Here are some choice quotations from Carl Robbins’ sermon on Ephesians 2:11-3:6 at the recent Together for Adoption conference:
My thesis today is: There should be no barrier for Christians to adopt trans-racially since they understand that their God is adopting children from every nation, tribe, race, people-group and language group.
Commenting on the phrase “having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12):
Think of what a hopeless situation is was to be a Gentile. The Jews had an enormous contempt for the Gentile. The Jews wold taunt them and say, “God made you to fuel the fires of hell.” It was not even lawful to render help to a Gentile mother in her hour of need, for that would simply be aiding the bringing of another Gentile into the world. These people had nothing to look forward to!
Can you see how hope-giving it would be to hear a Gospel that said, “You can be brought into the household of God and given al the same rights and privileges of His sons”?
Everything in me wants to run ahead of myself (at this point) and say, “Don’t you see what you’re doing for a child in an orphanage from Ethiopia or China or Guatemala? You’re giving them hope, you’re giving them a future!” But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
This description, found in verses 11-12, is a marvelous description of everyone of us before we came to saving faith in christ.
Commenting on Ephesians 2:17-22:
Jesus, by His finished work, took away all barriers to peace with and reconciliation to God. Jesus, by His finished work, took away all barriers to peace and reconciliation with others. He puts Jews and Gentiles together. If God has declared that He accepts Latinos, Whites, Africans and Asians into His family, how dare any Christian refuse to accept / embrace them?
Notice the key word (vs. 21-22) “together.” By this word the Holy Spirit gives no credence to the idea of segregation or separation. There is no hint, whatsoever, that God intends separation on the part of Jews and Gentiles. On the contrary, Paul moves on to talk about our 7-fold unity in Christ (in Eph. 4:4-6) . . . Notice this: none of these 7 marks of our unity are tied to ethnicity or skin color! In fact, it’s not an overstatement to say that after Pentecost, the NT documents know nothing of divisions and barriers and distinctions based on ethnicity or race.
In fact, later in this same Epistle of Ephesians, Paul will “beseech” his readers to walk worthy of their calling. How do they do that? By “endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit” (Eph. 4:3). Just as the Gospel reconciles on the vertical axis, so it reconciles and joins together on the horizontal plane. This is why Paul can say, as he does in Romans 10:11-12: “Whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him.”
Trevor Burke, in his excellent work on the doctrine of adoption, rightly says, “Adoption is a unifying metaphor . . . and stands at the heart of what makes us kin to one another” (Adopted in God’s Family, 80).
