This week we have a guest author introducing some thoughts on family. His legal background highlights the different ways we form family - and how God uses them all!
Birth, Marriage and Adoption
“Family” can mean a lot of things. There are a great number of things different people may associate with family, whether positive - affection, comfort, home - or negative. Family relationships also come about in several distinct ways. For every member of your family, you can identify whether that person is your family by blood, marriage, or adoption.
In human relationships, everyone has a family by birth; your father and mother are your family by birth, and you are born into a family that includes everyone they are related to.
Sometimes, family by birth is referred to as family by blood. We don’t use “blood” terminology all that much these days - think of dramatic movie lines where a hero recognizes that an ancestor’s blood runs through their veins - but we still acknowledge the physical, biological connection to our families by blood - who can be identified as relatives by DNA in blood tests, for instance.
People can also become families by marriage. When two people marry, they each marry into each other’s family - typically called “in-laws.” When I married my wife, her brother by birth became my brother-in-law, and vice versa. Each of us added an entire family, and became part of a new family as well.
Finally, people can enter into families by adoption, which can involve neither birth nor marriage. Adoption acts as a substitute for birth, although there is no blood relationship. Adopted children are part of their parents’ families, just as children born to the same parents are.
While the manner in which people become family varies, each process is significant, not done lightly, and of great importance. Each process makes people who were not family become family.
God uses each of these manners of becoming family as metaphors to show his love for us.
We are God’s children by birth. Those who belong to Christ have been born again, born of God to a living hope of the inheritance of God. (John 3:1-8; 1 John 5:1; 1 Peter 1:3-5)
Moreover, God makes us his family by marriage. Christ calls us his bride, whom he loves, and rejoices over. (2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:25-27; Isaiah 62:5)
Of course, God also uses the language of adoption. We are adopted by God, having been chosen by Him and becoming His heirs. (Romans 8:23; Ephesians 1:4-6; Galatians 4:4-7)
Finally, God achieves this all by the work of the blood of Jesus; by His blood God obtained us as his own and brought us near to Him; and by His blood we have confidence to draw near to God. (Acts 20:28; Ephesians 2:13; Hebrews 10:19-22)
We have become God’s family by birth, by marriage, by adoption, and by blood.
What now?
If you are not in God’s family, how do you become part of it? Receive Jesus, and believe in his name. “To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” (John 1:12)
What now for those who are in Christ, and are therefore members of God’s family? (Ephesians 2:19-20) Love your family. Honor and obey your Father. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Finally, be thankful and rejoice that God your father loves you so comprehensively, He used every expression of becoming family to choose you and make you His own.
Steven O'Herin is an attorney practicing in Southern California. He and his wife are actively involved in serving the church.
