For this reason I kneel before the Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.
Ephesians 3:14–15
Almost everyone in the world likes to look at pictures. All of us are especially drawn to photographs if we are in them! In doing this, we are motivated either by egotism or insecurity. Few of us see ourselves in a positive light.
If we don’t like how we look on the outside, how would we feel if a picture could be taken of what we look like on the inside? How would we like to have a photograph made of our thoughts, emotions, and motives? How devastating!
Man has not yet devised a machine that can take pictures of the spirit and soul. God, on the other hand, has provided us with a spiritual camera that can both photograph and reveal the human heart. What is this wonderful spiritual device that can look into the deepest recesses of the human spirit and can reveal your thoughts and motives? It is the Bible.
The Bible is God’s photo album. It has very clear and vivid pictures of people under every condition and circumstance. We can watch them in happiness and sorrow, in obedience and rebellion, in victory and defeat, in life and death, in heaven and hell.
It is filled with living pictures. Many of the people portrayed on the pages of the Bible think with your thoughts, feel with your emotions, act out your motives, express your fears, demonstrate your rebellion, and reveal your sin. That’s one of the great reasons why so many people fear the Bible—it is far too disclosing! It reveals to them accurate pictures of themselves they do not want to look at.
However, most of the human race has never looked through God’s camera. They have been unwilling to look at the big picture of divine revelation. Therefore, most people live with a skewed, myopic, restricted view of life here on planet earth.
Even though the Bible contains thousands of individual photographs, the most important pictures are the family pictures. We see a very early family picture in His Old Testament album with the photo of Abraham and Sarah. He was the first patriarch of God’s people. Under this early snapshot, God’s Spirit wrote this amazing promise He made to Abraham: “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you . . . . All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring” (Genesis 12:2–3; 28:14).
From that moment on, after God entered into His covenant with Abraham, He has continually added more people to His spiritual family. That unique family is known as the Church. This word comes from the Greek root ekklesia and means “an assembly of people who have been called out.” When God first “called out” Abraham, He said, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). Thousands of years later, God sent His only begotten Son into the world to continue and consummate His redemption of a people unto Himself.
Regardless of your social and religious standing through natural birth, we are only members of God’s family through spiritual birth. The true Church of Jesus Christ is not a building, a denomination, a particular theology, or an organization. It does not belong to any person, priest, or pope. The Church belongs exclusively to Jesus Christ. Are you in His family?