Standing Out: Spiritual Family

What do we mean by Spiritual Family according to God’s design?

For a start, when we think about “God” we need to have in mind God is a family. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This Triune God is Three persons while also absolutely One. Total unity expressed in beautiful diversity.

This Triune God is revealed to humanity in Jesus Christ, the eternal Son and beloved of the Father who is fully God and fully human. Christ shows us what it is to be fully human living in community. 

Here are some questions

What was it like growing up in your family?

Did your family live beyond itself? Was there a sense of mission and serving others?

Was generosity modelled?

How did your family deal with conflict?

As we engage with our own familiar upbringing we are more aware of what we bring to the spiritual family table - the church.

We can bring positives and strengths from our culture and upbringing to the church while also negatives and brokenness. It’s important to be aware of what we’re carrying.

In the bible the idea of family is not perfect. Parents are flawed and children do not always follow parents. The bible is the most honest book in the world.

Jesus entered into our fallen human condition and fallen ideas on family. 

What do we think of when we think of “church”?

Is it buildings? Clergy? Even meetings?

Or is church the place of belonging in God that we share together as a community?

Maybe we could think of spiritual family as defined by Jesus and his relationship with his Father.

Our Triune God is our vision of family. 

The Incarnation, Jesus Christ grounds any abstract views of the family into his life with His Heavenly Father, the Spirit, and his disciples. 

Christ was no lone ranger, he submitted to and lived in community, even though there was a terrible betrayal.

God has a dream for family, which might not be what you’ve experienced or can even imagine right now.

Humanity is invited into a union with God which both respects our culture and transcends it. There is no tribe or tongue, ethnicity or gender that satisfies our desire to belong. 

Only in Christ do we find an assurance our heart’s long for to belong. There is an inner circle we all long to discover in the Trinity. 

Family is primarily derived through our relationship with our Heavenly Father.

Christ’s work on the cross opened up the way to our spiritual adoption and our grafting into the life of the Trinity. Our primary belonging is attested to our union with Christ - this is our entry into the Kingdom of God: relationship.

We don’t build our own unique relationship with God so much as we participate in the unique relationship the Father has with the Son. That relationship gives us our boundaries to explore our relationship with God.

We connect with one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. Our membership with Christ’s body is the substance of our relationships as a spiritual family. 

Our life as a church is an exploration of our common identity in Christ. We’re developing the habit of seeing one another in Christ. The practices of confession are important to reset our identities as holy and righteous. 

Our marks of spiritual family cannot be limited to our own cultural or familiar experience. We belong in a far deeper and more profound way than even our nuclear family and cultural identity. In Christ there is space for diversity, imperfection and a journey to belong.