At Pentecost we receive the Spirit of adoption as children!

Rom 8: 15 & 17: All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father! Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ

In this verse Paul introduced an amazing metaphor, namely our adoption as God’s children. Remember that Paul was not only a Jew, but also a Roman citizen. He certainly had the Roman practice of legal adoption in mind. In summary, it was the law that when a child was adopted, he had to pass from the patria potestas (meaning the absolute power of the father) of his biological father, into that of his adoptive father.

The adopted son lost all rights to his former family and gained all the rights of a fully legitimate child of his new family. He could then inherit his adoptive father’s estate, even if other, biological sons, were after his adoption born to his adoptive father. In the eyes of Roman law, the former life of the adopted person completely disappeared. The adopted person literally and absolutely had a new father.

As in legal Roman adoption, the new relationship into which our spiritual adoption brings us in no way makes us less God’s children than his natural Son, Jesus Christ. To the contrary, it gives us a new standing as heirs of God, in fact, “joint heirs with Christ. Our natural father, which is Sin, has no right to our lives anymore. We also do not inherit Sin’s legacy of being without God, here and in eternity, anymore. And we are freed from Sin’s absolute power over us.

No, we now inherit the Kingdom of God from our heavenly Father, both in this life and in the life to come! Only God may claim ownership of us and of our children. We belong to God, because we belong to our gracious Saviour, Jesus Christ, through the work of the Holy Spirit in us.
Since the first Pentecost, we Christians received the “Spirit of the adoption as children”.

Live then as children of God!