Evangelicals Now
<< January 1998 >>

Family values

The local church as the family of God

One of the popular panaceas which some politicians prescribed during the General Election campaign was the need for a return to family values.
Now the breakdown of the traditional family unit in our increasingly secular society is a matter for grave concern. Rising divorce rates, couples living together outside of marriage, same sex relationships and all sorts of other pressures have brought about this sad state of affairs. However, before we wholeheartedly jump onto this bandwagon, I believe we need to think the issue through a little more carefully and biblically. Above all else, we need to ask if the nuclear family is indeed God's blueprint for society.
While marriage is a creation ordinance and not a social convenience, we need to recognise that the Bible and Jesus acknowledged and approved of the fact that not all people are married. More-over, the Bible and the gospel face up to the reality of living in a fallen world where relationships break down and in which people are painfully wounded.
So, what is God's provision for this? Surely it is the local church as the family of God. In every locality God calls out for himself fallen yet forgiven sinners who find acceptance in community together. And their relationship with each other is love - like that of Jesus (John 13.34-35).
So the local church should be a community in which single people are valued as much as married people, where children are God's gift and enrichment to all the members. It should be a place where the fatherless (and motherless), the widows (and widowers), the divorced and separated, the old as well as the young, can experience Christian love in action. It should be a place where those struggling with addictions, with their sexual orientation, with the effects of broken childhoods, and with all the results of living in a fallen world, can find help and hope.
Such love is not some vague sentiment, expressed in song alone. It is love in action which gladly gives an evening to the demanding person, provides hospitality to an overseas student, volunteers as a baby-sitter for a stressed single parent, makes a home for someone from a broken family, takes in a pregnant girl, gives a gift for a family to get a holiday. And so much more.
Such love is tough love - love that speaks the truth of God's Word, but has won the right to be heard. It is the love that Jesus showed in his earthly ministry. How challenging that one of the main criticisms voiced against him by his opponents was that he mixed with the wrong kind of people - not something that I or many Christians are often accused of.
If we are to develop as such a church, then it will be a costly business. But surely it is the ministry to which God has called us and about which the Sermon on the Mount is challenging us - to be salt and light (not just to talk about it).
One word of warning! When any church begins to be that kind of family, then the news gets around the neighbourhood. But who is my neighbour? And am I a good Samaritan or the religious person who passes by on the other side of the road? You don't get to choose the members of your spiritual family any more than those of your physical family.
Yes, the family matters to God. It is his church which he is calling out from every nation and from every strata of society to be his people and to bear the name of his Son, Jesus.
May God help us to be such a people!

Peter Grainger,
Charlotte Chapel, Edinburgh

Reprinted with permission from The Record, the Chapel's newsletter.