This is My Family

Ephesians 2:12-13,19

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As we look at the book of Ephesians, as if it were a photo album of the Christian Life, today in Ephesians chapter 2, it’s like we’re looking at the family pictures. And maybe you’ve seen some of the awkward family photos. As you know, this group of people gets together to get their picture taken, it can come up with some, some goofy results. Maybe you think about the people in your family and you think, man, I wouldn’t be friends with these guys unless I was related to them. I remember my younger sister at a wedding once looking around all over, and she says “Ya mean were related to these people?”

But God puts us together in families, and here, when he’s talking with the Ephesians, he even shows them how they got to be part of the family of God. Ephesians Chapter 2 beginning of verse 12, he says,

Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. (Ephesians 2:12)

They were gentiles. They weren’t Jewish people. They didn’t have all the blessings that the Israelites did.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. (Ephesians 2:13)

And he goes on to say in verse 19,

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household. (Ephesians 2:19)

And we just get this glimpse of what the family of God looks like. People who come from all kinds of different backgrounds and races and cultures that are united by this common faith in Christ. I work at a campus ministry for a lot of my time, and it’s a joy to be able to see international students come into the building who are united by a common Christian faith and come and be able to encourage each other. This is what the family of God looks like.

And then we even get to look at our own little situations in our own churches, and you get to look across the aisle and in the different seats and in the different pews and say, this is my family, not foreigners, not strangers, but members of the family of God. And when we can look at each other like that, even with maybe our difficult family relationships, and we can see we’ve been brought near by the blood of Christ. How can we live as a family together? This is your Christian life.