F.A.I.T.H.-- A

Forgiveness
Acceptance
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Not only are we forgiven, we are accepted and adopted into God's family. Paul uses the imagery of Roman adoption a lot in his letters. Knowing Roman adoption practices help us to better know how God looks at us. When someone was adopted in Roman society, their past name,and all of their past debts were wiped clean. They were given a new family name. A biological child could be disowned, but an adopted child could never be disowned. This is God's grace. We have not only been shown mercy and forgiveness, but grace and acceptance. Our old debts paid for and wiped away, our old name (representing our old identity) is done away with and a new name/ new identity is provided. If you've been forgiven and accepted into God's family (which on the human side, only requires our belief in it) we are like adopted children. I heard another beautiful analogy about a newly adopted child and his new parents.
The adoptive parents found out, only a few days into housing their newly adopted son; that at dinner the child was stealing food to hide in his room. Rather than the parents getting mad at their son, they found out that in his 1st home, the child was deprived of food for days on end, and had developed the practice of stealing food from the dinner table whenever he could in order to survive. The parents weren't mad--but of course they didn't want him hiding food away in his room. As an adopted child God is not mad at you--when He sees you He sees holy, blameless and pure. As an adopted child God is not mad at us when we "hide food away in our rooms" so to speak--He corrects us and helps us, yea of course. But isn't that what any loving Father would do?