 3:11).

5. The children of adoption place themselves under the protection of their heavenly Father (Psa 31:5; Psa 31:15).

6. By the Spirit of adoption, we are enabled to approach with boldness the throne of grace, in prayer to God (Eph 2:18). (A. McLeod, D.D.)

The Spirit of bondage and the Spirit of adoption

I. The state of the natural man.

1. It is a state of sleep: the voice of God to him is, Awake, thou that sleepest.

2. For this reason he is in some sense at rest: because blind he is secure, he cannot tremble at the danger he does not know. He has no dread of God, because he thinks Him merciful, and that he can at any time repent.

3. From the same ignorance there may arise joy either in congratulating himself on his own wisdom and goodness, or in indulgence of pleasure of various kinds, and so long as he doeth well unto himself men will doubtless speak good of him.

4. It is not surprising if thus dosed with the opiates of flattery and sin, one should imagine among his other waking dreams that he walks in great liberty, being free from all vulgar errors, prejudices, enthusiasm, etc. But all this time he is the servant of sin. He commits it every day. Yet he is not troubled. He contents himself with Man is frail; every man has his infirmity.

II. The state of a man under the law.

1. By some awful providence, or by His Word applied by His Spirit God touches the heart of the slumbering stoner, who awakes into a consciousness of danger–perhaps in a moment, perhaps by degrees.

2. The inward spiritual meaning of the law now begins to glare upon him, and he sees himself stripped of all the fig leaves he had sewn together–of all his pretences to religion or excuses for sin. He now, too, feels that the wages of sin is death.

3. Here ends his pleasing dream, his delusive rest, his vain security, etc. The fumes of these opiates being dispelled, he feels the anguish of a wounded spirit–he fears, indeed–Gods wrath, death, etc., almost to the verge of despair.

4. Now truly he desires to break loose from sin and begins to struggle with it. But though he strive with all his might, sin is mightier than he. The more he strives the more he feels his chains. He toils on, sinning and repenting, repenting and sinning, until he cries, O wretched man that I am, etc. This whole state of bondage is described in chap. 7.

III. The state of a man under grace.

1. His cry is heard and heavenly healing light breaks in on his soul–the light of the glorious love of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Overpowered by the sight he cries out, My Lord and my God, for he sees all his iniquities laid on Christ and borne away; God in Christ reconciling him unto Himself.

2. Here end the guilt and power of sin. He can now say, I am crucified with Christ, etc. Here ends the bondage unto fear. He cannot fear the wrath of God, for it is turned away; the devil, because his power is ended; hell, for he is an heir of the kingdom; death, for that is now but the vestibule of heaven.

3. And Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty, liberty not only from guilt and fear, but sin. Henceforth he does not serve sin; being made free from sin he is become the servant of righteousness.

4. Having peace with God, and rejoicing in hope, he has the Spirit of adoption who sheds abroad the love of God and man in the heart, and works in him to will and do of His good pleasure. Conclusion: The natural man neither fears nor loves God; one under the law fears: one under grace loves. The first has no light, the second painful light, the third joyous light, He that sleeps in death has a false peace; he that is awakened no peace; he that believes true peace. The heathen baptized or unbaptized has a fancied freedom, the Jew or legalist a grievous bondage, the Christian the glorious liberty of the children of God. An unawakened child of the devil sins willingly; one that is awakened sins unwillingly; a child of God sinneth not The natural man neither conquers nor fights; the man under the law fights but cannot conquer; the man under grace is more than conqueror. (John Wesley, M.A.)

The Spirit of adoption

1. In what sense are we to understand the word spirit? Our own spirit, inasmuch as it refers to that filial disposition which prompts us to cry, Abba, Father; yet also Gods Spirit, because it is only by His power and inspiration that this temper of mind is produced or sustained (chap. 5:5).

2. To what does again refer? No doubt to the former dispensation, Judaism (see the argument in Gal 4:1-31, especially verses 4-7 and 22-31, and again, Heb 12:18-24).

3. This Spirit of adoption is a spirit of–

I. Reverential admiration and love. Who so good or wise in the eyes of a son as his beloved parent? Yet our filial partiality may be grossly mistaken. Not thus is it with our regard for God. If His children, we learn to discern in Him every excellence, and each in its highest perfection and purest form.

II. Gratitude and praise. The son acknowledges his obligation to his father, is ever grateful to him, and learns to speak of him with becoming expressions of thankfulness and filial pride. So it is with us and God.

III. Dependence and trust. While we acknowledge His kindness in the past, we depend on Him at the present moment, and we commit to Him all our care for the future. How little anxiety for the morrow has the confiding child.

IV. Meek submission and cheerful obedience. A fathers will is law to a good son; and all that a father reposes or inflicts is submitted to without murmuring, from a persuasion of his wisdom and right to correct us when we do wrong, combined with a firm conviction that he seeks only our welfare and good. How much rather should we be in subjection to the Father of our spirits (Heb 12:5-10).

V. Communion and fellowship. It cries, Abba, Father. It is natural for a son to seek his fathers society, and to tell him all his wishes, all his wants. So do the sons of God come to Him in supplication and prayer (Mat 6:6.) Further, a good son is interested in his fathers pursuits, knowing that he himself will be enriched by his fathers successes and advanced by his fathers promotion. So do we know, as Gods children, that He conducts all the affairs of His empire for our honour and welfare, and we constantly pray, Father, Thy kingdom come, etc.

VI. Confidence and hope. A child who incidentally does wrong can come to his father in penitence and sorrow, assured of readily obtaining acceptance and forgiveness. So likewise we can come to God when we have sinned against Him, believing that He will quickly restore us to His favour, and not vindictively cast us off for ever. Therefore, we shall at length be brought home to our Fathers house above. A wealthy parent may send his child away for a season, and place him under tutors and governors, but it is to receive him back eventually with increased honour and joy. Thus will Jehovah act with regard to us. (T. G. Horton.)

Without fear

See yonder little bird. It floats fearlessly in the spray that arises out of the thunders of Niagara. It cleanses its plumage in that ever-ascending and radiant mist. It flies through the rainbow which spans that awful presence. It is not afraid. The colours of its wings are kindred to the tints in that rainbow. It sings its gayest songs as it darts back and forth in front of that terrible glory. It has no controversy with Niagara. It gains its living along its banks. It builds its nest and rears its nestlings in the tree that overhangs the cataract. The believer in revelation has ended his controversy with God, and is, like that flying, floating, singing bird, without fear.

The Spirit of adoption

The question has been raised whether this means the Holy Ghost, or a consciousness of being a child of God. It is both, and we cannot distinguish between the two. But we must not confound adoption and the Spirit of adoption, though they are never very far apart.

1. Adoption is that act whereby we are received into the family of God. And the way in which this is brought about is thus: Christ is the one Son of God. Into the Son, God elects and engrafts members. As soon as the union takes place, God sees the soul in the relationship in which He sees Christ. He gives it a partnership in the same privileges.

2. But this adoption, if it stood alone, would be no blessing. A rich man, well educated, adopts a poor illiterate child. The child moves in the social circle of his adopted father, and shares his wealth. Now, if his benefactor be a wise man, he will endeavour to give him a filial spirit, and the qualifications which are necessary for his elevation. But if not, the adoption will only issue in disappointment and unhappiness to all parties. 3 We cannot, therefore, sufficiently thank God that wherever He gives adoption, He follows by the Spirit of adoption. But, as in nature, as soon as ever a branch is grafted into a tree the sap begins to flow into that branch; and however dissimilar the graft to the parent stock, the passing of the graft into that stock gradually makes them one:–so in Christ, the Spirit of adoption following the adoption, seals the union by making the affinity close, happy, and eternal!

4. Of all words that which comprises most of wisdom, tenderness, and love, is Father. What a repose lies in that, My Father. And as soon as the Spirit begins to work in a sinners heart, the very first thing He plants there is, I will arise and go to my Father, etc. And if only we could take in the simple conception that God is a Father, well-nigh the whole work of our religion would be done. Thousands acknowledge it is true; but few think of how much has passed in the deepest councils and sublimest operations of God, that we might use that paternal function. All heaven had to come down to earth that we might stand to God again in that lost relationship. The blood of Christ only could purchase it; and no man could ever frame his heart to conceive, or his lips to utter it, but by the power of the Holy Ghost.

5. Now let me examine what a Spirit of adoption is. It is not a spirit of doubt and anxiety, in which I say, Does God really love me? Am I forgiven? How shall I overcome all my difficulties? That is not what a little child ever feels, if he has got an affectionate father. The Spirit of adoption is all hope. Hence, prayer becomes a very bold thing where there is the Spirit of adoption. A child does not ask a father as a stranger asks him. He goes as one who has a right. If he finds his fathers door for a moment closed, see how he knocks. He does not want wages; but he receives rewards. All creation is his Fathers house, and he can say, Everything in it is mine, on to death itself. The Spirit of adoption longs to go home. For, if the love of an unseen Father has been so sweet, what will it be to look in His face? (J. Vaughan, M.A.)

The Spirit of adoption

We are not merely criminals unwhipped of justice, but since Christ has met the demands of the law for us we are entirely acquitted; and then there is implanted in us, by the Holy Spirit, the sweet, glad consciousness of sonship.

I. Therefore the cowering fearfulness of sin is supplanted by a loving filialness. Very beautiful is that word, Abba just here. It is a little up-thrusting of the Apostles mother tongue. Though we be adepts in any other language, the speech we use to express overflowing feeling is always that which we learned at our mothers knee. And there is such a swell and throb of filialness in the apostles heart toward the heavenly Father, that even though he must immediately translate it, there is no word to tell his consciousness of his close, free sonship but the word that used to be prattle on his lips when he was a child. So swept away is the bad fear which comes from sin, so dear and deep is his sense of a holy familiarity with God, that the only word that can in the least even shadow it forth is the nursery word back there in Tarsus, Abba.

1. How easy prayer is to a God, who thus reinstating us in sonship, will allow from us such address.

2. How in everything (Php 4:6) may we make request of Him.

II. There is such a thing as an assurance of this sonship. The Spirit itself beareth witness.

III. Being thus adopted into sonship we are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. Then–

1. I have title to illimitable Divine possession.

2. I may dismiss fear that I shall fail to enter upon my unimaginable wealth.

IV. Such adoption does not preclude the necessity of discipline, It compels it rather. For so great a destiny and glory I must be prepared. But there is this infinite solace under chastisement–it is not punitive; it is educative. Its intention is to fit me for the splendid destiny God intends for me. It is thus quite possible to be glad and thankful for my pain. (Wayland Hoyt, D.D.)

Adoption

The spiritual connection of the true disciple with God is repeatedly represented to us in Pauls Epistles under the figure of sonship. The idea of simple sonship, indeed, is brought prominently forward by St. John; as 1Jn 3:1; 1Jn 4:6; 1Jn 5:9-10, etc. But whereas St. John always represents this idea in its simplest form, St. Paul, and St. Paul only, describes this sonship more artificially as adoptive. This illustration is not taken from any Jewish custom; the law of Moses contains no provision for such a practice. Adoption was essentially a Roman usage, and was closely connected with the Roman ideas of family. The son was declared to be the absolute property of his father from his birth to his fathers decease. In order to being adopted out of his own family into that of another man it was necessary that he should undergo a fictitious sale. But if a son had been thus sold by his father and had again recovered his liberty, he fell again under the paternal dominion, and it was not till he had been thus sold, emancipatus, three times, that he became finally free from this paramount authority. Accordingly, the adopter required that the fiction of sale should be three times repeated, before the son could be received into his new family, and fall under the dominion of his new father. When, however, these formalities had been complied with, the adopted son became incorporated into the family of his adopter, identified, as it were, with his person, made one with him; so that on the adopters decease he became not so much his representative as his second self, the perpetuator of his legal personality. He assumed, moreover, on adoption, the burdens or privileges incident to the performance of the rights of his new family. He relinquished his former rites, and attached himself to those of his new parent. All this appears to have been in the apostles mind when he addressed the Roman disciples in this passage. The Spirit of God, he says, bears witness with our spirit, or confers upon us an inward persuasion, that we are now by adoption the children of God Himself, whereas we were before the children of some other father–namely, the world or the Evil One. But henceforth we are relieved from the bondage of corruption, from the state of legal subjection to this evil parent, and admitted to the glorious liberty of the happy children of a good and gracious father, even God. And how was this escape from bondage to be effected? God paid a price for it. As the Roman adopter paid, or made as though he paid down a certain weight of copper, so God gave His Son as a precious sacrifice, as a ransom to the world, or the Evil One, from whom He redeemed His adopted children. Henceforth we became the elect, the chosen of God. The same illustration is indicated in Gal 4:3 : When we were children we were in bondage under the elements of the world, addicted to the rites of our original family; but when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, etc. But now, after ye have known God how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, such as the sacra of your original family, whereunto ye desire to be again in bondage (Eph 1:5). (Dean Merivale.)

Adoption, sacred and secular

Betwixt civil and sacred adoption there is a two-fold agreement and disagreement. They agree in this, that both flow from the pleasure and good will of the adoptant; and in this, that both confer a right to privileges which we have not by nature; but in this they differ: one is an act imitating nature, the other transcends nature: the one was found out for the comfort of them that had no children, the other for the comfort of them that had no Father. Divine adoption is in Scripture either taken properly for that act or sentence of God by which we are made sons, or for the privileges with which the adopted are invested. We lost our inheritance by the fall of Adam: we receive it by the death of Christ, which restores it again to us by a new and better title. (J. Flavel.)

A childlike spirit towards God

I. The contrast between the temper of a child of God and the temper of an unregenerate person.

1. Naturally fallen creatures have a spirit of bondage–the temper of a slave towards God.

(1) All the systems of heathenism are marked by this spirit. The love of God never enters into them, but either their self-love is addressed by certain hopes which appeal to their natural feelings, or else they are under the constraining influence of a dread of those misfortunes which the gods are supposed to have the power and will to inflict.

(2) Among Mohammedans we find the same spirit prevailing. They are sometimes told that, if they obey the admonitions of the Koran, they shall have a sensual paradise. They are more frequently told that, if they violate the same directions, they shall expose themselves to the anger of God.

(3) In the Roman Catholic Church, although there may be sometimes a reference to the promises of the gospel, how much more frequently and powerfully the fear of its votaries is addressed. They dread the church censures, the indignation of their priest, and their fancied purgatory. Nay, they dare not approach the merciful Mediator unless there be some other mediator.

(4) Nor is Protestantism by any means free from this unhappy spirit. For what is a fashionable religion but a compromise between mens passions and their fears? Anything of loving Him is often absolutely ridiculed.

2. Now, if we turn to this Book for the explanation of that universal feeling, we find that it is truly reasonable. The account which St. Paul gives of it in chap. 7 is applicable to all the world. It is obvious that, in proportion as this is comprehended, men must fear. A man may sometimes contrive, either by forgetfulness of God, or by forming to himself false notions respecting God, to escape from the influence of fear, but then his mind is sunk into a state of torpor and death-like slumber. When once the light is let in on the understanding, and the man sees anything of the attributes of God and what they demand, and finds that he has violated all, and that his own nature is opposed to that Holy God, he dies. In the language of the apostle, it is the law which shuts us up, allows us no hope,

3. But when a man finds the gospel, that spirit is changed. Then all the sources of dread are gone. How can he dread God any more? Do you think that the poor prodigal, when, all ragged and worn as he was, he came back to his fathers house, and felt his fathers arms around him, and his fathers kiss upon his pale and withered cheek–think you that he dreaded that father then?

4. And now the whole of the sinners future course is characterised by love; he is no longer a slave, but he is become a child. This is seen doubtless, and seen very mainly, in the character of the Christians obedience, which is now wholly changed. The child of God has the law written on his heart–loves every one of its requisitions, because he loves the wise and just Parent that enacted them–and would obey them all. His obedience is now unfettered, unrestricted, unreserved, cheerful, grateful, and generous.

5. The filial spirit prevails in the whole of the experience of every one of the children of God. If he receives any temporal blessings, he receives them from the hand of his Father; if he looks at the promises of the gospel, they come to him as the promise of his heavenly Father; if he receives any of the painful events of life, it is a wise and gracious Father who has sent them, and it is his inclination and his pleasure to submit. So, likewise, this same filial spirit pervades all the exercises of religion; if others pray because conscience compels them to pray, the child of God rejoices that he may come to his Father, who seeth in secret. If he looks forward to death, when no other being can go with him and sustain his faltering spirit, he feels his Father can; and when he looks to glory, it is with the same feelings; he is going to the house of his Father.

II. The origin of this Spirit. It is characterised in our text as a gift; it is not spoken of as an attainment. Ye have received. It is a gift received from God; therefore His favour and His blessing must have preceded it. If, then, we are told that the sinner must first love God, must first serve God, and then he may hope for the favour of God–this is just a sentence of despair to any man who knows himself. How can he love God? The source of that Spirit of adoption is in adoption itself, and the source of that adoption is the sovereign, unmerited, bounty and mercy of God.

1. Its meritorious cause is the Cross of Christ. There is no ether reason why a sinner deserves to be a child of God but this, that Jesus Christ has deserved it. When the fulness of the time was come, etc.

2. The instrumental cause is faith. Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.

3. The Agent is the Spirit of God. He only it is who implants faith, and He it is who alone communicates the Spirit of adoption.

4. The means is that view of the love of God which none but an adopted child can have. We love Him because He first loved us. (Baptist Noel, M.A.)

The temper of gospel obedience

Consider this–

I. By way of contrast, as it is opposed to any form of obedience performed in a slavish and unready mind.

1. With the severe discipline of the law. On this point the apostle is the best exponent of his own views in that allegory of Agar and Sarah (Gal 4:22-26). To the same purport there is another illustration of the two dispensations, addressed to the same Church (Gal 4:3-7). These distinct tendencies of the two dispensations are discoverable in almost every circumstance. Contrast–

(1) The method of their introduction, the thunderings of Sinai with the stillness of Bethlehem; the voice of the trumpet with the melody of angels; the blackness and darkness and tempest with the mild halo of glory which played around the wondering shepherds as they kept watch over their flocks by night.

(2) The miracles of the two dispensations. Look at the earth opening her mouth to swallow up the rebellious, the fiery serpents, the pestilence, and compare with these the blind receiving their sight, the multitudes fed with bread, and the widow receiving from death her child.

(3) In their outward ordinances–those of the one multitudinous, obscure, oppressive; those of the other easy, refreshing, simple. Of course we do not mean that this servile temper extended to every individual worshipper. The Spirit is not bound. Enochs was no servants walk, nor could fear have wrought Abrahams faith. Neither do we speak disparagingly of that dispensation itself. The law is a system of progressive teaching (Gal 4:1-2). We must be disciplined to habits of reverence and subjection, The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.

2. With the service of the man who is trying to work out a righteousness for himself. This fault first discovered itself in the newly-converted Jews, who could but feel a rude shock to their ancient sympathies when they were required to pass from the pride-fostering works of the ancient ritual to the simple faith and self-abasing truths of the gospel. And many now feel the stirrings of an alarmed conscience, and are urged on by an unresting anxiety to feel that their souls are safe, and yet God is not satisfied with them, neither are they satisfied with themselves. Now what is the secret of such painful experience happening to men who are taking more pains to be miserable than it would cost them to be happy? They will be servants, and not sons; they will be labouring to obey, and not trying to believe. If, then, you are in earnest about your souls salvation, take Heavens simple answer, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, etc. Then the works will follow. But all attempts to get peace before or without this will be mere labour in vain. This one thing done, the whole character of our obedience becomes changed. It is not the spirit of bondage again to fear; it is the filial obedience of those who, having received the Spirit of adoption, are enabled to cry, Abba, Father.

II. By way of comparison. Four marks of Roman civil adoption you will find exactly paralleled in the spiritual adoption. Did the child among the Romans share in the privileges of the natural children? It is affirmed of the believer that if children then heirs, heirs with God and joint heirs with Christ. Did the Roman bestow his own name on the child he adopted? Thou, O Lord, art in the midst of us, and we are called by Thy name. Did the civil law exact from the adopted all honour and reverence to the parent? If I be a Father, where is Mine honour? God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, etc. Did the new father engage to treat the stranger with parental care and kindness? I will receive you and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. From this view of the condition of the believer we may infer three characteristics of evangelical service.

1. Reverence.

2. Cheerfulness. No labour in the Lord can be in vain; no commandment of God can be grievous.

3. Confidence. (D. Moore, M.A.)

Whereby we cry, Abba, Father.—

Abba, Father

I. The fact. We cry, Abba, Father.

1. In one aspect this seems little. It is only a cry, a name named, and that a childs lisp of the first two sounds of the alphabet. True, but I am not anxious to get from you more than what all Christians confess. We cry, Abba, Father. Visions and revelations are exceptional, but we all cry, Abba, Father.

2. This is not a small thing. It means carrying the clear proof of our being Gods children. True, we are infants, but no infant would ever cry Abba unless it were a child. Here are weakness and strength, but the one is linked to the other by a bond that cannot be broken. And what a distance between us in our helplessness and God in His glory, but Father reaches all the way. Only a cry! God hears nothing else. Observe the refrain of Psa 107:1-43. Mark the reason why universal power is given to the Mediator (Psa 72:11-12).

3. This cry is the product of the Holy Spirit (see also Gal 4:6). This is the Divine side of the matter, of which we have both the human and Divine sides in Joh 1:12-13).

II. The consequences.

1. You have the witness of the Spirit. The cry and the groaning (verse 26) are His work; the natural man knows nothing of them.

2. You are heirs of God (verse 19; Mat 13:43).

3. You are joint heirs with Christ.

(1) An interest in all His glory.

(2) He has entered on the inheritance as our Forerunner (Heb 6:20).

III. But what of the present? If we suffer with Him. Suffer we must; but–

1. These pangs are hopeful; they are of birth, not death, and prove a heaven-sent longing after home and God.

2. The Saviour is with us in them. His Spirit causes them. Christ sympathises and succours (Heb 2:17-18). (A. M. Symington, D.D.)

The Abba, Father

The expression is used once by Christ, twice by Paul. Why should the Saviour in Gethsemane employ two languages, and Paul when speaking of the free Spirit which animates believers? Is it conformity to the custom of giving to persons a variety of names? Or is the one name an interpretation of the other? Augustine and Calvin think that it is to show that both Jews and Greeks each in their own respective language would call on God as a Father. Dr. Morison says that the dual form is delightfully fitted to suggest that in His great work Christ personated in His single self not Jews only, but Gentiles. And not only fitted, but designed. And so Paul may have caught the spirit and aim of the Masters words. And thus we have a speaking testimony to the fusion of Jew and Greek which prepared the way for the preaching of the gospel to the heathen. The idea of Father clasps not only the languages, but the people. What other word so fitted as a basis for all the nations to meet on and be made one! Grandly prophetic of the time, to bring about which the Saviour died and the apostle laboured, is Abba, Father. The term illustrates how the idea of Fatherhood–

I. Evokes the deepest filial feeling. In the only instances in which we have the words there is everything to justify this. It is the child-cry coming not from the surface, but from the depths. How much larger and more tender the word than master, magistrate king, etc.

II. Begets the most childlike familiarity. Only in the home circle can such feelings play. It is the child, not the subject or servant, that cries Abba, Father. Refinement of feeling and manner is always beautiful in a child, but it is not natural that it should express itself in courtly language. The charm of the family is in the freedom which love imparts. The parental heart, shining like a warm sun in the centre of the home, draws young affection to it as the flowers turn to the heat and light.

III. Stirs the intensest earnestness. So it did in Christ and Paul. There are moments in Christian experience when the language of familiarity rises into the language of anguish. Though in the Divine family, men are still on earth–not the most congenial place, and even Jesus seems to have had quite enough of it when He said, And now I come to Thee, The definition suggests emphasis or urgency. As a childs whisper will sometimes wake the family, even the gentlest ruffle on the heart will not pass the heavenly Fathers notice. How much more shall a cry of anguish reach Him and bring Him to our relief. (R. Mitchell.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 15. Ye have not received the spirit of bondage] All that were under the law were under bondage to its rites and ceremonies; and as, through the prevalence of that corrupt nature with which every human being is polluted, and to remove which the law gave no assistance, they were often transgressing, consequently they had forfeited their lives, and were continually, through fear of death, subject to bondage, Heb 2:15. The believers in Christ Jesus were brought from under that law, and from under its condemnation; and, consequently, were freed from its bondage. The Gentiles were also in a state of bondage as well as the Jews, they had also a multitude of burdensome rites and ceremonies, and a multitude of deities to worship; nor could they believe themselves secure of protection while one of their almost endless host of gods, celestial, terrestrial, or infernal, was left unpropitiated.

But ye have received the Spirit of adoption] Ye are brought into the family of God by adoption; and the agent that brought you into this family is the Holy Spirit; and this very Spirit continues to witness to you the grace in which ye stand, by enabling you to call God your Father, with the utmost filial confidence and affection.

The Spirit of adoption] Adoption was an act frequent among the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans; by which a person was taken out of one family and incorporated with another. Persons of property, who had no children of their own, adopted those of another family. The child thus adopted ceased to belong to his own family, and was in every respect bound to the person who had adopted him, as if he were his own child; and in consequence of the death of his adopting father he possessed his estates. If a person after he had adopted a child happened to have children of his own, then the estate was equally divided between the adopted and real children. The Romans had regular forms of law, by which all these matters were settled.-See in Aulus Gellius. Noctes Attic., vol. i. cap. xix. p. 331. Edit Beloe; and the note there.

Whereby we cry, Abba, Father.] The reason why the Syriac and Greek words are here conjoined, may be seen in the note on Mr 14:36, to which the reader is referred. The introduction of the words here shows that the persons in question had the strongest evidence of the excellence of the state in which they stood; they knew that they were thus adopted; and they knew this by the Spirit of God which was given them on their adoption; and let me say, they could know it by no other means. The Father who had adopted them could be seen by no mortal eye; and the transaction being purely of a spiritual nature, and transacted in heaven, can be known only by God’s supernatural testimony of it upon earth. It is a matter of such solemn importance to every Christian soul, that God in his mercy has been pleased not to leave it to conjecture, assumption, or inductive reasoning; but attests it by his own Spirit in the soul of the person whom he adopts through Christ Jesus. It is the grand and most observable case in which the intercourse is kept up between heaven and earth; and the genuine believer in Christ Jesus is not left to the quibbles or casuistry of polemic divines or critics, but receives the thing, and the testimony of it, immediately from God himself. And were not the testimony of the state thus given, no man could possibly have any assurance of his salvation which would beget confidence and love. If to any man his acceptance with God be hypothetical, then his confidence must be so too. His love to God must be hypothetical, his gratitude hypothetical, and his obedience also. IF God had forgiven me my sins, then I should love him, and I should be grateful, and I should testify this gratitude by obedience. But who does not see that these must necessarily depend on the IF in the first case. All this uncertainty, and the perplexities necessarily resulting from it, God has precluded by sending the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, by which we cry, Abba, Father: and thus our adoption into the heavenly family is testified and ascertained to us in the only way in which it can possibly be done, by the direct influence of the Spirit of God. Remove this from Christianity, and it is a dead letter.

It has been remarked that slaves were not permitted to use the term Abba, father, or Imma, mother, in accosting their masters and mistresses. The Hebrew canon, relative to this, is extant in the tract Berachoth, fol. 16. 2, haabadim vehashshephachoth ein korin otham, lo Abba N, velo Imma N. Men-servants and maid-servants do not call to their master Abba, (father,) N. nor to their mistress Imma, (mother,) N. And from this some suppose that the apostle intimates that being now brought from under the spirit of bondage, in which they durst not call God their Father, they are not only brought into a new state, but have got that language which is peculiar to that state. It is certain that no man who has not redemption in the blood of the cross has any right to call God Father, but merely as he may be considered the Father of the spirits of all flesh.

Some have supposed that the apostle, by using the Syriac and Greek words which express Father, shows the union of Jewish and Gentile believers in those devotions which were dictated by a filial spirit. Others have thought that these were the first words which those generally uttered who were made partakers of the Holy Spirit. It is enough to know that it was the language of their sonship, and that it expressed the clear assurance they had of being received into the Divine favour, the affection and gratitude they felt for this extraordinary blessing, and their complete readiness to come under the laws and regulations of the family, and to live in the spirit of obedience.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

This verse proves the former, that we are led by the Spirit of God, and are his children, and that by an effect of the Spirit in them, which is to enable them to call God

Father. He doth not here speak of two distinct Spirits, but one and the same Spirit of God, in different persons and at different times, is both

the spirit of bondage and

the Spirit of adoption.

The spirit of bondage seems to respect either that state of servitude, which the people of God were under in the time of the ceremonial law; see Gal 4:3,9; or it respects the publishing of the moral law upon Mount Sinai, which was with horror and fear. Compare Exo 19:16, with Heb 12:18-21; see Gal 4:24. Or else it respects that horror and slavish fear, which the Spirit of God doth work in mens hearts and consciences, by the ministry of the law, when he opens the eyes of men to see they are in bondage and slavery to sin and Satan, and that they are subject and obnoxious to the wrath and vengeance of God; this is many times preparatory and introductory to their conversion; but when they are regenerated they are delivered from it: see Luk 1:74; Heb 2:15; 1Jo 4:18.

Objection. Many of Gods children are full of doubts and fears.

Answer. These are not always from the suggestions of Gods Spirit, but the misgivings of their own spirits. Some distinguish between the spirit of bondage and desertion; the children of God are delivered from the former, but exercised with the latter. The Spirit of God is called the Spirit of adoption, both because he works and effects it in us, and because he testifies and assures it to us. He might have said, the Spirit of liberty; the antithesis required it; but he said as much, when he called him the Spirit of adoption, for children are free.

Whereby we cry, Abba, Father; or, by whom we cry. Acceptable prayer is wrought in us by the Spirit, Rom 8:26.

Abba is a Hebrew or Syriac word, signifying Father; why then is the word Father added in the Greek? To signify, that God is the Father both of Jews and Gentiles, Rom 3:29; 10:12; or to show the double paternity that is in God, he is the Father of all men by creation, of believers only by grace and regeneration: or, rather, to denote the importunity and earnestness which ought to be in prayer; and so it agrees with the former word, crying. Ingeminations carry an earnestness with them. There are two places more where these two words are repeated or used together, Mar 14:36; Gal 4:6.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

15. For, c.”For yereceived not (at the time of your conversion) the spirit of bondage,”that is, “The spirit ye received was not a spirit of bondage.”

againgendering.

to fearas under thelaw which “worketh wrath,” that is, “Such was yourcondition before ye believed, living in legal bondage, haunted withincessant forebodings under a sense of unpardoned sin. But it was notto perpetuate that wretched state that ye received the Spirit.”

but ye have received“yereceived.”

the spirit of adoption,wherebyrather, “wherein.”

we cry, Abba, FatherTheword “cry” is emphatic, expressing the spontaneousness, thestrength, and the exuberance of the final emotions. In Ga4:6 this cry is said to proceed from the Spirit in us,drawing forth the filial exclamation in our hearts. Here, it is saidto proceed from our own hearts under the vitalizing energy ofthe Spirit, as the very element of the new life in believers (compareMat 10:19 Mat 10:20;and see on Ro 8:4). “Abba”is the Syro-Chaldaic word for “Father”; and theGreek word for that is added, not surely to tell the readerthat both mean the same thing, but for the same reason which drewboth words from the lips of Christ Himself during his agony in thegarden (Mr 14:36). He,doubtless, loved to utter His Father’s name in both the accustomedforms; beginning with His cherished mother tongue, and adding that ofthe learned. In this view the use of both words here has a charmingsimplicity and warmth.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear,…. By “the spirit of bondage” is meant, not the Spirit of God: for this is just the reverse of his character, who is a “free Spirit”, or , “a Spirit of liberty”; and is contrary to his work and office, which is to show a soul its state of bondage by nature, and to deliver out of it; and though fear may arise from the convictions of sin, yet this he removes by discoveries of love; moreover, his work is to make application of grace and righteousness to sensible sinners, and to administer comfort to distressed minds, and make them meet for glory; and it is also contrary to the character of the persons in whom he dwells, who are the sons of God; besides, the Spirit of God, as a spirit of adoption, is in the text itself manifestly opposed to this spirit: but by it is intended a man’s own spirit whilst in a state of unregeneracy, and particularly whilst under a work of the law; and it refers to that “pharisaical” spirit which prevailed among the Jews. Men in a state of nature are under a spirit of bondage to the lusts of the flesh; by these they are captivated and enslaved, and the consequence of it is a fearful apprehension, when convicted, of death, judgment, and wrath to come. They are in slavery to the god of this world, who leads them captive, and by injecting into them fears of death, are subject to bondage. The Jews in particular were in bondage to the law, ceremonial and moral; to the ceremonial law, as circumcision, observation of days, and multitudes of sacrifices. This law was an handwriting of ordinances against them; it obliged them to keep the whole moral law; the sacrifices of it could not take away sin; the breach of it, being punishable with death, must unavoidably induce a “spirit of bondage unto fear”: they were in bondage to the moral law, which naturally genders to it, as it demands perfect obedience, but gives no strength to perform; as it shows a man his sin and misery, but not his remedy, as it accuses charges with sin, and curses and condemns for moreover, a spirit of bondage is brought upon persons through it, when they seek for justification and salvation by the works of it, for such obey it with mercenary views, not from love, but fear; and their comforts rise and fall according to their obedience: now these believers, though they had formerly been under such a spirit of bondage, were now delivered from it; nor should they return to it again:

but ye have received the spirit of adoption, by which is designed not a spirit of charity, or love, or inherent grace: adoption is not owing to inherent grace, or is any part of it: regeneration and adoption differ; adoption makes men the children of God, regeneration makes them appear to be so by giving them the nature of children; adoption is not a work of grace in us, but an act of grace without us, having its complete being in the mind of God; it is antecedent to a work of grace, inherent grace is a consequence of it, though no man knows, or has the comfort of his adoption, until he believes: rather a filial child like spirit, such a spirit as becomes the children of God is here meant; a spirit of freedom with God, of reverence of him, and of love of him, and of obedience to him; springing from filial affection and without mercenary views; a meek, harmless, and inoffensive spirit. Though it seems best of all to understand by it the Holy Spirit of God, who is distinguished from the spirit of believers, Ro 8:16, and is called “the Spirit of his Son” in a parallel place, Ga 4:6, and stands opposed here to a spirit of bondage, and may be so called because as a spirit of grace he flows from adoption; and is the discoverer, applier, witness, and ratifier of the blessing of adoption; and is the pledge, earnest, or seal of the future adoption or eternal inheritance: now the Spirit is received as such from the Father and the Son into the hearts of believers, by the means of the Gospel, in order to make known their adoption to them, which is an instance of grace, and ought to be acknowledged; for

we cry Abba, Father: by the help of the spirit of adoption; we, the saints under the Gospel dispensation, in opposition to the legal one, under which they had not that freedom; “cry” which denotes an internal vehemency and affection of soul, and an outward calling upon God, as a Father, with confidence; “Abba, Father, Father” is the explanation of the word “Abba”, and which is added for explanation sake, and to express the vehemency of the affection, and the freedom and liberty which belongs to children: the words in the original are, the one a Syriac word in use with the Jews, the other a Greek one, and denotes that there is but one Father of Jews and Gentiles. The word “Abba” signifies “my Father”, and is expressive of interest and of faith in it; and read backwards is the same as forwards, God is the Father of his people in adversity as well as prosperity; it is the word used by Christ himself in prayer, and which he directs his people to; to say no more, it is a word which the Jews did not allow servants, only freemen to make use of, and to be called by;

“it is a tradition; (say they b,) that servants and handmaids, they do not use to call , “father such-a-one, or mother such-a-one”;”

in allusion to which the apostle suggests, that only freemen, such as have the spirit of adoption, and not servants or bondsmen, can make use of this word “Abba”, or call God their Father.

b T. Hieros. Niddah, fol. 492. T. Bab. Beracot, fol. 16. 2. Massecheth Senachot, c. 1. sect. 13. Maimon. Hilch. Nechalot, c. 4. sect. 5.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

The spirit of adoption ( ). See on this term , Ga 4:5. Both Jews and Gentiles receive this “adoption” into the family of God with all its privileges. “ Whereby we cry, Abba, Father ” ( ). See Ga 4:6 for discussion of this double use of Father as the child’s privilege.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Spirit of bondage [ ] The Holy Spirit, as in Spirit of adoption. The Spirit which ye received was not a spirit of bondage. See ver. 4, under pneuma, 7.

Spirit of adoption [ ] . The Spirit of God, producing the condition of adoption. Uioqesia adoption, is from uiJov son, and qesiv a setting or placing : the placing one in the position of a son. Mr. Merivale, illustrating Paul ‘s acquaintance with Roman law, says : “The process of legal adoption by which the chosen heir became entitled not only to the reversion of the property but to the civil status, to the burdens as well as the rights of the adopter – became, as it were, his other self, one with him… this too is a Roman principle, peculiar at this time to the Romans, unknown, I believe, to the Greeks, unknown, to all appearance, to the Jews, as it certainly is not found in the legislation of Moses, nor mentioned anywhere as a usage among the children of the covenant. We have but a faint conception of the force with which such an illustration would speak to one familiar with the Roman practice; how it would serve to impress upon him the assurance that the adopted son of God becomes, in a peculiar and intimate sense, one with the heavenly Father” (” Conversion of the Roman Empire “).

We cry [] . Of a loud cry or vociferation; expressing deep emotion.

Abba [] . Compare Mr 14:36. A Syrian term, to which Paul adds the Greek Father. The repetition is probably from a liturgical formula which may have originated among the Hellenistic Jews who retained the consecrated word Abba. Some find here a hint of the union of Jew and Gentile in God. 45

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “For ye have not received,” (ou gar elabete) “For you all received not;” when you were redeemed – you did not receive the kind of Spirit that causes fear and torments, but the Spirit of liberty, freedom, and hope, Rom 8:2; Rom 5:5; Gal 5:1; Gal 5:13; 1Co 2:12; Gal 4:5-6; 2Ti 1:7.

2) “The spirit of bondage again to fear,” (pneuma douleias palin eis phobon) “a spirit of slavery again to or toward fear;” The voice of God, that thundered his law on Sinai, caused the hearers to tremble and those under its bondage thereafter to fear, Heb 2:15; Exo 19:16; Exo 20:18-19; Deu 5:5; Deu 5:23-27; Heb 12:19; Heb 12:21; the Spirit of Christ casts out fear, 1Jn 4:18.

3) “But ye have received the Spirit of adoption,” (alla elabete pneuma huiothesias) “But ye received a spirit of (an heir-setting) adoption;” The Holy Spirit (when followed by believers) leads to baptism and church membership where, in position of service, they become heirs of God and joint-heirs of Christ, Rom 8:17-18; Rom 8:23; Rom 9:4; Eph 1:5.

4) “Whereby e cry, Abba Father,” (en ho krazomen abba ho pater) “in which we cry out, Abba Father,” a Syriac-Chaldee term of affection meaning “Father” or -my Father,” the same term used by Christ in Gethsemane, Mar 14:36. Paul included himself in the “we” who cry “Father, Father!” In the Spirit – not of regeneration, but of adoption, or an heir setting, heir reigning Gentile rights obtained by children of God thru the church, Eph 1:5; Eph 3:21; Gal 4:6.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

15. ]He now confirms the certainty of that confidence, in which he has already bidden the faithful to rest secure; and he does this by mentioning the special effect produced by the Spirit; for he has not been given for the purpose of harassing us with trembling or of tormenting us with anxiety; but on the contrary, for this end — that having calmed every perturbation, and restoring our minds to a tranquil state, he may stir us up to call on God with confidence and freedom. He does not then pursue only the argument which he had before stated, but dwells more on another clause, which he had connected with it, even the paternal mercy of God, by which he forgives his people the infirmities of the flesh and the sins which still remain in them. He teaches us that our confidence in this respect is made certain by the Spirit of adoption, who could not inspire us with confidence in prayer without sealing to us a gratuitous pardon: and that he might make this more evident, he mentions a twofold spirit; he calls one the spirit of bondage, which we receive from the law; and the other, the spirit of adoption, which proceeds from the gospel. The first, he says, was given formerly to produce fear; the other is given now to afford assurance. By such a comparison of contrary things the certainty of our salvation, which he intended to confirm, is, as you see, made more evident. (253) The same comparison is used by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where he says, that we have not come to Mount Sinai, where all thing were so terrible, that the people, being alarmed as it were by an immediate apprehension of death, implored that the word should be no more spoken to them, and Moses himself confessed that he was terrified;

“

but to Sion, the mount of the Lord, and to his city, the heavenly Jerusalem, where Jesus is, the Mediator of the New Testament,” etc. (Heb 12:22.)

By the adverb again, we learn, that the law is here compared with the gospel: for the Son of God by his coming has brought to us this invaluable benefit, — that we are no longer bound by the servile condition of the law. You are not however to infer from this, either that no one before the coming of Christ was endued with the spirit of adoption, or that all who received the law were servants and not sons: for he compares the ministration of the law with the dispensation of the gospel rather than persons with persons. I indeed allow that the faithful are here reminded how much more bountifully God now deals with them than he did formerly with the fathers under the Old Testament; he yet regards the outward dispensation, in respect of which only we excel them: for though the faith of Abraham, of Moses, and of David, was superior to ours, yet as God kept them apparently under a schoolmaster, they had not advanced into that liberty which has been revealed to us.

But it must at the same time be noticed, that it was designedly, on account of false apostles, that a contrast was made between the literal disciples of the law, and the faithful whom Christ, the heavenly Teacher, not only addresses by words, but also teaches inwardly and effectually by his Spirit.

And though the covenant of grace is included under the law, it is yet far different from it; for in setting up the gospel in opposition to it, he regards nothing but what was peculiar to the law itself, as it commands and forbids, and restrains transgressors by the denunciation of death: and thus he gives the law its own character, in which it differs from the gospel; or this statement may be preferred by some, — “He sets forth the law only, as that by which God covenants with us on the ground of works.” So then persons only must be regarded as to the Jewish people; for when the law was published, and also after it was published, the godly were illuminated by the same Spirit of faith; and thus the hope of eternal life, of which the Spirit is the earnest and seal, was sealed on their hearts. The only difference is, that the Spirit is more largely and abundantly poured forth in the kingdom of Christ. But if you regard only the dispensation of the law, it will then appear, that salvation was first clearly revealed at that time, when Christ was manifested in the flesh. All things under the Old Testament were involved in great obscurity, when compared with the clear light of the gospel.

And then, if the law be viewed in itself, it can do nothing but restrain those, devoted to its miserable bondage, by the horror of death; for it promises no good except under condition, and denounces death on all transgressors. Hence, as there is the spirit of bondage under the law, which oppresses the conscience with fear; so under the gospel there is the spirit of adoption, which exhilarates our souls by bearing a testimony as to our salvation. But observe, that fear is connected with bondage, as it cannot be otherwise, but that the law will harass and torment souls with miserable disquietness, as long as it exercises its dominion. There is then no other remedy for quieting them, except God forgives us our sin and deals kindly with us as a father with his children.

Through whom we cry, etc. He has changed the person, that he might describe the common privilege of all the saints; as though he had said, — “Ye have the spirit, through whom you and all we, the rest of the faithful, cry,” etc. The imitation of their language is very significant; when he introduces the word Father, in the person of the faithful. The repetition of the name is for the sake of amplification; for Paul intimates, that God’s mercy was so published through the whole world, that he was invoked, as [ Augustine ] observes, indiscriminately in all languages. (254) His object then was to express the consent which existed among all nations. It hence follows, that there is now no difference between the Jew and the Greek, as they are united together. Isaiah speaks differently when he declares, that the language of Canaan would be common to all, (Isa 19:18😉 yet the meaning is the same; for he had no respect to the external idiom, but to the harmony of heart in serving God, and to the same undisguised zeal in professing his true and pure worship. The word cry is set down for the purpose of expressing confidence; as though he said, “We pray not doubtingly, but we confidently raise up a loud voice to heaven.”

The faithful also under the law did indeed call God their Father, but not with such full confidence, as the vail kept them at a distance from the sanctuary: but now, since an entrance has been opened to us by the blood of Christ, we may rejoice fully and openly that we are the children of God; hence arises this crying. In short, thus is fulfilled the prophecy of Hosea,

“

I will say to them, My people are ye: they in their turn will answer, Thou art our God.” (Hos 2:23.)

For the more evident the promise is, the greater the freedom in prayer.

(253) By the Spirit, πνεῦμα, (without the article,) some, as [ Augustine ], [ Beza ], and others, understand the Holy Spirit, and so [ Calvin ], for the most part, seems to do. Then “the Spirit of bondage” means the Spirit the effect of whose administration was bondage; and “the Spirit of adoption” must signify the Spirit, the bestower of adoption. But we may take spirit here, in both instances, as it is often taken, in the sense of disposition or feeling; according to the expression, “the spirit of meekness ” — πνεύματι πρᾴοτητος, 1Co 4:21, and “the spirit of fear ” — πνεῦμα δειλίας 2Ti 1:7. The word for adoption, υἱοθεσία, may be rendered sonship, or affiliation, or filiation, as [ Luther ] sometimes renders it: and as the Spirit of meekness means a meek spirit, so we may translate the two clauses here, “a servile spirit” and “a filial spirit.” At the same time it may be better to take the “spirit” throughout as the divine Spirit, as in several instances it must evidently be so taken. — Ed.

(254) [ Wolfius ] gives a quotation from the Talmud, by which it appears that “servants” or slaves, and “maids” or bondmaids, were not allowed among the Jews to call their master Abba ( אבא), nor their mistress Aima ( אימא), these being names which children alone were permitted to use. And [ Selden ] says, that there is an evident allusion in this passage to that custom among the Jews. Under the law the people of God were servants, but under the gospel they are made children; and hence the privilege of calling God Abba. [ Haldane ], quoting [ Claude ], gives the same explanation. The repetition of the word is for the sake of emphasis, and is given as an expression of warm, ardent, and intense feeling.. See an example of this in our Savior’s prayer in the garden, Mar 14:36, and in what he said on the cross, Mat 27:46. The idea mentioned by [ Calvin ] , derived from the Fathers, seems not to be well founded. — Ed.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

CRITICAL NOTES

Rom. 8:15.The Chaldee and Greek words for father are used so as to affect both Jews and Gentiles. Abba, like papa, can be spoken with the mouth, and properly, therefore, characterises genuine childlike disposition and manner (Olshausen).

Rom. 8:18. For I reckon.As the result of deliberate calculation. On the one side suffering, on the other grace and glory. Season sets forth the transitory character. The glory which is about to be revealed in us, towards us, with regard to us, as Alford puts it.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Rom. 8:15-18

Rom. 8:16-18. The inheritance of sonship.The sin of the world is a false confidence; the fault and sorrow and weakness of the Church is a false diffidence. The true confidence, which is faith in Christ, and the true diffidence, which is utter distrust of myself, are identical. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit. It is that there is one testimony which has a conjoint originthe origin of the Spirit of God as true source, and the origin of my own soul as recipient and co-operant in that testimony. The substance, then, of the evidence on which a Christian has a right to conclude that he is a child of God does not bear directly on his own state or condition at all, but upon Gods feelings to him and Gods relation to him. Our own souls possess these emotions of love and tender desire going out unto God; our own spirits possess them, but our own spirits did not originate them. Your sense of fatherhoodthat sense of fatherhood which is in the Christians heart, and becomes his crycomes from Gods Spirit. This passage, and that in Galatians which is almost parallel, put this truth very forcibly, when taken in connection: Ye have received, says the text before us, the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The heart with its love, the head with its understanding, the conscience with its quick response to the law of duty, the will with its resolutionsthese are all, as sanctified by Him, the witness of His Spirit.

This divine witness in our spirits is subject to the ordinary influences which affect our spirits.The Spirits witness comes from Godtherefore it is veracious; but the Spirits witness from God is in mantherefore it may be wrongly read.

No inheritance without sonship.In general terms, spiritual things can only be given to men who are in a certain spiritual condition. Even God cannot bestow certain blessings and gifts until there be in me a capacity or organ to receive them. No inheritance of heaven without sonship; just because all the blessings of that future life at last come down to this, they are of a spiritual character.

No sonship without a spiritual birth.Fatherhood involves the communication of a life and the reciprocity of love; it involves a divine act and a human emotion; it involves that the Father and the child shall have kindred life. Drop that figure, and simply rest on thisthe children of God, or the children of sin; sons because born again, or slaves and enemies by wicked works.

No spiritual birth without Christ.He has carried in the golden urn of His humanity a new spirit and a new life which He has set down in the midst of the race; and the urn was broken on the cross of Calvary, and the water flowed out; and whithersover that water comes there is life, and whithersoever it comes not there is death.

No Christ without faith.Unless we are wedded to Jesus Christ by the simple act of trust in His mercy and His power, Christ is nothing to us. Christ is everything to a man that trusts Him; Christ is nothing but a judge and a condemnation to a man that trusts Him not.

Then sonship with Christ necessarily involves suffering with Him.We suffer with Him; not, He suffers with us. The death of Christ is a type of the Christians life. It is a dying to sin; it is a dying to self; it is a dying to an old world. That crucifying of the old manhood is to be repeated by the power of faith.

Our sufferings are His. His sufferings are ours. Oneness with Christ involves a fellowship and community on both sides, of suffering. This community of suffering is a preparation for the community of glory. It is not the discipline that fits; the thing that fits goes before the discipline, and the discipline only develops the fitness.

That inheritance is the necessary result of all suffering that has gone before.The suffering results from our union with Christ. That union must needs culminate in glory. Trials have no meaning, unless they are means to an end. The end is the inheritance. What must be the end of that blessedness which is the counterpoise and consequence to the sorrow and pain of this lower world!Maclaren.

Rom. 8:16. The witness of the Spirit.Take these words in whatever sense we may, they contain a truth of unspeakable importance. The moment we hear them we feel that we are dealing with a matter which concerns our souls life. And the two points requiring our attention arefirst, who are the witnesses to be inquired of? and, secondly, what is the testimony to be elicited?

I. And first, in reference to this question of our spiritual sonship, let us see who are the witnesses who are to decide upon the matter.There is evidently nothing in the text to favour a notion entertained by some, who would resolve the witness of the Spirit into some supernatural intimation from abovesome mysterious whisper to the ear of the inner man, speaking to us, and addressing us as those who belong to the family of God. The text rather suggests to us that we are entering upon a calm, judicial process, in which the hoped-for verdict can be obtained only by the testimony of two distinct and agreeing witnesseswitnesses of tried competency to speak, and of proved faithfulness to be heardnamely, the witness of the Holy Spirit, and the consenting testimony of our own hearts. Chiefly, however, must our confidence stand in the first of these witnesses, the testimony of our own hearts being only derived and secondary, subscribing to that which has been given by the Spirit of God. And the importance of having this Holy Spirit as the chief witness will appear from the nature of the facts to be witnessed tonamely, that we are the children of God, are received into a state of adoption and grace, are at this moment reconciled to God, and know that He is reconciled to us. Our adoption is one of the things of God, and He must be of God, and in God, who shall bear witness of it to us. He must know when the act of grace went forth, and when the wandering spirit turned, and when the weak and subjugated heart surrendered, and when the signet ring was fixed to that covenant of mercy and forgiveness which made of the outcast rejoicing, and of the slave a friend and child. And these are things which must be known to the Holy Spirit, because of Him, and through Him, and by Him, are all these effects wrought.

II. How this important testimony is to be elicitedin what language does the Spirit speak, and in what signs does the heart make answer?And in the general elucidation of this point the first ground to be taken is that the joint witness of the text, and consequently the scriptural evidence of sonship, is to be looked for in thisnamely, an impression of inward peace arising from the discovery of certain tendencies and dispositions answerable to the state of sonship, and referred in Scripture to the agency of the Holy Spirit of God. And it is properly called a joint witness, because the same Spirit who forms these tendencies in us also manifests their existence to us. We can only know that we are adopted children when the Spirit of God reveals to our minds, with growing light and distinctness, the existence of those moral dispositions which prompt us to act as children act, and to feel as children feel. Do we inquire further, How do the children of God act and feel? the answer is, We find these only in the written word. But this still makes the Spirit of God the chief witness to us, because, until the Spirit shines upon the word, it is a sealed book to us, a dark and meaningless record, telling us nothing of our spiritual state, because the eyes of our understanding are not opened. But let the Spirit open our understanding, and we find that the entrance of Gods word giveth lightlight to the promises, light to the threatenings, light to the rules of duty, light to the evidences of our hope. We understand better both the rule and that to which we are to apply the rule; and it is just the agreement between these twothe Scripture calling and the heart answering, the Spirit insisting on certain commanded feelings and our own spirits testifying that we have such feelingsthat constitutes our double witness, that meets the judicial demands of a twofold testimony, that enables us to say, The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.P. Moore.

Rom. 8:16. Concerning the witness of the Spirit.This passage is something difficult, and commonly not rightly understood; for the clearing of which there are four things to be done:

I. To show what is meant by the Spirit.

II. What is meant by the children of God.

III. What is meant by the Spirits bearing witness with our spirit.

IV. How, or in what sense, the Spirit beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.

By the Spirit here is undoubtedly meant that Holy Spirit which our Lord promised He would send upon His disciples after He was ascended into heaven, and which accordingly came upon them on the day of Pentecost, and which from thenceforth was to continue with the Church to the end of the world. This Spirit is here in the text called the Spirit itself, to represent Him as a person, because in the verse before the apostle had used this word spirit in another senseviz., for a state and dispensation.

But, secondly, What is meant by being the children of God? To this I answer, that to be a child of God, in the Scripture phrase, is to be an heir of immortality, or to be an inheritor of the kingdom of heaventhat is to say, either in actual possession of it, or in a right title to it.
But, thirdly, What is meant by this expression of the Spirits bearing witness with our spirit? I conceive that which the apostle here meant is this: that the Holy Spirit by the visible, sensible operations which He wrought in and amongst Christians, that God owned them for His people, and as such would glorify them with His Son Jesus at the last day. First of all, I say, the Spirit gave an undeniable proof to Christians that they were the children of God in descending upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost. The fulness of the evidence we have for the truth of the matters of fact wrought by the Spirit in the ancient times for the confirmation of Christs doctrine, and the new arguments that the same Spirit hath given us since; we, at this day, have as much reason to say with St. Paul, as any in those days had, The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of Godthat we are Christians, in contradistinction to men of all other religions, are the very people of God, and heirs of eternal life, if we do not forfeit our title to it by a loose and wicked life. It ought to be a matter of unspeakable comfort and rejoicing to us that we have such an infallible witness as the Spirit of God to bear testimony to our minds that we are in a right and sure way to eternal happiness. The Spirits bearing witness to our minds thus effectually that we are the children of God should be an argument to us above all others that we should never depart from our Christian profession, but that we should hold it to our lives end without waveringnay, and be zealous for it. For where can we have eternal life but in the faith of Jesus Christ? We are always to remember that, when the Spirit gave His witness to the Christians that they were the children of God, it was to the Christians as professing the true faith of Christ. Though it be here said of all Christians in general that the Spirit bears witness to them that they are the children of God, yet it is to be remembered that no benefit will hereby accrue to any particular person that professeth Christianity if he does not lead his life according to the precepts of it. Secondly, if it be asked what this private witness of the Spirit is to the minds of particular persons, that they are the children of God, or wherein it doth consist, I answer very briefly, as far as we can gather from the apostles discourse, both in this place and in others of his epistles, it consists in thisviz., in the Holy Ghosts dwelling in the hearts of particular Christians, and enabling them to mortify their lusts, and to lead a holy life, in all sobriety, righteousness, and godliness. Now this indwelling of the Spirit, and these fruits therefore, wherever they are found, are to those that have them a seal of the Spirit of God upon their souls, whereby they are sealed to the day of redemption, as the apostle expresses it (Eph. 4:30). They are an earnest or a pledge of their future happiness, as the same apostle in other places calls them (2Co. 1:22; 2Co. 5:5; Eph. 1:13-14). Lastly, they are a testimony or evidence to their spirits that they are the true sons of God, and shall be glorified with Jesus Christ in another world, which is the tenor of his expression in my text. Now that this is the true meaning of the Spirits witnessing with our spirit that we are the children of God, so far as that witness concerns particular persons, will appear evidently from what goes before in this chapter. The main design that the apostle is pursuing is to encourage and animate the Christians of his time against the sufferings and persecutions they were likely to meet with in this world upon account of their religion; and this he doth chiefly from the consideration of the great rewards that were laid up for them in the other world. And to this purpose he tells them in the tenth verse, If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness (Rom. 8:10)that is, your body is indeed obnoxious to all sorts of outward calamities, and even to death itself, which is entailed upon the sons of Adam, upon account of sin; but yet the Spirit of Christ, which He hath given to dwell in you, will procure you a glorious life in another world, upon account of that inward spiritual righteousness which He worketh in you.

And, first of all, from this account that has been given, we learn what the true marks are of a child of God, or upon what grounds any person can rationally assure himself that he is in Gods favour and shall go to heaven. For as the miraculous operations of the Spirit in the days of the apostles were the public testimony of the Holy Ghost that the Christian Church in general was the people of God and designed to everlasting happiness, so the Spirits dwelling in the souls of particular Christians is His private testimony to particular persons that they are effectually the children of God and shall be actually raised up to everlasting happiness. Since all the evidence we can give to ourselves that we in particular are the children of God is that the Holy Spirit dwelleth within us, how infinitely doth it concern us, both to endeavour that the Holy Ghost should take up His habitation in our hearts, and also, after He hath so done, to be careful that we do not by our ill treatment of Him give Him cause to depart from us! Would we invite and prevail with the Holy Spirit to come and dwell within us? The way is to forsake our sins and to devote ourselves entirely to Gods service, and to solicit Him most earnestly with our daily prayers that He would purify our hearts, that they may become a temple fit for Him to dwell in, and withal to encourage and improve every good motion and every opportunity that He puts into our hands of growing in virtue and goodness. By this means we shall allure the good Spirit of God to take up His lodging in our hearts. And when once it is our happiness to have received so illustrious a guest, oh, with what zeal should we endeavour to preserve Him!Archbishop Sharpe.

Rom. 8:17. Sons and heirs.Law and gospel. There was a law: This do, and ye shall live. It tended to keep us in fear.

There is a covenant. In Christ we become adopted sons. It tends to keep us in peace. God is our Father. Abba term of affection = dear Father.

Sequence of thought. Sons? Sons are generally heirs. Are we heirs? To what? With whom?
We find that we are heirs of salvation (Heb. 1:14); righteousness (Heb. 11:7); a kingdom (Jas. 2:5); everlasting life (Mat. 19:29); a blessing (1Pe. 3:9); all things (Rev. 21:7).

Roman law allowed equal division among sons. We are heirs equally with each other, and all with Christ. God is impartial; He loves and gives to all alike.

The Lords supper. When we meet as children at our Fathers table, with His Son presiding, most striking reminder of our sonship, our fellowship, and our heirship.Dr. Springett.

Rom. 8:15-16. The Spirit of adoption.Let us consider first the respective offices of the two witnesses here mentionedthat is, the Spirit of God and our own spirit. Let us notice, then, the subject of their testimony. It is that we are the children of God. The Holy Spirit gives some witness to the great fact that our sins are forgiven, and that we, being reconciled to God, are now adopted into His family. The Spirit is the only witness who can give direct evidence of this. He is not only a competent witness, but the only competent witness. To this fact of our reconciliation to God, considered as a fact, our own spirits neither do nor can give testimony. Our own spirits have nothing to do with it. He alone can do this to whom it is perfectly known, and that is the Spirit of God. There are various ways, no doubt, by which the knowledge of this testimony is communicated to the soul, answering to the different modes of speech which we find in Scripture on the subject. There is the lifting up the light of the divine countenance upon the soul; the shedding the love of God abroad in our hearts; the crying, Abba, Father; the giving testimony to our spirits that we are the children of God; but all come from the Spirit and produce some persuasion and assurance that I am now a child of God, through His mercy in Christ. Next, we have the witness of our own spirits. Why is the testimony of our own spirit introduced and conjoined with that of the divine Spirit? Though there can be no delusion where the Spirit of God dwells and shines, yet there may be impressions not from Him, and which we may mistake for the sacred testimony which He bears. Against a delusion of this sort you must be most carefully guarded. Where the Spirit of God dwells as the Spirit of adoption, He dwells as the great Author of regeneration, as the source of all holy principles and feelings. Our justification and our sanctification are thus inseparable.

There are a few errors connected with this doctrine which ought to be noticed. The first is that there can be no certainty of our being now in a state of salvation; that, in fact, it is an unattainable blessing. If it be not attainable, the state of good men under the New Testament dispensation is far inferior to the state of good men under the Old. The first man of whom we have any record that he offered a sacrifice in faith obtained the testimony, the witness of his acceptance. And if ours be a dispensation much more glorious, and if we know that the Spirit of God has this particular office, we are not to conclude that we are placed in circumstances inferior, but superior to those of the saints of the Old Testament dispensation, with respect to the assurance of acceptance with God. This notion is contrary to all the words of Christ and the apostles. Here is the promise of Christ Himself, I will give you rest; and that rest is vouchsafed by the Holy Ghost, the Comforter who reveals to us the mercy of God in Christ, removes from our conscience the burden of guilt, and witnesses to us that we are no longer strangers but children and heirs. We notice another error, that this assurance and persuasion of our adoption is the privilege only of some eminent Christians. This blessing is as common as pardon; and the whole of this objection is grounded upon some secret idea of moral worth. None of these gifts are bestowed under any other character than as the purchase of the blood of Christ, and they are all parts of the great salvation held out to you, however unworthy, without money and without price. Some persons confound this assurance of present acceptance with an assurance of final salvation. The one is distinct from the other. I find no authority for the last in the Book of God. We are called upon to live in the assurance of this divine favour, and to rejoice in hope of the glory of God; but this conveys to us no certain assurance of final salvation. We are still to walk by the same rule and to mind the same things. The faith which brings us into this state must maintain us in it. We must still watch and pray, still lay aside every weight and easily besetting sin, still fight the good fight of faith, ever feeling that only to those who are faithful unto death shall the crown of life be given.R. Watson.

Rom. 8:12-17. From present life to future glory.

I. The argument starts from that practical influence of the Spirit of God upon daily conduct with which St. Paul has lately been dealing. This he describes as being led by the Spirit. The phrase is a short and easy one. It accurately describes, not simply the ideal of Christian life, but even in a fair degree its actual condition. For the word led must be admitted to suggest something more than spiritual direction as of a guide to duty who may or may not be followed. It is true enough that the Paraclete is given to shed light on the path of right conduct across the perplexing situations of life. But so outward and formal a conception fails to exhaust the functions of the indwelling Spirit. The word led implies that our Leader moves us along whither He would have us go, so that we yield ourselves to His reasonable and righteous impulses (, Rom. 8:14). For this is His manner of leading. He is the inspirer as well as the suggester of conduct. He persuades and enables us to walk in the way, as well as points out where it lies. If we are led by the Spirit, that means that to some extent we are day by day amending our ways, exerting ourselves successfully to do right, and making substantial progress in virtue. Nor is it foreign even to the word itself, far less to the nature of the case, that I should speak thus of a Christians own exertion and active progress in spiritual life. Unquestionably the word led describes the attitude of the believer as in some sense or to some extent a passive one. It means that he lets himself be acted upon. He submits to the operation of a superhuman force. That is true; and without some such force from above, it is impossible to see how human beings are to be led aright. All the same the phrase hints that a man is not merely passive under the action of the Spirit. To be led is a state proper to a rational and self-determining creature. It is not to be pushed like a machine or driven like dumb cattle. God acts upon us as one moral agent who is mighty and the source of influence can act upon another moral agent who is feeble and open to influencethat is to say, by secretly instigating or persuading the will to choose freely what is good. No doubt, this cannot be said to exhaust the mysterious operations of the Spirit of life; since being our Maker and Re-Maker, He has His peculiar divine sphere of action behind conscious choice, among those hidden tendencies, powers, and aptitudes which constitute human nature itself. Of this we can say little to purpose. But, so soon as the life reveals itself in consciousness, it is obvious that the Spirits leading is so far from shutting out the mans own activity or freedom that on the contrary it implies it. That the apostle recognised this active side of Christian experience is clear enough from the hortatory cast into which this first paragraph is thrown at its opening. He tells the Romans how they owed it to the blessed One who stooped to be their leader that they should mortify the deeds of the body. They were to this extent His debtors, as he puts it. Since God has in His grace approached and entered into man to be his guide to everlasting life, it is, so to say, the least thing man can do to give himself heartily up to such celestial guidance. The practical issue in every real Christian must be, as a matter of fact, open to observation, that his conduct does move on the whole along lines which are laid down by God in His word. Explain the mechanism how you please, here at least is the ascertainable result.

II. On the basis of this simple matter of fact, St. Paul moves forward to the second point in developing his transition from life to glory. It is this: wherever you find submission to divine guidance you have evidence of a divine birth. We have, in fact, no other mark of that sacred and lofty relationship, the noblest belonging to our nature, save character. With such sober, homely, and solemn teaching as this it is easy to see how the gospel erects a barrier against devout delusions such as may readily spring out of religious enthusiasm. It frequently occurs that persons persuade themselves they are the favourites or the children of God on the ground of some vivid experience they have undergone which they take to be conversion, or because they have been the subject of a surprising vision, a bright light beheld in prayer, or a sudden calm of mind which they feel certain could only have had a heavenly origin. Nothing can well prove more perilous to character than the security which arises from such a source. For a man to turn away from the severe moral test of obedience in duty in order to build his confidence on emotions, dreams, mental impressions, or any other non-ethical evidence of piety, is to desert the safe guidance of truth and run grievous risk of spiritual shipwreck. The shores of religious experience are strewn thick with the shattered reputations of men who perished on this sunken rock. On the other hand, when a devout person is actually walking closely in the steps of Christ, being led by His Spirit to maintain a godly and watchful temper in daily behaviour, there is a certain internal witness to his divine birth from which he may legitimately take comfort. Wherever such a persuasion as this is found within the breast it is a secret possession for him who has it. No stranger may intermeddle with it. No outsider can ever be made aware of it. It justifies itself only to the soul in which it dwells. It is the witness of God within the man; not the same thing as an inference of the judgment based on the evidence of conduct. True, it needs, as I said, to be sustained or corroborated by a most scrupulous behaviour, else what is called the witness of the Spirit may be nothing but a self-imposition. Still, where it is genuine, it is simply a matter of immediate personal consciousness. It is the heart of the son becoming conscious of itself and of its Father as united in one act of mutual trust and love. From a heart so near to God, so open to Him, so humbly bold in its access to Him, so reverently affectionate in its embrace of Him, why may not words of childlike familiarity well out with a happy unconsciousness of their own daring? To its lips may there not come without blame a spontaneous cry like the Abba! of Jesus Himself?
III. If on solid grounds a believer has made sure Pauls second arch in this brief bridge which spiritual logic builds from earth to heaven, then he is prepared to go on to the third and last: If sons, then heirs. There is no need to institute any curious inquiry here about either the Hebrew or the Roman law of inheritance, as if the apostles argument turned upon such niceties. A lawful and beloved son shares his fathers estate all the world over. He who belongs to Gods family may with safety leave the question of his future inheritance in the hands of a parent who is too generous and too opulent to leave any child without a portion.Dr. Dykes.

Heirs.

I. Then the Christian is going to a rich home and a glorious future.Therefore he ought not to be too much elated or depressed by the pleasures or privations of the journey. An eye to the rest and glory at the end should keep him from getting weary of the way.

II. Then the Christian should not debase himself by an undue attachment to the things of time.How unreasonable to see an heir of God so swallowed up in the world that he has neither taste nor time to pray, or make suitable efforts to get ready for his heavenly inheritance!

III. Then no man should speak of having made sacrifices in becoming a Christian.Any person making such a declaration should blush to the roots of his hair, and ask God to forgive him for an utterance so untrue.

IV. Then an heir of God should be made meet for his inheritance.Without a meetness for it, the inheritance would be a burden rather than a blessing. Our business here is to cultivate the manners, to learn the language, and acquire the tempers of our future abode. May we not forget our errand!

V. Then, in securing this meetness, the Christian may confidently expect divine aid.As soon doubt the rising of the sun as that God would fail to aid and bless the man who is struggling to be pure and Christlike.T. Kelly, D.D.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Rom. 8:15-17

All may be heard.This is much for their comfort, that from whomsoever and whatsoever corner of the world prayers come up to Him, they cannot want acceptance. All languages, all countries, all places, are sanctified by Jesus Christ, that whosoever calls on the name of the Lord from the ends of the earth shall be saved. And truly it is a sweet meditation to think that from the ends of the earth the cries of souls are heard, and that the end is as near heaven as the middle, and the wilderness as a paradise, and that they who understand not one another have one living and loving Father that understands all their meanings. And as the different dialects of this body make no confusion, no Babel, but meet together, the crysent up by the Catholic Church, which is here scattered on the earth, ascends as one perfume or incense.Binning.

Proof of sonship is holiness.From these verses we may remark that the only infallible test of our being genuine disciples of Christ is our having that mind in us which was also in Him, and that the proof of our being sons of God consists in our living habitually under the influence of the Holy Spirit, in studying to discharge conscientiously all the duties to which we are called, and to avoid every sin against which we are warned in the Holy Scriptures. This we are enabled to accomplish by means of the aids of the Holy Ghost; for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. It may be observed further that the dispositions with which the gospel calls us to worship God do not imply a slavish dread of His displeasure, but that filial reverence and confiding thankfulness with which the unspeakable mercy of the great Father of the universe ought to inspire all who are permitted to draw near to Him through the one Mediator between God and man.Ritchie.

Concurrence of two witnesses.How do the Spirit of God and your conscience bear witness together that you are the children of God? I reply, first, by the harmony of the dictates of conscience in the soul with the dictates of the Spirit in the Bible. It was enacted in the law of Moses that at the mouth of two or three witnesses every word should be established. It is evident that in the case before us a single witness would be insufficient to prove you the children of God, and that a concurrence of the two is indispensably necessary. The concurrence of those two witnesses appears in the harmony of the dictates of conscience with the fruits or work of the Spirit in the soul. Now as the fruits of the Spirit are His witnessesfor by His fruits ye know Himso conscience, discerning these fruits in itself and in all the faculties and affections of the soul, bears witness with the Spirit that you in whom these fruits appear are the children of God. The concurrence of these two witnesses appears in the harmony of the dictates of conscience with the dictates of the Spirit as living witnesses. The language of the text conveys the idea of living personality in the Spirit of God as well as in our own spirit. It is not a mere indirect or passive testimony that is given by conscience, as of Abels faith or sacrifice, by which he being dead yet speaketh, but the direct testimony of a living witness.Parlane.

Miraculous interceptions not now to be expected.But it may be asked, Was the witness of the Spirit limited to that age? and have Christians in the present period no reason to look for it? To these questions we cannot hesitate in replying that the witness of the Spirit is common to all ages. But it must appear somewhat presumptuous to expect, in the present state of the world, those visible and miraculous communications of the gifts of the Holy Spirit which were necessary for promoting the first establishment of the Christian religion. The witness which we are now entitled to look for is therefore so far different from what it then was, that, generally speaking, it does not consist in a special revelation to individuals, intimating their adoption into the family of Christ; nor in Such sensible communications as were common in the apostolic age, and which were perfectly intelligible and obvious to others, as well as to the persons receiving them. But it consists in the inward and unseen co-operation of the divine Spirit, which manifests itself by its effects, producing the filial temper, or what, in the preceding verse, the apostle calls the Spirit of adoption. We presume not indeed to limit the operation of the Spirit, or to maintain that this is now the only method in which His influence is imparted; but we are entitled to think that miraculous interpositions for satisfying the minds of individuals do not constitute the usual way in which God deals with mankind, and that those silent and unostentatious influences which promote the sanctification of our nature, without abridging our free agency, are the common methods by which the Spirit now beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.Ritchie.

Gods sons have emanations of Gods love.The communication of God Himself, not that we shall ever acquire Gods infinite attributes, or that He will cease to be God alone, but such emanations of His love and wisdom and glory will flow into our souls as to fill us with the fulness of God, or with Godlike wisdom, holiness, love, and blessedness. What comes nearer to a communication of Himself into us or to our having a portion in the divinity than our being made like unto Him? It would look as if the circumstances of our seeing Him led, by a sort of causal or influential energy, to the circumstance of our being assimilated to Himas if we gathered, by a sort of radiation from His glory, the reflection of a kindred glory upon our own personsas if His excellences passed unto us when ushered into His visible presence, and became ours by sympathy, or ours by transmission. He does not part with His character; but He multiplies His character by the diffusion of it through all the members of the blest household that is above; and they may be most significantly called heirs of Godmay be most significantly said to have God for their portion, God for their inheritance, when not only admitted to the full and immediate sight of Him, but when the efficacy of that sight is to actuate and inspire them with His very affections, to cover and adorn them with His very spiritual glories.John Howe.

For the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.Here the apostle shows the ground of our union and communion with Christ, because, having His Spirit, we are of necessity His. What ties and makes one things far asunder but the same Spirit of life in both? So that Spirit which is in Him, a full, running-over fountain, dropping down, and being also infused, unites us unto Him; yea, that Spirit doth tie me as fast unto Christ as any joint ties member to member, and so makes Christ dwell in mine heart. So that now by this means we are inseparably united unto Him. For, I pray you, what is it that makes a member to be a member to another? Not the nearness of joining, but the same quickening spirit and life which is in both and which causeth a like motion. By the same Spirit I know I am conveyed into Christ and united unto Him. The testimony of our spirit I conceive to be when a man hath taken a survey of those excellent things belonging unto justification and sanctification, when according to the substantial truths which I know in the word belonging thereunto I observe and follow as fast as I may what is there commanded. This is the groundwork of the witness of our spirit. If a man be in the faith, and do believe the word, and if in this case the Spirit come and fill the heart with joy, then all is sure and well.Sibbes.

A real participation.It is a real participation. It is not a picture, but a nature: it is divine. God doth not busy Himself about apparitions. It is a likeness, not only in actions, but in nature. God communicates to the creature a singular participation of the divine vision and divine love: why may He not also give some excellent participation of His nature? There is a nature, for there is something whereby we are constituted the children of God. A bare affection to God doth not seem to do this. Love constitutes a man a friend, not a son and heir by generation. The apostle argues, If children, then heirs. He could not argue in a natural way, If friends, then heirs. And the Scripture speaks of believers being the children of God by a spiritual generation as well as by adoption. So that grace, which doth constitute one a child of God, is another form whereby a divine nature is communicated. Generation is the production of one living thing by another in the likeness of its nature, not only in the likeness of love; so is regeneration. Were not a real likeness attainable, why should those exhortations be, of being holy as God is holy, pure as He is pure? The new creature receives the image of God: not as a glass receives the image of a man, which is only an appearance, no real existence, and though it be like the person, yet hath no communion with its nature; but as wax receives the image of the seal, which though it receive nothing of the substance, yet receives exactly the stamp, and answers it in every part. So the Scripture represents it: Ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise (Eph. 1:13). Something of Gods perfections are in the new creature by way of quality which are in God by way of essence. In a word, it is as real a likeness to God as the creature is capable oflaid in the first draughts of it in regeneration, and completed in the highest measures in glory.Charnock.

Spirit of adoption.The Spirit received is more than the spirit of mere freedom: it is the spirit of adoptionthe dearest, the most intimate, the most delightful of all kinds of freedom, that of a child under a kindly indulgent, a loved and loving father. This the Spirit imparts by means of the truthmaking known to our minds the character of God as it appears in the gospel, as the God of love, in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, delighting in mercy. It is by leading the mind into this view of the divine character and relation to the guilty that the Spirit overcomes the enmity of the carnal mind, and fills the soul with love to God, with desire after, with joy and confidence in Him. It is thus that by the Spirit we cry, Abba, Fathernot merely using the words, but being inspired with the dispositions and tempers of mind that belong to the endearing relation. It is the language of affection, of liberty of conscience, of confident expectation, of filial intimacy, of happiness unfelt before. The words are nothing. Alas! how many have hundreds of times used the form of address whose hearts have been strangers to the spirit which the use of it implies! How often has the invocation of the Lords prayer been used, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, while there has been nothing but the moving of the lips from the power of habit and of association with time and placenothing of the heart of a loving, confiding, expecting child! In using both the Syro-Chaldaic word and the Greek for the same relation the apostle probably meant to convey the idea of the union of Jew-and Gentile under the gospel, in addressing the same God by the same endearing appellation. Or else he uses the Syriac, and simply explains it by the GreekWe cry Abba[which is] Father.Dr. Wardlaw.

Gratitude to the divine Spirit.We owe much, in one sense we owe everything, to the Spirits influences. To Him we owe our regeneration. To Him we owe our perseverance in faith and holiness. To Him we owe all the present joys and all the future hopes, as they exist and are experienced in our hearts, of Gods salvation. The spiritual life in its first elements, and in all its variety of subsequent exercises and enjoyments, is His work. He commences it. He maintains, and forwards, and perfects it. We are too apt to confine our gratitude to the Father and the Son, probably from two causes:The work of Christ in assuming our nature, and suffering and dying for us, and as commissioned by the Father so to do, has in it something more external and palpable, something on which the mind can more readily realise to its conceptions, than the work of the Spirit, which, in as far as regards the personal application of that work, is inward and spiritual; imperceptible except in its effects, and frequently undistinguishable in our consciousness from the ordinary operations of mind. This is the case with the manner in which He helps our infirmities in prayer, and with all His other operations in the soul. We see it not, we hear it not. It does not even in imagination embody itself to any of our senses; and even when most conscious of the effect we are not sensible of the influence which produces it. And, moreover, we justly regard the Spirit as the gift of the Father and the Son, and are in danger of forgetting the personality and the perfect voluntariness of the Spirit Himself in the whole of His part in the work of our redemption. It is to the work of Christ we are instructed to look for a sense of pardon, for peace and hope and joy and all spiritual excitement; and while that is the object of our contemplation, we are in danger of forgetting the necessity of the Spirits influence to our deriving from it any saving benefit. The Father sent and gave the Son; the Son came and gave Himself; the Spirit, though sent by the Father and the Son, performs His part, as regenerator and sanctifier, with the same personal delight and satisfaction. Let us cherish gratitude to Father, Son, and Holy GhostONE GOD.Dr. Wardlaw.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 8

Rom. 8:16. Confidence.The celebrated Philip de Morney, prime minister of Henry IV. of France, one of the greatest statesmen and the most exemplary Christian of his age, being asked, a little before his death, if he still retained the same assured hope of future bliss which he had so comfortably enjoyed during his illness, he made this memorable reply: I am as confident of it, from the incontestable evidence of the Spirit of God, as I ever was of any mathematical truth from all the demonstrations of Euclid.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

(15) Spirit of bondage.The Greek corresponds very nearly to what we should naturally understand by the English phrase, such a spirit as would be found in slaves. The word spirit varies much in meaning in these verses. Here it is the dominant habit or frame of mind; in the next verse it is used both for the Spirit of God and the spirit of man.

Again to fear.So as to take you back under the old terrorism of the Law. The Law, if it contained promises, was still more essentially a system of threats; for the threats took effect, while the promises remained ineffectual, because the Law could not be fulfilled.

Spirit of adoption.That spirit which is characteristic of those who are taken to be sons, who, like the Christian at his baptism, are admitted into this relation of sonship.

Whereby we cry.The intensity of the Apostles feeling comes out in this simple definition. Instead of any more formal elaboration of his meaning, he says the Spirit of adoption is that which prompts the impassioned cry, Abba, Father.

Abba, Father.Abba is the Aramaic equivalent for father. The repetition is one of endearment and entreaty, taken from the natural impulse of children to repeat a beloved name in different forms. Comp. Newtons hymn

Jesus, my Shepherd, Husband, Friend,
My Prophet, Priest, and King, &c.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

15. Again After having once been emancipated from it.

Spirit of adoption Being adopted as children into God’s family, God has breathed into us the humble confidence of the child feeling himself at home in his father’s house.

Abba, Father For the Hebrew and for the Greek our apostle furnishes this blessed word in both languages to indicate that both may claim the same divine paternity.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, “Abba, Father”.’

This is a call for them to recognise that they have not been called as servants (who were often beaten) but as sons (something made clear by Jesus in the parable of the prodigal son – Luke 15). Left to their own ideas they might well have seen themselves as ‘slaves of God’, cowering before a despotic Master ( a regular feature of life in those days), but the fact that Jesus taught them that they could call God ‘Father’ demonstrated otherwise. His point was that God did not want them to look on Him as a stern Master, but as a loving Father. This idea is thus firmly rooted in the teaching of Jesus about God as a loving Father. It is further supported by the idea lying behind ‘no longer do I call you servants, but I have called your friends’ (Joh 15:15) and by His stress on the fact that it was He Who had chosen them (Joh 15:16). God did not see them merely as servants, but as those who had been chosen by Him.

In Gal 4:1-4 reference is made to ‘being held in bondage under the rudiments of this world’ as a situation which is remedied when God ‘redeems those who are under the Law that they might receive adoption as sons’. In that case both bondage and adoption are therefore mentioned. But simply to apply this would seem to miss the main point of the verse which has in mind previous bondage to the Law..

‘Adoption as sons’ (huiothesia). This has reference to the Greco-Roman practise of the ‘adoption’ of a son, in some cases when he became full grown, and therefore able to take on responsibility, so that he might be the heir (the idea actually lies behind Gen 15:2-4).

Despite Galatians 4 then, there is good reason here for seeing ‘bondage’ as referring to the bondage of the Law from which they have just escaped by being accounted as righteous. The point is that the Spirit Whom they receive will not take them back again under the bondage of the Law so that they once more live in craven fear under that Law. Rather He will bring them into a state of adoption under their Father in which they cry ‘Abba Father’, the tender cry of a child to its father, and live openly and joyfully in His presence. The freely open cry of ‘Abba father’ is deliberately in direct contrast to the quivering slave who fears to say anything. It is a hugely significant cry, a cry of trust and confidence, and of assurance that the Father will hear.

‘The Spirit of bondage.’ This term is basically a term describing what is non-existent as it is describing what the Holy Spirit is NOT and what we have NOT received. He is not a Spirit of bondage but a Spirit of adoption..

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Rom 8:15. The spirit of bondage What this is, the Apostle has plainly declared, Heb 2:15. Again, means, “Now again, under Christ; as the Jews did from Moses under the law.” The word abba signifies father in the Jewish language, and the insertion of it beautifully represents the union of Jewish and Christian believers, in thosedevotionswhichwere dictated by a filial spirit, as well as the genuine experience of a child of God. See Locke, Doddridge, and Evans’s Christian Temper, vol. 1: serm. 17, 18.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Rom 8:15 assigns the ground for Rom 8:14 in application to the readers. For ye received not , when the Holy Spirit was communicated to you, a spirit of bondage , that is, a spirit such as is the regulating power in the state of slavery . This view of the genitive (Fritzsche, de Wette, Philippi) is required by the contrast; because the , when the Spirit is given, is already present, having entered, namely, through faith and justification (Gal 4:6 ). Hence it cannot, with others (Kllner, Rckert, Baumgarten-Crusius, Hofmann, Reithmayr, following Theodore of Mopsuestia and others), be taken as the genitive of the effect (who works bondage). This also holds against Lipsius, Rechtfertigungslehre , p. 170.

] again to fear , conveys the aim of the (denied) . . ., so that , as its very position shows, gives a qualification, not of ., but of .: “in order that ye should once more (as under the law working wrath) be afraid.”

.] i.e. a spirit which, in the state of adoption, is the ruling principle . is the proper term for adoption ( , Plat. Legg . xi. p. 929 C; Arr. An . i. 23. 11); see Grotius and Fritzsche, in loc .; Hermann, Privatalterth . 64. 15; comp. on Gal 4:5 ; also Weiss, bibl. Theol . p. 340. Therefore not sonship in general (the Patristic ), as is the view of the majority; it is rightly rendered in the Vulgate: “ adoptionis filiorum; ” it does not represent believers as children of God by birth , but as those who by God’s grace (Eph 1:5-8 ) have been assumed into the place of children, and as brethren of Christ (Rom 8:29 ). Those thus adopted receive the Spirit from God, but are not begotten to sonship through the Spirit (Hofmann); comp. Weiss, l.c.

The repetition of has a certain solemnity. Comp. on 1Co 2:7 ; Phi 4:17 .

] in whom , as in the element that moves our inner life. Comp. on 1Co 12:3 ; Eph 2:18 .

] we cry , the outburst of fervid emotion in prayer. Comp. on Gal 4:6 . The transition to the first person takes place without special intention, under the involuntary pressure of the sense of fellowship.

] See on Mar 14:36 , and Buxtorf, Lex. Talm . p. 20. From the three passages, Mark, l.c. , Gal 4:6 , and our present one, it may be assumed that the address ( ) was transferred from the Jewish into the Christian prayers, and in the latter received the consecration of special sanctity through Christ Himself, who as Son thus addressed the Father. This gradually assumed the nature of a proper name; and thus it came that the Greek-praying Christians retained the Chaldee word in a vocative sense as a proper name , and further, in the fervour of the feeling of sonship, added along with it the specifically Christian address to the Father, using the appellative in the appositional nominative (Khner, II. 1, p. 42); so that the “ Abba, Father ,” now became fixed. It has been frequently supposed (and is still by Rckert, Reiche, and Kllner) that Paul added by way of explanation . But against this view it may be urged, that in passages so full of feeling as Rom 8:15 and Gal 4:6 , an interpretation and that too of a word which, considering the familiarity with Jewish modes of expression in the churches of Rome and Galatia, undoubtedly needed no explanation, and was certainly well known also through the evangelistic tradition as the form of address in prayer that had flowed from the mouth of Jesus seems unnatural and out of place. Besides, in all three instances, in Mark and Paul, uniformly the mere is given without any formula of interpretation ( or the like) being added. Other views destitute, however, of all proof are: that the custom which insinuating children have of repeating the father’s name is here imitated (Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret, and Grotius); or that the emphasis affectus (Erasmus) is here expressed (either view would be possible only in the event of the passage standing as , ); or even that it is meant to signify the Fatherhood of God for Jews and Gentiles (Augustine, Anselm, Calvin, Estius, and others). With our view Philippi is substantially agreed. Against the objections of Fritzsche, who regards as an explanatory addition grown into a habit , see on Gal 4:6 .

The Father-name of God in the Old Covenant (Exo 20:2 ; Isa 63:16 ; Hos 11:1 ; Jer 3:19 ; Jer 31:9 ) only received the loftiest fulfilment of its meaning in the New Covenant through the accomplished in Christ. Comp. Umbreit, p. 287 f.; Schultz, alttest. Theol . II. p. 98.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 1870
THE SPIRIT OF BONDAGE AND OF ADOPTION

Rom 8:15. Ye have not received the Spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

OUR blessed Lord in his last discourse with his Disciples, promised to send down from heaven the Holy Spirit, who should convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment: and accordingly, on the day of Pentecost he did send down the Holy Spirit, who instantly wrought in the most powerful manner on the minds of thousands, filling them with the deepest convictions, and with the richest consolations. From that time the Holy Spirit has continued so to work on the minds of men, in some as a Spirit of bondage, and in others as a Spirit of adoption. The nature of the Holy Spirits operations is the same in both cases; their use and tendency being to bring men to God: the difference which is found in the effects, is occasioned by the state of the persons on whom the Spirit works: in those whose minds are yet blinded by Satan, and enslaved by sin, he produces only bondage and fear but those who are deeply penitent, and unfeignedly desirous of fulfilling the word of God, he introduces into a state of light and liberty and joy.

Corresponding with these different states of men was the difference between the Jewish and the Christian dispensations; the one of which was intended to introduce the other: and it was good, as far as it answered that end: but, as an ultimate state to rest in, it was bad: it consisted only of weak and beggarly elements, and imposed an insupportable yoke, from which it is our happy privilege to be released. It is in reference to that dispensation chiefly that the Apostle uses the word again; because the Jewish converts at Rome had, previous to their embracing of Christianity, groaned under that yoke: but the others also, in their heathen state, had experienced a bondage not very dissimilar; and therefore the same expression may not improperly be applied to them also.

That we may have a distinct view of the whole of the Spirits operations, we shall consider them,

In reference to the dispensation under which we live

The Christian dispensation, as contrasted with the Jewish, is called The ministration of the Spirit [Note: 2Co 3:8.], because under that dispensation the Spirit is poured forth far more abundantly than before.

The Jewish economy tended only to bondage
[The terrific manner in which the law was given, generated nothing but fear in all who heard it: even Moses himself said on the occasion, I exceedingly fear and quake. And the strict prohibition to all the people not so much as to touch the border of the mount, clearly shewed to them that it was not a dispensation whereby they were ever to obtain a near access to God.

The two tables of the law, which were then given to Moses, were so holy, that though in the letter they might be observed, in the spirit they could not be kept by any child of man: and yet they were enforced with the most awful sanctions, the smallest violation of any one command subjecting the offender to death, even eternal death. What but fear could result from such a dispensation as this?

The very sacrifices prescribed for the relief of those consciences which were oppressed with guilt, tended, in fact, to confirm, rather than relieve, the bondage of their minds. For how could they imagine that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sin? Hence the offerers were never made perfect, as pertaining to the conscience; and the annual repetition of the same sacrifices confirmed their apprehensions, that their sins, so imperfectly atoned for, were not effectually removed. The sacrifices were to them only a remembrance of sins from year to year [Note: Heb 10:1-4.]. Moreover, the people in their own persons could not approach unto their God: they must deliver their offerings to the priests and Levites: nay, not even the priests could enter within the vail, nor even the high-priest himself, except on one day in the year, and then only in the precise manner that was prescribed to him. In all this, the Holy Ghost, who even under that dispensation was not altogether withheld from men, signified to the Jewish nation that the way into the holy of holies was not yet manifest [Note: Heb 9:6-8.].

Even the promises that were given for their encouragement were, for the most part, only such as were calculated to work upon an earthly mind, and in no respect to bring them to a state of peace and joy. Hence, except those few favoured saints who had an insight into the Gospel, and were enabled to look through the shadows of the law to Christ as the substance of them, all were in bondage, serving God from fear, rather than from love; and rendering to him rather the reluctant services of the body, than the willing devotion of the soul.]

The Christian dispensation, on the contrary, tends to produce in us a happy childlike disposition
[The new covenant, which it holds forth to us, offers life and salvation on far different terms than were prescribed by the old covenant. The old covenant said, Do this and live: the new covenant says, Believe and be saved [Note: Rom 10:5-9.]. The Gospel reveals unto us a sacrifice, that is, a propitiation for the sins of the whole world; and offers us a Saviour, who is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him. Under this dispensation every one is privileged to enjoy the most intimate access to God, to come with boldness into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, to draw near to God with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having his heart altogether sprinkled and purged from an evil conscience [Note: Heb 10:19; Heb 10:22.]. Further, these rich blessings are revealed to us as the fruits of Gods everlasting love, no less than as the purchase of the Redeemers blood; and to the blessings of time are added all the glory and felicity of heaven, as the assured portion of all Gods chosen people.

But, besides this clearer revelation of Gods grace and mercy, there is a manifestation of it made to the souls of the faithful by the Spirit of God, who sheds abroad in their hearts the love of God the Father, and takes of the things that are Christs to shew unto them, and by his own sanctifying operations delivers them from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.]
With this contrasted view of the two dispensations agree the express declarations of God himself
[The nature of the two dispensations is thus distinctly marked by a very striking allegory; in which the Spirit generated in those who were under them is contrasted by that of a servant and a child [Note: Gal 4:1-6.]: moreover, the transition from the one to the other is illustrated by the very same images as have been already noticed [Note: Heb 12:18-24.]: and the final issue of our adherence to the one or to the other is declared to be precisely such as might be expected;to the servant, banishment; and to the son, an everlasting inheritance [Note: Gal 4:24-25; Gal 4:30.].]

But, to enter fully into the subject, we must consider it,

II.

In reference to the experience of individual believers

The Holy Spirit strives in a greater or less degree with all:
In the unconverted, he works as a spirit of bondage
[He is the true Author of every good desire. The least disposition towards what is good is as much his work as the most spiritual exercises of Gods dearest children. His operation therefore must be traced as well in the hearts of the unconverted, as of the converted. In the commencement, he operates in a way of legal hopes: in the progress, he impels to slavish fears: and, with those who are not the subjects of saving grace, he terminates his operations by instigating to self-righteous endeavours. A person first beginning to think about his soul, (for which thought he is wholly indebted to the Spirit of God,) is desirous of putting the most favourable construction on all his former ways, and of dissipating all apprehensions about his eternal state. Hence he persuades himself, that he has never committed any great sins; or, if he has, that they were committed under such circumstances as greatly to palliate their guilt: that, at all events, God is too merciful ever to visit his offences with such a terrible punishment as the Scriptures speak of: and that his good deeds, which he either has performed, or hopes to perform, will counterbalance all the evil he has done. By degrees his mind becomes more enlightened, and he sees that his sins have been neither so few, nor so venial, as he had imagined. And now his legal hopes vanish, and are succeeded by slavish fears. The declarations of God respecting the final condemnation of the wicked are credited by him; and his claims of innocence or good desert are seen to be destitute of any solid foundation. Now the thoughts of death and judgment are terrible to him; and, as St. Paul says, He, through fear of death, is all his lifetime subject to bondage. To such an extent do these terrors of the Lord operate on many, that they hate their very existence, and would gladly surrender it up, if they could but perish like the beasts, and never be called to any future account. These apprehensions lead, as may be expected, to self-righteous endeavours. The person who is under their influence, sets himself to read, and pray, and attend the ordinances: he dispenses alms to the poor; he renounces many practices which he once justified, and performs many duties which he once neglected; hoping, if possible, to make up for all the time that he has lost, and to conciliate the favour of his offended God. As his light increases, and the insufficiency of human merit is discovered by him, he looks to the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, to atone for his faults, and to supply his detects. Perhaps in time the folly of depending on human righteousness is seen by him; and he is willing to seek for salvation through Christ, provided he may but recommend himself to Christ by some obedience of his own, and have in himself the warrant for embracing the Saviour, and for expecting his salvation. Thus he founds his hopes, if not entirely, yet in some measure, on his own good works; and though doing well, as far as respects the ardour of his exertions, he fatally errs in making self the ground of his dependence, and perishes for want of a better righteousness than his own. This was the progress of the Spirits work in the unconverted Jews [Note: Rom 9:31-32.]; and such it is also in thousands at the present day.]

In those who are converted, he works as a Spirit of adoption
[To these he imparts sublimer gifts, enabling them to look up with confidence to God, crying, Abba, Father. He gives them an assured testimony of their acceptance with God as a reconciled God and Father; setting, as it were, upon their hearts the Fathers seal [Note: 2Co 1:21-22.], and witnessing with their spirits that they are the children of God [Note: ver. 16.]. Thus, drawing them by his gracious influences, he brings them into a state of holy fellowship with the Father and the Son, causing them to walk with God as dear children, and to live habitually as in his presence; they dwelling in God, and God in them; yea, being one with God, and God with them. As brought into the family of God, they now, through the power of that same blessed Spirit, live in a humble dependence upon God for all that they stand in need of for body and for soul, for time and for eternity. All their care is cast on Him who careth for them; and the life which they live in the flesh they live by the faith of the Son of God, receiving every thing out of his fulness, in the time and measure that Infinite Wisdom seeth best for them. Nor are these heavenly gifts uninfluential on their conduct. They now walk in the habit of grateful obedience to God, desiring and striving to be perfect, even as their Father which is in heaven is perfect. They serve their God no longer from fear, as slaves, but from love, as obedient children, whose ambition is to do their Fathers will on earth, as it is done in heaven. Elevated thus, and sanctified by the Spirits influence, they are filled with a joyful expectation of dwelling speedily, and to all eternity, in the immediate presence of that Saviour, whom unseen they loved, and in whom even here they rejoiced with joy unspeakable and full of glory. They look for, and haste unto, the coming of that blessed day, when they shall behold him face to face: the time seems long till they shall enjoy that bliss; and, with a holy impatience, they are ready to cry, Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly. They know that, as children, they are heirs: they have already, in the consolations of the Spirit, had an earnest of their inheritance; and they long for the full possession of it, desiring to depart, that they may be with Christ. Thus does the Spirit work, though certainly in different degrees, on all the children of God, inspiring them with filial joys, as he fills the unregenerate with slavish fears.]

In conclusion, we would entreat all of you to inquire, What spirit you have received?
1.

Have you received the Spirit of God at all?

[Many, alas! have scarcely so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost: or, if they have, they regard all idea of his agency upon the soul as visionary and delusive. But let such persons know, that they are altogether dead in trespasses and sins. If the Spirit of God have not so far wrought upon our minds as to convince us of our lost estate, we have not as yet taken one single step towards heaven. The declaration of St. Paul in the preceding context is, If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.]

Have you received the Spirit as a spirit of bondage?

[Despise it not: the fears and terrors with which he has filled your minds, maybe introductory to your final liberty, and your complete salvation. It is thus that the Spirit usually, if not invariably, works in those who are translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of Gods dear Son. He first wounds, and then heals, the soul: he convinces us first of sin, and then of righteousness and of judgment: he causes us to feel ourselves lost, and makes use of that feeling to lead us to Him who came into the world to seek and save us. Despise not then the day of small things: for then shall you know if you follow on to know the Lord.

On the other hand, we must say, Do not rest in it. The spirit of bondage will generate fear; but it will not produce either love or holiness, both of which are necessary to your everlasting salvation. If we have no better principle than slavish fear to make us obedient to our God, what are we better than the heathen? The Christian must regard God, not merely as a Judge, but as a Father. He must obey, not through fear of the lash, but from a real love to his name, and an unfeigned delight in his holy will. The truth, if it enter into our hearts, will make us free: and it will deliver us from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God.]

Have you received the Spirit as a Spirit of adoption?

[Then be thankful for it, and adore your God for the exceeding riches of his grace towards you. But take care that you do not deceive your own souls respecting it. It is possible to mistake in this matter, and to refer to Gods agency the delusions of Satan and of your own hearts. Many indulge a very unhallowed confidence in God. But, though it is our privilege to put away slavish fear, it is our duty to cherish to the uttermost a filial fear of offending God. We must walk in the fear of the Lord all the day long. If we are on our guard in this particular, then our confidence cannot be too strong; since there is nothing which a loving father can bestow on his obedient child, which our God will not confer on us. Know then your privilege, and rejoice in it; and with all the confidence which the repetition of the word implies, go into the presence of your God from time to time, crying, Abba, Father. But take care that you do not lose it. Take care that you grieve not the Holy Spirit of promise, whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption [Note: Eph 4:30.]. Watch over your every action, word, and thought; endeavouring to walk as obedient children, yea, as dear children, worthy of the relation in which you stand to God; being holy, as He who hath called you is holy [Note: 1Pe 1:14-15.].]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

15 For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

Ver. 15. The spirit of bondage ] , as 2Ti 1:7 , . The law will convince the judgment; but it is the gospel that convinceth the lust and the affection, and so sendeth us to treat with God as a Father, by fervent prayer. The Spirit is here called a “spirit of bondage;” because by the law he enlighteneth a man to see his bondage and slavery to sin and Satan, and his subjection to God’s wrath and vengeance.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

15, 16 .] Appeal to the CONSCIOUSNESS of the Christian to confirm the assertion (assumed for the moment that he is led by God’s Spirit) that he is a son of God . For (confirmantis) ye did not receive (at your becoming Christians) the spirit of bondage (= ‘the Spirit which ye received was not a spirit of bondage.’ . is not merely a spirit, a disposition , but evidently refers to the same . which afterwards is . ., and . The Apostle seems however in this form of expression, both here and elsewhere, see reff., to have combined the objective given to us by God with our own subjective . In the next verse they are separated) [ leading back (or,] again [; but the latter word is undesirable, as] it has been imagined here that the must refer to a former bestowal of the , and consequently that the reference is to the O. T. dispensation. In this two different sets of Commentators have found difficulties; (1) those, as Chrys., who would hold from Joh 7:39 , that the Holy Spirit was absolutely not given under the O. T., and (2) those, as Cocceius, who holding Him to have been given, deny that His character was . . But there seems to me to be no occasion to go back for the reference of to the O. T. The state of the natural man is : the Holy Spirit given to them, the agent of their birth into, and sustainer of, a new state, was not a . ., a spirit merely to retain them in, or take them back into their old state, viz. a state of slavery : to whom , or whether to different masters , is not here in question, but the state merely the object of the gift of the Holy Spirit was not to lead them back into this) towards fear ( so as to bring about or result in fear, see ch. Rom 6:19 . can hardly, as De W., be taken with .), but ye received the Spirit of (the Spirit whose effect was, see above) adoption (this stricter meaning, and not that of mere sonship , is plainly that intended by the Apostle, both here and in reff. So Fritz., Meyer, Olsh., Harless on Eph 1:5 , Tholuck: on the other hand Luther, Winer, Rckert, De Wette, al., see on Rom 8:23 . Of course, the adoption to be a son involves sonship , but not the converse), in whom (compare ch. Rom 2:29 , and Rom 8:9 . Luth. and Tholuck, ‘ through , by means of, whom:’ but = Him in whom, not merely Him by whom, not being merely an external agent, but an indwelling and pervading power) we cry (the earnest expression of supplicating prayer, see reff. LXX) Abba, Father (I have said, on ref. Mark, that . does not appear to be a mere explanation of , but to have been joined to it in one phrase, as a form of address: expressing probably, a corresponding ‘my father,’ , in the Heb. expression. Luther, to express the familiarity of Abba, renders ‘ lieber Vater ,’ ‘ dear Father ’). See on the whole, the strictly parallel place, ref. Gal.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Rom 8:15 . Sons, . The aorist refers to the time of their baptism, when they received the Spirit. It was not the Spirit proper to slaves, leading them again to shrink from God in fear as they had done when under the law of sin and death, but , a spirit proper to those who were being translated from the servile to the filial relation to God. is a word used in the N.T. by Paul only, but “no word is more common in Greek inscriptions of the Hellenistic time: the idea, like the word, is native Greek” (E. L. Hicks, quoted in S. and H.), see Gal 4:5 , Eph 1:5 . The word serves to distinguish those who are made sons by an act of grace from the only-begotten Son of God: Rom 8:3 , Rom 8:32 . But the act of grace is not one which makes only an outward difference in our position; it is accomplished in the giving of a spirit which creates in us a new nature. In the spirit of adoption we cry Abba, Father. We have not only the status, but the heart of sons. (often with ) is a strong word: it denotes the loud irrepressible cry with which the consciousness of sonship breaks from the Christian heart in prayer. The change to the first person marks Paul’s inclusion of himself in the number of those who have and utter this consciousness; and it is probably this inclusion of himself, as a person whose native language was “Hebrew” (Act 21:40 ), to which is due the double form . The last word certainly interprets the first, but it is not thought of as doing so: “we cry, Father, Father”.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

have. Omit.

the = a.

spirit. App-101.

bondage. App-190.

adoption = sonship. Greek. huiothesia. Occurs here, Rom 8:23; Rom 9:4. Gal 1:4, Gal 1:5. Eph 1:5. An “adopted” child may partake of all the privileges of the family, yet it is not begotten and born in the family. But the subjects of this verse are begotten of the Spirit (Joh 3:6) and are, therefore, sons of God by spiritual generation. It is thus a real sonship-spirit that enables them to cry, “Abba, Father. “

whereby = in (App-104.) which.

Abba: i.e. Father. See App-94. (Hebrew. ‘ab). It is said that slaves were never allowed to use the word “Abba”. Strictly, therefore, it can be employed only by those who have received the gift of the Divine nature.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

15, 16.] Appeal to the CONSCIOUSNESS of the Christian to confirm the assertion (assumed for the moment that he is led by Gods Spirit) that he is a son of God. For (confirmantis) ye did not receive (at your becoming Christians) the spirit of bondage (= the Spirit which ye received was not a spirit of bondage. . is not merely a spirit, a disposition, but evidently refers to the same . which afterwards is . ., and . The Apostle seems however in this form of expression, both here and elsewhere, see reff., to have combined the objective given to us by God with our own subjective . In the next verse they are separated) [leading back (or,] again [; but the latter word is undesirable, as] it has been imagined here that the must refer to a former bestowal of the , and consequently that the reference is to the O. T. dispensation. In this two different sets of Commentators have found difficulties; (1) those, as Chrys.,-who would hold from Joh 7:39, that the Holy Spirit was absolutely not given under the O. T., and (2) those, as Cocceius, who holding Him to have been given, deny that His character was . . But there seems to me to be no occasion to go back for the reference of to the O. T. The state of the natural man is : the Holy Spirit given to them, the agent of their birth into, and sustainer of, a new state, was not a . ., a spirit merely to retain them in, or take them back into their old state, viz. a state of slavery:-to whom, or whether to different masters, is not here in question, but the state merely-the object of the gift of the Holy Spirit was not to lead them back into this) towards fear (so as to bring about or result in fear, see ch. Rom 6:19. can hardly, as De W., be taken with .), but ye received the Spirit of (the Spirit whose effect was, see above) adoption (this stricter meaning, and not that of mere sonship, is plainly that intended by the Apostle, both here and in reff. So Fritz., Meyer, Olsh., Harless on Eph 1:5, Tholuck: on the other hand Luther, Winer, Rckert, De Wette, al., see on Rom 8:23. Of course, the adoption to be a son involves sonship, but not the converse), in whom (compare ch. Rom 2:29, and Rom 8:9. Luth. and Tholuck, through, by means of, whom: but = Him in whom, not merely Him by whom, not being merely an external agent, but an indwelling and pervading power) we cry (the earnest expression of supplicating prayer, see reff. LXX) Abba, Father (I have said, on ref. Mark, that . does not appear to be a mere explanation of , but to have been joined to it in one phrase, as a form of address: expressing probably, a corresponding my father, , in the Heb. expression. Luther, to express the familiarity of Abba, renders lieber Vater, dear Father). See on the whole, the strictly parallel place, ref. Gal.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Rom 8:15. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear;

You did receive it once. You needed it. You were in sin, and it was well for you when sin became bondage to you. It was grievous, but it was salutary; but you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear.

Rom 8:15. But ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

Does your spirit cry in that way tonight? Even if you be in the dark, yet if you cry for your Father, you will soon be in the light. There is no need to be distressed with any form of doubt so long as the Spirit makes this continual breathing, Abba, Father, show thyself to me. Do what thou wilt to me. Let me taste thy love. Let me at least bow under thy hand.

Rom 8:16. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.

Our spirit feels the spirit of adoption, and so there is a double witness, the witness of our spirit, and the witness of Gods Spirit, that we are the children of God. In the mouth of these two witnesses the whole shall be established.

Rom 8:17. And if children, then heirs;

That does not follow in other cases, but it does in the case of the family of God. In a mans family, only one son can be an heir; but in Gods family, of all is it declared if children, then heirs.

Rom 8:17. Heirs of God,

Not only heirs to God, but heirs of God. God himself is the heritage of his people; he belongs to them now, as an eternal endowment. Heirs of God.

Rom 8:17. And joint heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.

We are to take the rough and the smooth, the bitter and the sweet, with Christ; and who will make any demur to that? If we are to be heirs with Christ, we do not wish to split the inheritance in pieces. Nay! we will take the cross as well as the crown the reproach as well as the honour.

Rom 8:18. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

He had just mentioned the sufferings. They are too little. They are mere specks in the sun. They are too small to be weighed in comparison with the exceeding weight of glory which God has prepared for us.

Rom 8:19. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestly, of the sons of God.

So great is to be the glory of Gods children that all the world is waiting for it. Every creature stands on tip-toe, looking for the coming of Christ and the manifestation of the redeemed. What must be the greatness of this thing which the whole creation has learned to expect?

Rom 8:20-21. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope. Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

We were in bondage, and we have come out in a measure into the liberty of the children of God. Now the world in which we live is in sympathy with us, and it is part under bondage because of sin, but it is only temporary bondage. There will come a day when the whole creation shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God a new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

Rom 8:22. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

Deep groans are in the world. Have you not heard of earthquakes? Do you not know how the whole world is in a tremor? There is something coming, and all the world is groaning for that coming. God makes the universe to be like an instrument of music played upon by the fingers of mortal men: so that when they are sorrowful, the world is sorrowful, and when they go forth with joy and are led forth with peace, then the mountains and the hills shall break forth before them into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. We know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

Rom 8:23. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.

As yet the body is under bondage. The body is dead because of sin: hence those headaches this palpitation of the heart this heaviness of the day which incases us: but by-and-bye, as the material world is to be delivered from its bondage, so shall these bodies also pass away from all the encumbrance of weakness, and disease, and death, into a better state.

Rom 8:24. Far we are saved by hope:

As yet.

Rom 8:24-25. But hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.

What a lesson that is, and how seldom do we learn it! Oh! in this present state our main duty is, Then do we with patience wait for it. You want to have your cake and keep it. but you cannot eat it and keep it too. With patience wait for it. There see some fruits of the earth that are not ripe yet. You lay them by in store, and there are many good things that God has laid by in store for his people, and he says to us, With patience wait for it: Oh! but you would fain have heavenly joy on earthly ground. It would be a sorry misfit if it were so. But God keeps time and season, and there is harmony in his music. You shall have earthly sorrow on earthly ground, and you shall have heavenly bliss on the heavenly shore: but not till then. We do with patience wait for it.

Rom 8:26. Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities;

Especially our infirmities in prayer. I think that if anywhere our infirmities come out, it is in prayer: even the strongest are, on their knees, comparatively weak. How few there are among us that prevail with God. as Elias did! We ought to do so. We need, none of us, stop short of the fullest stature of a man in Christ Jesus. and a man of full stature in Christ would surely carry the keys of heavens treasury at his girdle. He would have but to ask, and to receive to seek and to find. May the Spirit help our infirmities.

Rom 8:26. For we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

See what little worlds we are. Microcosms, to use a harder word; for as there are groanings and travailings in the whole creation, so are there such in the little world of our own heart. Only natures travail is but natural; but our travail is supernatural. It is the Spirit himself groaning within chosen breasts with groanings that cannot be uttered.

Rom 8:27. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

When we ourselves hardly know the mind of the Spirit, he that searches all hearts knows it. When we feel as if we could not pray, yet the Spirit of God makes intercession in us, and the great Father reads the purport of the intercessions, and blesses us, not according to our knowledge of our own prayer, but according to his knowledge of what the Spirit means by those prayers. Have you never noticed that holy men of old sometimes spoke much greater things than they thought they should, for the Spirit of God in them spoke by them more than they themselves understood; and I believe that it is so in prayer. Oh! oftentimes the groaning, wrestling believer may have no inkling of the full purport of his own prayer, but he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

Rom 8:28. And we know

Now we are getting upon a dear old passage which reads like music. There is no eloquence in the world that ever touches the eloquence of the Apostle here.

Rom 8:28. That all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

I do not like to hear this text quoted, as I often do, only in part only half of it. All things work together for good, say people. Oh! yes; somehow or other, good will come of it. It does not say so here. It says, All things work together for good to them that love God; to them that are the called according to his purpose. A special purpose and object of God for a special people. And if you do not belong to this people, things are not working together for your good. No; but you may find that they will work together for your banishment from life and from the presence of God. Take your heed to this. The stars in their courses fight against you, if you fight against God; and the very earth groans and complains of bearing up your weight if you are a rebel against the Most High. You must, first of all, be reconciled so as to love God, and the eternal purpose must be wrought in you by your effectual calling from out of the world, or else you must not dare to intrude into the holy sanctuary of my text. We know that all things work together for good to them that love God. Of course, they do, for God loves them. To them that are the called according to his purpose. Of course, they do, for that purpose which called them is not consistent with anything, but a purpose of infinite love to them. The great eternal purpose encompasses all things that happen, and bends all to the grand object of the good of the called ones.

Rom 8:29-30. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

He spoke of it as if it were done because it is so sure, so certain to be done; he puts it down as a fact.

Rom 8:31. What shall we then say to these things?

Ah! indeed, what shall we say? If we had the tongues of men and angels, what could we say? Well, we will say this much at any rate.

Rom 8:31. If God be for us, who can be against us?

Those afflictions that we read of just now these reproaches which we share with Christ what of them? They are not worth calling anything. If God be for us, who can be against us?

Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible

Rom 8:15. , for) This word has reference to sons in the preceding verse.- , the spirit of bondage) The Holy Spirit was not even in the Old Testament a Spirit of bondage; but He so unfolded His power in the case of those believers, in whom He then dwelt, that there however was lurking, beneath, a feeling and sense, which carried with it something of bondage, inasmuch as being in the case of those who [under the law] were still but children, Gal 4:1.-, again) as formerly [under the law]. The Romans in their state as Gentiles had had groundless [vain] fear; but not the spirit of fear, as those had had, into whose place the Gentiles had come. The Church of all ages is, as it were, one individual, moral person; so the word, again, Gal 4:9; Gal 5:1.- , to fear) See Heb 2:15, note.-, of adoption) See Gal 4:1, etc.-, we cry) one and all. Cry is a word implying vehemence, accompanied with desire, confidence, a just claim, perseverance. And the Holy Spirit himself cries: Abba, Father, Gal 4:6, note. [If, while you are alive, you have not attained to this experience, it ought to be the subject of lamentation to you, and you ought eagerly to seek it; but if you have attained it, see that you joyfully continue in it.-V. g.]

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Rom 8:15

For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear;-[This points to the time when they believed, were baptized, entered into the kingdom, and received the Holy Spirit (Act 2:38), by whom they were led (Rom 8:14). The bondage which throughout this Epistle is contrasted with the liberty of the children of God is the bondage of sin (Rom 6:6; Rom 6:16-17; Rom 6:20; Rom 7:25), and of the corruption of death as the consequence of sin (Rom 8:21). They had all been once under this bondage, which tends unto the fear of death. (Heb 2:14-15).]

but ye received the spirit of adoption,-In coming into Christ they received not, as under the law, the spirit of bondage, in which they were moved by fear. They had now been adopted as children into the family of God and received the spirit of children. [The reference here is a Roman legal process by which one man took anothers to be his own son. The adopted son took the name and rank of the one adopting him and stood in exactly the same legal relation to him as a born son.]

whereby we cry, Abba, Father.-Having been adopted as a child into the family of God, they could cry, Father. Abba is the Chaldee word for father. Whenever it occurs (Mar 14:36; Gal 4:6; and here), it has the Greek interpretation subjoined to it. This is apparently to be explained by the fact that the Chaldee, though frequent in prayer, gradually acquired the nature of a most sacred proper name, to which the Greek-speaking Jews added the appellation from their own tongue. Under Christ the heart is touched with love, and we come to love God because he first loved us; but under Moses they served from fear; under Christ, from love.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

The Spirit of a Son

For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.Rom 8:15.

1. In a remarkable letter which appeared in the Times, written by Professor Harnack, in which he was dealing with the letter of the Emperor of Germany upon the controversies gathering round the Higher Criticism, great prominence was given to the fact that there is no subject of graver importance for a man than his relation to God, and that everything depends on this relation. We would all say a full Amen to that sentence. A true relation to God lies at the bottom of all right-shapen life. A wrong conception of God will issue in a wrong shaping of life.

2. But what is a true relation to God? It is beyond doubt a filial relationship. Our Lord has taught us that, in the first clause of the Lords Prayer. He who prays, Our Father which art in heaven, believes that the relation in which he stands to God is that of a child to his father; and he who thus praysif his prayer be a realitywill find the primary shaping of his life in the fact that his relation to God in every aspect of life is that of a child to his father. Accordingly, St. Paul tells the Roman Christians that what the Holy Ghost does is to enable us with fulness of utterance to say this first clause of the Lords Prayer. No man can call Jesus Lord but by the Holy Ghost. No man can really call upon God as Abba, Father, unless it be through the power of the witness of the Spirit. The Lords Prayer can be a reality only to those who are taught to utter it in the power of the Holy Ghost. But the characteristic feature in the life of the true Christian is this, that not having the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the spirit of adoption, he is enabled to look up into the face of the Eternal as He dwells in the light that no man can approach unto in the glory of the heavens, and with simplicity of utterance say, Abba, Father.

3. What says the example of Christ? For let us remember this truththe model Christian is Christ Himself; and if we want to know what the ideal Christian life is, and the conditions under which we are to live it, we have simply to discover first of all what were the conditions under which Christ, in His humanity, lived that ideal human life. The most superficial study of St. Johns Gospel will teach us this, that the whole life of Christ was lived in a spirit of filial relation to His Father in heaven. When we turn to St. Johns Gospel and go through it with even the most cursory study, we find one expression in it again and again, with a repetition which seems almost to be unnecessary: My Father, My Father. We see Jesus living with His eyes always fixed upon the face of the Father which is in heaven, with a blessed consciousness of His filial relationship to the Father, not only essentially in His Divine nature, but also in His human nature. His mind is lit with the light of this relationship; His heart rejoices in its joy; His will is always fixed in its posture and action by this relation; and the life of the Christ is emphatically and pre-eminently the life of sonship.

4. And the example of St. Paul agrees. In the words of our text, taken from the supreme chapter of St. Pauls classic formulation of the meaning of Christianity, we hear the note of real and vital personal experience. From the midst of the clouds and darkness of human existence, the great spirit of St. Paul rose high in faith, and with trust and deep yearning cast itself upon the heart of the unseen Father, and not without response.

Out of the thunder came a human voice,

Saying, O heart I made, a heart beats here.

By the grace of God in Christ, by the power of the Father manifested in the Son, the spirit of adoption, of filiation, the spirit which can make men sons of God, went forth and transformed the spirit of St. Paul into the likeness of itself, and even in the hour of darkness and anguish he could find rest in the centre of his being by the faith which cried, Abba, Father!

We have

I. The spirit of Bondage, that is, the spirit of a slave, which is a spirit of fear.

II. The spirit of Adoption, that is, the spirit of a son, a spirit which expresses itself in the glad cry, Father.

The Spirit of Bondage

1. This is another subtle variation in the use of spirit. From meaning the human spirit under the influence of the Divine Spirit the word comes to mean a particular state, habit, or temper of the human spirit, sometimes in itself, but more often as due to supernatural influence, good or evil. So here it is such a spirit as accompanies a state of slavery, such a servile habit as the human spirit assumes among slaves.

2. The bondage or slavery, which throughout this Epistle is contrasted with the liberty of the sons of God, is the bondage of sin (Rom 6:6; Rom 6:16-17; Rom 6:20; Rom 7:25), and of corruption or death as the consequence of sin (Rom 5:21). The Apostles readers, both Jews and Gentiles, had all been once under this bondage (Rom 6:17) which tends unto fear, even the fear of death (Heb 2:14-15).

3. What then (to be more particular) is this spirit of bondage which St. Paul says the Roman Christians had not received? That they had received some kind of spirit was to the Christians of that age a fact of experience, which no one doubted. The entrance into the Church was marked, as a general rule, for every believer, by an access of new spiritual emotions prompting him to unwonted utterances. So a Christian defined himself no less as a partaker of a Spirit from above than as a believer in a risen Lord. St. Paul therefore takes the receiving of a spirit for granted; the question is what kind of a spirit it was. He tells his readers emphatically that it was not one suitable to slaves, generating a habit of fear; they had not simply exchanged a heathen or a Jewish spirit of bondage for a Christian spirit of bondage; the Spirit received by the Church washe does not here use the formally opposite phrase, one of freedom, but an equivalent and more instructive termone of sonship.

4. Bondage means slavery; and the spirit of bondage means the spirit which makes men look up to God as slaves do to their taskmaster. Now, a slave obeys his master from fear only; not from love or gratitude. He knows that his master is stronger than he is, and he dreads being beaten and punished by him; and therefore he obeys him only by compulsion, not of his own goodwill. This is the spirit of bondage: the slavish, superstitious spirit in religion, into which all men fall, in proportion as they are mean, and sinful, and carnal, fond of indulging themselves, and bear no love to God or right things. They know that God is stronger than they; they are afraid that God will take away comforts from them, or even cast them into endless torment, if they offend Him; and, therefore, they are afraid to do wrong. They love what is wrong, and would like to do it; but they dare not, for fear of Gods punishment. They do not really fear God; they only fear punishment, misfortune, death, and hell.

If you wish to see how much slavery there may be in religion, you have but to glance at some of the heathen religions. They have not been all equally oppressive; where nature has been bright and free from terrors, there religion has generally had its cheerful and joyous elements. But how frightfully have some races been tormented by their religions! Having experience of arbitrary rulers and cruel enemies in the visible world, they have peopled the invisible with principalities and powers far more cruel and capricious. Their worship has been devil-worship. Imagine how the fear of their false gods must have harassed the souls of a people, before they would make their sons and their daughters pass through the fire, to propitiate them. This seems the last extremity to which the spirit of bondage could drive human beings; but, short of that, the lives of men have been filled with misery and darkness in various degrees by the malevolent powers which they have placed in their heaven.1 [Note: J. Ll. Davies.]

One in a vision saw a woman fair;

In her left hand a water jar she bare,

And in her right a burning torch she held

That shed around a fierce and ruddy glare.

Sternly she said, With fire I will burn down

The halls of Heaven; with water I will drown

The fires of Hell,that all men may be good

From love, not fear, nor hope of starry crown.

The fear of punishment, the lust of pay,

With Heaven and Hell shall also pass away,

And righteousness alone shall fill each heart

With the glad splendour of its shining ray.

Such is the Hindoo legend quaintly told

In Bernard Picarts famous folio old;

And neath this symbol ethnical, we may

A moral for the present time behold.

When fear of punishment and greed of pay

Shall faint and die in Loves serener day,

Then shall the Kingdom of the Lord arrive

And earth become the Heaven for which we pray.1 [Note: W. E. A. Axon.]

5. The spirit of bondage is due to world-weariness, to the torment of conscience, or to the fear of death.

(1) It is due to weariness with this world. Are we mere people of the world, loving money, pleasure, vanity, sin, loving to live as our own evil hearts incline us? And yet there are times when we tear ourselves away from these beloved things to say our prayersto come to Churchto attend the Holy Communionto read the Bible. Do we love to pray? Have we a delight in the service we attend? Do we find refreshment in the Sacrament? Is the word of God sweet to us? No; but, on the contrary, we are ready to exclaim, whilst engaged in any of these exercises, What a weariness it is! when will it be over? It is, in short, all part of our weariness with the world itself. We attend to these things partly in hope of finding pleasure in them, but chiefly out of some sense of duty or some fear of the consequence of neglect.

Dear Saints, it is not sorrow, as I hear,

Nor suffering, which shuts up eye and ear

To all that has delighted them before,

And lets us be what we were once no more.

No, we may suffer deeply, yet retain

Power to be moved and soothed, for all our pain,

By what of old pleased us, and will again.

No, tis the gradual furnace of the world,

In whose hot air our spirits are upcurled

Until they crumble, or else grow like steel

Which kills in us the bloom, the youth, the spring

Which leaves the fierce necessity to feel,

But takes away the powerthis can avail,

By drying up our joy in everything,

To make our former pleasures all seem stale.1 [Note: Matthew Arnold.]

(2) It is due to the torment of a guilty conscience. The spirit of bondage is strikingly seen in the case of those who are just awakened to a sense and feeling of their sins. Observe a man in this condition who has not yet discovered the fulness and the freeness of the gospel offer of salvation. He sees himself a lost and ruined sinner. Gods holy and spiritual commandments are written up, as it were, before his eyes, and he looks at them as Belshazzar did at the handwriting on the walllooks and trembles. And what does this poor trembling sinner do to mend his case? He labours with all his might to make himself acceptable to God; multiplies his prayers and duties; tries to keep the whole law; resolves to mortify his flesh, to forsake every evil habit, to practise every grace which his Bible recommends. As for the salvation of Christ Jesus, he has no other idea of what it means than to hope that he may render himself worthy of it by a strict obedience to the law. And yet he finds that his duties and observances lie heavy on him. They are but vain attempts to satisfy an accusing conscience and to heal a wounded spirit. He goes about them in a melancholy frame of mind, feeling all the time he is engaged in them that he has undertaken a work which is far beyond his strength. He feels just as Israel did at Sinai, when they saw God as a consuming fire and trembled under the voice of His commandments.

If I could shut the gate against my thoughts

And keep out sorrow from this room within,

Or memory could cancel all the notes

Of my misdeeds, and I unthink my sin:

How free, how clear, how clean my soul should lie,

Discharged of such a loathsome company!

Or were there other rooms without my heart

That did not to my conscience join so near,

Where I might lodge the thoughts of sin apart

That I might not their clamorous crying hear,

What peace, what joy, what ease should I possess,

Freed from their horrors that my soul oppress!

But, O my Saviour, who my refuge art,

Let Thy dear mercies stand twixt them and me,

And be the wall to separate my heart

So that I may at length repose me free;

That peace, and joy, and rest may be within,

And I remain divided from my sin.

(3) The fear of death, and of the terrible possibilities (at least) which must be faced just beyond death, is, no doubt, the chief cause of that spirit of bondage which oppresses man in life. The feeling that we are in anothers hands, powerless alike over the duration and to a great extent over the circumstances of our own being, is a very formidable thing in itself. If we add to this, that the Power in whose hands we thus are is either unknown to us or supposed to be unfriendly, we have suggested a consideration which has exercised more influence than any other upon the religion, and through it upon the history, of the world. Hence all manner of superstitions: a powerful Being, absolute over our destiny, yet unknown to us in character, in will, and in intention, must be propitiated by such offerings as we possess or can discover, that He may be induced to use His power for protection and not for destruction. Thus the spirit of bondage is the very religion of the heathen.

Why am I loath to leave this earthly scene?

Have I so found it full of pleasing charms?

Some drops of joy with draughts of ill between:

Some gleams of sunshine mid renewing storms:

Is it departing pangs my soul alarms?

Or deaths unlovely, dreary, dark abode?

For guilt, for guilt, my terrors are in arms;

I tremble to approach an angry God,

And justly smart beneath His sin-avenging rod.

Fain would I say, Forgive my foul offence!

Fain promise never more to disobey;

But, should my Author health again dispense,

Again I might desert fair virtues way;

Again in follys path might go astray;

Again exalt the brute and sink the man;

Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray,

Who act so counter heavenly mercys plan?

Who sin so oft have mourned, yet to temptation ran.

O Thou, great Governor of all below!

If I may dare a lifted eye to Thee,

Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow,

Or still the tumult of the raging sea:

With that controlling power assist even me,

Those headlong furious passions to confine;

For all unfit I feel my powers to be,

To rule their torrent in the allowed line;

O! aid me with Thy help, Omnipotence Divine.1 [Note: Robert Burns.]

The Spirit of Adoption

i. The Adoption

1. Adoption is that act whereby we are received into the family of God. We are none of us in Gods family by nature. It is not a matter, properly speaking, of birth; we are brought into it from without; literally, we are adopted. And the way in which it is brought about is this;God has one only Son, the Lord Jesus Christ; we are never Gods sons in exactly the same sense in which Christ is His Son: indeed, there is a word which is always confined in the Bible to Christ. That word conveys the idea of right, the right which Christ has really in Himself to be a Son. For instance, in the passage in St. Johns first epistle in which he says, Now are we the sons of God, the word is not the same, though it has been translated the same, as when Christ is called the Son of God. The word used concerning us is children. It is a close, dear, affectionate, blessed word; but it is not quite the same word as is used about Christ the Son. Christ, then, is the one Son of God. Into the Son, God elects and engrafts members. He elects them everywhere, and He engrafts them just as He pleases; but they are all chosen from without, and brought in. As soon as the union takes place between a soul and Christ, God sees that soul in the relationship in which He sees Christ. He gives it a partnership in the same privileges; He treats it as if it were His own child; He gives it a place and name better than of sons and daughters. In fact, He has adopted it.

2. We must not, however, confound adoption and the spirit of adoptionas though they were the same thing. They are never, indeed, very far apart; but still they are not the same thing. For adoption, if it stood alone, would be no blessing. Suppose a mans relationships were changed, but his own actual state or moral condition remained unalteredwhere would be the benefit? Would it not be an evil and an injury to him? Conceive a man to be placed as a son of God, and yet, all the while, to dislike and hate God; or conceive that a man were called to take his place in spiritual societies, and heavenly fellowships, for which he had, and felt that he had, no taste or fitness whatever; if to that new relationship there were attached particular duties, and the man had no power or adaptation to fulfil those dutiesis it not evident that the man, though his position would be really a better one, would be no gainer, but rather a loser, by that change?

A rich man, well educated, adopts a poor illiterate child. The child moves in the circle of the society of his adopted father, and shares with him in the indulgences of his wealth. But because that child has no sense of affection towards his adopted father, or because he has no previous training to qualify him for his elevation, or because he has no habit of life to fit and prepare him for his position, the connection is absolutely irksome and injurious to that child; it were better that he never should be adopted. If the benefactor of that child be indeed a wise man, he will endeavour by kindness and education to give him a filial spirit, and the qualifications which are necessary for his elevation. But, if not, the adoption, however well intended, and however actually in itself a good thing, will only issue in disappointment and unhappiness.

3. How, then, will the spirit of adoption reveal itself?

(1) The spirit of adoption is a spirit of reverence. Not of slavish fear, but of filial reverence. No man can be happy without having some one to revere; some one whom, the more he knows of him, the more he reveres; some one towards whom that process of discovery which is inseparable from prolonged intercourse is a process wholly of increasing reverence, insomuch that they who stand nearest to His throne in heaven veil their faces as they worship (Isa 6:2), and they who live nearest to Him on earth are ever found the most humble, the most self-abased, the most full of reverence and awe and godly fear.

David says, Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice before him with trembling. Let some one make this rhyme for me;to be joyful and to fear. My little son Hans can do it to me; but I cannot do it with God. For when I sit and write, or do anything, he sings a little song to me the while; and if he makes it too loud, and I tell him so, then he still sings on, but makes it softer, crooning on with a sweet, little, subdued voice, shyly watching me all the time. So would God have it with us; that we should be always rejoicing, yet with fear and reverence towards Him.1 [Note: Luther.]

(2) The spirit of adoption is a spirit of submission. The cry, Abba, Father, is the expression of an entirely resigned will. It was so used on earth by Him who, though He was a Son, yet condescended to learn obedience by the things which He suffered (Heb 5:8). Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done (Mar 14:36; Luk 22:42). If this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done (Mat 26:42). God grant us all betimes that spirit of adoption from which alone that prayer can rise heartily or be heard with acceptance! Well may he who knows that he has indeed a Father in heaven submit himself in all respects to His wise and fatherly will.

The son cannot be true to his sonship unless he is obedient to his fathers will; and whenever the Spirit of God is bearing witness to the Divine adoption, whenever the Christian is really living responsive to this witness, there always must be, not constraint, but a glad, free delight in obedience. How practical, how beautiful, is life thus lived under the sweet power of the witnessing Spirit, the Spirit of adoption, in the light of the Fatherhood of God, whom I may call Father. Aye, when memory grieves me for the past, here is my rest: Like as a father pitieth his children, even so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. To be living thus in relation with the Lord God as my own Father, is to be living in peace and security, like a child shielded in its home amidst all the sorrows and perils of life. Then the joy of dying may be mineI may fall asleep in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God, with this last utterance issuing from my failing spirit, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.1 [Note: Canon G. Body.]

There are few finer stories of obedience than that of Fnelon, the Prince-Archbishop of Cambrai. When his book was condemned by the Pope and cardinals, a book his own judgment told him to be orthodox and helpful, he accepted the public rebuke without a sign of protest. He received the news that the book was proscribed just as he was about to preach to his people in the cathedral. He at once laid aside his sermon, preached on obedience, and showed that he could practise what he preached by the following letter, which he sent to all the clergy:Our holy Father, the Pope, has condemned the book entitled Explication des Maximes des Saints, in a brief which is spread abroad everywhere, and which you have already seen. We give our adhesion to this brief, dear brethren, as regards the text of the book and the twenty-three points simply, absolutely, and without a shadow of doubt; and we forbid the faithful of the diocese to read or retain the book. God grant that we may never be spoken of save as a pastor who strove to be more docile than the least sheep of the flock, and whose submission knew no limit. Dear Brethren, may the grace of God be with you all. Amen.

Franois, Archbishop and Duke of Cambrai.

It must have caused him much suffering to feel that he was looked upon as a heretic, that his enemies were triumphing over his submission; but he felt, and no doubt he was right, that obedience would bring a greater blessing to the Church than any protest.2 [Note: G. H. S. Walpole, Personality and Power, 88.]

When our commissioners went a few years ago to Paris to treat with the Spaniards, the latter are said to have desired certain changes in the language of the protocol. With the polished suavity for which they are noted, the Spaniards urged that there be made slight changes in the words: no real change in the meaning, they said, simply in the verbiage. And our Judge Day, at the head of the American Commissioners, listened politely and patiently until the plea was presented. And then he quietly said, The article will be signed as it reads. And the Spaniards protested, with much courtesy. The change asked for was trivial, merely in the language, not in the force of the words. And our men listened patiently and courteously. Then Mr. Day is said to have locked his little square jaw and replied very quietly, The article will be signed as it reads. And the article was so signed. That is military usage. The surrender was forced. The strength of the American fleets, the prestige of great victory, were behind the quiet mans demand. But that is not the law here. Jesus asks only for what we give freely and spontaneously. He does not want anything except what is given with a free, glad heart. This is to be a voluntary surrender. Jesus is a voluntary Saviour. He wants only voluntary followers. He would have us be as Himself. The oneness of spirit leads the way into the intimacy of closest friendship. And that is His thought for us.1 [Note: S. D. Gordon.]

(3) The spirit of adoption is a spirit of trust. Submission runs on into confidence. The one is a readiness to bear even though the stroke were in anger; the other is the assurance that the stroke will not be in anger, or that, beneath the anger, even if anger should be needful, will lie a deep purpose of eventual mercy. Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him (Job 13:15): for even from the very depths of the grave I know that He can and that He will at last raise me up (Heb 11:19).

A childs experience is marked above all things by thisfreedom from anxiety. The father or mother may look round upon their children with anxious eyes. The demands are many, the resources are limited, the prospects are gloomy. They may have weary days and sleepless nights. But the child in the home has no anxiety; it goes on its way in a position of absolute dependence. The father never has failed, and never will fail; and it sleeps in absolute calmness. So it is when we go out into life. If there is one thing that mars the development of the Christian character within us it is that we should be consumed with corroding cares. Be not anxious. The cares of this world choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful; cares for those we love, cares for ourselves, cares and bitter anxieties over Gods own dear Church; cares at times for the tendencies of the life of the nationmultitudes of cares come in. How are we to be able to rise above them? It is all very well to say, Be not anxioushow can we fail to be anxious? God would not ask us to live in a fools paradise, and not face the actual facts under which we have to live. Abba, Father, all is in His hands.1 [Note: Canon Body.]

I will not doubt, though all my prayers return

Unanswered from the still, white Realm above;

I shall believe it as an all-wise Love

Which has refused those things for which I yearn;

And though at times I cannot keep from grieving,

Yet the pure ardour of my fixed believing

Undimmed shall burn.

I will not doubt, though sorrows fall like rain,

And troubles swarm like bees about a hive;

I shall believe the heights for which I strive

Are only reached by anguish and by pain;

And though I groan and tremble with my crosses,

I yet shall see, through my severest losses,

The greater gain.

I will not doubt, though all my ships at sea

Come drifting home with broken masts and sails;

I shall believe the hand that never fails

From seeming evil worketh good for me;

And though I weep because those sails are battered

Still will I cry, while my best hopes be shattered,

I trust in Thee.2 [Note: Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Poems of Love and Life, 13.]

(4) The spirit of adoption is, in the last place, and throughout, a spirit of love. It seems very wonderful that God should care for our love. But it is so. Not in awe, not in fear, not in dread is God glorified, but in that going forth of the human spirit to Him, as to One in whom alone it can rest and be satisfied; that return of love for love; that same yearning of the heart, after an affection unchangeable and inexhaustible, which upon earth, as directed towards a human object, is the source of all our deepest joys and of all our keenest sorrows; this it is which God would have turned towards Himself, and which, when once so turned, is as certain to be satisfied as it is in itself elevating and glorious. Herein is the spirit of adoption fulfilled. Reverence for God, submission to God, confidence in God, all meet and are consummated in the love of God. May He who has prepared for them that love Him such good things as pass mans understanding, pour into our hearts such love towards Him, that we, loving Him above all things, may obtain His promises, which exceed all that we can desire, and be filled with all the fulness of God.

My God, I love Thee; not because

I look for Heaven thereby,

Nor yet because who love Thee not

Are lost eternally.

Thou, O my Jesus, Thou didst me

Upon the Cross embrace,

For me didst bear the nails and spear,

And manifold disgrace.

Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ,

Should I not love Thee well,

Not for the sake of winning Heaven,

Or of escaping Hell,

Not with the hope of gaining aught,

Not seeking a reward;

But as Thyself hast loved me,

O ever-loving Lord?

Even so I love Thee, and will love,

And in Thy praise will sing,

Solely because Thou art my God,

And my eternal King.

ii. The Cry

We have already seen that the word adoption distinguishes those who are made sons by an act of grace from the only-begotten Son. But we have also seen that the act of grace gives not only the status but the heart of sons. It is accordingly in this, the true and full, spirit of adoption that we are able to cry, Abba, Father.

1. Abba, Father. Our Lord, speaking in Aramaic, the vernacular of Palestine, is recorded by St. Mark to have said in His hour of agony Abba. And even in the Greek-speaking churches of St. Pauls day, that sacred word was still used side by side with its Greek equivalent, according to the witness of this and the parallel passage, Gal 4:6. St. Paul appears to be referring to some occasion on which the Church was in the habit of calling on God with the Aramaic and Greek words side by side, and it is more than likely that he is making a definite reference to the Lords Prayer, as recited by the Roman and Galatian Christians in the form prescribed for us in St. Lukes version, beginning, Father. The retention by Greek Christians of an Aramaic word in a familiar religious formula is like the later retention by the Latins of the Greek prayer, Kyrie eleison, or the retention by us of the names Te Deum, Magnificat, etc. St. Pauls meaning would come home to us better if we were to readwhereby we cry Our Father.

The repetition of this word, first in Aramaic and then in Greek, is remarkable, and brings home to us the fact that Christianity had its birth in a bilingual people. The same repetition occurs in Mar 14:36 (Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee) and in Gal 4:6 : it gives a greater intensity of expression, but would only be natural where the Speaker was using in both cases his familiar tongue. Lightfoot (Hor. Heb. on Mar 14:36) thinks that in the Gospel the word Abba only was used by our Lord, and Father added as an interpretation by St. Mark, and that in like manner St. Paul is interpreting for the benefit of his readers. The three passages are, however, all too emotional for this explanation: interpretation is out of place in a prayer. It seems better to suppose that our Lord Himself, using familiarly both languages, and concentrating into this word of all words such a depth of meaning, found Himself impelled spontaneously to repeat the word, and that some among His disciples caught and transmitted the same habit. It is significant, however, of the limited extent of strictly Jewish Christianity that we find no other original examples of the use than these three.1 [Note: Sanday-Headlam, Romans.]

From my recollections as a student in the New College, Edinburgh, I am able to supply an interesting instance of the influence of strong, deep feeling towards a polyglot expression. One morning in the course of his opening prayer in the Senior Hebrew Class, the late Rabbi Duncan was led to use the expression in Psa 68:35, O God, thou art terrible out of thy holy places, adding in the same breath, Thou art Nra venerandus. Indeed the Rabbi had something of a habit of polyglotting (if I may coin a word) his ideas.1 [Note: A. Thom, in The Expository Times, xx. 527.]

2. We cry, says the Apostle; and he uses a strong word (often followed by with a great voice). It denotes the loud irrepressible cry with which the consciousness of sonship breaks from the Christian heart in prayer.

3. What do we cry? Of all words which can ever express mans thought, the word which comprises most of wisdom, tenderness, and love, is the name of Father. What a repose lies in that My Father. And if we were not so familiar with it, the wonder would never cease to awaken the deepest feeling of admiration that we are ever permitted to say of the great, the holy, the awful, the unseen, the unutterable Jehovah, My Father. And yet, as soon as the Spirit begins to work in a sinners heart, what is the very first thing that the Spirit plants there? I will arise and go to my father, and I will say unto him, my father. And if only we could take in the simple conception that God is a Father, well-nigh the whole work of our religion would be done. It is just what we want, for peace, for holiness, for heaven, to be able to say My Father. Thousands, indeed tens of thousands, acknowledge it as true; but few, very few think of how much has passed in the deepest counsels and in the sublimest operations of Almighty God, that we might use that paternal name. All heaven had to come down to earth that we might stand to God again in that lost relationship. All the blood of Christ could only purchase it; and no man could ever frame his heart to conceive or his lips to utter it, but by the power of the Holy Ghost; for none can cry, Abba, Father, but by the spirit of adoption. It will be a marvel, one day, to find what stupendous processes were necessary before we could really say the two first words of that prayer, which some people call, and most beautifully call, Our Father.

4. Now some of the signs of this filial spirit which cries Father, are these

(1) Boldness in Prayer. A child does not ask a father as a stranger asks him. He goes as one who has a right,as one who has never been refused all his life, and never can be refused to all eternity. If a son finds his fathers door for a moment closed, see how he knocks. That door must open to me. And life grows very earnest in that spirit; and that spirit is all real.

Boldness in prayer was a new ingredient put into the religious consciousness by Christianity, and is a distinctive feature of the Christian faith. To come boldly to the throne of grace is a new and living way (Heb 10:19). This can be seen by a comparison between the way in which man approaches God under the OT dispensation, and the way in which the Christian approaches Him under the new covenant. In the OT man approaches God with fear and trembling; he stands afar off at the nether part of the mount (Exo 19:17); even Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake (Heb 12:21). In the NT man approaches with boldness the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, God the judge of all, and Jesus the Mediator of a new covenant, and the blood of sprinkling (Heb 12:22-24). It will be found, too, that in this matter of boldness the Christian religion is distinct, not only from the Hebrew, but from all other religions. Fear and shrinking rather than boldness and confidence are, universally, the concomitants of the natural mans approach to the Unseen and Eternal. The Christian alone has boldness of access to the throne of God.1 [Note: D. Russell Scott, in Encyclopdia of Religion and Ethics, ii. 786.]

Of what an easie quick accesse,

My blessed Lord, art Thou! how suddenly

May our requests Thine ears invade!

To show that State dislikes not easinesse,

If I but lift mine eyes my suit is made;

Thou canst no more not heare then Thou canst die.

Of what supreme almightie power

Is Thy great arm, which spans the east and west

And tacks the centre to the sphere!

By it do all things live their measurd houre;

We cannot ask the thing which is not there,

Blaming the shallownesse of our request.

Of what unmeasurable love

Art Thou possest, Who, when Thou couldst not die,

Wert fain to take our flesh and curse,

And for our sakes in person sinne reprove;

That by destroying that which tyd Thy purse,

Thou mightst make way for liberalitie!

Since, then, these three wait on Thy throne,

Ease, Power, and Love, I value Prayer so,

That were I to leave all but one,

Wealth, fame, endowments, vertues, all should go;

I and deare Prayer would together dwell,

And quickly gain for each inch lost an ell.1 [Note: George Herbert.]

(2) Service for Love. He does not want wages; but he receives rewards. He does not want them; he works for another motive; and yet he does not know that he has another motive, for he never stops to ask what his motive is. Of course I love.

It is just the old story of the way the birds got their wings. At first God gave the birds their wings as burdens, and bade them carry the burdens. They obeyed, and laid their burdens on their shoulders and wrapped them about their hearts, when lo! their burdens became their wings, and carried them. So it is with every life that in unselfish service takes up the tasks and duties God appoints. As we carry them on our shoulders and wrap them about our hearts, instead of weighing us down they carry us. Our burdens become our pinions, our duties our privileges, our Service becomes our reward, our sacrifice our song. Glory is a flame lit in the altar fires of service. Heaven is the homeland of all who travel a thorn-path of duty to the cross-crowned hill where life is laid down for the sake of others.

When God first made a little bird

For sheer delight,

He gifted it with power of song

But not of flight.

Then by its side He gently laid

Those untried things

That we, in human parlance, call

A pair of wings.

And said, My little one, this load

Uplift and see,

Beneath this strange disguise, my loves

Sweet thought for thee.

The feathered darling serious grew;

A sudden sob

Choked all the music in its throat

And seemed to rob

The air of sunshine; yet it gave

A patient nod,

And said, Ill bear it for your sake,

Dear Father God.

Then on reluctant shoulders, firm

The burden laid;

And lo, the merry winds of heaven

About it played,

Until in very ecstasy

It spurned the ground,

And, borne upon its lifted load,

Glad freedom found.

(3) Fulness of Possession. He has a present possession in the whole universe. All creation is his Fathers house, and he can say, Everything in it,everything that is great, and everything that is little,everything that is happy, and everything that is unhappy,every cloud and every sun-ray,it is mine, on to death itself.

John Kendrick Bangs tells about a little boy who one night cried for the moon. So his father, who was a kind and generous as well as a wise man, gave it to him. You may have the moon, said the father, only you must not be selfish about it. The very best place to keep the moon is up there in the heaven, where it will give you light by night; and of course you want it to give light to me and your mother and other people also. You may have the moon just as long as you are unselfish, but when you grow greedy then the moon will belong to some one else who will make better use of it. And one day when the lad wanted the ocean his father gave him that also on a similar condition. You must not carry it away and bottle it up, he said. It is yours, but you must not be selfish. Let other people bathe in your ocean and sail boats on your ocean. Indeed, it is very much better for you to have others using your ocean, for it would not be nearly so interesting without ships sailing up and down to all parts of the world to bring you and me and your mother tea and coffee and bananas, and other fishing boats going out to catch our fish for us. So when the lad wanted a great forest the father gave it to him, and when he asked for the mountains the father gave him the mountains also, until by and by he owned the whole universe, but always on condition that he would not be selfish but would let other people enjoy his moon and his ocean and his forest and his mountains with him.

It is not always easy to distinguish between the serious and the quizzical mood of Mr. Bangs, but I think in this instance he meant to read us a parable. All things are ours. The Great Father gave them to us, at the same time bestowing upon us the capacity to use and enjoy them. The forest belongs to the man who loves it, the mountain belongs to the man who loves it, and the crisp winter landscape belongs to the man who, to use Jobs phrase, has entered into the treasures of the snow.1 [Note: F. O. Hall, Soul and Body, 139.]

(4) Readiness to Depart. For he knows very well what those ever-present words mean, In my Fathers house are many mansions. And, if the love of an unseen Father has been so sweet, what will it be to look in His face?

Death is to Francis, the lover of all life, a dear and tender sister; to others of like mind, the mother of life, or a strong brother, angel of pity; and for St. Paul, to whom to live was Christ, to die was gain of Christ. Now, even I in my low measure begin to see my deep door as a gateway of fulfilment; and I must turn my eyes away to my place in God on this side of the door, lest even I desire death too much.

I have no tormenting fear; my door is mine alone, and beyond is my own place again. I know I have to dread no gloom which is not already mine; but while I am still on earth I would learn more of the life of Paradise foreshadowed here, that in the greater light I may see the beauty which is of Avalon.

Therefore, for all this cause, although I share the optimism of the saints, I dare not long for death as they have longed; in me nature groans and travails still. I look towards it only as a step in life which I hope that I shall gladly take when it comes before my waiting feet. I will call it a transfiguration towards my truth, and I will dread it only as I dread a truer vision of my truth.2 [Note: A Modern Mystics Way.]

What if some morning when the stars were paling,

And the dawn whitened, and the East was clear,

Strange peace and rest fell on me from the presence

Of a benignant Spirit standing near;

And I should tell him, as he stood beside me,

This is our Earthmost friendly Earth, and fair;

Daily its sea and shore through sun and shadow

Faithful it turns, robed in its azure air:

There is blest living here, loving and serving,

And quest of truth and serene friendships dear:

But stay not, Spirit! Earth has one destroyer

His name is Death: flee, lest he find thee here!

And what if then, while still the morning brightened,

And freshened in the elm the summers breath,

Should gravely smile on me the gentle angel,

And take my hand, and say, My name is Death.1 [Note: E. Rowland Sill.]

The Spirit of a Son

Literature

Davies (J. LI.), The Christian Calling, 29.

Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year: Sundays after Trinity, i. 265.

Kingsley (C.), National Sermons, 403.

Neale (J. M.), Sermons in Sackville College Chapel, ii. 117.

Newman (J. H.), Parochial and Plain Sermons, v. 313.

Oosterzee (J. J. van), The Year of Salvation, i. 486.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxx. No. 1759.

Vaughan (C. J.), Epiphany, Lent, and Easter, 441.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), iv. No. 486.

Christian World Pulpit, lx. 65 (Strong); lxiii. 150 (Body); 369 (Newsom).

Churchmans Pulpit, xxviii. 37 (Roberts), 44 (Tait), 47 (Cotton), 49 (Newsom).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

the spirit: Exo 20:19, Num 17:12, Luk 8:28, Luk 8:37, Joh 16:8, Act 2:37, Act 16:29, 1Co 2:12, 2Ti 1:7, Heb 2:15, Heb 12:18-24, Jam 2:19, 1Jo 4:18

the Spirit: Rom 8:16, Isa 56:5, Jer 3:19, 1Co 2:12, Gal 4:5-7, Eph 1:5, Eph 1:11-14

Abba: Mar 14:36, Luk 11:2, Luk 22:42, Joh 20:17

Reciprocal: Gen 22:7 – My father Deu 32:6 – thy father 1Ch 29:10 – our father Psa 51:12 – free Eze 46:16 – If the prince Zec 12:10 – of supplications Mat 6:9 – Our Mat 25:25 – General Luk 1:74 – that we Luk 15:22 – a ring Luk 19:21 – I feared Joh 4:23 – in spirit Joh 8:32 – and the Joh 8:35 – but Joh 14:16 – another Joh 18:11 – my Rom 8:23 – which have Rom 8:26 – but Rom 14:17 – peace 2Co 3:17 – where Gal 4:3 – in Gal 4:6 – God Gal 4:24 – which Gal 4:30 – for Eph 1:14 – the earnest Eph 2:18 – by Eph 3:6 – the Gentiles Eph 6:18 – in the Phi 3:3 – worship Heb 4:16 – come Heb 10:19 – Having Jam 1:25 – liberty 1Jo 3:2 – now are we the 1Jo 5:13 – ye may know Rev 21:7 – and I

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

THE FAMILY OF GOD

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

Rom 8:15

We are learning much at the present time about unity, and yet we must remember that the unity which Christ prayed for was unity of a very solemn kind, a unity which was real, and which would be lasting because it was real. We may unite on a false basis, on an artificial basis, on a basis which will dissolve under the distress of the first storm. But if we believe that this world was designed to be Gods family, if we believe that this conception was damaged by the Fall, and is now further injured by mans selfishness, let us aim at making real once more the purpose of God. If once we can realise the conception of the family knit together by love of the great Father, unity will come as a matter of course.

I. Let us labour, then, first of all, to restore the sense of Gods Fatherhood in the world.There never, I suppose, has been a time when man has felt the plenitude of his powers so completely as he does now, but at the same time we cannot but feel that material prosperity may tend, if we are not careful, to make us forget the purpose of God in the adjustment of this world to man as his proper environment. Look, for instance, at the growth of luxury, and the unrestrained accumulation of wealth. Is Gods world being made better, more completely His, by the luxurious selfishness of inglorious ease which turns the things that should have been to our wealth into an occasion of falling? Here, too, we see the desire for unity; it is one of the loudest cries of the time; that there should be a greater unity of distribution as between the wealthy and the poor, if necessary by force. But the purpose of God must come before unity. As we read Gods Word, can we say that this is the purpose for which He placed man in his material environment, that he should find in this world the best possible place, stored with good things in which every one should have an equal share? The rich spirit, which is all that matters, the spirit of possession which heralds the selfishness which dethrones God, can exist just as much with three acres and a cow of an equally distributed materialism, as it can in the fruitless millions of the rich fool. We need to watch anxiously lest we miss the purpose of God in placing us where we are, lest we rob Him of His seat as Father of this world, which He has made for man, to help man on his journey towards the heavenly city, an inn as the old Latin writer tells us, on the pilgrim road for our refreshment, not a dwelling-place for our settled life.

II. The purpose of God assumes a more settled aspect still in the provision which He has made for our souls.God, as the Father of the prodigal, has devised means to help those whom He knew must needs suffer from the contact of a rough and hostile world. Here Gods purpose seems so clear that we almost wonder that any doubt could exist concerning it. And yet what do we find? From the earliest days men who called themselves His followers have wrangled and fought as to the details of His scheme of salvation. How tempting it is to sacrifice anything and everything to unity! Here is one who objects to episcopacy. Very well, let us by all means cast it away. Let us cast away anything to do with bishops, if that will make for unity. Here is one who objects to the priesthood; very well, by all means let us cast away sacerdotalism. Here is one who objects to the sacramental system; let us cast it away upon the denominational rubbish heap; it is unimportant. If a creed will satisfy you, by all means take it; if the Old Testament is a stumbling-block, remove it. It is not unity that we need so muchthat can be secured at any time under the name of absorption; but it is unity in the truth. Unity, that is, which is secured by seeking out the purpose of God and working for its realisation. There are thousands who have tested, by a long life of earnest obedience, the purpose of God in giving them this wonderful and unique privilege; it cannot be given up in sacrifice to a passing sentiment by those who feel that our Heavenly Father knows what we need before we ask Him, and knowing our needs has left us the Catholic Church.

III. But, after all, this purpose of God touches us more closely, in the realisation of His Fatherhood in our inmost life.Surely we need here, too, a greater unity, a unity of purpose in carrying out the will of God, not the fitful impulses which are shaken by the gusts of uncontrolled passion, nor the feeble dictates of an irresolute will imperfectly obeyed, nor the glimmers of a reason which sin has obscured, nor the pleadings of the spirit through a dishonoured and vacillating conscience. The child of God who can say Abba, Father, is a splendid conception, which, alas! we do but imperfectly realise. The term Father is full of tenderness and love, but it is also a term full of seriousness and even severity. Of His own will begat He us by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. Can we feel that we correspond to this description of the child of God?

Rev. Canon Newbolt.

Illustration

Surely we must feel that a great deal of the alienation which has taken place has arisen from taking things at their worst, or as realised in their corruption, and by condemning by reason of a manifest abuse the real use and purpose of that which is Gods ordinance. The Church, for instance, need not be for ever identified with a privileged Establishment which receives imaginary honour from the State. The Church is an institution which is just as much part of our Lords plan as was His Atonement. Certainly let us give up all arrogant pretensions, and rest solely on the privileges of that wonderful position which Christ has given us. But if we believe the Church to be Gods purpose for the salvation of man, we cannot give it up, in the mistaken idea of thus promoting unity. Holy Baptism is no indifferent matter, but closely connected with one of the most pressing problems of lifeheredity. Confirmation is not a negligible ceremony, but once more an ordinance which is intimately bound up with the problem of environment; when men and women are failing all around us to realise the ideal of humanity to which they were meant to attain, we cannot think that we are justified in substituting a symbolical ceremony for an effectual sacramental sign. Episcopacy does not mean prelacy, nor the priesthood sacerdotalism, nor sacraments a mechanical religion.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE INDIVIDUAL POWER OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

The influence of Christianity has been enormous. Yet to thousands who are called Christians, Christianity is only an abstract idea, it is not a fact which has changed their lives. There are crowds of people who are living to-day who believe in Christianity, who believe in the teaching of Christ, but who do not believe in the individual power of the Christian life.

I. The fatherhood of God.We know that every one of the services of our Church is based upon the prayer which our Lord taught His disciples, the Lords Prayer; in Latin it is called the Pater NosterOur Father. All our prayers are directed to God Who, through Christ, is our Father. But again, thousands repeat that prayer, yet they can no more truly pray this prayer than a heathen who has never heard it and who has never heard of Christ.

II. Real sonship.Do we realise that we are Gods sons? Do we feel that we have that Divine nature in us by which we may call ourselves the sons of God? Real sonship of God lies deeper than realising that God is the Creator, the Father. Yea, it lies even deeper than believing that God sent His Son, and that He was the son of the Eternal Father. The fatherhood of God is the golden thread on which all the precious pearls are strung. Take away that fatherhood from our religion and we feel sure that our whole Christian life becomes disconnected. We feel that it is the one spring by which we are able to change our lives. And so we come to ask ourselves, in what way can we draw nearer to that Father? Does it help us if we begin to realise the brotherhood of mankind? There are many people among us who deny that Christ was the Son of God, and yet they say that if there is a brotherhood of mankind it must be maintained. But a brotherhood without a fatherhood is no help to any one. Let us look at our own lives and ask if we realise the brotherhood of mankind in our own lives. Do we really feel, speak, act, and live as brethren with those whom we meet? Do we love those with whom we come in contact? Strive as we may, we cannot live as sons of God as long as we are alone. But we know that at the redemption which Christ brought He fulfilled His pledge. When He ascended up into heaven and went to sit at the right hand of the Father, He sent His Holy Spirit down upon us. Gods gifts and blessings come to us through the Holy Spirit, and through that Spirit we are made sons of God, and by that Spirit we are taught to say, Abba, Father.

III. The spirit of adoption.And so we find that there is indeed a Father aboveGod our Creator, God Almighty, and we see that there is the Son Jesus Christ; and there is One Who is among us nowthe Holy Ghost Who constantly speaks to us, constantly moves us, constantly directs us to Him Who is the Fountain of Life. There are many gifts and blessings which we receive from the Holy Ghost, but there is one which is nearer and dearer than any to those who enjoy it, and that is, that we are able to speak to God above as to our Father. As we receive the Spirit of God we begin to feel the truth of St. Pauls words, and as we receive that power we are brought to Him, we are brought into the circle of the Divine Family.

St. Paul says that all who believe are the sons of God, and he adds that, although we do not realise it, the Spirit is constantly interceding for us. Shall we not pray for a manifestation of Christs Spirit amongst us? We know that He is speaking to-day to many a soul. Do let us open our hearts to Him. All things will become new if we obey the voice of the Spirit. As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God, and all of us who have received that Spirit are able to cry, Abba, Father.

Rev. M. M. Vischer.

(THIRD OUTLINE)

THE SPIRIT OF ADOPTION

Let me examine what a spirit of adoption is. But, first, let us look at what it is not.

I. It is not a spirit of doubt and anxiety; in which many of us are living. It is not like this: Does God really love me? Am I forgiven? Shall I be kept all through this year unto the end? How shall I overcome all my difficulties? That is not what a little child ever feels, if he has got an affectionate father. He never asks questions. It is not, Does my father love me? And why does my father love me? But that love is a great fact, which lies down silent and at rest in his bosom.

II. It is all hope. It always sees bright futures.Hence, prayer becomes a very bold thing where there is the spirit of adoption. The spirit of adoption criescries Abba. A child does not ask a father as a stranger asks him. He goes as one who has a rightas one who has never been refused all his life, and never can be refused to all eternity. If a son finds his fathers door for a moment closed, see how he knocks. That door must open to me. And life grows very earnest in that spirit; and that spirit is all real. I was a stranger once, and now I am a child. My Fathers work must be done, and I am the one to do it. I have got the privilege of doing my Fathers work. He does not want wages; but he receives rewards. He does not want them; he works for another motive; and yet, he does not know that he has another motive, for he never stops even to ask what his motive is. Of course I love.

III. That spirit has a present possession in the whole universe.All creation is his Fathers house, and he can say, Everything in it,everything that is great and everything that is littleeverything that is happy and everything that is unhappyevery cloud and every sun-rayit is mine, on to death itself.

IV. The spirit of adoption longs to go home.He knows very well what those ever-present words mean, In my Fathers house are many mansions. For, if the love of an unseen Father has been so sweet, what will it be to look in His face?

There is nothing which I desire for you so much as that you should take child-like, loving, trusting views of your Father in heaven. Do you say, But perhaps I am not His child? I answer, the act of believing that He is your Father makes you His child. Cherish the Holy Spirit in your heart. Every obeyed impulse of the conscience will confirm and ratify your adoption.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

:15

Rom 8:15. This verse makes a comparison of the difference between a servant and an heir. (See Gal 4:1-7.) These Jewish Christians had been made free from the law through Christ, which entitled them to recognize God as their Father.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Rom 8:15. For ye did not receive. The fact that they are sons is now proven from their Christian experience at conversion.

The spirit of bondage, etc. The latter part of the verse most naturally refers to the Holy Spirit, but many find a difficulty in this clause, if such a reference be accepted. But the difficulty is only apparent, as the following paraphrase shows: The Spirit ye received was not a spirit of bondage, but a Spirit of adoption. The Apostle does not suggest that the Holy Spirit could be a spirit of bondage, but emphatically denies this. This view is confirmed by the difficulties which attend the other explanations. To interpret: a slavish spirit, a filial spirit, is not only weak, but contrary to the New Testament use of the word spirit. To refer it to the subjective spirit of the renewed man disturbs the antithesis.

Again to fear. In order again to fear, Again, as in the native condition, when fear was the motive of religious life. This applies to Gentile, as well as Jewish, Christians. All unchristian religiousness is in principle legalism, which is a bondage; and bondage produces fear.

But ye received the Spirit of adoption. The repetition is for solemn emphasis. They received the Holy Spirit; this Spirit was not that of bondage, to make them fear, but of adoption, leading to the joyful cry Abba, Father. They were sons of God, not by birth, but by reason of grace numbering them among His children; the particular reference being to the method by which they became sons, rather than to their sonship.

Wherein, not strictly, whereby, but in the fellowship of the Spirit of adoption, we cry, Abba, Father. Abba is the Syrian name for Father, to which Paul adds the equivalent Greek term. It seems best to regard this repetition as taken from a liturgical formula, which may have originated among the Hellenistic Jews, who retained the consecrated word Abba, or among the Jews of Palestine, after they became acquainted with the Greek language. The latter theory best explains the expression as used Mar 14:36. Riddle, in Lange, Galatians (chap. Rom 4:6, a parallel case). Some add the notion of affectionate address in Abba; others find a hint of the union of Jews and Gentiles in Christ

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Observe, 1. That there is a spirit of bondage, which the children of God do for some time receive, working fear in them. By the spirit of bondage understand those convictions and terrors of conscience which awakened persons labour under, when the law of God charges them home with the guilt of sin; and layest them under direful apprehensions of the wrath of God. The spirit of bondage is neither to be slighted, nor yet to be rested in; not to be slighted, because it is preparatory to conversion; and not to be rested in because it is like a spark of hell kindled in the conscience; it is as a bearded arrow shot into the conscience, which only the hand of God can pluck out.

Observe, 2. That the spirit of bondage to God’s children is succeeded by, and ends in a spirit of adoption; the signs of such a spirit are a child-like love to God, a child-like fear and hope, a child-like trust and dependence, and a child-like obedience to his commands.

Observe, 3. That God’s Holy Spirit, after he has once been a spirit of adoption never again becomes a spirit of bondage to the same soul, Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear.

Observe, 4. That one principal work of the spirit of adoption is to enliven and embolden the soul in prayer, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

Vv. 15. The ancients were much perplexed to explain this expression: Ye have not received a spirit of bondage. It seemed to them to imply the idea, that a servile spirit had been given to the readers previously by God Himself. Hence the explanation of Chrysostom, who applied the spirit of bondage to the law. This meaning is inadmissible. It would be preferable to understand it of the mercenary and timid spirit which accompanied legal obedience. But could Paul possibly ascribe this to a divine communication? If we connect the adverb , again, as we should do, not with the verb , ye received, but only with the regimen , to fear, there is nothing in the expression obliging us to hold that Paul has in view an anterior divine communication; for the meaning is this: The Spirit which ye have received of God is not a servile spirit throwing you back into the fear in which ye formerly lived. Comp. 2Ti 1:7. The character of heathen religions is in fact the sentiment of fear (, Act 17:22). And was it not in some respects the same among the Jews, though with them the fear of Jehovah took a more elevated character than the fear of the gods among the Gentiles? The feeling with which the Spirit of God fills the believer’s heart is not fear, suited to the condition of a slave, but the confidence and liberty which become a son.

The word spirit might here be regarded as denoting simply a subjective disposition; as in that word of the Lord in reference to Sennacherib (Isa 37:7): I will put such a spirit in him, that he will return, to his own land; comp. 1Co 4:21 : a spirit of meekness; Rom 11:8 : a spirit of slumber. Here it would be the filial sentiment in relation to God. What might support this subjective meaning of the word spirit, is the strongly emphasized contrast between this verse and the following, where the objective meaning is evident: The Spirit Himself beareth witness…Nevertheless it is impossible, if we consider the connection between Rom 8:15 and the preceding verse, not to see in the Spirit of adoption, of which Paul here speaks, the Spirit of God Himself; comp. especially Gal 4:6, a passage so like ours, and where there is no room for uncertainty. The difference between Rom 8:15-16, so far as the meaning of the word spirit is concerned, is not the difference between an inward disposition and the Spirit of God, but rather that which distinguishes two different modes of acting, followed by one and the same Holy Spirit. In the former case, the operation of the Spirit makes itself felt by means of a personal disposition which He produces in us; in the second case it is still more direct (see on Rom 8:16).

The Spirit of adoption is the Spirit of God, in so far as producing the spiritual state corresponding to sonship; He may even be called: the Spirit of the Son Himself, Gal 4:6. He puts us relatively to God in the same position as Jesus, when He said: Father! The term , adoption, reminds us of the fact that Jesus alone is Son in essence ( , only son). To become sons, we must be incorporated into Him by faith (Eph 1:5).

The pronoun , in whom, shows that it is under the inspiration of the filial sentiment produced in us by this Spirit that we thus pray, and the term cry expresses the profound emotion with which this cry of adoration goes forth from the believing heart.

Abba is the form which the Hebrew word ab, father, had taken in the Aramaic language, commonly spoken in Palestine in the time of Jesus. It was thus Jesus spoke to God when He called Him Father; comp. Mar 14:36. It has been thought Paul employed the form here, because he made use of it habitually in his own prayers, and that he added the Greek translation: , father, in writing to the Romans and to the Galatians, because the Aramaic was unintelligible to them as former Gentiles. But the employment of the expression (which occurs in three writings of the N. T.) must rest on a more general usage. Like the terms Amen, Hosanna, Hallelujah, this word Abba had no doubt passed from the liturgical language of the primitive Judeo-Christian church into general ecclesiastical language. By adapting this sacred form of address, which had passed through the mouth of Jesus Himself, to the worship of Christians, not only was there a compliance with the command: When ye pray, say: Our Abba (our Father), who art in heaven, but the feeling of the whole church seemed to blend with that of its High Priest, who had prayed, using the same term for Himself and His brethren. From regard to Greek-speaking Christians, and neophytes in particular, the custom was probably followed of adding the Greek translation: , father, as is done by Mark. Augustine and Calvin suppose that it was meant, by using these two forms in juxtaposition, to express the union of Jewish and Gentile Christians in one spiritual body. This hypothesis has no great probability.

Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)

For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. [That ye are the sons of God is apparent, as I say, because of the Spirit which leads and animates you, and which changes your own spirit. For, in your unsaved, unregenerate state you had a spirit of bondage, leading you to fear God, and his wrath; but when ye were baptized, and became regenerate, ye received a different spirit; viz.: the spirit of adoption or sonship, which dispels fear, and causes you, with confident gladness, to approach and address God as your Abba (which is, being interpreted, Father).]

Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)

15. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again unto fear, but you received the spirit of sonship, in which we cry out, Father, Father. The spirit of bondage here mentioned does not refer to the unconverted, but the regenerated state, peculiar to the period of spiritual infancy. This passage is corroborated by Gal 4:1-7 (which you do well to read in this connection), setting forth spiritual servitude and sonship contrastively;

the former appertaining to the entire period of spiritual infancy, beginning at birth, i. e., regeneration, and running up to majority, i. e., sanctification, where you enter spiritual manhood. Upon examination you readily see that these two periods are but counterparts in the history of the same individual, the servile character predominating during spiritual infancy, while you need nurses and guardians, and the filial having pre-eminence during your majority, when you are competent to take care of yourself and consequently no longer under the and guardians. A dead man is not subject to law in any sense. Regeneration raises you from the dead and puts you under a legal regime of nurses and guardians in the visible church, till you reach the majority of entire sanctification, old Adam, who is under the law, being crucified, thus gloriously liberating you, so that you are no longer under the law but under grace (Chapter 6:14). We must not discriminate too widely between servant and son in this exegesis, so as to conclude that they are different individuals, for they are not, but one and the same; during the regenerated state, while under the law, which can only be satisfied by the crucifixion of Adam the First, the servile character predominating; while in the sanctified experience the filial relation comes to the front, throwing into eclipse the former period of spiritual infancy amid the cloudless glories of full salvation. Your son is as truly your heir from his infancy as he will ever be, though under the law of domestic government and frequently flogged for misdemeanor till he reaches adult age. Though after this epoch you treat him as a servant no more, but simply as a son, yet he is more obedient and actually serves you better than when, a naughty lad, you found the rod a valuable auxiliary. The old theology is here at random recognizing the dead church members as servants of God, though they had never been born of the Spirit. You see that is untrue, because the servant in this case is your child, who serves you like a slave during minority. Hence you see that all the servants of God are not simply His servants, but His children, denominated servants during a spiritual minority, but sons after they have reached majority. Hence it is flagrantly murderous to true diction to call these common sinning church members who have been born from above the servants of God, even though they be ever so loyal to the church and obedient to the preacher. That is a Romish heresy, now fearfully rapidly creeping into all the Protestant churches. God does not yoke up the devils cattle to pull the salvation wagon. He works none but His own oxen.

Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament

Verse 15

The spirit of bondage; the spirit of a slave. The meaning is, that the renewed man is not received as a slave, to live in terror of threatened punishment, as he did under the law, but as an adopted child, so that he may approach God as his benefactor, and call him Father.–Abba; the word meaning father in the language then used by the Jews.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

8:15 {17} For ye have not received the {p} spirit of bondage again {q} to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of {r} adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

(17) He declares and expounds (as an aside) in these two verses by what right this name, to be called the children of God, is given to the believers: and it is because, he says, they have received the grace of the gospel, in which God shows himself, not (as before in the proclaiming of the law) terrible and fearful, but a most gentle and loving Father in Christ, so that with great boldness we call him Father, the Holy Spirit sealing this adoption in our hearts by faith.

(p) By the “Spirit” is meant the Holy Spirit whom we are said to receive, when he works in our minds.

(q) Which fear the Spirit stirred up in our minds by the preaching of the law.

(r) Who seals our adoption in our minds, and therefore opens our mouths.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

Unlike sin, the Spirit does not enslave us. He does not compel or force us to do God’s will as slaves of God. Rather He appeals to us to do so as sons of God. The "spirit" in view is probably the Holy Spirit who has made us God’s sons by regeneration and adoption.

"Abba" and "Father" are equivalent terms, the first being a transliteration of the Aramaic word and the second a translation of the Greek pater (cf. Gal 4:6). Probably Paul used the Aramaic as well as the Greek term to highlight the intimate relationship the Christian disciple enjoys with God. The Lord Jesus revealed this intimate relationship during His training of the Twelve (Mar 14:36). [Note: See Joachim Jeremias, The Central Message of the New Testament, p. 28.] In their translations, J. B. Phillips paraphrased "Abba! Father!" as "Father, my Father," and Arthur S. Way rendered it, "My Father, my own dear Father."

Adoption is another legal term (cf. justification). It indicates the legal bestowal of a legal standing. Both adoption and justification result in a permanent condition, and both rest on the love and grace of God. [Note: See Francis Lyall, "Roman Law in the Writings of Paul-Adoption," Journal of Biblical Literature 88 (December 1969):458-66.]

"Paul could hardly have chosen a better term than ’adoption’ to characterize this peace and security. The word denoted the Greek, and particularly Roman, legal institution whereby one can ’adopt’ a child and confer on that child all the legal rights and privileges that would ordinarily accrue to a natural child. However, while the institution is a Greco-Roman one, the underlying concept is rooted in the OT and Judaism [i.e., God’s adoption of Israel]." [Note: Moo, p. 501. Cf. Bruce, p. 157; Ryrie, Basic Theology, pp. 306-7.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

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