“Adopted as sons of God” by Petrus Van Mastricht

“Those united with Christ are adopted as sons of God.

Therefore, those who have been united with Christ, or have fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3), God not only declares righteous, as we have taught up to this point, but also His sons (John 1:12).

And that through the grace:

(1) of predestination, whereby He elected them from eternity to this sonship (Eph. 1:5; Rom. 8:29);

(2) of redemption, and of the merit of His Son (Gal. 4:4-5);

(3) of spiritual generation (John 1:13) by His Spirit (John 3:3, 5);

(4) of union with His own Son, through which they are made brothers of His own and only begotten Son (Heb. 2:11), and have obtained the same heavenly Father with Him (John 20:17);

(5) of promise, whereby to all believers He assigned the ἐξουσία filiationis, the right of sonship (John 1:12);

(6) of resurrection from the dead, whereby they will be generated as it were anew by God (Luke 20:36), from which Paul pants so eagerly for the blessed resurrection (Phil. 3:11).”

–Petrus Van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology: The Application of Redemption and the Church, Volume 5, Trans. Todd Rester, Ed. Joel Beeke (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 1698/2025), 5: 223.