If you’re like me and most other people, you are a blood-relative of the family that claims you. Although some in this world are adopted, most of us are not, and do not fully comprehend what it means to be adopted. I know that I don’t.
That’s why it’s hard for me to understand the passages in the Bible that talk about us being adopted into the family of God. I don’t normally preach in this venue, but I will this time. If you don’t want to hear it, just don’t read it. Romans 8, Galatians 4, and Ephesians 1 all talk of our adoption into God’s family as His children, being lavished upon with all that comes with sonship.
Listen to just a few verses.

“In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” Ephesians 1:4-10, NASV

In spite of what Paul says about adoption, I’ve always thought that it was kind of a second-class existence…not quite as good as blood, and not quite as safe and sure. I know that flies in the face of everything that is said in Scripture. I am only telling you what I feel, at times.
That has, thankfully, begun to change. Part of that change came in an “Aha!” moment as I read a portion of the article, Blessed Are the Barren by Sarah Hinlicky Wilson in the December 2007 issue of Christianity Today (beginning on page 22). I’m going to bore you yet again in this writing with a quote from that article. Ms Wilson says this concerning Jesus and His lineage.

Jesus, the new Moses, is the natural-born, only-begotten Son of God, but he is not the natural-born son of Joseph. Yet he must be Joseph's adoptive son. Two Gospels trace at great length Jesus' genealogy through Joseph, even while they both insist that Joseph played no part in Jesus' conception.

Matthew starts with Abraham, moves fourteen generations to David, another fourteen to Jeconiah, and a final fourteen to Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. Luke moves in the opposite direction, starting with Jesus at the age of thirty, "being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph," through many sons and fathers, until the end when we reach "Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God."

Through adoption, Jesus is the son of David and heir to the kingdom. The genealogies are pointless unless adoption matters; unless it is real; unless the ingrafting really happens.

If that doesn’t open your eyes immediately, you’re either brain dead or you just don’t care. Think of it. The only way that Old Testament prophecy could be fulfilled was if Jesus’ adoption by Joseph was considered by God to be as good as blood lineage. And if God considered that to be so, how much more does He consider our adoption into the family of God to be as good as anything human blood lineage could do.