Do You Live Like You Are God’s Adopted Child?
What does it mean to be a child of God? Paul's words in Galatians 4 provide the answer.
Have you ever watched someone step into a role that instantly changed how everyone related to them?
This is what happened in August 2011, when Steve Jobs formally stepped down as Apple's CEO. Rather than leave the company's future open to speculation, he publicly named Tim Cook as his successor.
Some quibbled with this decision. Cook was not a founder, not the public face of Apple’s creative vision, and not the figure most people associated with the company’s identity. He wasn’t the automatic heir to the throne, if you will. Yet the moment the announcement was made, everything in Cook’s life changed.
From that point forward, Cook no longer borrowed legitimacy from Steve Jobs, as his new title gave him tremendous power and opportunity—something he has seized. When Cook became CEO in 2011, Apple’s annual revenue was approximately $108 billion, but by the end of 2025, that number was over $400 billion.
While history is rife with leaders who assumed a title and drove an established business into the ground, Cook’s example shows a very different story. It demonstrates that it is possible to assume a title, recognize the awesome opportunity it offers, and use that title as the basis for great good.
This brings us to the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church of Galatia.
Ancient Adoption
As our wonderful TMC writers have shown through this Galatians series, Paul is writing to Christians who have failed to realize who they are because they are adopted children of God. To these people, Paul writes:
1Now I say that as long as the heir is a child, he differs in no way from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. 2 Instead, he is under guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. 3 In the same way we also, when we were children, were in slavery under the elements of the world. 4 When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then God has made you an heir.
In ancient Rome, adoption was not primarily about rescuing infants, as we often assume today. It was a deliberate legal act tied to inheritance, identity, and social standing, especially among the elite.
Families adopted grown sons to secure heirs, preserve family names, and ensure that wealth and authority passed intact to the next generation. One of the most famous examples is the adoption of Octavian, who would later become Caesar Augustus.
Octavian was Julius Caesar’s grandnephew, not his biological son. By birth, he occupied a respectable but unremarkable place in Roman society, far removed from the center of imperial power. Yet when Caesar formally adopted him in his will, everything changed at once.
Overnight, Octavian received Caesar’s name, wealth, authority, and future, stepping into a role that no amount of personal ambition or effort could have secured on its own. His old family identity was legally erased, his debts were absorbed into Caesar’s estate, and his past no longer defined him. He became an heir not by achievement, loyalty, or merit, but by adoption.
In Roman law, this transfer was total and irreversible. Adoption placed a person under a new father’s authority, rewrote his lineage, and guaranteed his claim to inheritance in a way that blood alone did not. Once adopted, Octavian’s status was settled.
The only remaining question was how he would live into the identity he had already been given.
The Value of Being God's Child
With this context in place, notice what Paul is doing in Galatians 4. He is telling believers that God did not simply forgive them and leave them on probation. He did not free them and say, “Now try to behave as you belong.” He adopted them in the strongest legal and relational sense imaginable.
Their old identity under slavery to the law was ended. A new identity was given. And that identity came with inheritance.
Verse 6 deepens this further by showing that God sends the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying “Abba, Father.” In Roman adoption, the adopted son did not slowly earn trust or intimacy. He was immediately expected to relate as a son.
Paul is saying something radical: Christians are not meant to approach God like former slaves nervously asking permission. The Spirit inside them cries out with the confidence of belonging.
Verse 7 lands the point. Because of Christ’s finished work on the cross, those who place their faith in him are no longer slaves, but children. The Gospel Transformation Bible notes,
Reflecting on these truths, our hearts cannot sit still. We are moved with wonder as we consider the great lengths to which God has gone to comfort his people. He has sent forth both his Son and his Spirit—the Son objectively to rescue us eternally from the penalty of sin, and the Spirit subjectively to apply that rescue to our attitudes and actions in daily life. The work of the Son is “outside in,” an alien righteousness; the work of the Spirit is “inside out,” an experience in which we cry out, “Abba! Father!”[1]
This passage is not just theological, but deeply personal. It tells those who still live like servants, still anxious about approval, still measuring themselves by rules, that they have misunderstood their status. The Father has already signed the papers, the name has already been changed, and the inheritance is already theirs.
A Title That Can Crush
Several months ago, I finished a biography of Harry Truman, the 33rd US President, who took office after Franklin D. Roosevelt passed away on April 12, 1945. If you know anything about Truman, you realize the office of the president was not one he craved. In fact, Roosevelt picked Truman as his running mate for electoral considerations and largely left Truman in the dark on matters of World War II.
So when Truman assumed office, the great challenge he faced was living up to the tremendous weight of the identity he now possessed. He was now the man who had the final say on the Manhattan Project, the one who would decide the fate of millions, and the one who would be part of redrawing the global map.
To the average man, this would have been crushing, and I notice an interesting parallel to Paul’s words in Galatians 4.
There is nothing you or I could do to earn adoption into God’s family. When thoughtfully considered, this title is much too great to comprehend and tends to push Christians in one of two directions.
Some leverage this title to do great harm in the name of Christ, pushing the idea that there is something they did that deserves it. Others wither under the weight and push this reality into the background of their minds. I suspect your temptation is the latter. A.W. Tozer famously said,
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
That’s because belief determines action.
In practical terms, if we assume the title of God’s child in our minds but never treat him like our Father, we’ve missed the mark.
How Do You Live Like an Adopted Child?
The first is by solidifying in your mind what you believe. Author Jim Belcher writes, “Only when we preach the gospel to ourselves—our justification, our adoption, our union with Christ, our participation in the kingdom of God—will we have the power and motivation to obey. We need grace to be saved, and we need grace to obey.”[2]
The second is by putting this “Sunday belief” into “Monday action.” Rather than giving you specifics, I challenge you to reflect on your life this week and consider how your routine might look different if you truly lived as if you were God’s adopted child.
- Recognizing this tremendous gift, how much more grateful would you be?
- Seeing the confidence this brings, how might this change the petty situations that arise at work?
- Noticing the amazing grace you’ve received, how much more gracious might you be to others?
The concept of being God’s child is wonderful in theory, but it becomes life-changing when you live out of that reality each moment of every day.
[1]Bryan Chapell, eds. Gospel Transformation Study Bible Notes. Accordance electronic ed. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2013), paragraph 5526.
[2] Jim Belcher, Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 173.
