God's Spiritual Family
To be in God's eternal family,
we must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ
and receive His gift of salvation.
Here's Dr. Gene Getz:
The key phrase in this Principle is
eternal family. Eternal family.
The interesting thing, however,
in this passage of Scripture, Jesus uses
his own earthly family to illustrate the
eternal family, the spiritual family.
And we see that here in Matthew
chapter 12 beginning in verse 46:
He was still speaking to the crowds
when suddenly His mother and
brothers were standing outside
wanting to speak to Him.
[And] someone told Him, "Look your mother
and your brothers are standing outside,
wanting to speak to You."
Now it's very interesting, that if you go
to Matthew chapter 13. And if you look
ahead to that chapter, you will see that
His brothers' names were: James,
and Joseph, and Simon, and Judas.
And it says, He also had sisters.
Now that was simply means this:
After Jesus was born, Joseph and Mary
had children normally.
It's very clear from Scripture
that Jesus had brothers and sisters.
Now they were half-brothers,
half-sisters in that sense.
So, the mother and the brothers are standing outside.
Now initially, we also know that
His family basically rejected Him.
Now we don't know about Mary and
how she felt about him initially.
But we do know that His brothers and
His sisters were really disturbed with
the fact that He claimed to be the Messiah.
Initially they rejected Him.
But we also know from Scripture that
eventually they recognized that their
half-brother, Jesus, was more than their
half-brother. He was also the Son of God.
And we see that verified on the day of Pentecost,
really, in the upper room.
Because we read in Acts chapter 1, verse 14:
Now this is, remember,
after Jesus had gone back to heaven.
And after Jesus told them to go back,
and go into this room, and wait.
And they did. And here we read:
All these were continually united in prayer,
along with the women, including...
[Get this. Who?]
...Mary the mother of Jesus, and His brothers.
It doesn't say His sisters were there.
Perhaps they were back in Nazareth.
But his brothers had come to Jerusalem.
They were there when the Holy Spirit descended.
And of course, God used them dramatically--
His brothers--particularly James and Judas.
Because James became the lead elder
in the church in Jerusalem.
That was Jesus' half-brother, James.
And Judas, who was later called Jude,
wrote a very significant little letter in
the New Testament. It's placed right
before the book of Revelation.
And Jude, speaking by inspiration of the Holy Spirit,
gave us a powerful little letter
in relationship to how to deal with
false doctrine and false prophets.
So initially, these men and sisters--
probably brothers and sisters--rejected Jesus.
But ultimately, they understood and
came to believe in Jesus Christ.
Not just as their half-brother, but as the
Son of God, and as their Savior.
Now in this context, when these
brothers were outside, along with Mary,
and wanted to talk with Jesus.
And He was inside this house--
must have been a very large house.
Because He was speaking,
even to a multitude, inside the house.
But notice, it says:
But He replied to the one who told Him...
That they were on the outside waiting.
..."Who is My mother and who are My brothers?"
And stretching out His hand toward[s]
His disciples, He said, "Here are My
mother and My brothers!"...
And He goes on to expand that with these words:
...For whoever does the will of
My Father in heaven, that person is
My brother and sister and mother."
And what He is doing there,
is introducing us to the concept of the church.
He is introducing us to a mystery that is
going to be revealed.
And He is starting to reveal that mystery.
And we read about that in Ephesians
where Paul, later on, wrote these words
about the mystery of the church:
By reading this you are able to
understand my insight about the
mystery of the Messiah. ...
Now you're going to see, that Jesus is
going to talk about the mystery of the
kingdom of heaven or the secrets of the
kingdom of heaven.
I believe that Jesus is projecting ahead
to this revelation that Paul received.
Along with other apostles.
About the church--the family of God. So, we read:
By reading this you are able to
understand my insight about the
mystery of the Messiah.
This was not made known to people
in other generations as it is now revealed
to His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit...
And we know that that is referring to
the apostles--the apostles of Jesus Chris.
These men that Jesus chose to reveal Himself.
And when He said: They are sitting in that room.
And saying to them, as He went out to greet them:
Who is My mother and My brothers?
He referred to the disciples. He referred to the apostles.
They are indeed members of the family of God.
He segued from His earthly family to
illustrate that there is going to be
an eternal family that's coming into being-- it's known as the church.
And here we read about it.
And so he explains, Paul does, through revelation:
...The Gentiles are coheirs...
This is the mystery revealed.
...members of the same body,
and partners of the promise in Christ Jesus
through the gospel.
And there he uses the word body,
the human body, to illustrate the fact
that we are the body of Jesus Christ.
Now later, he goes on to describe
God's eternal family--actually referring
to the household of God.
And Paul continues in verse 18 here in
Ephesians chapter 2:
For through Him [that is Christ]
we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. ...
Who is that? All people who believe in Christ--
both Jew and Greek.
...So then you are no longer foreigners and strangers...
Directing his thoughts to the Ephesians
who are formerly Gentiles. He says:
...So then you are no longer foreigners and strangers,
but fellow citizens with the saints,
and members of God's household...
There he uses the term "God's household."
God's family. God's family.
And that's what He was referring to.
That's what Jesus was referring to when
He gestured to the disciples and said:
They are My brothers. They are My sisters in Christ.
He's laying the foundation.
But here in Ephesians--and Paul often did this--
he changed metaphors to get the point across. He says:
...God's household, built on the
foundation of the apostles and prophets,
with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone.
The whole building...
See, he changed his metaphors--the whole building.
Now earlier he had referred to the body of Christ.
That's an anatomical metaphor to
illustrate the church.
And then he referred to the family, the household--
which is a familial metaphor to illustrate the church.
But here he refers to an architectural metaphor.
Isn't it amazing how Paul used different metaphors
to illustrate the church?
And believe me, there is no one metaphor
that that can describe the beauty
and wonder of the family of God and the
church of Jesus Christ.
So we see Paul describing this. And so he says:
...The whole building, being put
together by Him, grows into a
holy sanctuary in the Lord.
You also are being built together
for God's dwelling in the Spirit.
So here we have reference to the family of God.
And Jesus is laying the groundwork by
segueing from His own family--
earthly family--to the spiritual family.
And this leads us to a
Reflection and Response question:
How would you describe a local church
that is functioning as a loving, unified family--
as brothers and sisters in Christ
doing the will of the heavenly Father?
Well the fact is we could answer that
question with many references,
many scriptural references.
But there's one I think that encapsulates it--
says it all, in a sense.
And Paul used the metaphor--
at least inferred the metaphor--
in Romans chapter 12, verse 10.
When he referred to God's spiritual family.
That which Jesus was illustrating and
projecting ahead to what was coming
after the church was born. And this is what Paul wrote:
Show family affection...
You see there, immediately,
Paul is keying on relationships.
And family affection can help us
to understand what it really means
to be the members of the family of God.
By the way, the irony here is that Jesus
did not have a functional family.
And as we're going to see, His brothers and
sisters rejected Him.
Eventually they accepted Him.
But Jesus also knew what it was like to be in a dysfunctional family.
But He's going to bring into being a family,
the family of God, to reparent
dysfunctional human families.
And that's the beauty, I think, of this passage.
When He says:
Show family affection to one another
with brotherly love. ...
And there He uses a Greek word, one Greek word.
It's a compound Greek word: philadelphia.
Very easy to say because we understand that word.
Particularly in the United States
because we have a city called Philadelphia.
And it's actually called the city of brotherly love.
Which is kind of contradictory when you
take a look at what happens in any city
in the United States.
But here Paul uses this word to describe
the church. That we are to be devoted to
one another in brotherly love.
Now I said it's a compound word.
Because the Greek word for love--
from which this word comes--
brotherly love. Philadelphia.
Phila comes from the Greek word phileo,
which is one of the words is used for love
in the New Testament.
So you see that in philia--phileo.
And then you have another Greek word.
It's part of the compound word,
which is "adelphos." And that means "brother" in Greek.
And so you put it together, you have phila-delphia.
Philadelphia. The city of brotherly love, as we call it.
But here, Paul is using this word to
describe the fact that we are brothers
and sisters in Jesus Christ. It's generic. We're to:
...Outdo one another in showing honor.
So here you have a beautiful
description of what God intended
to happen within the church of Jesus Christ.
And I love that metaphor.
And I love that illustration.
Because it tells us that God has a
purpose in the church--the family of God.
And it's to re-parent people who come into the church,
who come out of dysfunctional families.
And in the New Testament world,
the majority people that became
members of the church, came out of
dysfunctional families. Even including
the Jewish community.
And today we need that kind of concept
in our lives as a church--a family of God--
that can re-parent people. So here's the Principle.
I've called it God's Spiritual Family.
To be in God's eternal family,
we must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ
and receive His gift of salvation.
And once we're in that family,
we can have the wonderful experience
of relating to our brothers and sisters in Christ
in order to demonstrate to the whole world
that we're Christ's disciples.