The Family of Faith

Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. And he was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.” But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” (Luke 8:19–21).[1]

When Jesus returned to his hometown of Nazareth, from preaching throughout Judea, he didn’t receive what we would call a “warm welcome.” Rather than celebrating his ministry, the people wondered, “Where did this man get this wisdom, and these mighty works?” (Matt. 13:54). To them, he was just the carpenter’s son, the son of Mary, the brother of James, Joseph, Simon, Judas, and his sisters.[2]

In response, Jesus provided his memorable proverb, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household” (Matt. 13:57). All across Judea, people were coming to him, to be blessed by his teaching and healing, but in Nazareth they wanted to kill him.[3] Not surprisingly, he never went back home.

Perhaps realizing he’d never return, his mother and his siblings came to him. We may presume they came for some quality family time, but the Gospel of Mark reveals his family thought him “out of his mind” (Mark 3:21). Perhaps they’d come more for intervention than conversation. Regardless, Jesus used their arrival to reveal something about his family, saying, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it” (8:21). In translation, his words sound stark, but we should not hear Jesus’ words as disrespectful or presume he disowned his family. He did not. We can be sure that he who never sinned[4] and fulfilled the Law[5] kept the Fifth Commandment.[6]

What Jesus meant, when he said, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it” (8:21), was while God blesses us with our flesh-and-blood family here and now, what matters in the kingdom of heaven is, what the apostle Paul calls, “the family of faith” (Gal. 2:10 NET). Through faith in Christ, the apostle John explains, we have been given “the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13). And to be “born of God” transcends all other relationships. We may cherish the flesh-and-blood family God has given us, and rightly so, but our family of faith is forever.

Predestined for Adoption

In the first chapter of Ephesians, the apostle Paul tells us that access into the family of faith is not by our own choosing but God’s.We were chosen “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4a), not for anything he foresaw in us but only according to his sovereign mercy. As God said to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (Rom. 9:15).While this remains a mystery to us, it is no mystery that he is God, and we are not: “he does all that he pleases” (Ps. 115:3b).It was “out of his mere good pleasure,” as the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it, that “from all eternity [God] elected some to everlasting life.”[7]

And as God chose us, so he “predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ” (Eph. 1:4b-5a). The word “adoption” implies that the Fall rendered us, as Adam’s descendants, “children of the devil” (1 John 3:10). We were “by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3), not naturally born children of God. When God chose us, he did not look down the corridor of time and see anything worthy in us but predestined us to be his. Why would God do this? One word: “love.” “In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ” (Eph. 1:4b-5a).

If you have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, know that you have been, are, and will be loved always and forever by God. God loves you personally, not in response to your faith, but “according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace” (Eph. 1:5b-6a). God loves you personally, not in response to your love but because he is love.[8] “In this is love,” John explains, “not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). God loves you so strongly, so deeply that it will continue for eternity.

So, God chose us and predestined us for adoption, to love us just as he loves his only Son, bestowing upon us a share of his promised eternal inheritance.[9] The apostle Peter refers to it as “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven” for us (1 Pet. 1:4). Such is the case for every believer, the regal privileges of a child of God, which God guarantees in eternity by giving us his Spirit today.

Born of the Spirit

Though we were chosen and predestined for adoption, we become children of God through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, born of the Spirit.[10] God does this, Paul explains, “not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:5-7). By this “washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,” we are justified as righteous before God, adopted as his own, receiving the inheritance of a natural-born child.

The Holy Spirit’s work, however, is not once and done but continues, conforming us more and more to the image of our Savior.[11] For example, the Holy Spirit leads us to deny ourselves, as Jesus taught, to take up our cross and follow him.[12] But the Christian life is not lived in isolation but with our family of faith, which God uses to mature us in Christ, primarily through the ordinary means of grace of Word, sacrament, and prayer.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism teaches us, “The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching, of the word, an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort, through faith, unto salvation.”[13] Likewise, the Holy Spirit uses baptism as the sign and seal of our ingrafting into Christ, of our enjoying the benefits of the covenant of grace, and our engagement to be the Lord’s,[14] and as entry into his church. Also, the Lord’s Supper, as the covenant meal of the family of faith, the Holy Spirit uses, as a visible portrayal of the gospel and the means to spiritually nourish us and grow us in grace, individually and as a family. And, the Holy Spirit works not only through our private, personal prayers but also the public prayers of our assembled worship, and the prayerful petitions we offer up for one another.

The Holy Spirit’s work in us then is a family affair. As Paul explains, “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body ... and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13), and “he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor. 6:17). We are all in this together, by God’s design and the Holy Spirit’s presence, united as one with the Lord. The Christian who tries to go it alone, who forsakes “the assembling of ourselves together” (Heb. 10:25 KJV) is not only forgetting his family; he’s denying the Word of the Lord.

But still, some run away from rather than to the church. The reasons why vary, but let’s be honest: family life can be hard. Sometimes it’s easier to stay away than to live with our brothers and sisters. We can seem at times more like a household of flaws than a household of faith. But let me ask: When Jesus said, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18), did he not know that it would be built from sinners like you and me, with all our flaws, including the potential for rivalry, infighting, hypocrisy, and hurt? Heaven forbid! But he did. And he does, building his church, with the likes of you and me, that he might get all the glory!

Obedient to the Word

There are characteristic features in every family. Maybe we look alike or act alike or (in the case of the Clayton family) both. But in the family of faith, the characteristic feature is faith, hearing the gospel, believing the gospel, living the gospel. As Jesus said, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it” (Luke 8:21). Of course, anyone can say they are a member of the family, but the family traits give it away. “By this it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil,” John says, “whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:10). We’re not hard to spot: You can tell who is family and who is not.

But implicit in the name “family” is not only likeness but togetherness. There is no such thing as a family of one. Jesus said, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Matt. 18:20). And where they gather is what Christ calls the church.[15]

Sadly, today we suffer from what Terry Johnson describes as a “lack of ecclesiology.” To his point, he gives this familiar example:

A family leaves a congregation with which it has been associated for over a decade, without warning and without explanation. The members who are left behind are bewildered. They may have sacrificed for that family during a time of crises. Prayers were offered, visits made, meals cooked, funds given, and baby-sitting provided. Gone. Why? Because they, like so many others, see the church as a voluntary association, like a health club, rather than a commitment, like marriage.[16]

This is not to say that there can be valid reasons for leaving one local church for another, but the reasons are doctrinally driven and few.

More often the case is we think more like consumers than family. Somone may say, “I get more out of my Bible study group than I do from the church”; or, “I get more from my daily devotion than I do from Sunday School”; or, “The sermon podcasts of my favorite preachers are better than my pastor’s sermons.” But what each of these alternatives reveals is a misperception of God’s priority, purpose, and provision through the local church: “alternatives to the church are not the same as the church.”[17] Jesus did not give “the keys of the kingdom of heaven” to a parachurch organization, or its podcast, platform, or a public rally (Matt. 16:19). He gave the keys of the kingdom and his authority with them to his church.

What then are we called to as a family of faith in obedience to Christ? For one, we are to assemble, which is beyond obvious in the word we translate “church” (ekklesia), meaning a “gathering,” “assembly”[18] or “congregation.” The New Testament never contemplates a Christian outside of the local church but always in union with others in the family of faith, gathering in worship.[19] Second, we are to bring others into the family of faith by sharing the gospel, both near and far.[20] Third, we do not merely mobilize the gospel for converts but “make disciples” (Matt. 28:19a) in Christ, fellow family members of faith, who learn faithful obedience to Christ through us and with us. Fourth, as the church and in the church, we administer baptism[21] and serve the Lord’s Supper,[22] sacraments exclusive to Christ’s church. And fifth, we teach and preach the Word of Christ,[23] reproving, rebuking, exhorting, with patience, “in season and out of season” (2 Tim. 4:2). Of course, the church does other things, but the essence of what we do comes from what Christ has commissioned us to do.

Jesus said, “I will build my church” (Mat. 16:18), which we understand as his gathering a family of faith, through his family of faith. And this privilege we share is a further testimony to God’s grace, that he would make brothers and sisters from sinners saved only by grace through faith. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us,” John writes to the church, “that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” We are a family of faith. Thanks be to God. Amen.

[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).

[2] Matt. 13:55-56

[3] Luke 4:29-30

[4] 1 Pet. 2:22

[5] Matt. 5:17

[6] Ex. 20:12; Deut. 5:16

[7] “The Shorter Catechism” Q. 20, The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Lawrenceville: PCA Christian Education and Publications, 2007), 367-368.

[8] 1 John 4:8

[9] Heb. 9:15; Rom. 8:17

[10] John 3:6-8

[11] Rom. 8:29

[12] Matt. 16:24

[13] “The Shorter Catechism” Q. 89, The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Lawrenceville: PCA Christian Education and Publications, 2007), 396, italics added.

[14] Ibid., Q. 94, 398.

[15] For example, Matt. 18:17.

[16] Terry Johnson, Church & Ministry (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2024), 10-11.

[17] Ibid.

[18] https://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/greek/nas/ekklesia.html

[19] Heb. 10:25

[20] Matt. 28:19a

[21] Matt. 28:19b

[22] 1 Cor. 11:26

[23] Matt. 28:20a