Adoption, by its very nature, is an act of free kindness to the person adopted. If you become a father by adopting a child, you do so because you choose to, not because you are bound to.
Similarly, God adopts because He chooses to. He had no duty to do so. He need not have done anything about our sins save punish us as we deserved. But He loved us so; He redeemed us, forgave us, took us as His sons, and gave Himself to us as our Father.
Nor does His grace stop short with that initial act, any more than the love of human parents who adopt stops short with the completing of the legal process that makes the child theirs. The establishing of the child's status as a member of the family is only a beginning. The real task remains: to establish filial relationship between your adopted child and yourself. It is this, above all, that you want to see.
Accordingly, you set yourself to win the child's love by loving it. You seek to excite affection by showing affection. So with God. And throughout our life in this world, and to all eternity beyond, He will constantly be showing us, in one way or another, more and more of His love, and thereby increasing our love to Him continually. The prospect before the adopted sons of God is an eternity of love.
- J. I. Packer, Knowing God
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