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so believers` inheritance is as unchangeable as Christ`s priesthood is (Heb. 7:24). It faces
no division. Every heir enjoys the whole inheritance, since God is both infinite and
indivisible. God gives His all, not half, but his whole kingdom (Gen. 25:5; Rev.
21:7).
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Specific blessings that accrue for us as believers from His divine inheritance and
spiritual adoption include the most wonderful privileges one could ever imagine, both in
this world and in the world to come. Here is a summary of them, drawn from the
Puritans:
Our Father cuts us off from the family to which we naturally belong in Adam as
children of wrath and of the devil, and ingrafts us into His own family to make us
members of the covenant family of God. Adoption translates us out of a Miserable
estate, into a Happy estate, writes Thomas Cole. God is in covenant with us, and we in
him.
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By nature, Stephen Marshall says, we are Children of wrath, Children of Belial,
Children of old Adam, Children of Sin and Death, we are cut off from that Family, no
longer to reckoned of it, [or of its] Bondage, Baseness, Obligations, Curses and are
taken into Gods Family as his Sons and Daughters, that is,... he hath ingaged himself
perpetually forever to us, so that this family relationship will last forever (John 8:35).
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Our Father gives us freedom to call on Him by His Father-name and gives us a new
name, which serves as our guarantee of admission to the house of God as sons and
daughters of God (Rev. 2:17; 3:12). We are a peculiar people--his people, called by his
name (2 Chron. 7:14). That means, says Thomas Boston, that our old name is for ever
laid aside. [We] are no more called children of the devil, but the sons and daughters of
God (Heb. 12:5). John Cotton goes a step further, saying expressly that this name is
Adoption: [We] have this white Stone, that is Absolution for sin, and in that a new name
written, that is, Adoption: and if we be of a meek, humble, innocent, frame of mind, we
have this comfort.
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By the Spirit of adoption, we have access to God as a reconciled
Father through Christ. We have liberty to call God Father, which is more worth than a
thousand worlds (Jer. 3:4).
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