So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:26-28 NIVUK
A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.
Psalms 68:5-6 NIVUK
There are few truths in Scripture that are more wonderful than this. It ought to bring us to our feet in an enthusiastic and joy filled round of applause. It ought to put dancing shoes on the feet of the most conservative, reserved follower of Jesus Christ.
God takes lonely people and He gives them a family.
Praise the Lord!
As much as our individualistic culture would like to ignore it, break it down and destroy it, and replace it with self-destructive 'Me First' nonsense, family is important. Critically important. It's important for our health. It's important for our well-being. It's important for our development. It's important for support.
I realised more than at any other time how important family is when I found myself in a Romanian orphanage for children with HIV who'd been abandoned by their families because they just couldn't cope with their children's condition. A little boy, probably two or three years old, partially sighted and with crippled legs shuffled over to me while I was seated watching a children's programme put on by my team-mates and he asked me, 'Are you my daddy?'
My heart wasn't broken. No, it was blown to smithereens. I barely held it together.
We all need family. And don't try to pretend that you're an independent woman or man because you fell out with them over some petty nonsense that you can't remember and you haven't talked to them since. God created us to need family. End of discussion.
But there are times when we don't have family. There are times when our family is messed up and rejects us. There are times when we out-live them. There are times when we are thousands of miles away from them.
This is where God's wonderful plan comes into play.
Do not forsake your friend or a friend of your family, and do not go to your relative’s house when disaster strikes you – better a neighbour nearby than a relative far away.
Proverbs 27:10 NIVUK
God gives us a family. A family close by. A family that understands us, will stick by us and support us, no matter what.
A family that is more wonderful than any earthly family could be.
He gives us His family. The family of God. The church.
And this is a most wonderful family.
This family is firstly inclusive. There are no racial, political, gender, tribal, class-based or any other human reasons that would prevent anyone - literally anyone at all, from being part of the family.
This is precisely what Paul talked about in the verse below:
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:28 NIVUK
Paul is not saying that we lose our identity when we become part of the Body of Christ. No, he is saying that our identity is freely expressed, but is not a factor that binds us and divides us.
There are organisations that pride themselves on being inclusive. And these organisations try to set the standards that everyone else has to follow.
But recent history has proved that they are not. Their vision of inclusiveness is one that promotes only their warped political opinions and excludes those who dissent.
For example, I worked for years for a huge multinational with plenty of money - enough to pay their board members more in salary each than it took to run my entire office for a year. They set aside a tiny proportion of their enormous bank balance to support LGBT personnel. They supported charities with an LGBT connection. They freely and openly celebrated Pride. They set up networks for LGBT personnel, as well as racial and women's networks.
But when I asked if there could be a meeting room set aside for Christians to meet at lunch, or if Christians or even religious people could have an official network, I was slapped down with a terse email: 'We do not sponsor religion here'.
I was astounded. They were yanking billions of gallons of hydrocarbons from the Bible Belt and the Middle East - two of the most fundamentally religious places on God's earth. They were even paying for Islamic rituals to be carried out on boys in Malaysia (because it's the law there).
Yet they could not set up any form of employee network for religious people?
That is not inclusion.
I want to tell you something. The family of Christ is the most inclusive network in the world. It doesn't matter where you come from. It doesn't matter what you did. It doesn't matter what you know. It doesn't matter what language you speak or the colour of your skin. All are welcome. All.
In fact, this is not an accident. It's God's deliberate design:
‘I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.
Isaiah 42:6-7 NIVUK
Surely you will summon nations you know not, and nations you do not know will come running to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has endowed you with splendour.’
Isaiah 55:5 NIVUK
And now the Lord says – he who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, for I am honoured in the eyes of the Lord and my God has been my strength – he says: ‘It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.’
Isaiah 49:5-6 NIVUK
And one day God will finally bring His plan to fruition:
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no-one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’
Revelation 7:9-10 NIVUK
So the family of God is absolutely inclusive. There is no place for racism or sexism or tribalism of any sort. If we have a serious problem with any person or any part of the church then we have to sort it and sort it quickly. We have to learn to live with them for a short time on earth because we will live for an eternity with them in heaven.
But the family of God is also exclusive. Not everyone can be part of it. Not everyone is a part of it. A line is drawn. If you are on the correct side of that line, you are in. If you are on the wrong side of the line, you are out. And you really don't want to be out.
This is the part of the Gospel that makes many modern believers very queasy. They don't want to be responsible for condemning anyone to hell. And that's right. But I have good news for them. We don't
But they do. They condemn themselves. As Jesus Himself taught:
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
John 3:18 NIVUK
And this is the dividing line. This is the decisive factor. If you believe in Jesus and His work on the cross and follow Him, then you are part of God's family. If you do not, then you are not. It's that simple.
Paul explains this further and states that we must be led by the Spirit of God (Romans 8:14-17). This doesn't mean that we become highly ecstatic in our worship and make weird noises or lie down. No, the Bible is clear that this has a moral aspect (Galatians 5:16-26).
So we see that the family of God is both inclusive and exclusive. Inclusive in that all are invited; exclusive in that there is something we all must do to be part of it, and that is to believe in what Jesus has done on the cross.
If this seems confusing, Jesus explains it in the Parable of the Wedding Feast:
Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. ‘Then he sent some more servants and said, “Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.” ‘But they paid no attention and went off – one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, ill-treated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. ‘Then he said to his servants, “The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.” So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. ‘But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, “How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?” The man was speechless. ‘Then the king told the attendants, “Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” ‘For many are invited, but few are chosen.’
Matthew 22:1-14 NIVUK
You see, what troubled the rich man, and seemingly confused the improperly dressed guest, is that respect and honour were due to the rich man. Now, these verses aren’t encouraging the imposition of a dress code for Christian party goers who want to stick around before the buffet starts. No, as Revelation explains, clothing here represents deeds – in particularly righteous deeds (Revelation 19:8).
In other words, it’s not enough to be invited, or at the party. Your life must show it.
So for us to be part of the family, we must accept that it is inclusive of all, but exclusive, for those who believe, and that the visible, unspoken testimony of a changed and changing life bears witness to this.
But the family of God is also intrusive. It’s not a family known for its cold indifference. It’s not a family you become a part of by just turning up, doing your thing and going home. That’s not how it works. Not at all.
Paul explains, using a different metaphor to describe the church: that of a body:
If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
1 Corinthians 12:26-27 NIVUK
Happy when they’re happy. Sad when they're sad. No competing. No jealousy. No backbiting. No put-downs. No gossip. No disrespect. That might seem like a utopian pipe dream – the type of heavenly community you would admire from afar, but never even dream to be part of lest you ruined it – but that is what Paul tells us the church should be. And can be. And is, when it’s at its best.
Perhaps the strangest part of this is that we often ruin this for ourselves.
Let me explain how. We all pass through times when we need help and a friend to rely on. The church provides it. We have the attention and everything is fine. We get back on our feet. The attention dries up.
So what happens next? We throw a petty tantrum because someone else is suffering and they are getting all the attention. We are frustrated because someone else succeeds and is being congratulated.
Seriously! How childish! How utterly immature!
It pains me to say that I have seen this behaviour first time. And it is highly irritating.
I’ve also seen Christians get really annoyed when they didn’t feel the benefit: when people didn’t speak to them. When no-one visited them. Hello! Who did you speak to? Who did you visit?
You see, as Paul stated, the church is a body. A body has veins and arteries: veins to take blood throughout our body from our heart; arteries to bring it back again. Our entire body is a two-way street.
And so are our relationships with the family of God – the Body of Christ – the church. They are a two-way street. We should give if we expect to receive. If we want others to bless us, we should bless them. To be encouraged, we should encourage.
But there is another, and quite startling, way in which the family of God is intrusive. Loving members of this family, with your best interests in mind, have the right to rebuke you:
‘If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that “every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.” If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
Matthew 18:15-17 NIVUK
In other words, for their good and the good of the family of God, we have the right to intervene and help people to repent of their sin or shortcoming.
And that’s never easy.
Or at least, it shouldn’t be. If we’re overzealous with this particular teaching, we might need to be aware that someone might intervene and point this sin out to us...
The family of God is the most wonderful, the most caring, the most loving family in the world. It is inclusive – without a shadow of a doubt the most inclusive community in the world, without exception. Everyone is welcome.
But there has to be a line. There has to be exclusion. And there is. If you want to be part of the family of God, you have to accept your Father’s plan of salvation. You have to follow Jesus. That’s the line.
And there also has to be intrusion. Being part of the family of God is not a spectator sport. Not by any means. You can expect to have your emotions swing from high to low and back again while you stand alongside and care for other members of the family.
You see, a true Christian is part of this family. A true Christian accepts other family members, no matter who they are. A true Christian accepts that if Christ has loved someone enough to save them, then they must love them too.
We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
1 John 4:19-21 NIVUK
So how about you, Christian? Do you love your family?
Questions
Do you feel included in the family of God? Have you ever felt excluded? How can you stop others from feeling the same?
Do you think anyone should be excluded from the family of God? Why do you think accepting the work that Jesus did on the cross is the means of deciding who is in the family and who isn’t?
How much are you prepared to let the family of God intrude into your life?
I like my privacy and am happy to be included when I feel comfortable.
I don’t think anyone should be excluded.
I e felt excluded many times at church. When you are told. We thought about you for a particular position, but decided on someone else. It’s horrible to feel rejection.