The Name a Slave Would Never Dare Use | Romans 8:15

You did not get a spirit of fear. You got a name to call God that a slave would never dare use. There is a word in the middle of Romans 8:15 that would have made a Roman audience flinch. Abba. It is a word children used at kitchen tables. A word that domestic servants were not culturally, legally, or relationally allowed to say. To use that word implied a standing the slave did not have. Slaves used the formal word. Sons used Abba. And Paul puts it in the mouth of the least likely person in the room. You. Two words carry this verse. The first is huiothesia — the Greek word for adoption, and it does not mean adoption the way modern ears hear it. Roman adoption was legal, not emotional. When a Roman father adopted a son, that son received the full standing of the biological son. Often stronger. In Roman law, an adoption was harder to revoke than a birth. It had been chosen and formally sworn. The adopted son inherited. The adopted son bore the family name. The adopted son could not be un-adopted. Paul is not telling you God has warm feelings about you. He is telling you God has legally sworn you into the family, in a way the ancient world understood as unbreakable. For the leader who has been trying to audition your way into belonging with God for years, this is the verse that closes the audition. You are not a slave with a chore list. You are not on probation. You are not one bad Sunday away from being escorted out of the family. Paul does not use the language of employment here. He uses the language of a legal transaction that already went through.