by Elder Mike Chon
Who is your family? This question for most people should be easy to answer. Most of us will answer this question by saying who our parents are, who our siblings are, if married, our spouse would be considered family and if you have children they would be your family as well. What may surprise you is that as believers, who we consider family and who actually is our family may be different. Again, we need to start with the Bible as our source of truth to find out who our family truly is. Next time, we will look at the significance of this in how we live our lives.
We will begin by looking at who Jesus considers to be His family. In Matthew 12:48-50, the question of who are His mother and brothers was answered by Jesus Himself. He considers those that do the will of His Father to be His brother and sister and mother. His family are those that are true believers, not just those that are His natural family members. As my last article questioned who your friend is, we must now question who our family is.
So who is your family? Who do you consider your brother and sister? Even though we all grew up with different natural families we were all born under one spiritual father according to the Scriptures. None of us were born as righteous, and Jesus tells us who our father truly was in John 8:44. There are only two spiritual fathers: God and Satan as it written in 1 John 3:10. Before being a believer we were all sons of Satan, because we followed his ways and were disobedient to God (Ephesians 2:1-2). So our family before being a believer included Satan as our father, and all the other unbelievers as our brother and sister.
So who is your family? As a believer our father has changed from being Satan to now being God. You may have heard in the past how a parents’ love for their baby is an example of God’s love for us. Since the baby can’t do anything for the parents but yet the parents love the child unconditionally. But this picture of God’s love falls short of how great His love truly is. A better picture of God’s love, is actually found in a parent-child relationship, but it occurs when a parent adopts a child that is not their own. For the child being adopted are given new parents who they don’t choose but instead the parents choose them. Not only does the child receive new parents they may also receive new brothers and sisters that are part of this new family. As believers we are all adopted into the family of God, when before we were all in the family of Satan. Not only is our sins forgiven, not only are we justified, not only do we receive the gift of salvation, but our relationship with God has completely changed and he becomes our Father (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:5-6). So who is your family? As a believer we would consider God as our father. Along with God being our father, we also are given brothers and sisters in general who are all the other believers in the world, but specifically your brothers and sisters are those that are fellow members of your church.
So who is your family? If God is your Father, then your fellow members of your church are your brothers and sisters. Hopefully you have seen a theme in the past few articles that I have written in regards to encouragement. The main theme is that the spiritual aspect of our lives should out weigh the physical aspect of our lives. Even though children may bring physical difficulties they are an encouragement in our spiritual lives. Even through trials are difficult physically, they are an encouragement to our spiritual life. Even though “others” may make life difficult, they are an encouragement to our spiritual lives. And in the last article our friends are those that encourage us spiritually to love God more. So if we continue with this thought, if we consider our natural family and our spiritual family, our spiritual family should and ought to be the priority of our life because through our spiritual family we grow closer to our love for God and for Christ. Our adoption into God’s family and our identity with God as our Father will change the way you live your life and the way you view the church. But you will have to wait for the next article as we consider who our friends and family truly are and how we should live in light of this truth.