The Church is a family
Have you ever been told you are related to someone famous? People often ask me if I am related to Chris Moyles, the DJ – I’m not! But I am related to God. Not in some distant way, but intimately – God doesn’t have any grandchildren – only sons and daughters. That is one reason why we can’t rely on any faith our earthly parents had, but must come to Jesus ourselves.
The John passage shows us that by believing in Christ we have become God’s children, who will inherit the full blessings of being adopted children.
Earthly families have their ups and downs and often some people who we put up with because they are family! The church family is the same in a lot of ways, but we are meant to speak into each other’s lives to help us grow to be more like the Father. In the first letter to Timothy, Paul encourages us to speak into each other’s lives in an honouring way. Encouraging rather than rebuking older men like you would your earthly father, speaking to younger men like you would a brother (although not so much like my teenage children speak to each other at times!). Likewise, older and younger women as mothers and sisters.
For many of us the church has great power as a second family. In the Old Testament book of Ruth – the foreigner Ruth joins Naomi’s family saying “Your God will be my God and your people my people.” As so many of us live so far from earthly families, the church being family together is powerful and helpful.
Pray: Thank God for church as family and ask for his blessing on it.
Recommended extra reading
Knowing God (J.I. Packer)
