We love because He first loved us.
In a perfect world, everyone would know what it’s like to be part of a healthy, loving family. But the enemy has waged war against the family, and, as a result, many are born into troubled homes where they experience few, if any, of the blessings that ought to be a part of family. Others are orphaned or abandoned and therefore don’t even have a family—troubled or otherwise.
If it were up to man, that would be the end of it. A few would be born into happy, healthy homes; the rest would just have to cope with not knowing the joys of family. But it’s not up to man. The Lord desires all of us to enjoy the blessings of family as He designed it. And so, the New Testament speaks of another family: the family of God. This family isn’t limited to a privileged few chosen seemingly at random; it is open to any who truly desire to be a part of it. In this family, orphans have parents, only children have brothers and sisters, and those who previously knew home only as a place of strife and misery discover what it’s like to have a family that provides love and safety.
This family is the church of God: our brothers and sisters in Christ. It has a worldwide aspect, but we want to consider its local manifestation. The local church is compared to a family. And not just any family—God’s family. “But in case I am delayed, I write so that you may know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). What does this comparison teach us?
Order
1 Timothy 3:15 tells us that there is an order expected in the church. We are not free to order the church in whatever way seems best to us. It is God’s family. He paid an unimaginable price for it. He, and He alone, has the right to determine how it functions. This is a truth that is largely unappreciated by believers today. Many seem to think that it’s our right to remake the church in whatever image seems best to us. (In an eerie coincidence, this new image usually turns out to be more in line with the world and less in line with the Bible.)
There are also implications beyond corporate church order. The picture of family provides guidelines for how we ought to treat one another at all times. “Do not sharply rebuke an older man, but rather appeal to him as a father, to the younger men as brothers, the older women as mothers, and the younger women as sisters, in all purity” (1 Tim. 5:1f).
Forbearance
The Lord has granted me the privilege of knowing some exceptional Christian families—shining examples of love, encouragement, and service. I haven’t polled them (yet) but my guess is that, were I to inquire as to the reasons for such family success, not one of them would be based on the bizarre notion that the other family members are perfect.
It is odd, then, that so many Christians seem to feel that perfection (in others) is required before they can have happy fellowship in their local assembly. How often do we meet saints who are out of sorts or uninvolved with their assembly and who blame their situation on the faults and foibles of the other Christians. Apart from the obvious hypocrisy, this thinking demonstrates a complete failure to understand the local church as a family.
A family doesn’t have to be perfect in order to be healthy. The members don’t live in a make-believe world where each other’s faults are either non-existent or unknown. If anything, the members are even more aware of each other’s faults than outsiders are. But the point is that they don’t dwell on each other’s failings! Love, not criticism, is the basis of their family fellowship, and, as a result, a great many aggravations simply fade away—not because the imperfections no longer exist, but because we don’t obsess on them. “Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet. 4:8).
Service
A newborn baby is only conscious of one set of needs: his own. Furthermore, he doesn’t have the skills to meet the needs of others, even if he were to recognize them. But this is a temporary situation. We expect (or, at least, we ought to expect) that, as the child matures, his concern will shift from his own needs to the needs of others. The same is true in the local church: the more a believer matures, the less he will be concerned with his own needs and the more he will be concerned with meeting the needs of others. Instead of seeking ways to receive, he will be actively looking for ways to give (Acts 20:35; Mk. 10:45).
There’s a little lesson here, too, regarding skills. When my three-year-old son wanted to help shovel the driveway, I didn’t expect he was going to cut my workload in half. If anything, my work load increased because sometimes he shoveled the lawn, instead. Did that bother me? Not for a moment! His company and his desire to help were what mattered to me. An older Christian who has unreasonably high skill expectations of younger Christians or who is perpetually irritated by the mistakes they make as they learn, betrays a lack of both charity and wisdom. On the other hand, by the time my son gets to be sixteen, he ought to have learned which direction to shovel the snow.
The biblical pattern is that new believers will grow in both their awareness of the needs of others and the ability to meet those needs, while older believers will be grateful for the fellowship and growth, not grumpily demanding that baby Christians instantly have the same skills it took them fifty years to hone. The family grows in strength and joy through this mutual service and encouragement.
Commitment
What would you think of a man who abandons his family the moment trials come? It’s unthinkable if the man has even a shred of decency. Yet countless Christians have no problem with abandoning their Christian family the moment events don’t go their way. As soon as the local church has difficulties or they have trouble with another believer in the fellowship, they leave (burning with righteous anger, of course) and join another family. Often this becomes a pattern and they flit from family to family. (Don’t worry…it won’t take as long to reach the breaking point the second time.) Rinse, lather, repeat. “Dysfunctional” is the kindest word we can use to describe this behavior.
An appreciation of the local church as our spiritual family, viewing each other as brothers and sisters in Christ, will cause us to see that the Lord expects us to be in this for the long haul, through good times and difficult times—and not just to be present, but whole-heartedly present. It isn’t enough to be a family observer—sitting on the sidelines, eating the meals, enjoying all the benefits of home but contributing essentially nothing. A mature Christian is passionately committed to his local church—taking every opportunity to meet together, cheerfully shouldering his share of the load, and constantly looking for ways to help others.
Love
Much more could be learned from the biblical picture of the church as a family. There are lessons in encouragement, sympathy, intimacy, purity, and safety. But the paramount feature of any healthy family is love. Without love, the blessings of family wither; with love, they flourish to the glory of God, the edification of our brothers and sisters, and as a vibrant testimony to the lost (Jn. 13:35).
In closing, we realize that the love of a local church family is perhaps felt in a special way by those who are otherwise alone and lack an earthly family. Our gracious Lord has made special provision for those whom others may have overlooked. May our churches be God’s outposts of love in a world of loneliness.