ARAMAIC WORD STUDY – ADOPTION – ‘IMUTS (NOT FOUND IN SCRIPTURE) אמוץ   Aleph Mem Vav Sade

John 15:15: “Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.”

Ephesians 1:5: “Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,”

It seems few people give much thought to our relationship with God. Yet, when you start meditating on it and examining these relationships in light of Semitic culture things start to get a  little muddied. At one point we are God’s servants and He is our master.  Then we are his friend, and then adopted children and then just children. In our culture we have no problem with this.  We are all these things wrapped up in one.  In our culture a servant is just an employee who gets paid for his services, a friend is someone who clicks “friend” on Facebook, or they have a backyard BBQ with. An is legally a child to that adoptive parents despite the fact that the mother did not actually give birth to the child.  Then we have a child who was birthed by the mother. The Greeks are more Western minded like us and they have no problem wrapping us up all in one package. Semitic mindset, however, have a real problem with these distinctions.  These were actual class distinctions.  

In an earlier study I talked about servants ‘avada, who were actually property of their masters. We make the parallel today to an employee but that is not a fair parallel.  Today we cannot image owning a human being.   So that comparison is hard for us in a Western mindset.

Where the real problem comes is in the role of a friend, adopted child and birth child. In the eyes of God an adopted child is the true child of the adopted parents as if they gave birth to that child. However, in the eyes of the child, parents and others in the community they see a difference. I have known many who talk of their birth mother, but also speak about their mother and father. But they explain it like this: “Oh, they are not my real parents, I mean they are, but my real mother and father are…”   There has been and always will be minor social stigma in being adopted.  The adopted child will wonder why their birth parents did not want them, the parents wonder what kind of genes may be in that child, the child’s friends will look upon the child a little differently (oh, that is not his real mother).  It is not right and hopefully our culture is moving toward more tolerance.

However, culturally, I have a problem being an adopted child of God.  I mean I feel like God took pity on this poor little orphan and adopted me, ain’t God wonderful. Yet, I read that when I accepted Jesus as my Savior I was not adopted, I was born again.  That means I was actually born into the family of God like a child is born from a mother and father.  I have all the spiritual genetic makeup of my Heavenly Father. 

So why does Paul call us adopted children?  In an earlier study I established that in the Aramaic the word friend is really racham which means one who was born from the womb and loved by the birth mother who carried that child in her womb for nine months and then that child is placed in her arms. There is a difference at that moment, not a lasting one but a difference nonetheless. The mother will love the adopted child as her own but will not have the experience of carrying that child in her womb for nine months.  Thus an adopted child can not be racham. We are not friends of God we are children of God who were racham, carried in the womb and given birth, ie., born again. 

In that case we have a real contradiction in Scripture if we are adopted rather than born into the family of God. What is the real concept of born again in this case?

Well, back to the Aramaic.  What people call contradictions in the New Testament can most likely be resolved in the Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke, the language that was Paul’s native language.  In the Aramaic the word adopt is not found in this text or any other text in the New Testament that speaks of adoption.  

Ephesians 1:5  Reads in Greek and English: “Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself…”   In Aramaic it reads: “Having predestinated us to be children of  Jesus Christ to himself…”  

Why does the Greek text insert the word adoption? I haven’t yet found the Aramaic word for adopt. Perhaps it does not exist. Perhaps no distinction was made between an adopted child and one born into the family.  I have my theories, which I will only share on All Access as they are just theories. For you reading this, I only give it for your consideration. If you like the idea of being adopted by God, go with it.  If you would rather be a child born into the family of God, you have a possible Biblical basis for that. Choose what you want either way when we get to heaven, it won’t matter one bit which theory you choose.