Absolutely! In fact, we see earthly adoption as a picture of our heavenly adoption. How we see this is that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, cap-stoning his creation on the sixth day by creating man and woman in his image. Adam and Eve were created to be his children, sinless and righteous with free and total access to God. God gave them everything on earth to enjoy but forbid them to partake of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This tree represented that God was king and that he was to be trusted and obeyed. But Adam and Eve questioned God’s goodness and disobeyed him, effectively cutting off all mankind from God – effectively making them and us orphans.
From the time of Adam and Eve, everyone has been following them in the same way. We question God’s goodness and disobey him. We don’t believe that God’s ways are best for us, so we go our own way. But in his holiness, God demands perfection from those who would be his children. He demands that we obey him and give him recognition in all our motives, thoughts, and actions. We all clearly fall short, and so God in his holiness must eternally punish us for breaking his commands.
But in his love and in his magnificent wisdom God provided a way where he could remain holy as well as forgive us, bringing us back as orphans into a right relationship with him! God sent his son, Jesus Christ, who obeyed God perfectly, to pay the penalty of our disobedience through a gruesome death on a cross. Jesus then rose from the dead three days later to validate that he was who he said he was, the Son of God, and that God accepted his payment on the cross.
God is now willing and ready to forgive us of our disobedience and to declare us not guilty, making us his children, ensuring us eternal life with him forever! And we receive it all by turning from our lives of disobedience and trusting in Jesus Christ alone.
So as Christians, we see the Bible saying God has made us his children – his adopted children! We were formally orphans, fatherless, and without any permanent home. But God, in his grace and at a costly price, the death of his son Jesus Christ, choose us as his child, making us his own – an offer he extends to all people.