Orphan Care / Galatians 3:29-4:7

Well, church, it is good to see you this week. If you have a Bible with you, Galatians chapter four is where we are going to land. We will get there in just a little bit.

If you are just joining us, we started a new series last week called Gospel Transformation. In this series, we are looking at how the power of the gospel—the good news of Jesus Christ—has the ability, unlike anything else that has ever existed on planet Earth, to transform a human life and to transform the very society and culture in which we live.

Last week, PJ walked us through the beauty and the importance of how that gospel transformation begins with us personally, and then begins to move its way out within the body of the church so that it transforms us communally. But the beauty of the gospel, if we look at it rightly, is that its aim is never to stay just within us or just within our church. The aim of the gospel is to go even further—that through us, it might spread out over these four walls and into the community around us, so that we would see our society transformed as well. That is why Jesus called us the salt of the earth and the light of the world in Matthew chapter five. That is what the gospel wants and intends to do through us: to bear witness against the dullness and the darkness around us, bearing weight and pushing back the collateral damage of hurt, pain, and injustice that sin has caused in our culture.

Matthew 5:13-14 (NASB)

’You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty [again]? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. ’You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden;

The Crisis at Our Doorstep

With that understanding of the gospel’s intent in mind, we as a church began prayerfully asking the Lord last year to help us discern the areas of brokenness in our culture—specifically here in Fresno—that the gospel wants to transform, and that maybe for a while we have turned a blind eye toward. We prayed that in those areas the Lord revealed, His Spirit within us would encourage and empower us to stand up, speak out, and engage where we have been silent in years past.

While there are literally dozens upon dozens of issues and injustices around us that we could engage, there are three in particular that the Lord began to burden us with to prayerfully consider: the issues of orphan care, literacy, and racial reconciliation. These are three prominent issues in our culture, but specifically here in Fresno. We will look at literacy and racial reconciliation in the weeks to follow, but today, we want to look at the issue of orphan care.

Whether you are aware of it or not, the issue of orphan care in our culture—let alone our globe—is at a paramount crisis right now. Looking at both the global and local perspective, there are an estimated 18 million children who are orphans across the world today. By orphans, I mean both parents are gone out of the picture with no family. That number could grow up to 150 million if you count children with single parents teetering on the edge of losing custody.

Here in the United States alone, on any given day, 400,000 children are in the foster care system. In 2015, there were 670,000 children who went through foster care in America. Out of those, 100,000 are currently awaiting adoption right now, meaning parental rights have been terminated and they are waiting for somebody to adopt them. The average child in foster care in America will spend around two years there, but in 2013, nearly 25,000 aged out at the age of eighteen having spent their entire childhood in the system.

In California, there are 32,000 children in foster care in this state alone right now. Eight thousand of those children are in the Central Valley of California, and 2,000 of them are right here in Fresno. There are 2,000 children in this county who do not have a home today. Those statistics are staggering. And as one of our partner organizations, City Without Orphans, tells us so beautifully: every one of those numbers has a name. Every one of those numbers has a soul and is made in the image of God with dignity and worth, even though they may currently be wrapped up in a broken garment. Every single one of them has a name.

The Greatest Orphanage on Earth

The condition around us is dire. The need for these children to find families and hope is massive. When we talk about the care and rescue of orphans, and when we talk about adoption, it is not just some abstract theory. It is not merely another man-centered humanitarian cause facing us. Orphan rescue and adoption sit at the very center point of Christian theology. Our entire Christian worldview hinges on the reality of what the Heavenly Father did for us in our salvation.

By definition, an orphan is one who has been stripped away from their parents or family, primarily due to death or sin. Spiritually speaking, that is exactly what happened to us before God the Father came after us. Prior to the fall in Genesis chapter three, when God created humanity, He blessed us with three significant aspects of family connection with Him.

First, He gave us identity. We were made in the image of God with dignity and worth, created as members of His family. He is the one who gave us our name and our position as sons and daughters of God.

Second, along with identity, He gave us intimate access. God the Father was not a distant reality. In the garden, God was intimately near, granting us His voice, His presence, His affection, His power, and His will. Access was granted to us in creation.

Third, He gave us an incredible inheritance. Every promise of God was ours. All of eternity was secured for us in His presence. We had access to the tree of life, and our future was secure in Him.

Yet, in one unspeakable moment of rebellion and distrust, all three of those things were stripped away. In an instant, planet Earth became the largest orphanage known to man. Sin alienated us from the Father and removed the intimate access He had granted. Death ended the family life we once enjoyed and handed us over to a new family—one that Ephesians chapter two describes as ruled by the prince of the power of the air, making us sons of disobedience.

Ephesians 2:2 (NASB)

in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

For the first time in human history, we were fatherless. The Bible describes our condition as poor, wretched, unclothed, enslaved, and without hope. Every single human being who has ever lived is born into a spiritual orphanage.

Yet here is the beauty of the gospel: God did not just sit by and say, “Man, I really feel sorry for those kids; I hope somebody does something.” In His grace, God initiated toward us. He did something about it to rescue us, reclaim us, and reestablish the identity, access, and inheritance we had lost.

Galatians 4:4-5 (NASB)

But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

When the time was right, God made the tough call to inconvenience Himself. He sent His own Son into the stench of our orphanage called the world, that His Son might offer His life for us and bring us back into the family of God.

The biblical term for this rescue is adoption. Adoption is the legal act of establishing someone who formerly was not part of the family into full standing within the family.

I remember this reality so clearly from two years ago when my wife and I were adopting two of our daughters. We stood in that courtroom, and you could feel the weight of the moment. The judge recounted the history of what these two little girls had walked through. He looked us soberly in the eyes and asked, “Are you prepared now to take on the weight and the responsibility of what this will cost you to bring them in and give them a new home, a new family, and a new life?”

We looked into his eyes and said, “By God’s grace, yes.” In that sober moment, the paperwork came to us, we signed their names over to ours, and the judge slammed his gavel and declared, “It is complete.” There has perhaps been no more profound moment in our lives than that.

That is exactly what God did with us. By sending Jesus Christ, He satisfied the righteous demands of His own justice. When we received the payment He made through faith, God signed over the paperwork from Satan back to Himself to take legal custody of us for all eternity.

Reclaiming Identity, Access, and Inheritance

The moment God signed those adoption papers, three things were restored to us. First, we received a brand-new identity.

Galatians 3:26-29 (NASB)

For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.

One of the problems in the Galatian churches was the ongoing debate between Jewish and Gentile Christians. The Jewish Christians were debating whether Gentile believers had the right to claim full belonging in Christ’s church. For two thousand years, the Jews had identified themselves primarily by their flesh—by genealogical lineage or ceremonial works. Along came these pig-eating, uncircumcised Gentiles claiming they had full access to God by faith alone. Many Jewish believers felt you needed extra qualifications to belong.

Paul stepped in and said, “No. That is not how it works.” When you have been adopted by faith, your identity is no longer attached to your past deeds or your past bloodline. Your identity is wrapped up in the present grace and mercy with which God saved you. Based on those grounds alone, there is no longer Jewish Christian and Gentile Christian; there is just Christian.

I have five daughters: three biological, and two we adopted two years ago. When I introduce them, I never say, “Here are Emma, Sarah, and Abigail—these are our daughters—and these other two kind of came along later.” No! When I introduce my daughters, they are all my daughters. They all share the same identity, which is no longer attached to their past, but secured in present and future grace.

Second, we have been given intimate access.

Galatians 4:6 (NASB)

Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’

Jesus Christ is the true, legitimate Son of God. If anybody was illegitimate, it was us. Yet Paul tells us that the Spirit of Christ now lives within our hearts. Through adoption, we get to cry out with the exact same claim of relationship that Jesus has with the Father. There is no junior varsity and varsity here. We have the exact same access.

It is the same with my daughters. It is not as if three have intimate access to me and two do not; the ground is entirely level. That is why Paul uses both terms: Abba, the Aramaic word for father, and Pater, the Greek word for father. You are not separate anymore. You both have equal access to claim God as your Father.

Third, we have our inheritance reclaimed.

Galatians 4:7 (NASB)

Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.

In both Galatians 3:29 and 4:7, Paul uses the word heir. An heir inherits the full promise of the father’s estate. In the first-century Roman world, slaves had no rights to the estate; only sons did. But Paul says that because of adoption, you are no longer slaves. You are sons and daughters, which makes you heirs. You possess the full inheritance of the Father: the present reality of His love, presence, and joy, along with the promise of the full consummation of His kingdom to come.

From Vertical Grace to Horizontal Rescue

When we look at present-day adoption, the vast majority of those children are helpless victims. But when you look at our spiritual condition before Christ, we were not innocent victims—we were rebels and enemies of God. It was our sin that alienated us; it was our death that separated us. Yet in spite of that, God lavished His love upon us and brought us into His family.

1 John 3:1 (NASB)

See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and [such] we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.

If God would do that for us while we were His enemies, how much more should we take this vertical grace we have received and extend it horizontally to the helpless victims among us?

A true understanding of God’s vertical grace must transform itself horizontally. We were once orphans. God wants to use rescued orphans to go rescue orphans. This is where our theology must line up with our mission. If we have a theology of adoption without mission, adoption remains nothing more than a metaphor. If we have a mission of adoption without theology, it becomes just another humanitarian cause. Adoption is an expression of who we are and what has been done for us. If we ignore the brokenness around us, we deny the validity of our own rescue.

As Russell Moore has noted, adoption in the church cannot merely be a “Plan B” for those struggling with infertility. As precious a grace as adoption is for couples walking through infertility, it cannot be relegated to a backup plan. If we view adoption as only for a select few, we evidence a Darwinian theology of love rather than a gospel theology of love. The gospel is unconditional, and God’s heart spills over for the fatherless.

Psalms 68:5-6 (NASB)

A father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows, Is God in His holy habitation. God makes a home for the lonely; He leads out the prisoners into prosperity, Only the rebellious dwell in a parched land.

Psalms 146:9 (NASB)

The LORD protects the strangers; He supports the fatherless and the widow, But He thwarts the way of the wicked.

Job 29:12 (NASB)

Because I delivered the poor who cried for help, And the orphan who had no helper.

Deuteronomy 10:18 (NASB)

’He executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing.

Those passages are not just metaphors for spiritual adoption; they reflect God’s literal heart to rescue the physical orphan. How does He execute justice and defend the fatherless today? He does it through us.

Proverbs 31:8-9 (NASB)

Open your mouth for the mute, For the rights of all the unfortunate. Open your mouth, judge righteously, And defend the rights of the afflicted and needy.

Psalms 82:3 (NASB)

Vindicate the weak and fatherless; Do justice to the afflicted and destitute.

Isaiah 1:17 (NASB)

Learn to do good; Seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, Plead for the widow.

James 1:27 (NASB)

Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of [our] God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, [and] to keep oneself unstained by the world.

That word visit in James 1:27 means to care for by means of rescuing. It is the same concept used in Hebrews to describe how God visited us to rescue us from our plight.

A Beautifully Messy Journey

Growing up, I had very little awareness of orphan care. I did not know many people who were adopted, and my world was fairly sheltered. After college, when I read James 1:27, the Lord began opening my eyes. Early in our marriage, my wife and I thought about adoption as something we might do down the road, but like many couples, we focused on having biological children first. Three biological kids later, fostering or adoption was not on our radar.

While living in Dallas, we were part of a church that had a deeply ingrained culture of adoption. It was all around us. At Christmas in 2012, my middle daughter came to us and said, “I don’t want Christmas gifts this year. I want an adopted brother or sister.” We thought, Oh, that’s sweet, and bought her presents anyway.

The next year, in 2013, we moved back to Fresno. As Thanksgiving approached, that same daughter came to me again and said, “I don’t want gifts this year. I want to go get a brother or sister who needs a home.”

By that point, the Holy Spirit had been convicting us deeply. We took a few days as a family to go out to the coast and pray. The Lord nailed us. That statistic about 2,000 kids in Fresno County’s foster care system weighed heavily on our hearts. We decided to enter in through the foster-to-adopt route to help bring that number down.

We partnered with Koinonia, a local agency here in town. The certification and training were sobering. They prepared us for the hardships ahead, because children in foster care are there due to tragedy, and that trauma leaves deep wounds.

Like many families, we started with our preferences: “Maybe a sibling set, definitely under six years old since our youngest is six, and preferably multiracial.” Sure enough, the first placement offered to us was two Caucasian girls, both older than six—because foster care agencies love to test your faith! They were half-sisters who had been through five different homes over two years in foster care, and had even experienced homelessness on the streets.

We spent two months getting to know them. I remember sitting with the oldest, who was nine at the time, and asking her, “What has been the hardest part about being in foster care?”

She looked at me and said, “I just don’t feel like I’m a fit anywhere.”

The night we took custody of them, they arrived at our home. My wife and I had taken a family photo, turned it into a puzzle, and left it on the table with the two pieces representing their faces removed. When the girls walked in, we asked, “What’s missing from this puzzle?”

They said, “Us.”

We said, “Why don’t you put those pieces in?” They placed their pieces into the puzzle, and we told them, “It seems like it fits now, doesn’t it?”

It was a beautiful moment, but the journey was not simple. That first Christmas, I realized that when we pulled out our big box of handmade ornaments from our other three kids, these two girls had almost no history or memories to hang on the tree. My wife and I searched eBay and bought every Hallmark ornament made in the years they were born. We placed their few baby photos inside them and packed them into the ornament box. When we opened that box at Christmas, their minds were blown seeing ornaments from the years they were born.

Before the adoption was finalized, our social worker suggested we ask the girls if they wanted new names. At first, I hesitated—they were already getting a new last name, and I could not fathom changing a nine-year-old’s first name. But the social worker urged us to consider it.

Knowing the insecurity the oldest carried, we thought of the name Rebecca, which comes from a Hebrew root meaning “a secured knot.” For the younger one, we chose Hannah Grace—Hannah meaning grace, paired with Grace as a middle name: grace upon grace.

We sat down with them and said, “Your names are beautiful, and you can keep them. But if you had been born into this home, knowing what we know about you, these are the names we would have given you. It is entirely up to you.”

With tears in their eyes, they looked at us and said, “We want those names. We want that identity.”

Walking this out has been beautifully messy. We have wrestled with bonding, grief over our previous family dynamic, behavioral challenges, and trauma. But over the last two years, I have watched God’s grace settle those little hearts and grant them identity, access, and inheritance. It is a living picture of the gospel.

How We Can Respond

What does it look like for us as a church to dive further into gospel transformation in orphan care? Let me leave you with several practical steps.

First, we need awareness. This sermon is part of that. On Saturday the 21st, we are hosting the Central Valley Orphan Care Summit right here at The Well, put on by the Central Valley Christian Alliance for Orphans. There will be multiple speakers, workshops, and twenty different organizations represented. This summit is not just for people who want to adopt; it is for singles, couples, and anyone who wants to become educated on how to help. You have until Monday to register online.

Second, consider fostering. The goal of foster care is often reunification with biological parents once they receive the help they need. Some kids need a home for a short time; others need one for years. There is a massive need for families willing to foster older kids, sibling sets, and children with disabilities. The tragic reality of foster care is that older kids, boys, non-white children, and children with special needs are the least likely to find homes. Who will step up to rescue them?

Third, consider adoption—whether locally through foster care, privately, or internationally. There are millions of children around the world waiting for a permanent family.

Fourth, look into preventative care through organizations like Safe Families. They step in before state intervention, providing temporary care for children while biological parents get the support and stabilization they need.

Finally, you can provide wrap-around support. Not everyone is called to adopt or foster, but everyone is called to care. You can financially support families who are adopting. You can give to organizations like City Without Orphans. You can deliver meals, provide supplies, become certified for respite care to give foster parents a weekend rest, and commit to faithful prayer.

My prayer is that we would cultivate a culture of adoption in this church—that anyone walking through our doors would see a tangible reflection of God’s kingdom through diverse, rescued orphans who have found a home.

Today is Sanctity of Life Sunday, a day we remember that every single life matters to God. How might the Lord be calling you to participate in gospel transformation? Let us allow the gospel to transform us so that through us, it spills over these walls and helps bring an end to the orphan crisis in our city.

Would you pray with me?

Father, thank You for Your precious, rescuing mercy. Thank You for sending Your Son, Jesus Christ, to ransom us into a new family with a new identity, intimate access, and an eternal inheritance. God, transform our hearts so that Your gospel might go out from this place and transform our city. Use us, as rescued orphans, to rescue others in our day. We ask this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.