The Nature of the Church, Pt. 2: The Family of God

Here is the next installment in my series on the importance of the local church.

The second important metaphor that the New Testament uses to describe the church is the family of God. This is a pervasive concept in the New Testament, and it can be argued that this is the concept that best defines how the members of the church relate to God the Father and to the other members of the body. There is no one definitive text that describes this concept in depth, but rather there are two explicitly biblical concepts that come together to give us this idea of the church as the family of God. The first is the concept of adoption, that is, God’s adoption of those who believe. Perhaps the most glorious text which describes this reality is Ephesians 1:4b-6, which declares that “In love [God] predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” This magnificent truth, declared in many places elsewhere in the New Testament, is a rich one which could take up a paper in itself, even a book! The truth that believers are children of God is one that professing believers in the visible church in the West today embrace, but they are loathe to  embrace in the same fashion the truth that because of God’s adoption, they are part of the family of God along with other believers. But this is a truth that is foundational to the concept of the family of God, and to the life of the local church. In every New Testament letter, the concept that true believers are brothers and sisters in Christ, with one Father, is assumed. This truth implies a special relationship and a special love which goes deeper than even the love between a traditional family. It is even considered by John to be a mark of a true believer in 1 John, that he loves the brethren, and John is merely echoing Jesus, who said that the love that believers had for one another would define them to the world (John 13:35). The truth that the church is the family of God is a beautiful one, but it is also a hard one, because it defines the relationship believers ought to have with all of their fellow believers, regardless of who they are.