“All those led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father!’ The Spirit Himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children.” [Romans 8:14-16 HCSB]
Fear is an atmosphere the enemy of our soul loves, promotes and rejoices in. The devil knows that if he can keep us in a spirit of slavery to fear, he has effectively made us irrelevant in the kingdom of God.
Fear is one of the greatest issues of our time. It is promoted daily in the media and on social media. It comes through loud and clear. We are to fear the virus. We are to fear our government is not being truthful about the virus. We are to fear the vaccine. We are to fear those who refuse to be vaccinated. We are to fear the vaccine will not be enough to stop the virus. We are to fear our economy will never recover. We are to fear our economy being opened up without better safeguards.
Wherever your opinion on this virus-and fear pandemic, there is enough fear to go around. But notice the solution Paul provides in Romans 15 … “you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba Father!’”
The antidote to a spirit of slavery to fear is “adoption.” The word for adoption is “huiothesia” and it means to be adopted into a divine family. We know it is a divine adoption because Paul links that adoption to the Spirit of God. The word he uses for “Spirit” is “pneuma” and signifies the Holy Spirit of God is involved in that adoption.
Now we have the closest of relationships … instead of crying out in fear we cry out “Abba, Father!” as we remember that our relationship with God is far stronger than our fears.
