Book of the Month/September 2014

In this wonderful book, Children of the Living God, Sinclair Ferguson carefully discusses the new birth, the glory of adoption, and the ramifications of living together in God’s family.

Regeneration “means to come to share in the risen life and power of Jesus Christ, and to enter into vital fellowship with him” (p. 18).  This is the work of God, and no one else can do it. When He does it, He displays the nature of His power — which is infinite. “It is no easier for God to give you a new birth than it is for him to give it to the worst man who ever lived” (v.  21).

“There are, then, two dimensions to our sonship. The first is re-creation (or regeneration); the second is adoption, God’s acceptance of us into his family” (p. 26).

Adoption “is not a change in nature, but a change in status” (p. 36). We are men before God does this, and we are men after. But before God brings us into His family, we are members of another kind of family, with a usurping alien father. The devil is our father, using all the gifts and faculties that God gave our race to hasten the day of our damnation. When someone is truly converted (which is not the same thing as joining the church), he is adopted by a new Father, and his status changes completely. His old faculties are still operational, but they are pointed in a different direction entirely, devoted to a new love.

When we are brought into God’s family, we are being changed into human beings. So with that being the case, what were we before then? The answer is that we were “wreckage of human” — and headed toward the abyss, the outer darkness, where our status would finally become “ultimate wreckage of human.”

Ferguson describes our plight this way:

“Think for a moment of some great man whose life has been ruined by addiction. He has gambled away his resources; he has drunk away his senses; his family has abandoned him; his bedraggled appearance betrays the fact that his only home is old, uninhabited buildings. Yet,  when he speaks, there is a reminder of the home, the breeding, the education, he once had. But he is incapable of bringing himself back to the original status. The marks of his former dignity remain, but only underline the tragedy of his present condition. So it is with man. The wonder of the gospel is that God has restoration plans” (p. 122).

But God has interrupted our sad slow spiral down toward the bottomless pit.

“The basic structure of John’s thought is that we have been born again. The new life we have received works itself out in a variety of ways” (p. 49).

In the second part of this book, Ferguson addresses how this new life is in fact worked out. Having discussed the firm foundation of the new birth and legal seal placed upon that new birth by the Spirit of adoption, Ferguson moves on to discussion what life in the family of God is actually like. He first discusses “family freedom,” and then moves on to “fatherly discipline.”

God had sonship for us in mind from before the creation of Adam, and as we have seen in the gift of Christ, our sin and rebellion did not deter Him from this ancient purpose. His plans for our sonship remain, despite the fact that we threw ourselves for a time into the devil’s lineage, the devil’s family.

This is a small book but it is densely packed with Scripture, and with the kind of wisdom that flows out of packing Scriptures this tightly together. This is evangelical scholarship at its pastoral best. It is a short book, but meaty enough to really satisfy. I would highly recommend it for anyone looking for a book to help disciple a young believer. It would also be a great book for a book group looking for something really edifying to go through together. Really worthwhile.