EXTRACTS

We have much in Romans 8 about the Spirit, leading on to “a Spirit of adoption”. It says, “Ye have received a spirit of adoption”, and that is not a spirit of fear. It is a spirit; it is the principle of the thing received. We have a spirit of adoption and what do we do with it? Well, we cry, “Abba, Father”. We use it. The Spirit would aid us in using it, and in speaking to the Father. We have “a spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father”. God is pleased with that. What it involves in speaking to the Father came out in the Lord Jesus Himself in Gethsemane, and now it is our part to speak thus, the Holy Spirit aiding us, so that we are great enough for it. The Lord is pleased to give us the liberty and power to speak rightly to His Father; we have “a spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father”. It leads us into worship, and enables us to speak suitably to the Father, having in our minds all that that name implies. The Father is in our minds, intently in our minds as we speak to Him. Why should we not? “See what love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God”, 1 John 3: 1. The Father has opened up that to us, and I would urge it on young people, to learn to use that word. You have a spirit of adoption. The word adoption is really the word sonship; we have a spirit of sonship, by which, the mind laying hold of it, and the heart expanding to it, we understand the thought of the Father.

J. Taylor (N.S. Vol. 63, pp.301, 302)

It is almost equally wonderful that Man is gone up on high into the presence of God, and that God came down into the misery, sorrow, sin, and death of man. But both these marvellous things are the truth. What a place man, seen in this light, holds in the counsels of God.

J. N. Darby (‘Notes and Comments’ Vol. 2, p.164)

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