As we continue our series on ‘Building a Passion for God’s Church’, we remember the privilege of being God’s family (1 Peter 4:17). The Scriptures often use picture language to explain what we are as a church – like ‘flock’ or ‘body’ or ‘temple’.  But the descriptions of us as family are not a metaphor to be unravelled. Our status as family is a direct reality.  We are the household of the living God (1 Tim 3)!  It’s the truth – but what I’ve been forced to think about this week, is whether anyone notices?

One danger we face in being ‘God’s family’ is imposing our dysfunctional experience of family (& all our families are dysfunctional – it is just a case of degree!) on to church.  The danger of noticing just that!  But we need the truth revealed by God to shape our experience – not the other way round!  Let me highlight 2 ways, to start a conversation about whether our church makes them obvious:

First, we relate to God as our Heavenly Father.  Jesus taught His disciples to pray to God as ‘your father in Heaven’.  The revolution was taking God, the father of the nation, to being the ‘father’ you could address as an individual.  To call on God that way – as intimately as ‘Abba’, or ‘Daddy’ (Romans 8) – is an act of unparalleled love (1 John 3:1 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!).  We don’t get to choose our family – God does.  & God picks His enemies!  But being under His Fatherhood anticipates training.  Imperfect as we are, to bear His family likeness is to copy Him in thought, word & action.  Hebrews 12 points out this requires correction.  But, like good earthly Dads, it is from love.  But unlike earthly Dads, all the correction is always for our good (not just hopeful guesswork).  Authority & Patriarchy have a bad name – bad that is men’s fault, not God’s.  His discipline is just as loving as the welcome into the family.  As the hymn ‘Praise my soul the King of heaven’ beautifully puts it:

Father-like he tends and spares us; Well our feeble frame he knows;
In his hand he gently bears us, Rescues us from all our foes.
Alleluia, alleluia! Widely yet his mercy flows’. (Henry Francis Lyte, 1834)

To have God as our Father, expects we will go through the painful joy of change to be more like Him.

Second, we relate to one another as family.  The household of God is visible to all, by who we love & how we love them.  I read once that having children is like welcoming a stranger into your home.  As God’s family we don’t choose who we love – they are chosen for us by God.  If Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers (Heb 2.11) – who are we to?  Even more, we must prioritise loving these ‘strangers’ who are family (Gal 6.10). The controlling factor of the ‘who & how of love’ is the family of God.  As it has been put:

‘It is in the family of God that I am able to care & be cared for; love & be loved; forgive & be forgiven; rebuke & be rebuked; encourage & be encouraged.  All of which is essential to the task of being a disciple of the risen Lord Jesus.  Too often, however, churches are not contexts for making disciples so much as occasions for acknowledging relative strangers. […] G K Chesterton said: ‘The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world… the reason is obvious.  In a large community we can choose our companions.  In a small community our companions are chosen for us’.  Community has been insightfully defined as the place where the person you least want to live with always lives!’ (Total Church, Chester & Timmis, 2007, p110)

To be the family of God means we will prioritise loving those we ‘don’t like’.

We are the family of God.  In the way we relate to God, have you noticed?  By the way we love others, would anyone outside notice?

In Him,

Mark Smith
Assistant Pastor