 |  |
"Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the
spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with
our spirit, that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs" (Rom. 8: 15-17).
It is not so much the Holy Spirit addressing Himself here to the human spirit in
confirmation, but rather the joint witness of the Holy Spirit and the spirit of the believer
to the same blessed fact.
Closely associated with the law of adoption was that of the Roman will. The
Prętorian will was put into writing, and fastened with the seals of seven witnesses (cf.
Rev. 5: and 6:). There is probably a reference to this type of will in Eph. 1: 13, 14:
"In Whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise,
which is the earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession,
unto the praise of His glory" (Eph. 1: 13, 14).
W. E. Ball translates the latter part of the passage: "Until the ransoming
accomplished by the act of taking possession (of the inheritance)."
"When a slave was appointed heir, although expressly emancipated by the will which
gave Him the inheritance, his freedom commenced not upon the making of the will, nor
even immediately upon the death of the testator, but from the moment when he took
certain legal steps, which were described as `entering upon the inheritance'. This is `the
ransoming accomplished by act of taking possession'. In the last words of the passage--
`to the praise of His glory', there is an allusion to a well-know Roman custom. The
emancipated slaves who attended the funeral of their emancipator were the praise of his
glory. Testamentary emancipation was so fashionable a form of posthumous ostentation,
the desire to be followed to the grave by a crowd of freedmen wearing the `cap of liberty'
was so strong, that very shortly before the time when St. Paul wrote, the legislature had
expressly limited the number of slaves that an owner might manumit by will"
(W. E. Ball).
In all these things there is necessarily more than one aspect to be remembered. The
bearing of the O.T. teaching of the Kinsman-Redeemer and of the Hebrew law must
never be forgotten, but for the moment we are limiting ourselves to the laws in force
during the period covered by the Acts. Many passages like Rom. 8: and Gal. 3: & 4:
are given a much fuller meaning when we are able to understand the allusions to customs
and procedure that were everywhere in vogue at the time they were written.