The Gospel's Astonishing Good News

From Reclaiming Adoption: Missional Living Through the Rediscovery of Abba Father:

"This is the astonishing reality with which the gospel’s good news begins. As Scottish theologian T.F. Torrance has written, “In his outgoing Love God the Father wills us to coexist appropriately with him as his dear children, and through the presence of his Spirit to share in the Communion of his own eternal Life and Love.” What Torrance is saying here can seem too good to be true. But, according to the gospel, it is truer than the air we breathe, truer than gravity, truer than time.

"The good news of the gospel is that God’s gracious provision of adoption, irrespective of our grievous demerit, is the activity by which he enlarges the circle of communion that has eternally existed between the three Persons of the Trinity! The joyful news of the gospel is that God the Father brings us to share in the loving communion that he forever enjoys with his eternal and natural Son through the work of his eternal and natural Son in our place and in our stead. Through adoption God graciously brings us to participate in the reciprocal love that ever flows between the Father and his Son. Not only is this the very heart of adoption; it is also the very heart of the gospel" (Reclaiming Adoption: Missional Living Through the Rediscovering of Abba Father, pp 26-27)