What we’ve covered so far are the general components of prayer, but what is it that allows a Christian to pray? As a depraved race, humanity has no right to talk with God; enemies have no right to summon the ear of their most powerful opponent. However, when sinners become saints, then they are granted the duty and privilege of prayer. Thomas Boston, the famed Scottish puritan, argued that adoption is the basis upon which Christians can, and should, pray: “The children of God [are] those who… are capable to pray acceptably: for they only can indeed call God Father. We cannot pray acceptably unless he be our Father, and we his children, namely, by regeneration and adoption.” Boston continues to distinguish regeneration from adoption in that while regeneration changes our nature, it is adoption that changes our position before God. Adoption, for the Christian, is also a Trinitarian work according to Boston: the child of God is adopted by the Father, in the Son, through the means that the Spirit employs to draw them. Boston also outlines the abundant benefits that the Christian receives in adoption: a new name, the Spirit of adoption, access to God, special freedoms, God’s fatherly love, protection, provision, correction, and an inheritance. It is the adoption of the elect by the Father, in the Son, through the Spirit that serves as the basis for a Christian’s prayer; without it, prayers are empty and go unheard.
I’d like you to think about your adoption today, and thank God for His grace.
