FAM­I­LY MAT­TERS by Pas­tor Julien Cyrus

With God, fam­i­ly mat­ters. God speaks in the lan­guage of fam­i­ly. Fam­i­ly is a way of think­ing, com­mu­ni­cat­ing, and func­tion­ing. Fam­i­ly is about iden­ti­ty and in­her­i­tance with­in an in­ti­mate en­vi­ron­ment.

Like every oth­er in­sti­tu­tion, the fam­i­ly is di­vine­ly struc­tured. The head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God (1 Corinthi­ans 11:3). Roles and names may dif­fer, but we are made one for the oth­er and are ac­count­able one to an­oth­er.

God is not just ‘the Man up­stairs’, but iden­ti­fies as our heav­en­ly Fa­ther. Je­sus ad­vis­es that when we pray, we must ad­dress God as “Our Fa­ther in heav­en” (Matthew 6:9).

Je­sus came as Mes­si­ah, but more im­por­tant­ly, iden­ti­fied as the on­ly be­got­ten Son of God. He ar­rived on earth through the medi­um of a fam­i­ly head­ed by Joseph and his wife, Mary, to whom he sub­mit­ted as a son.

God, the Fa­ther, be­cause of his great love for us, has called us his chil­dren. When we be­lieve the gospel and re­ceive Je­sus as our Lord and Sav­iour, we ac­cess the right to be­come God’s sons (John 1:12).

There­after, we are no longer strangers, but mem­bers of God’s very fam­i­ly, cit­i­zens of God’s coun­try and be­long to God’s house­hold (Eph 2:19). We al­so re­ceive God’s Spir­it and our adopt­ed spir­its cry, “Ab­ba, Fa­ther” (Ro­mans 8:15).

Fam­i­ly is es­tab­lished on the foun­da­tion of mar­riage. A mar­i­tal re­la­tion­ship is a repli­ca of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Christ and his church. The hus­band gets to func­tion as Christ and the wife, as the church. Christ loved the church and died for it. The church loves Christ and lives for him! So, with­in the fam­i­ly, Christ is the ul­ti­mate re­cip­i­ent of our ser­vices.

In Luke chap­ter 15, Je­sus shares the ex­pe­ri­ence of a fam­i­ly–a fa­ther and his two sons. The younger son dis­in­her­it­ed him­self by with­draw­ing his por­tion of goods, along with his en­thu­si­asm and sup­port from his fam­i­ly’s es­tate.

He then moved away from son­ship and fam­i­ly, to or­phancy in a far-off place where he wast­ed his re­sources with his prodi­gal lifestyle. Be­ing alien­at­ed from fam­i­ly and fa­ther­ly over­sight, he was cut off from a sus­tain­able source and found him­self try­ing to sur­vive by feed­ing swine in a field.

In that fall­en state, he re­mem­bered that he did not have to con­tin­ue ‘play­ing or­phan’ be­cause he had a fam­i­ly and a true fa­ther who was a great provider and the source of all bless­ings.

He re­alised that he could change his des­tiny with a sim­ple change of mind. This is called re­pen­tance when one stops do­ing the wrong things and starts do­ing the right things.

Up­on his re­turn, his fa­ther wel­comed him with the best robe, a ring, and shoes–first-class treat­ment. Son­ship can­not be earned; it is a priv­i­lege sov­er­eign­ly im­put­ed to us by a lov­ing, com­pas­sion­ate fa­ther with­in the con­text of fam­i­ly.

A sim­ple change of mind and a recog­ni­tion of fam­i­ly led to a changed life. That day, he dis­cov­ered that fam­i­ly tru­ly mat­ters.