The Spirit and the Cry

A Sermon preached on April 14th,1878, by Charles H. Spurgeon "Adoption - The Spirit and the Cry"

"And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" Galatians 4:6

Three things are very clearly set forth in my text:*

• the first is the dignity of believers - "you are sons;"
• the second is the consequent indwelling of the Holy Spirit - "because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts;" and
• the third is the filial cry - crying "Abba! Father!."

The Dignity of Believers

Adoption gives us the rights of children, regeneration gives us the nature of children: we are partakers of both of these, for we are sons.

And let us here observe that this sonship is a gift of grace received by faith. We are not sons of God by nature in the sense here meant.

We are in a sense "the offspring of God" by nature, but this is very different from the sonship here described, which is the peculiar privilege of those who are born again. . . .We have a sonship which does not come to us by nature, for we are "born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."

Our sonship comes by promise, by the operation of God as a special gift to a peculiar seed, set apart unto the Lord by his own sovereign grace, as Isaac was. This honour and privilege come to us, according to the connection of our text, by faith. Note well the twenty-sixth verse of the preceding chapter (Gal. 3:26): "For you are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."

As unbelievers we know nothing of adoption. While we are under the law as self-righteous we know something of servitude, but we know nothing of sonship. It is only after that faith has come that we cease to be under the schoolmaster, and rise out of our minority to take the privileges of the sons of God.

Faith Brings Us Justification

Faith works in us the spirit of adoption, and our consciousness of sonship, in this wise: first, it brings us justification. Verse twenty-four of the previous chapter says, "The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith." An unjustified man stands in the condition of a criminal, not of a child: his sin is laid to his charge, he is reckoned as unjust and unrighteous, as indeed he really is, and he is therefore a rebel against his king, and not a child enjoying his father's love.

But when faith realizes the cleansing power of the blood of atonement, and lays hold upon the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, then the justified man becomes a son and a child. Justification and adoption always go together. "Whom He called them He also justified," and the calling is a call to the Father's house, and to a recognition of sonship. Believing brings forgiveness and justification through our Lord Jesus; it also brings adoption, for it is written, "But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name."