"In his Father's Likeness"

I'm in the Library reading a book (A History of Women in the West, Vol. 1, p. 366). In it, the author speaks of how a father would be taken to see a child after childbirth. If the father accepted the child, it was taken into the family. If the father did not, it was left exposed to die. A son was accepted and brought into the family only if the father accepted the child as "in his father's likeness" (i.e. proving it was his son).

This has tremendous implications for our own adoption into the family of God. When we are re-created in the likeness of the father through our new birth in Christ, it means that we are accepted into the family of God.