8:15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery leading again to fear,18 but you received the Spirit of adoption,19 by whom20 we cry, “Abba, Father.”
tn The Greek term υἱοθεσία (huiothesia) was originally a legal technical term for adoption as a son with full rights of inheritance. BDAG1024s.v. notes, “a legal t.t. of ‘adoption’ of children, in our lit., i.e. in Paul, only in a transferred sense of a transcendent filial relationship between God and humans (with the legal aspect, not gender specificity, as major semantic component).”