BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES MADE PRACTICAL FOR YOUR FAMILY AND HOW THIS WILL AFFECT CHURCH PROGRAMS

I. The family is God’s concern.

II. Family is God’s nature – Father and Son

III. Family is God’s way of governing the universe, Ephesians 3:14,15

IV. Family is God’s way of saving and reuniting us with himself.

Spiritually, we must be born again and then we receive God’s promise, “I will be a Father unto to you and you will be my sons and daughter.” Then, too, we become co-heirs with Christ, Romans 8:17.

The church, in keeping with all of this, is structured as God’s family made up of our families. In each local church there are spiritual brothers and sisters united under the care of elders.

Out in the world around the church, the fallen human family is unable to govern itself in a family relationship with one another and with God. Therefore, governments of the world are structured so as to provide forceful restraint to evil. Rulers are said to be given by God for the peace of society.

The church is commissioned to maintain itself as God’s family on earth. Each local church is a family of families and each individual family of each church stands as a light in their particular neighborhood.

There is much interplay between the two – the church and the home. Church leaders must be sure to take care of their own home responsibility before they are commissioned to lead the church,                 I Timothy 3:4-5, 12. (This includes relationships with their wives and their children.)

Teaching is given in Scripture as to how active ones in church are to strengthen home relationships of other members. Thus, a pastor is not simply to be pastor of individuals but of families. See the responsibilities assigned in Titus 2:3-5, where Paul instructs Titus to instruct the mature women to instruct the younger women who are to set the atmosphere for their own families.