All in the Family
Rev. Res Spears
Walking in Truth and Love • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Let’s play a little game this morning. I’m going to name a famous family from television, and I want you to call out the TV show about that family. OK?
We’ll start with an easy one to get you in the groove: The Partridges? Right!
OK, the Huxtables? The Ricardos? The Bradys? The Cleavers? The Ingallses? The Conners? This one’s a bit more recent: The Crawleys? (Downton Abbey)
And one more: The Bunkers? Right, All in the Family.
And I’m going to end with that one, because that’s the title of today’s message: All in the Family.
Rudyard Kipling once wrote this about families: “All of us are we--and everyone else is they." It’s been said that “A family is a clan held together with the glue of love and the cement of mutual respect. A family is shelter from the storm, a friendly port when the waves of life become too wild.” [http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/f/family.htm]
Of course, I don’t have to tell you that not all families are this way. Just think back through the TV families we mentioned earlier.
Certainly the Partridges and the Cleavers and the Ingalls families all seem to have conformed mostly to this utopian view of family relations.
But what about the Ricardos? What about the Conners? What about the Bunkers? Maybe not so much.
Thinking back on his own family, the comedy writer Robert Orben once said, “Who can ever forget Winston Churchill's immortal words: ‘We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills.’ It sounds exactly like our family vacation.” [http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/f/family.htm]
Does that sound like anybody else’s family vacations? Sometimes, right?
Well, the truth is that as much as we all might like our families to be like the Huxtables or the Cleavers, sometimes we all look at lot more like the Conners or the Bunkers, known more for raised voices and slamming doors than for gentle words and hugs.
Of course, that’s not how things were meant to be. But, as with everything else in this sin-broken world, families got all twisted up when Adam and Eve brought sin into the world.
Remember that God had created them and placed them into a garden where there was perfect peace and harmony, giving them the single commandment not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
But when they disobeyed God, everything started to go off track very quickly.
Suddenly, they needed to hide the nakedness that just a few verses earlier had brought them no shame. And then God comes along and asks, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
And then we see the beginning of the breakdown of the family, as Adam blames Eve for his own disobedience.
12 The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.”
But things go from bad to worse in the very next generation, as we see Cain brutally murdering his brother Abel.
And lest we think that the family failure of sibling rivalry has run its course, biblically speaking, with Cain, remember that it was still strong between Jacob and Esau and between Joseph and his brothers.
In fact, the Book of Genesis is chock-full of failed and dysfunctional families.
And the dysfunction doesn’t end with the Book of Genesis.
We see in the Book of Exodus that Miriam, the sister of Moses, gossiped against him and tried to usurp his position as God’s prophet to the people.
We see in the accounts of Samuel the great problems within King David’s family, problems that split the family, brought great shame upon David, and briefly plunged Israel into chaos.
We see in the time of the kings of Israel and Judah — as described in 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles — that violence against and power struggles among family members are common and recurring themes.
In the prophetic books, we see the prophets of God condemning the family “as the source of corrupt teaching and worship” and directly contributing to the brokenness of the relationship between Israel and God. [Michelle J. Morris, “Family,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).]
From that first sin in the Garden of Eden, DYSfunctional families seem to have been the norm. Maybe you can relate.
And that shouldn’t come as a surprise to us if we understand just how sin twists up everything that God made straight.
There is no part of the world that isn’t twisted up by sin. There is no part of our lives that hasn’t been knotted into a mess or even torn apart by our rebellion against God.
We’ve made a mess of it all, quite frankly.
But Jesus makes all things new. He made the blind see. He made the lame walk. He raised the dead to life. He came and lived and died and rose again, so that we who were dead in our trespasses could have LIFE through faith in Him.
When we turn to Him in faith, He makes us new creatures, new creations. We are reborn in Him.
And since He makes things new, since He redeems what was broken, it should not surprise us that Jesus redeems the family, too.
But He has done this by redefining what family is. Look at Matt 12:46-50:
46 While He was still speaking to the crowds, behold, His mother and brothers were standing outside, seeking to speak to Him.
47 Someone said to Him, “Behold, Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside seeking to speak to You.”
48 But Jesus answered the one who was telling Him and said, “Who is My mother and who are My brothers?”
49 And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He said, “Behold My mother and My brothers!
50 “For whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother.”
Now, I don’t think Jesus was disowning His blood relatives here. I think the point He was making was that He had a NEW family whose connections were deeper and more significant than the simple fact of sharing a blood line.
The disciples had become His family by virtue of having been adopted into the family of God. They were His brothers and sisters now.
This family of FAITH would be the family that would finally look and act the way families were always intended to look and act.
And this new family of faith is so important that Jesus said it might be necessary for His followers to walk away from their blood relatives in order to be a part of it. Look at Luke 14:26:
26 “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.
Now, it’s important to understand that the word “hate” here is hyperbole. It’s an exaggeration to make a point. Jesus isn’t suggesting that we should actually HATE anybody, much less our family members.
What He’s saying is that we need to be prepared to set aside everything that’s important to us to follow Him, because Kingdom relationships should matter more to us than even family relationships.
And His promise in Matthew 19 is that those who do so will receive far more than they’ve left behind.
29 “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name’s sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life.
And what we see as we leave the Gospels and look at the Book of Acts and then into the Epistles is that the Church has become the family of faith. The Church is now the manifestation of God’s design for family relationships.
“While it may have been necessary to leave a biological family in order to follow Jesus, the Church functioned as a new family and was prepared to receive new brothers and sisters.” [Michelle J. Morris, “Family,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).]
Jesus has redeemed the family by making it something new. We who follow Him in faith aren’t all related by genealogy. Our TRUE family is no longer our blood.
Instead, we are now related to one another by the blood of Jesus, which cleanses believers from our sins and through which believers have been adopted as sons and daughters of God.
This is how the Apostle Paul thought of the family of faith. This is how James, the half-brother of Jesus, thought of the family of faith. And this is how the Apostle John thought of the family of faith.
And John, whose first letter we’ve been studying for the past several weeks, seems to have had this redeemed version of the family in mind as he wrote the passage that we’ll look at today in 1 John, chapter 5.
Now, as you’re turning there, let me remind you that we talked last week about the three tests John gives in this letter that will reveal whether a person is in a right relationship with God.
There was a doctrinal test, a moral test, and a test of action. Does that person believe the right things about Jesus? Does he live a life that’s characterized by righteousness, rather than sin? And does he love others?
“For John, true faith always leads to love for God and others, and true love always results in obedience.” [Daniel L. Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, vol. 38, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001), 188.]
And we’ll see all three of those characteristics — right doctrine, love for others, and righteous obedience to God’s commands — in the first three verses of chapter 5. Let’s read them together.
1 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him.
2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments.
3 For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.
Now, remember that referring to Jesus as both “Jesus” and “the Christ” is John’s shorthand way of packing a lot of theology into a few words.
Jesus’ name came from the Hebrew word for “God saves.” And His designation as “the Christ” meant that He was the Anointed One, the promised Messiah, the one who would save mankind from the penalty for our sins.
And this term connects back to Psalm 2, where God describes His Messiah as King and as His Son.
So, John’s shorthand reference encompasses a doctrine of Jesus that includes His humanity, His deity, His saving work as Messiah, His kingship, and His Sonship.
And what he says here is that those who believe these things about Jesus have been born — begotten is the most precise translation — of God, who is the one who begets or declares people to be His sons and daughters.
And those born of God — those whom God has declared to be His sons and daughters — love not only Him but others who have been born of Him.
Faith is connected to right doctrine, and right doctrine is connected to right action.
And, as John says in verse 2, in the redeemed, recreated, and renewed family of faith, love for God and love for others are knotted up together so tightly they can’t be separated.
Love for God and love for others are two sides of a coin. “Just as it is impossible to love God without loving God’s children, it is impossible to love God’s children without loving God.” [Daniel L. Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, vol. 38, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001), 191.]
But look what John says at the end of this verse. Not only is LOVE a family affair for those who follow Jesus in faith; obedience, too, is a family matter. Indeed, as we’ll see in a couple of weeks, SIN is a family matter.
There’s a bit of circularity to what John is saying in this verse, because loving others is one of the commandments Jesus gave us.
But I think the circularity is there to drive home the point that when we love God, we are enabled to love others more completely, and when we love others, we love God more completely.
Our love for the one confirms and proves and reinforces our love for the other.
And we see in verse 3 that obedience to God is both a RESULT of our love for Him and a PART of our love for Him.
As John Stott puts it: “Love for God is not an emotional experience so much as a moral commitment.” [John R. W. Stott, The Letters of John: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 19, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 173.]
So, just as we saw last week, the one who loves God will confess the truth about His Son, love others, and act righteously, following His commandments.
And the great thing about God’s commandments is they’re not burdensome.
As followers of Jesus and members of the family of God, we have been given the very Spirit of the God who IS love, and so acting in love toward one another should be our default position.
And just as God’s love for us is a choice He makes on our behalf — just as God’s love for us is sacrificial and self-denying — so should ours be for one another.
Our love must go beyond sentimentality and mere emotion. It must be characterized by ACTION. It must be characterized by actions that flow out of the fact that we love God and — more importantly — that He loves us.
Warren Wiersbe tells a story about a woman who visited a newspaper office to try to sell her poems to be published.
“What are your poems about?” the editor asked.
“They’re about love!” she replied.
The editor settled back in his chair and said, “Well, read me a poem. The world could certainly use a lot more love!”
The poem she read was filled with moons and Junes and other sticky sentiments, and it was more than the editor could take.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but you just don’t know what love is all about! It’s not moonlight and roses. It’s sitting up all night at a sickbed, or working extra hours so the kids can have new shoes. The world doesn’t need your brand of poetical love. It needs some good old-fashioned practical love.” [Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 523–524.]
The kind of love that should exist in families is unselfish love; love that seeks the best for others, even when that means making a sacrifice; love that is expressed without expectation.
But that’s not what a lot of families look like, whether on television or in the real world. All the way back to the Garden of Eden, after Adam and Eve had sinned, that’s not the kind of love many families demonstrated.
But Jesus has redeemed the family unit. He has redefined it as those who are now related by the blood He shed on the cross and by their faith in Him and in His sacrifice on our behalf.
And we who are a part of this family of faith are now called to do what so many families have failed to do throughout history — to demonstrate the love of God in our love for one another, in faith that is based on right doctrine, and in obedience to Him.
The fact of the matter is that even the Church will fail in this calling. We see that failure in churches around the world. Sadly, we have seen it even here in THIS church in days gone by.
We will finally see this love perfected in the Kingdom of Heaven. But our calling as followers of Jesus is to display His Kingdom here on earth.
And so, we must not be people who are content to wait until we’re in heaven to see what this is like. We must be pursuing this kind of love right here on earth.
And not just because it’ll bring greater joy into our fellowship, although it will. But also because that’s how the lost world sees Jesus.
They see Him — or they don’t — in how we treat one another. They see Him in how we set aside our own preferences and even our own rights for the good of one another. They see Him in how we love even when that love isn’t returned to us.
These verses are the last time the word “love” appears in this letter. But let us not allow them to be the last word ABOUT love.
Let us commit to one another today to making our lives and our relationships with one another SHOUT the word “love” for all the world to hear.
Let us commit ourselves to making THIS family an outpost of the Kingdom of Heaven where love and family both are what they were always intended to be.