The Family of God

The call to follow God has always been a call to community. Since Adam and Eve, God has been calling individuals to Himself. We each individually choose to answer that call, or to reject it, but when we choose to answer His call and to draw near to Him, we are not just answering the call to an individual relationship with God, but we are also answering the call to join the community of God, the family of God.

This image of the Family of God is used repeatedly throughout the scriptures. In the earliest times it was a literal family, the family of Adam and Eve, the family of Noah, the families of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. These early families are both literal, historical, families, and also “types” for the broader family of God that would be revealed more fully only much later. These early families demonstrate the unity and the complexity of following God in community. They serve as both encouraging symbols and as illustrations of the problems that come with living in community.

We must resist the temptation to romanticize the family. Living in community has many benefits but it also brings with it many burdens. G. K. Chesterton, in answering those who generally attacked the family as being bad because it is uncongenial, or difficult, replied:

“Of course the family is a good institution because it is uncongenial. It is wholesome precisely because it contains so many divergencies and varieties. It is, as the sentimentalists say, like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy. It is exactly because our brother George is not interested in our religious difficulties, but is interested in the Trocadero restaurant, that the family has some of the bracing qualities of the commonwealth. It is precisely because our uncle Henry does not approve of the theatrical ambitions of our sister Sarah that the family is like humanity. The men and women who for, good reasons and bad, revolt against the family are, for good reasons and bad, simply revolting against mankind. Aunt Elizabeth is unreasonable, like mankind. Papa is excitable, like mankind. Our younger brother is mischievous like mankind. Grandpapa is stupid like the world; he is old, like the world.”

Chesterton is hitting on a point that is of great value to those of us who are called into the family of God. When we entered into the family of God, it is not as an only child in exclusive relationship to our Father, but rather we were adopted into a family with many brothers and sisters. Jesus is the firstborn among many brothers. We are adopted into a family and we must learn to live with our brothers and sisters in the faith. Chesterton strips away the romantic notion that living in community, in family, will be easy or comfortable. We are wildly divergent in our gifts and temperaments, our likes and dislikes, our callings and our character; and yet, we are called to live and work together.

The process of living in this kind of environment, learning to love one another, to esteem others more highly than ourselves, to serve those whom we may not even like, is a kind of living sacrifice. It requires that we die to ourselves a bit more every day. The beauty of the Cross is that while death is never comfortable, it can be transformational. Death is no longer defeat, but is now the point of redemption. If we are willing to fill up in our own bodies what remains of the sufferings of Christ for His Church, we will find that we are transformed in the process. To live in community is to experience some of the greatest joys available to us on earth, and also to place ourselves in the flaming crucible of transformation. The fires of community both warm our souls and burn away the dross. May we never draw back from all that He wants to do in us and through us in community!