“Reading Romans: Debtors, Slaves, Adoptees, Heirs”
- Dr. Todd R. Wright
- Jul 19
- 5 min read
And just like that their life was transformed! That is what has happened for the Christian.
![[1] Painting in the Grotto of St. Paul, Ephesus, late 5th century](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ff6591_17ca03eacccd4ae6a898355272d4ffec~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_634,h_752,al_c,q_85,enc_avif,quality_auto/ff6591_17ca03eacccd4ae6a898355272d4ffec~mv2.jpg)
Romans 8:12-25
July 19, 2026
Dr. Todd R. Wright
We are nearing the end of our series, but Paul still has much to say to the congregation gathered in Rome. Here, as elsewhere, he is particularly adept at mining local customs to make his theological points and to help people understand the will and ways of God.
For instance, when he was in Athens, he talked to people about a shrine he had noticed to an unknown God. He used it as an opportunity to preach about the God who made the world and everything in it and who raised Jesus from the dead.[i]
For the folks in Rome, he draws on the image of being adopted. After all, the city was legendarily founded when orphaned twins, Romulus and Remus, were suckled by a wolf and then rescued by a shepherd, Faustulus, and his wife, Acca Larentia, who raised the boys as their own.[ii]
Now, despite that story, adoption in first Century Rome, was not what you are thinking of.
Scholars say, “In the Roman world, adoption was a social institution that [wealthy, powerful,] Roman fathers used to secure a suitable adult male heir in order to pass on their household and inheritance.”[iii]
It was not to care for the orphaned or a way for childless couples to make a family.
Verity Jones explains that Paul here is borrowing the concept of adoption from Greek or Roman law, since Jews did not practice adoption, and the word never appears in the Hebrew scriptures.[iv]
Leon Morris says adoption is “a useful word for Paul, for it signifies being granted the full rights and privileges of [belonging to] a family [in] which one does not belong by nature.”[v]
Think about how brilliant Paul’s use of adoption in this letter is!
Paul is nudging the Romans to consider their situation in light of a known practice.
They had seen adoptions. Maybe it was a local senator; or a wealthy landowner; or someone in the congregation who had no heir, and so they initiated legal proceedings to make a nephew, or a cousin, or a friend’s son, their own son. The child was given the family name, a place in the family home, and an inheritance.
And just like that their life was transformed! That is what has happened for the Christian.
Jones draws the parallel: “One is not born a Christian; one becomes a Christian.”
And to be clear, just like the Romans, we become Christian when God chooses to adopt us!
We symbolize this when we baptize – with a splash of water and a few questions – we are adopted into the family of God, and renamed Christian, and marked as Christ’s own forever!
Not because God needs an heir – God already has a son – but as an act of generous love!
Or to put it another way – as an act of pure grace!
Like adopting a three-legged dog from the shelter, God says, I want you! Really, I do!
Not because we are so cute; nor out of pity; and not because God is banking on our potential.
God just wants us.
It is a baffling decision, but one that produces, in the adopted, wonder and gratitude and loyalty!
Or at least it should, if we understand what it means! Paul is determined to make it plain.
David Lose hones in on Paul’s “heir” language to help us consider the implications. He writes:
“Imagine with me for a moment, the delight you would experience in discovering that you had a long lost uncle or aunt who had made you the heir to their [vast] estate. You’d wake up one morning and discover that they had left you riches beyond count, that your major financial worries were over, and that you really didn’t have to worry all that much about the future.[vi]
Then he asks, “If that scenario happened, how would you feel? What would you do? Or, more to the point, what would you do differently?”
What would you answer?
Maybe you’ve played the parlor game where you imagine what you’d do if you won the lottery.
When I was writing this sermon, the mega millions jackpot was about $672 million.
That’s a bigger number than most of us can process, but the usual answers are something like:
Pay off my debts.
Invest.
Quit my job.
Help family; help friends.
Buy a nicer house, car, clothes.
Travel.
Do something I love to do, like open a bagel shop, without worrying about profitability.
Give some of it away to causes I care about.
Lose isn’t satisfied with the usual answers. He pushes:
“What would be different about your day-to-day attitudes, practices, habits, and outlook?
How would knowing that your future is absolutely secure change your present?
What he is getting at is that being a joint heir with Christ due to God’s unmerited grace ought to leave a mark. Paul says it ought to free us from living a life of fear with a slave mindset.
Eugene Peterson describes the transformation with his paraphrase in the Message:
“This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life.
It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike, ‘What’s next, Papa?’”[vii]
Do you live like that?
If Paul is right about this unbelievable inheritance …
then we ought to be living like a child at a 4th of July parade[viii] – standing on tip toe to try and see the next float, or the local high school band, or the scout troop flinging candy into the crowd; we ought to be dragging people to the Amtrak depot because our train has come in;
we ought to be climbing a tree like Zacheus, at the mere possibility that what we hear is true!
Paul is indirectly asking the Romans whether they live like that,
like they believe something wonderful is coming,
because if they’re not, then they haven’t heard the gospel he wants to bring them yet!
It has been nearly 2000 years since Paul wrote this letter to Rome, so it is fair to ask whether his words to them about adoption have molded us, inspired our teaching, seeped into our liturgy.
Have they? I ask because some of us were raised in the faith and cannot remember a time when we didn’t feel like we were part of the family of God.
Others came to faith (and the church) later – introduced by a friend, invited by a neighbor, maybe drug by their children after VBS – and chose to stay, to stick with it, to study and grow.
So it would be understandable if you think you were born into this family, or chose it.
But the truth is that every one of us has been adopted into this family.
That’s the gospel in a nutshell. That’s grace. That’s the point Paul is trying to make.
Because once you embrace the idea that God refused to leave us orphaned, that you are part of a big family, a joint heir with Christ, then your world will never be the same.
How? At least this:
You’ll never have to worry about being abandoned or left wanting for the blessing of God.
You’ll not be inclined to brag about your superiority or lament a lack of worthiness –
because you’re marked as God’s own for God’s own baffling and brilliant reasons!
You’ll also stop dismissing other children of God as somebody else’s problem – they are family!
[i] See Acts 17:16-32
[iii] From Erin Heim’s reflections on the text for workingpreacher.org, 7/19/26
[iv] Here and following, from “Up for adoption” in the Christian Century, 7/3/02
[v] From The Epistle to the Romans
[vi] Here and following, from “Three in One Plue One”, at workingpreacher.org, 5/25/15
[vii] See Romans 8:15
[viii] This image is adapted from Doug Bratt’s reflections on the text for cepreaching.org, 7/23/23
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