When I think of an heiress, I think of a lost and confused, spoiled, blonde woman. The tabloids follow her from one debauched scenario to the next, always supplementing the text with pinup-style pictures. Her trust fund holds her in an infantile state. It's not surprising God doesn't call his female children heiresses, but he does call them heirs--which in its Biblical context is actually far more surprising.
Why does he call us heirs? Because first, and even more surprisingly, he calls us sons. While I'm in favor of translating "man" in a gender neutral way when the Bible is using it to mean "mankind," I think gender neutral translations can do readers a big dis-service if they confuse gender on other points. When Paul's female, Jewish listeners heard that God had made them sons and heirs, they would have known exactly what the Psalmist meant when he said "God is the lifter of my head." To be a woman was at the very least an unenviable position, but to be a son meant honor and receiving the delight of the father. Sons got more education, had more power in society, and maintained a closer connection to their parents--often living with them. They were valuable.
Not long ago I spent two years in Abu Dhabi teaching English to Arabs who were one generation removed from Bedouin tribesman and who were still living out Old Testament social contracts. Marriages consisted of a father and future son-in-law negotiating a contract; the woman didn't even have to be present. That contract integrated the woman into the wider household of her father-in-law, where she would be obligated to obey almost everyone besides the girl children and sisters-in-law. While my female students entered the classroom timidly, covered head to toe in black, my male students strutted in like the world belonged to them, as--in a way--it did. Men ate together, served by women; they took and divorced wives with relative ease; they kept multiple wives if it pleased them; and they seemed to feel no twinge of conscience over trips to visit the prostitutes of Europe. Women were made for use and misuse by men.
The female, Roman converts to Christianity might have taken Paul's words in stride. Roman women were valued, could inherit, and retained allegiance to father over husband; but the Jewish listeners, like my Emirati students, would have found very surprising the assertion that women were entitled to the rights of sonship. When Paul says, "All who are being led by the Spirit of God, . . . are sons of God (NASV Rom 8:14)," he is operating from the culture-undermining assumption that God interfaces with his female children in exactly the same way as he connects with his male ones. Not only does God love his male and female children to the same degree (many fathers in patriarchal structures love their daughters), but Peter notes specifically that women are co-heirs with men "of the grace of life (NASV IPet 3:7)." God acts out his love on both men and women by connecting them to the inheritance.
So what do we men and women inherit? Or because of the lavishness of God, perhaps we should ask, what don't we inherit? The human, blonde-bombshell heiresses inherits almost nothing compared to what we are offered. Through our adoption as sons, God connects us to himself and to his human family descended from Abraham. Then he shares with us his divine nature through the spirit he puts in us, and we become his representatives in public. We have his name, speak "as though speaking the very words of God," and return to his household when this fleeting period of "daylight" (our present lives) is over. Our spiritual decent from Abraham also entitles us to inherit what was promised to Abraham: relationship with God and, ultimately, inheriting the whole world (Rom 4:13). Paul even goes so far as to say we will rule angels. Feeling pretty powerful now?
Maybe it's time to note that God isn't going to let all this amazing goodness poured out on us turn us into the infantile weaklings that trust fund money sometimes produces. Oh, yes we are heirs and will be glorified alongside our big brother, Jesus, "if indeed we suffer with Him (NASV Rom 8:17)." While God doesn't bring this suffering on us, our own broken world brings it, and he uses it to build perseverance and character; so we are asked to rejoice in it. After all, God is giving us everything we could ever want, including that we become the kind of people we've always wished we were.
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