Adoption is the reception of the newly justified and regenerated
believer into the family of God. No longer enemies, nor even strangers
and foreigners, those who have accepted Christ as their Saviour, now
receive the adoption of sons. They become the children of God by faith
in Jesus Christ. This is their pedigree and they rejoice to declare it.
A human governor or ruler may pardon a guilty criminal, and grant him a
reprieve, but he never takes him into his own family. He may forgive
the guilty one, but he cannot bestow upon him a new nature, nor can he
consent to recognize him as a brother or a son. But God not only
remits the sins of those whom He saves, He not only delivers them from
wrath and from punishment, but He gives them a new nature by which they
can respond to His love, and He takes them into His own household as
children and heirs, yea, as joint heirs with Jesus Christ. "Ye are all
the children of God by faith in Jesus Christ."

The witness of the Spirit is something not easily defined, but it is
well known by those who experience it. It is an impression or
consciousness wrought into the mind of the believer by the Holy Ghost,
which gives him the satisfactory assurance that he is a child of God.
Before this, he believes, now he knows. This witness, therefore,
expels doubt and infuses into the heart of the new-born child of God, a
calm, definite and indisputable persuasion that all is now right
between himself and his Heavenly Father. "The Spirit Himself beareth
witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." "Ye have
received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." "And
because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into
your hearts, crying, Abba, Father."

Now the graces that have been mentioned, namely, justification,
regeneration, adoption and the witness of the Spirit, are all received