“—the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
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Is God not my very own Father? Is he my Father only in a sort or fashion—by a legal contrivance? The adoption of God would indeed be a blessed thing if another than he had given me being! But if he gave me being, then it means no reception, but repudiation. “O Father, am I not your child?”
It avails nothing to answer that we lost our birthright by the fall, that I have been cast out: can any repudiation, even that of God, undo the facts of my origin? Nor is it merely that he made me: by whose power do I go on living? When he cast me out, did I then begin to draw my being from myself—or from the devil? It cannot be that I am not the creature of God. Creation in the image of God is fatherhood. To be fit to receive his word implies being of his kind. No matter how his image may have been defaced in me: the thing defaced is his image, remains his defaced image. What makes me evil and miserable is, that the things spoiled in me is the image of the Perfect. In whatever manner I may have become an unworthy child, I cannot thereby have ceased to be a child of God. Is it not proof, this complaint of my heart at the word Adoption? Is it not the spirit of the child, crying out, Abba, Father? However bad I may be, I am the child of God, and therein lies my blame. Ah, I would not lose my blame, for in my blame lies my hope. It is the pledge of what I am, and what I am not; the pledge of what I am meant to be, what I shall one day be, the child of God in spirit and in truth.