While a college student I was stunned to hear Lutheran clergy espouse the heresy of adoptionism. They argued that Christ did not become divine or not fully divine until some specific point in His earthly ministry. Usually, the adoptionists argued that Jesus was fully divine only after His baptism and testing in the wilderness. This viewpoint raises some serious questions about the identity of the One the church confesses as the only Son of the Father, begotten from eternity. First, it raises the question: Who was He that was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary when the angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy - the Son of God" (Lk 1:35)? Who then comes from her womb and suckles at her breast. A child like any other? Well, yes and no. He is a child like any other because he is flesh of our flesh conceived in Mary, just as we were conceived, except he was without sin and was conceived virginally. But if He is only flesh, the best of human flesh perhaps, then the account of His conception and birth is just another baby story, of which we have as many as we have babies. The story is hardly worth telling if it is like every other pitiful, poverty-stricken birth in the first century of our era. Luke and Matthew are wasting their breath talking about this birth if it is not the birth of God's Son, or if He might be God's Son to be named later, like some promising draft choice. He is not like any other child in that He is God of God and of one substance with the Father.

Second, it raises the question, "How does Jesus become adopted as God's Son?" What change was necessary in His person that He should now be considered worthy to divine honor and glory, who was not worthy of it previously? It is a kind of Christological work righteousness, in which the Son becomes God by doing...what? What is it that Jesus could have done to "become" divine? What extraordinary labor could have merited the full worship as God? What doing makes someone who is not God into God? It is no wonder that those who are adoptionists Christologically are also proponents of some form of work righteousness in salvation. If Jesus can work Himself into the Father's good graces, then why can't we?

"For if Christ was not, or was truly, but only afterwards promoted to divinity, how were all things made by Him, or how in Him, was He not perfect, so that the Father delighted in Him (Prov 8:30)? And He, on the other hand, if now promoted, how did He before rejoice in the presence of the Father? And, if He received worship after dying, how is Abraham seen to worship Him in the tent (Gn 18:2; Jn 8:58), and Moses in the bush (Ex 3) and, as Daniel saw, myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands were ministering unto Him (Dan 7:10)? And if, as the Arians say, He had His promotion now, how did the Son Himself make mention of His glory before and above the world, when He said, 'Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed' (Jn 17:5)? If, as Arians say, He was then exalted, how did He before that 'bow the heavens and come down' (Ps 18:9); and again, 'the the Most High uttered his voice' (Ps 18:13)?