Woven throughout the New Testament is the beautiful reality that those who are in Christ now have a new identity. We don’t “do” things to earn anything or to make us anything. Who we are drives what we do and this is the amazing reality of the Gospel.
One of our new identities is that we have been adopted into a family. You might read that statement and say, “Yeah, I’ve known that since I was a kid.” But knowing something and living in the reality of it are two different things.
An Acts 29 pastor, Jeff Vanderstelt, writes, “We are God’s family and this means that we are His children who are adopted and fully accepted and loved. We don’t do good works to be justified. We do them because we ARE justified.”
So what does this mean for your life? As you enter this week, how might you love better if you began to view the Christians in your midst as your family?
I know for me, I gladly sacrifice with joy for my wife and son, but it is a different story when I step out of the context of my “immediate” family. When we begin to live in the reality that our family is much larger than we can imagine and that our family is for eternity, we might have a shift in focus.
Families eat together, play together, share financial burdens, surround each other with love, and the list goes on and on. As we do this, the world will see our love for one another. Francis Schaeffer writes, “…without true Christians loving one another, Christ says the world cannot be expected to listen, even when we give proper answers.” He goes on to write that we should work hard to give honest and helpful answers, but he concludes this thought by saying, “But after we have done our best to communicate to a lost world, still we must never forget that the final apologetic which Jesus gives is the observable love of true Christians for true Christians.”
Read John 1:12-13 and Ephesians 4:11-32 and ask God to reveal to you how you have neglected building up your family in love and what you need to do in order to better love and sacrifice for your family.
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