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Adopted into God’s Family: Exploring a Pauline Metaphor is unavailable, but you can change that!

The relationship between God and his people is understood in various ways by the biblical writers, and it is arguably the apostle Paul who uses the richest vocabulary. Unique to Paul’s writings is the term huiothesia, the process or act of being “adopted as son(s).” It occurs five times in three of his letters, where it functions as a key theological metaphor. Trevor Burke argues that huiothesia...

have pride of place in any treatment and understanding of Paul’s soteriology. But if certain metaphors, such as propitiation, underscore the objective side of salvation, other metaphors, including huiothesia, tend to focus more on what happens to us—that is, they look at salvation from the subjective or experiential side and focus more on the result of what is achieved for the people of God.20 Whichever way we look at it, salvation, according to the apostle Paul, is profound and many sided. Stated
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