What’s the greatest blessing of salvation?

“I will not leave you as orphans;I will come to you” (John 14:18 ESV).

“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 Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:15-16 ESV).

[Adoption] “is the highest privilege that the gospel offers; higher even than justification… justification is the primary blessing, so it is the fundamental blessing, in the sense that everything else in salvation assumes it, and rests on it– adoption included. But this is not to say that justification is the highest blessing of the gospel. Adoption is higher, because of the richer relationship with God that it involves… To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater” (J. I. Packer, Knowing God).

This photo hangs over the fireplace at my brother’s home. It captures a moment in time when our parents were still living and we were happily safe in their care. Only a couple of years later, my mother had another child, a daughter, and within a year my father died of cancer.

It’s amazing how life changes when a home becomes fatherless.

My mother didn’t handle my father’s passing very well, so we moved from Virginia to Michigan to live with my mother’s sister. At the age of eight, I left my third grade classmates, my own bedroom, our southern yard to play in and my collie dog for the cold climes and shared quarters of a small suburban home outside Detroit. We were all aching with grief.

Later that year, in Sunday School at a church in Wayne, Michigan, I made a public profession of faith. I had heard the gospel all my life, but now I saw the reality of death and eternity with greater clarity. I wanted to be sure that I was ready to meet God when I died. I also wanted to be with my Daddy again.

The following years of my life were marked by the absence of my father. As I grew into my teen years, I began to rebel against my mother and against God. I believed in God, but I didn’t trust Him. After all, He had allowed my father to die. I knew that I needed Christ to justify me before Him, but I didn’t think that He wanted my best in this life. So, I tried to walk a fine line between receiving Christ as Savior without following Him as Lord.

It was as a teenager that a youth leader asked me why I wasn’t more serious about my faith. He said that he could tell that I believed, but my life didn’t line up with my faith. He asked, “Have you made Christ the Lord of your life?”

I tried to change the subject, but he was persistent, so I finally acknowledged that I was afraid of God. I knew He existed. I had trusted Christ as Savior. But I certainly wasn’t ready to surrender control of my life to the God who took my father away.

Hearing my response, he asked, “If your father was still living and you told him that you loved him and wanted to obey him and to be just like him, would he grab you by the shoulders and shake you? Would he look you in the eyes and say that he was happy to have you as his slave because now he would make your life miserable?”

“No way! My Dad was my best friend!” I shouted. “In fact, I used to tell him all the time that I wanted to grow up to be just like him. And he would say that he loved me, that he was so proud of me and that he would do anything for me.” I responded.

“Well,” my youth leader continued, “Your Heavenly Father loves you even more than that! And He is waiting for you to call on Him as Father. If you ask for fish, he won’t give you a snake. And if you ask for bread, he won’t feed you rocks!”

It was on that day that I began to call on God as Father. I started trusting Him with control of my life. Since then, my father wound that hurt with an aching grief, has been replaced with the joy of knowing the Lord as “Abba, Father.”

I am so happy that Jesus died on the cross for my sins, offering Himself as a propitiation through His shed blood that justified me before the Judge of Righteousness. This is a great blessing. But I am forever changed by the even greater blessing of God’s adopting me as His own son. I am a co-heir with Christ. All that belongs to Him is mine and all that is mine is His.

And someday both my Dad and I, along with all of God’s children, will stand before our Heavenly Father together, worshiping Him forevermore.