There were probably many arrangements God could have chosen to introduce His Son to the world, but the one He favored was the context of the nuclear family. He selected in the town of Nazareth of Galilee a lowly couple who were just beginning their marriage. Joseph was a carpenter, and his betrothed was a maid named Mary. They were ordinary folk without social distinction, yet they were endowed with pure and pious spirits that attracted God's attention as just the best pair suited to have charge of the Messiah's upbringing from infancy to adulthood. The Holy Record indicates that God's choice was perfect, for this man and woman never faltered in the enormous responsibility given to them. After the birth of Jesus they had other children according to the course of nature. There came to them four sons and at least two daughters, (Mrk. 6:3). So Jesus grew up in a family that numbered no less than eight members, and it is evident that He loved them dearly and honored each with deep respect.
God's choice of the family as the vehicle for bringing His Son as a mature adult able to deliver the gospel unto mankind is perhaps God's strongest sanction of the value and integrity of the family. Jesus' perfect adaption to family structure as a child, youth, and young adult is further evidence of God's will that families should be united, cohesive, and mutually devoted to the best of everything for each member. One of Jesus' last considerations on the cross was for the welfare of His mother, (Jno. 19:25-27). God Himself made the family and assigned it the purpose of stabilizing society and giving everyone a strong foundation of identity, fellowship, and paramount support in life, especially during the formative stages of youth. The present destruction of the family is a major source of the grievous ills that are weakening civilization and bringing it toward the brink of collapse.
Notwithstanding God's creation, sanction, and solid support for the family as the foundation of a healthy society and enduring civilization, He has greater blessings and higher aims for another institution. And that is the Kingdom of Heaven over which He presides as the Father figure. Here on the human plane it translates as the church, a spiritual family with Christ as head. We may enter this great family by a spiritual rebirth, as Jesus explained to Nicodemus, (Jno. 3:3-7). We then become subjects to Jesus as Lord, and brothers and sisters to other members. This is the kind of kinship to which Jesus refers in the text prefacing this article, and it is obvious that He esteems it far above the kinship that bonds us together in our common human families. There is no family like the Family of God, and there is no kinship comparable to the spiritual bond that unites Christ to His subjects, and His subjects to each other as spiritual brothers and sisters.
One must not assume, however, that this spiritual fraternity is meant to negate the value, importance, and critical function of our human families. Christian doctrine emphasizes the integral place of the family in God's continuing plan for humanity, (Eph. 5:22-33). The ideal is for the human family to exist entirely within the larger scope of the Family of God. When each person in a family is a child of God, then it is a Christian family. It exists in harmony with the Family of God, and each family can then yield its total strength and support to the other. Its member are not only "brothers and sisters" in the flesh, but far more significantly, brothers and sisters "in the Lord." It is terribly sad and pitiful when brothers and sisters in human families are not also brothers and sisters in the spiritual family where these bonds will not be severed forever by death.
