Scripture Daily

Context No. 2002 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 48:1-7: in context

1After these things, someone said to Joseph, “Behold, your father is sick.” He took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. 2Someone told Jacob, and said, “Behold, your son Joseph comes to you,” and Israel strengthened himself, and sat on the bed. 3Jacob said to Joseph, “God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and blessed me, 4and said to me, ‘Behold, I will make you fruitful, and multiply you, and I will make of you a company of peoples, and will give this land to your offspring after you for an everlasting possession.’ 5Now your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you into Egypt, are mine; Ephraim and Manasseh, even as Reuben and Simeon, will be mine. 6Your offspring, whom you become the father of after them, will be yours. They will be called after the name of their brothers in their inheritance. 7As for me, when I came from Paddan, Rachel died beside me in the land of Canaan on the way, when there was still some distance to come to Ephrath, and I buried her there on the way to Ephrath (also called Bethlehem).”

The aged Jacob, near death, blesses Joseph and does something striking with Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, who had been born in Egypt. Your two sons, he says, who were born to you before I came, are mine; Ephraim and Manasseh, even as Reuben and Simeon, will be mine. He takes Joseph's sons and makes them fully his own, giving them the status and inheritance of his own firstborn sons, adopting them as though they were his children rather than his grandchildren.

Jacob's act is one of adoption: he takes these two, who were his grandsons, and makes them his own sons, counted as Reuben and Simeon, given full standing and a full share in the inheritance. They did not become his by birth; he was not their father. He made them his own by his choice, granting them the place and portion of true sons. And this pictures a grace that reaches to us. For Scripture says that God, by his choice and grace, adopts us as his own children, giving us the standing and inheritance of sons, though we were not his by nature. He predestined us, Paul says, for adoption as children through Jesus Christ; we have received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, Abba, Father. As Jacob took Joseph's sons and made them fully his own, so God takes us, who were not his children by nature, and makes us his own by grace, granting us the full standing and inheritance of sons. This is a wonder worth dwelling on. To be adopted is not merely to be forgiven or tolerated, but to be brought into the family, given the name, granted the inheritance, made a true son or daughter with full standing. And this is what God does for those who are his in Christ: not keeping us at a distance as servants or strangers, but adopting us as children, giving us his name, making us heirs. We were not his by nature; we are his by grace, adopted, brought into the family, granted the full inheritance of sons. This changes how we stand before God. We come not as outsiders hoping to be tolerated, but as adopted children, given full standing in the family, able to call God Father. Jacob made Joseph's sons his own, counted as his firstborn; and God, by a greater grace, makes us his own children, adopted in Christ, given the standing and inheritance of true sons and daughters, no longer strangers but family.

Do I come before God as an outsider hoping merely to be tolerated, forgetting the grace by which he claims me, or can I take hold of the wonder that God adopts those who are his in Christ as his own children, as Jacob made Joseph's sons his own, giving me the full standing and inheritance of a son and the right to call him Father, no longer a stranger but family?

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