‘Church Family’
Sunday 6th August 2023
Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.
1 Timothy 5:1-2 (NIV)
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
‘Church Family’
We talk much about being a ‘church family.’ Is that just a cosy, but sloppy way of thinking about church? Is it perhaps even a cynical attempt to get a deeper buy-in from people? Or is there any biblical foundation for speaking and thinking of church in such terms? Yes, there is!
For a start, in the New Testament, Christian believers are frequently referred to as “brothers and sisters” and we have a Father in heaven (see for example 2 Thessalonians 1:1, 4). That sounds a lot like a family to me! And Jesus Christ himself is spoken of as being our (elder) brother (Romans 8:29).
These verses from Paul’s first letter to Timothy encourage us to think more carefully about the ‘family’ that is the church. He distinguishes between older and younger, male and female. So, there are older men, younger men, older women and younger women – as we would expect to find in a biological family. And Timothy is to treat each of these four groups differently, according to age and sex. He himself is in the ‘younger man’ category (see 4:12), and that explains why he is to relate to each of the other categories in a particular way.
It all makes enormous sense. Being a Christian doesn’t mean you stop being a human being! Redemption doesn’t overthrow creation, but rather restores and renews it. And so being male or female, older or younger is something to accept and even embrace.
A lot of this comes instinctively, but perhaps sometimes we would be wise to consider which of these categories we belong to: older or younger (these are relative terms, of course, unless you really are older or younger than everyone else!), female or male. And then to ask, “How then should I relate to this other person? Am I to think of them as my sister, my brother, my mother, my father, my daughter or my son?” And that will answer a lot of the questions about how you are to relate to them.
Father, thank you for the family of your church, for my brothers and sisters, and for the different ages and sexes among us; please help us to love each other well, as a true family. Amen.
Yours warmly, in Christ,
Chris Hobbs (Senior Minister)