Word studies · Greek · Strong's G5206
υἱοθεσία · huiothesía · appears 5 times in the New Testament
In one line: Being made a full son or daughter, and heir, of God.
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery that returns you to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption to sonship, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!
Romans 8:15
Huiothesia is adoption as sons — being placed as full heirs in God's family, with all the standing that carries.
Paul alone uses huiothesia, for Israel's privilege, for what believers receive through the Spirit, and for the completed redemption still awaited. Its effect is immediate intimacy and status: “you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!'”
Huiothesia is a compound of huios, “son,” and a form of tithēmi, “to place” — literally the placing of a son. It was a legal term in the Greco-Roman world, where adoption transferred a person permanently into a new family, with a new name, new debts canceled and full rights of inheritance.
Roman adoption usually concerned an heir chosen deliberately, often an adult, which is closer to Paul's meaning than the modern picture of taking in a child. The stress falls on legal certainty: an adopted heir's place did not depend on performance or sentiment.
Huiothesia (G5206) appears only 5 times in the New Testament, all of them in Paul's letters — three in Romans, one in Galatians and one in Ephesians.
Adoption goes beyond acquittal: the justified are not merely released but brought home, made heirs “fellow heirs with Christ.” It also gives the Spirit's work a family shape — His first reported activity in the believer is prompting the word “Father.”
Pray once today beginning with “Father,” and stop long enough to mean it. Adoption is a fact to be believed before it is a feeling to be had.
the placing as a son, i.e. adoption (figuratively, Christian sonship in respect to God)
to redeem those under the law, that we might receive our adoption as sons.
Galatians 4:5He predestined us for adoption as His sons through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will,
Ephesians 1:5Press and hold adoption in any chapter and this study opens on the verse you are reading, with the lexicons, every occurrence and the commentaries beside it. The Bible is free to read.
Scripture quoted from the Berean Standard Bible, public domain. Strong's definitions are public domain. Counts come from The Pillar's own tagged text.