Adoption as the Crowing Blessing

This Easter let us once again reflect upon our Great and Good God who sent his Son to become our sacrificial lamb. By this sacrifice we can, as Paul says, "cry Abba! Father!" That is only through our adoption as children of God (Rom 8:15). I am in complete agreement with Packer quote by Cole:

Believers have not received the spirit of slavery but the Spirit of adoption (pneuma huiothesias, v. 15). This exalted status is "the crowning blessing" of the gospel, as J.I. Packer argues, while justification is "the basic blessing." This adoption not only brings status, it also brings a future.

Graham Cole, He Who Gives Life: The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Foundations of Evangelical Theology. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007), 269.