From the very beginning (you can turn now if you would to Genesis 1 with me) God made it clear that He wanted man and woman to join together, to come together. For what? To form a family.
The physical family unit is an example of that pattern and it is a huge part, a vital part of God's plan on three different levels.
First, marriage and the love between husband and wife gives us a glimpse of Jesus Christ's passionate love and devotion to His bride, the church.
Second, brotherhood or sisterhood gives us the opportunity to learn God's agape love to bond together in God's love through encouragement, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and loving kindness. We just heard all about this from Richard.)
Third, parenthood provides us an incredible life lesson, a life lesson of God's parental love, His loving kindness, His tenderness, and patience towards us, His children.
Now our physical and spiritual family relationships here on earth are indeed a gift from God. They teach us how to become just like Him. It does not matter if you are single or married, we are all part of God's future Family, learning how to love and grow in oneness with the spiritual Family of God through the upcoming marriage with Jesus Christ. You can jot down Revelation 19:7. So God the Father is indeed creating a family and in the end, after the 1,000-year reign of Jesus Christ with His firstfruits, we see New Jerusalem brought down to a renewed earth and Jesus Christ presents all the many billions of saved children of God to the Father of all. That is when all who are willing to submit will be together in unity.
So knowing the ultimate purpose of our family relationships here on earth, this should really help us appreciate them more. That family unit is critical. It is vital to us becoming like God. Is it any wonder why we see Satan attacking the physical family so ferociously? Is it any wonder why we see Satan attacking the spiritual Family, the Body of Christ? God's pattern of physical and spiritual family units in the church are all critical to our growth. So in our remaining time today we are going to explore some key attributes that we can learn from the family construct, attributes of becoming Godlike and might I say, childlike.
Now, if we were going to expand that, or amplify it in the English, it would read somewhat like this: The God, as to His nature, is love. What it means, then, is God is a loving God. Most of the gods in the ancient world, in Greek mythology, were wrathful, vengeful, angry, picky things who had the same foibles, the same weaknesses, as human beings. They were not 'loving' gods. But the God is a loving God. So it is not to be understood that loving is one of God's activities; but rather that every activity of God is 'loving'. Therefore, if He creates, He creates in love. If He rules, He rules in love. If He judges, He judges in love. All that He does is an expression of His nature.
Now, let us think about this in reference to man. We are still talking about how God is the source of this love, and man, by nature, does not have it. Man was made in the image and the likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-28). But, God is described as being spirit. God is Spirit (John 4:24). And we find here that God is love. Now contrast that to man. Man is flesh. You see, the image begins to change. We are not quite in the image of God, are we?
Not only that, but the Bible describes us as being carnal. In this case, I am using it in the sense of being fleshly or physical. We are self-centered, and we are deceitful. What this means in practical fact is that man cannot be what he is meant to be - in the image of God - until he loves as God loves. Until his nature is the same as God's, we will never really be in the image of God. This is the essential thing that must be changed in man. Of course, you understand that, because of receiving of the Spirit of God, we are now partakers of the divine nature, which Peter states there in one of his epistles.
So, if man is to achieve what he is meant to be, then we must love, but we must love with the love of God.
God is working out a specific purpose for all of mankind to create us in His very image (Genesis 1:26). It began with the physical creation (Genesis 1:27-28) and will be accomplished fully when men are finally born into the very Family of God (Revelation 21:6-7).
