What does the Old Testament have to say about Orphan Care:
- Psalm 10:14 But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted; you consider their grief and take it in hand. The victims commit themselves to you; you are the helper of the fatherless.
- Isaiah 1:16-17 Wash and make yourselves clean. Take you evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right, seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.
- Psalm 68: 5-6 A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.
What does the New Testament have to say about orphan care:
- James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
New Testament and the Doctrine of Adoption:
- Romans 8:14-17 For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘ABBA, Father’. The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God and if children heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
- Ephesians 1:3-8 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the kind intention of his will , to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he lavished on us.
- Galatians 4:4-7 But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a women, born under the Law, so that he might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘ABBA, Father!’ Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.