The Language of Family in the Gospel

Christians have typically been very concerned about the role and meaning of family in society. For example, in light of the controversy regarding the Health Promotion Board's FAQs on Sexuality and the response by Health Minister Gan Kim Yong, the National Council of Churches wrote in a press statement:

We especially welcome the Minister’s assurance that there has been no shift in the government’s position: that the family is the basic build ing block of society, and that ‘family’ is taken to mean a man and a woman joined in marriage, and encouraged to build a stable nuclear or extended household.

There are many reasons why Christians should be concerned about the family, including Biblical teaching about marriage, children, as well as sexuality.

But there is another reason why the family plays such an important role in Christianity. It is because, as concisely summed up by Julia Shaw, "the language of Christianity is familial". The Gospels speak so much in familial terms that it is almost impossible to understand the Gospel without understanding the family.

Father, mother and child
Promise and identity in the Bible are fulfilled through the simple image of father, mother and child.

Already in the beginning, the Bible foretells of the "Seed" or "offspring" of the woman who will crush the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15), and of the "Seed" of Abraham who will be the fulfilment of God's promise (Genesis 12:7; Galatians 3:16).

The promise of that "Seed", Jesus Christ, was not fulfilled in pompous fashion but through the humble circumstance of an unexpecting mother and loving adoptive father. The Gospels speak of the shock and submission of the virgin Mary when she found out that she was with child by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the dilemma faced by her betrothed Joseph. The scene of the Nativity is none other than that of a father, mother and child in a stable in Bethlehem. This is a family whose genealogy Matthew and Luke trace back through the the generations to David, the patriarchs, Adam, and finally to God.

The message of Jesus Christ is one of fatherhood. Early in Jesus' ministry, Jesus was already speaking going about "His Father's business" (Luke 2:49). He taught His disciples to address God as "Father", and taught that God is a loving Father who wishes to give good gifts to His children (Luke 11:13). In His parables, He likened God to a father with two wayward sons (Luke 15:11-32).

And Jesus, the son who learned obedience through suffering (Hebrews 5:8), ultimately paid the price so that we might be reconciled to God and called as His children. Paul teaches us that we "are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:26). God has made us His children and heirs:

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. (Romans 8:15-17)

Marriage
Another aspect of family in the Gospels is the marital covenant.

Marriage, as defined by Scripture, is an exclusive and permanent union between a man and a woman. In the New Testament, Jesus taught:

"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh' ? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." (Matthew 19:4-6)

The sacrament of marriage parallels the spiritual relationship between Christ and His church. The relationship between Jesus Christ and His church is likened to that of a bridegroom and his bride, of a husband and wife. Paul makes this clear in Ephesians 5:22-33:

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church-- for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

The Second Coming of Jesus Christ is depicted as a wedding, where people are waiting in anticipation for the bridegroom (Matthew 25:1-13). The Book of Revelation ends with a wedding between Jesus Christ and His church. John writes about how he saw "the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband" (Revelation 21:2).

Brothers- and sisters-in-Christ

With God as Father, and with Jesus and the church as husband and wife, what would that make individual believers?

It is no surprise then, that Christians regarded one another as part of a larger spiritual family. In the Epistles, the apostles address their fellow believers as "brothers" and "sisters", and regarded some older women as "mothers". Paul instructed Timothy:

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)

Indeed, Jesus taught that "whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother" (Matthew 12:50).

The habit of the early church of addressing one another as brothers and sisters caused quite some misunderstanding to Roman observers! In about 200 AD, a pagan lawyer named Marcus Minucius Felix even wrote: 

They love one another before being acquainted, so to speak. Everywhere they practice a kind of religious cult of lust, calling one another “brother” and “sister” indiscriminately. Thus, under the cover of these hallowed names, ordinary fornication becomes incest.

The Language of Family in the Gospel
Family is at the centre of the Gospel.

So integral is the family to the Gospel that it becomes almost impossible to understand the Gospel without understanding the family. Mary Eberstadt writes in her book, How the West Really Lost God, which examined the decline of Christianity in the West:

The Christian story itself is a story told through the prism of the family. Take away the prism, and the story makes less sense.

It is a premise of this book that we Western men and women, whether inside the churches or not, are only at the beginning of understanding how the fracturing of the natural family has in turn helped to fracture Christianity. Evidence from all over suggests that understanding Christianity requires understanding the natural family - and a world where natural families are often weak is one in which the very language of Christian belief, literal and figurative, is destined to be less well understood than it was before.

She warns: family illiteracy breeds religious illiteracy.


Preaching the Gospel requires sound understanding of the family, and vice versa. A church which fails to teach about the family does a great disservice to the Gospel.