The very foundation of any stable civilization is a solid family structure. Today’s civilization, with its foundation disintegrating, is itself on the way out! The modern world has adopted what it calls “the new morality,” which in truth means “gross immorality!” Mated with it has come “women’s liberation.” Women have been emancipated from the home! Women have their own incomes and a new spirit of independence. Nothing in this material world is as important as a happy home life with father, mother and well-taught happy children—a close-knit family.
It strikes at the very heart and core of humanity’s future and eternity and the gospel that Jesus Christ proclaimed. His gospel was the good news of the coming Kingdom of God. That gospel, suppressed from the world for 2000 years, reveals that God’s Church is the affianced Bride of Christ—to marry Him at His glorious imminent return, establishing the world-ruling Kingdom of God. By approximately the middle of the first century, Christ’s gospel message was suppressed—not proclaimed to the world until the middle of the present 20th century!
It was the news of the coming Kingdom of God. It is the “divine” Family of God, ruling all Earth’s nations with the government of God. Actually God is a family name. In the very first verse in the Bible says “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) Moses originally wrote those words in Hebrew. The Hebrew name for God is “Elohim”, a plural noun, such as the words family, church, group. One Church with many members—yet “from him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” (Ephesians 4:16).
Not many independent Christians, each going his own way as he feels is right in God’s eyes—but one body, not only joined together, but fitly joined together, all speaking the same thing (1 Corinthians 1:10) and that “same thing” the Word of God—God’s truth as revealed in His Word. A family is made up of more than one person, yet only one family. And God’s Family on Earth is not split up and divided, for “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” It is compacted together (Ephesians 4:16), and the word compacted means as closely bound together as if glued together—definitely not made up of independent Christians.
God is a Kingdom—that is, the supreme divine Family that rules the universe! The whole gospel, which Jesus Christ brought from God for mankind, is the good news of the coming Kingdom of God. And the united, closely knit together family of Christians—the Church—will, at the second coming of Christ and the time of the resurrection, become the Kingdom of God! The Kingdom of God starts with a family relationship—first the physical human families, second, the one compacted together Church and, finally, when the Church is changed to immortality, the God Family—which is the Kingdom of God! Jesus said that He and God the Father are one. They are 100 percent in harmony. So must the Church be! “Elohim” is the divine Family—only one Family, and therefore one God! When Jesus was born human, of the virgin Mary, He became the Son of God. He was “Immanuel”—God with us—God in mortal human flesh to make it possible for the rest of us humans to be born into the God Family!
In Genesis 1:26, Elohim said, “let us”—not let me—“make man in our image …”—in God’s likeness as to form and shape, although man is made from the dust of the ground, mortal, and God is wholly spirit, not matter or flesh. So the eternal Father is God—a divine personage. And Jesus is a different person and is God! They are two separate and individual persons (Revelation 4:2, 5:1). The Father is divine supreme Head of the God Family. He is the lawgiver, Christ is the administrator—He does the work by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the Word or Spokesman—He speaks and it is done. But when Jesus was begotten in the womb of the virgin Mary, He was not, as all other humans, begotten by a human father, but by God the divine Father, by the power of God’s Spirit, which emanates from His very person. When Jesus became adult, He set us the example of praying to His Father in heaven. He had become the Son of God. And so we have the divine Family relationship— “Father, Son and Spirit.” That is a family relationship!
But humans, if called by God the Father, made physically in the likeness of God, may receive the gift of God’s Holy Spirit, thus being begotten, but not yet born of God. Though not yet born of God, we do become the begotten children of God (Romans 8:14-17). The Church of God is the affianced Bride of Christ, to marry Christ at His coming in glory, when the Church will be changed from physical mortal flesh to immortal spirit. The Church will, then, become the actual born inheritors of the Kingdom of God, the divine Family! The Kingdom of God will then become the God Family, ruling the universe!
Did you ever come to realize that this family relationship is given to no other beings God ever created, but to us as humans? Angels do not reproduce children, have no family relationship. Animals, birds, fish have no close and lifelong family relationship as do humans. Satan is subtly destroying the human family relationship. He is doing it through the women’s liberation movement and through the new-morality attitude toward sex. The number of men who have become perverted in their minds as homosexuals and the number of women lesbians tend to reduce the number of families and to destroy a God-blessed family relationship. The divorce rate is also gradually tending to destroy the human family relationship.
Satan is doing everything in his power to destroy God’s Church and God’s way of life—the way of His law, His government! And this world is heading at accelerating speed into the final crisis—the end of this evil world and the dawn of a peaceful and happy World of Tomorrow, ruled by the Kingdom of God. Then human mortals still living will be ruled by the Kingdom of God. Satan will be gone from Earth. And, in that happy World of Tomorrow, mortal humans, taught and ruled by the God Family, will learn the joys and blessings of a healthy home-and-family relationship, with spiritual salvation and eternal life to look forward to. Jesus taught us to pray: “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”(Matthew 6:10)!
Looking to Scriptures we can find general principles for prioritizing our family relationships. God obviously comes first: Deuteronomy 6:5, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” All of one’s heart, soul, and strength is to be committed to loving God, making Him the first priority. Church membership and regular church attendance will be one way a family shows that God is first in their lives. (Hebrews 10:25)
If you are married, your spouse comes next. A married man is to love his wife as Christ loved the church (Ephesians 5:25). Christ’s first priority—after obeying and glorifying the Father—was the church. Here is an example a husband should follow: God first, then his wife. In the same way, wives are to submit to their husbands “as to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:22). The principle is that a woman’s husband is second only to God in her priorities.
If husbands and wives are second only to God in our priorities, and since a husband and wife are one flesh (Ephesians 5:31), it stands to reason that the result of the marriage relationship—children—should be the next priority. Parents are to raise godly children who will be the next generation of those who love the Lord with all their hearts (Proverbs 22:6; Ephesians 6:4), showing once again that God comes first. All other family relationships should reflect that.
Deuteronomy 5:16 tells us to honor our parents so that we may live long and so things will go well with us. No age limit is specified, which leads us to believe that as long as our parents are alive, we should honor them. Of course, once a child reaches adulthood, he is no longer obligated to obey them (“Children, obey your parents…”), but there is no age limit to honoring them. We can conclude from this that parents are next in the list of priorities after God, our spouses, and our children. After parents comes the rest of one’s family (1 Timothy 5:8).
Following one’s extended family in the list of priorities are fellow believers. Romans 14 tells us not to judge or look down upon our brothers (verse 10) or do anything to cause a fellow Christian to “stumble” or fall spiritually. Much of the book of 1 Corinthians is Paul’s instructions on how the church should live together in harmony, loving one another. Other exhortations referring to our brothers and sisters in Christ are “serve one another in love” (Galatians 5:13); “be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32); “encourage one another and build each other up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11); and “consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds” (Hebrews 10:24). Finally comes the rest of the world (Matthew 28:19), to whom we should bring the gospel, making disciples of Christ.
In conclusion, the scriptural order of priorities is God, spouse, children, parents, extended family, brothers and sisters in Christ, and then the rest of the world. While sometimes decisions must be made to focus on one person over another, the goal is to not be neglecting any of our relationships. The biblical balance is allowing God to empower us to meet all of our relationship priorities, inside and outside our families.
China - in His image 