Family of God

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named … -- Ephesians 3:14-15

Surnames are relatively modern.   In the Bible, people of the same or similar names are distinguished by region, Elijah the Tishbite, or ethnicity, Uriah the Hittite, or by tribe – of Ephraim, Judah, Levi.  Sometimes a person is referred to as being descended from an illustrious ancestor, but David was known simply as the son of Jesse.  Sometimes people, like blind Bartimaeus, called Jesus the Son of David, a messianic title.  Today, we have family names, in the West, usually of our paternal line.  Mine can be followed back to Scotland, though my genes are mixed in who knows what combination. 

All of us, though, regardless of genetics, earthly descent, race, or background, whether of angels or of men, are named from the one God and Father.  It is not a matter of knowledge or understanding.  The ignorant and untaught are children of the Most High, same as anyone, though it does them little good outside the general blessings of life.  Man has been drawn toward God through the slow, methodical spiral of history, but he has been in His image and likeness, no matter the depravity of mind or the corruption of culture.

I had a good earthly father who was with me for a long time.  He was not perfect, but I am glad to be thought, by some, much like him.  Not everybody has been so blessed.  I know too many too well who were neglected and ignored by selfish fathers, crushed and abused by petty and twisted ones.  Some have been made to feel inadequate by fathers who demanded too much, though I think a father’s job includes sometimes saying, “You can do better.” 

Our God is, in some ways, very demanding.  He says we can and should do better, be better. Then He offers us the means to be better.  He gives us the means of grace through His only begotten Son.  Which tends to make us wonder, if there is only one Son, who are all these in heaven and on earth that God claims as His children?  The Son is the Eternal God.  There can be no Father except there be a Son.  But we are the chosen, the elect – the adopted, with God Incarnate, Jesus of Nazareth, as our elder brother. 

Perhaps someone we know has not had the best of families, the best of fathers or mothers.  Someone may be alienated, outcast or abandoned by all natural relation.  We can tell them they have a family and a loving Father who knows them perfectly yet loves them fully.  They have a Father who will ask much of them and challenge them but will walk with them through the greatest trial and the darkest night, who will help them when they stumble and lift them when they fall.  Child of God, every one may be a child of God.