The Mission of God and Adoption

Lately I have begun to read, The Mission of God, by Christopher Wright. I had a church planting pastor from San Diego with whom I took a seminary class, tell me that this was the most important book that he had ever read (except for the Bible of course). Thus I bought it on his recommendation alone. It has not disappointed. Understanding God's mission from cover to cover of the Bible is no small tangential point of Christian doctrine. This book is helping me wrap my mind around God's will through the whole of the Scriptures.

In light of what you may have been reading the last couple days about our family and adoption, this excerpt served to encourage me as we move forward into adoption. Adoption truly reflects God's heart in a profound way. We aim to do what God does. As best we can, we reflect him and his character.

Deut. 10:14-19 - Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. 15 Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. 16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. 17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. 18 He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. 19 Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.


Dr. Wright comments:

But the startling claim in Deuteronomy 10 is, first, that this God who rules over the entire universe has chosen Israel of all people as his covenant partner (v. 15) and second that the power of this God over all other forms of power and authority, human or cosmic ("gods and lords") is exercised on behalf of the weakest and most marginalized in society - widow, orphan, and alien (v. 18). Indeed, the balance between verses 15 and 18 implies that when God saved Israel from their suffering as aliens in Egypt, when he fed them and clothed them in the wilderness, God was simply acting in character - doing for Israel what he typically does for others. That is what YHWH does for aliens generically. That is the kind of God he is. YHWH is the God who loves to love, and especially to love the needy and the alien.

- Dr. Christopher Wright, The Mission of God, p. 80.