Friday | 18 July 2025
When we have become a temple of the Holy Spirit, we have received the ‘promise of the Spirit’ through faith. Gal 3:13-14. Amazingly, this is the first of the promises that the faithful men and women in the Old Testament saw from afar, and believed for, even though they were unable to receive them. Heb 11:13. The promise of the Spirit was not available to a believer until Jesus died on the cross and then rose from the dead after three days and three nights.
This promise delivers to a believer ‘the adoption’. Making this further point, Paul said that ‘when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those who were under the Law [through the cross], that we might receive the adoption as sons’. Gal 4:4-5. We see that, on account of Christ’s offering on the cross, we can receive the Holy Spirit, and this delivers to us the adoption!
The adoption is not merely a waypoint on the pathway of salvation. It describes the process through which sons of men receive the Holy Spirit of promise; are born again of God’s divine nature; and then are progressively made men in the image and likeness of God. This process is complete on the day of resurrection, when those who have been born as sons of God, and saved through regeneration and renewing as men, receive a spiritual body. Paul actually called this event ‘the adoption, the redemption of our body’. Rom 8:23. On this day, our physical body will be made immortal and incorruptible by the word of the Son. It will then be clothed with our heavenly body from the Father. This spiritual body is as physical as it is spiritual, and as spiritual as it is physical.
Further Study:
1 Corinthians 15
References:
Gal 3:13-14
Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’, that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
Heb 11:13
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the Earth.
Gal 4:4-5
But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.
Rom 8:23
Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.