“Our righteousness doesn’t have to be earned because Christ has earned it for us. He is our righteousness. Our righteousness is in heaven, and our standing before God is not based on the righteousness we can ‘work up’ every day but based solely on the righteousness of the One who sits at God’s right hand.” —David Platt
“Adoption is the highest privilege that the gospel offers: higher even than justification. This may cause raising of eyebrows, for justification is the gift of God on which evangelicals have laid the greater stress, and we are accustomed to say, almost without thinking, that free justification is God’s supreme blessing to us sinners.
That justification—by which we mean God’s forgiveness of the past together with his acceptance for the future—is the primary and fundamental blessing of the gospel is not in question. Justification is the primary blessing because it meets our primary need. We all stand by nature under God’s judgment; his law condemns us, guilt gnaws at us, making us restless, miserable, and in our lucid moments afraid; we have no peace in ourselves because we have no peace with our Maker. So, we need forgiveness of our sins, and assurance of a restored relationship with God, more than we need anything else in the world; and this the gospel offers us before it offers us anything else. …But this is not to say that justification is the highest blessing of the gospel. Adoption is higher, because of the richer relationship with God that it involves.” —J.I. Packer
“To be right with God the judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater.” —J.I. Packer
1. Our Condition Under the Law (v.1-3)
“They’re incredibly powerful, so powerful, in fact, that sinful creatures like you and me are constantly tempted to turn them into idols then worship them as gods.” —Todd Wilson
2. The Process for Our Adoptions (v.4-5)
“He sent his Son that we might have the status of sonship, and he sent his Spirit that we might have an experience of it.” — John Stott