A New Family

A New Family

Read: Matthew 19:27-30

“Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.”

Matthew 19:29

“When we take God for our God, we take His people for our people.”

—Matthew Henry

IN WORD “Blood is thicker than water,” the saying goes. The assumption is that our deepest human loyalties lie with our blood relatives. But this is not so in the kingdom of God. “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother,” Jesus says (Matthew 12:50). The Spirit is thicker than blood in the kingdom. The covenant of the kingdom ties us together in ways that genetics never will. Jesus explains in Matthew 10:35-36—“I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’” Families will divide over Him; a new family will be formed.

There is a wonderful illustration of this in the Old Testament. In marriage, man and woman leave father and mother and cleave to one another. In God’s plan, the bonds of covenant take priority over the bonds of blood kinship. And now, according to Scripture, we are the bride of Christ. Aren’t we glad for the depths of spiritual union over blood- relatedness? If this were not so, we would be forever related to Adam and never to Christ.

IN DEED Over and over again, Jesus calls His disciples to place their relationships in the Spirit above their relationships in the flesh. Our ties to Christian brothers and sisters are infinitely more substantial than those to our blood relatives. We gain hundreds of brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and children in the Spirit because the Spirit is thicker than blood. We are bound together with Christ, and through Christ to one another. May we glory in the family that is now ours.