There is a popular song which begins, “I’m so glad, I’m a part of the family of God”. Even though we are called the Family of God, the Lord deals with us as individuals. While we marry and have families and have committed interpersonal relationships still God expects a personal connection that is more than any other experience we know. Often we are able to trace our extended family tree for hundreds of years, through many generations. The Lord has a one generation view of His place in our lives.
I like my family primarily because it is my family. It is who I am most attached to and committed to. Most of the time and energy of my life are devoted to our relationship as a family. There are levels within that word, family. My oldest son is the proud father of the world’s three greatest granddaughters and I am in the family. We would not agree on how best to raise and nurture and expose those precious lives to the world’s ways. Yet I am connected and loved as a part of the family. My children are wise and intelligent and bear the marks and traits in their lives of having been members of our family. Each has chosen a relationship with the true and living Creator God of the universe. It is their relationship. It is different than mine. It came to them at a different time in their lives than did mine, yet it is. My brothers and sister are unique, intelligent and enjoyable. We have the distinct privilege of being a family with specific experiences which caused each to be exposed to the Lord in varied times and ways. Just as varied is the acceptance and rejection of what we were exposed to.
I said I like my Family. Yet as I grow older I find I love my family. Each level, each person, each complex personality offers to me the sum of their experiences and choices which I would be deprived of at their level if they were not there. As I write this, both my mother and father as well as two of my brothers have died and I am no longer able to know the impact by their personal presence. I am so glad I am a part of this family. I don’t agree with all they are and believe and practice but I am so glad we are a part of each other because I would be so much less without them. By the way, I can assure you they do not agree with all of me either. That’s okay because I’m not sure I agree with all of me either.
Their relationship with the Lord is not based on my relationship with them nor my relationship with the Lord. Each is influenced as am I by the impact of both believers and non-believers to what level we acknowledge or deny the truths of the Lord in our lives. As much as we love each other we understand we don’t understand why we understand things the others don’t understand and why they understand things we don’t. I am so glad I am part of my family and I’m so glad, I’m a part of the family of God.
As children of the Most High God, we congregate as a family of believers with many things in common. One of the more common things is the things we do not have in common. Core values are what make us believers and what make us a family. Things like the solitarily singular essence of the Lord. God the Father (whom we know as Yahweh), God the Son (Jesus) and God the Holy Spirit are one. Only he knows how that works we just accept it. We also hold that as the Creator of all things, He demands perfection which we are incapable of. He demands a penalty for failing to meet His standard. Since we could ne meet the standard not the penalty he in his great love toward us provided and became that provision for us. His shed blood on the executioner’s cruel cross became the basis for our relationship with Him. We believe if we repent of our sin and trust in His sacrifice as our atonement and the God raised Jesus from the grave to new and everlasting life then we too are part of the family and will enjoy everlasting life as well.
These things make us family. We will not agree on many things, as members of families often do. We will have differing exposures and experiences to the reality of the truths of God’s Word and that will cause us to view events and circumstances in a myriad of ways. We will agree and at times agree to disagree agreeably. The main thing is to grow the family by being the point of exposure and experience that others who are not yet believers need to see. As a family we impact each other and those who watch us as a family. Some will be drawn towards us by what they see some will not. Sometimes we will operate as dysfunctional as my family has. Sometimes we will be the perfect example of what it means to be family.
In all of this, I’m so glad; I’m a part of the family of God. We are by His grace and the miracle of the new birth, His family. I believe He is looking forward to bring us home to heaven and enjoying us individually and corporately as His family. I wouldn’t want to be in angry disagreement with any of His children then, in His presence. Nor do I want to be in angry disagreement with any of His children now, in His presence.
I’m so glad; I’m a part of the family of God. I glad for the differences I cannot seem to agree with and the commonality we agree on. Pettiness and bitterness and misunderstandings are inevitable as humans with “I am so much more right than you” complexes. I’m also glad that only our Father God is always right and we are only that right when we agree with Him. In His Word, the Holy Bible He had the Apostle Paul record in his letter to the church in Ephesus that we ought to be careful about how we communicate with each other. So as a family I hope we can agree to disagree agreeably on the differences and agree to perform that which is good as is written in the last verse of the fourth chapter of that book. “And be ye kind, one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.” And did I mention “I’m so glad; I’m a part of the family of God!”?