Romans 8 Adoption Analogy from Trump Family!
Romans 8 has a beautiful passage on adoption into the family of God so that we get to call God the Creator of the whole world "Abba! Father!". That is the greatest privilege anyone will every have! However such great privilege comes with great responsibility. The recent Republican National Convention (RNC) provided a great metaphor for both the privilege and the responsibility side of what it means to be counted as a child of God!
Trump Analogy
Donald Trump has two groups of people who speak on his behalf, his campaign employees and then his own family. His campaign employees always refer to the Donald as Mr. Trump, very respectfully. His family on the other hand just say Dad. They have the privilege of associating closely with Him which got them the chance to speak about him to an audience of millions of people watching the RNC.
Trump's employees who call him Mr. Trump can say whatever the heck they want, short of manhandling reporters, and get away with that. But not so if you are family. The great privilege of being family comes a great and arduous responsibility which is that every word they say is analyzed and judged. On the first night of the RNC Melania Trump, Donald Trump's wife, gave a very good speech for someone on that stage for the first time in their life. The speech was well received by the audience. However, an hour after the speech it was a catastrophe (here, here) merely because she had borrowed a couple of lines from Michelle Obama's speech from 2008 Democratic National Convention (DNC) address.* There is great responsibility if one is family!
Analogy Breaks Down
Romans 8 provides us with the greatest of privileges and it also comes with the greatest of responsibilities. When people claim to be children of God, others will very carefully watch and judge. This creates an onus on the one claiming to be family to be a responsible witness. The place where the analogy breaks down is that with politics, where appearance is reality, as long as one is responsible in one's appearance it works. Not so with adoption into God's family! When one is adopted into God's family, it is total ownership - every aspect of one's life needs to reflect God's nature. This is beautifully explained by Jesus in John 13:33-35...
33 “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come. 34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
We Need Help
Maintaining appearances is easy, what is difficult is living a life where every aspect of our life is permeated by the love of Christ. This is a great responsibility. If we think we can love others as Christ loved us, with our own strength and resources, we are dead wrong - we are naive if not delusional about the power of the selfish gene in us. We need the Help! In fact, the root of the problem for Melania Trump's speech is that she did not get help from professional political speech writers (here, here). Instead she got her personal friend to write the speech. Ended up coming short. Jesus says the Holy Spirit is our help.
John 14:26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
The passage from Romans 8 about adoption says it is the Holy Spirit who empowers us to call God "Abba! Father!".
Romans 8: 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 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!”
The Holy Spirit who gives us the privilege to call God "Abba! Father!" is also the one who helps us live into the enormous responsibility of adoption, which is to love others as Christ loved us in all areas of our life. The one who lives into both sides of this equation is the one that will be harmoniously balanced and will life of great witness to the love of God in Christ.
*Disclaimer: Melania is a wonderful woman. She has shown herself to be strong and capable. Her mistake was one of a novice to politics and easily forgivable. I am not bashing Melania at all here. I merely couldn't resist how the whole episode is an analogy for adoption into God's family.