Cultivating JoyIhe Atụ

  

Joy Is Having a Family

Family can be a source of great joy for me, but we all know that there are many people who, sadly, have very little joy from having a family. But when people belong to Christ, even if they endure the loneliness or pain of a broken or abusive family, they have the joy of a new family among God’s people. This doesn’t fix every problem, but there is a joy in belonging to the family of God despite the sorrow of a dysfunctional or missing human family. This deep joy comes from knowing you are part of a family you can never lose. 

When writing to the early church, Paul spent much of his time explaining how God in Christ had accepted both Gentile and Jewish believers and made them into one people. Before, all non-Jews had been alienated from God; they were “without hope and without God in the world,” as Paul says to the Ephesians (Ephesians 2:12). But now, through the blood of Christ, they can take part in God’s covenant. Paul concludes by reminding them that they “are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household” (Ephesians 2:19). Now, those who were once cut off from God get a new family through belonging to Christ. 

The story of the Ethiopian eunuch illustrates the joy of unity with God’s family. He came to Jerusalem to worship God and purchased an Old Testament scroll. He was reading in Isaiah 53 about how the Servant of the Lord would be slain for our sins. Philip then used that passage to lead the eunuch to Christ. Perhaps he then pointed the Ethiopian to the nearby passage in Isaiah 56 where God made a promise to eunuchs, who cannot have children: God will bring them into his own family, with a family name that will never die out. Later God adds that he will bring eunuchs and foreigners to himself “and give them joy in my house of prayer” (Isaiah 56:7). This Ethiopian had been to God’s house of prayer (the temple), but it was when he trusted in Jesus that “he went on his way rejoicing” (Acts 8:39). He now had a new family because he belonged to Jesus. So he returned with joy, the first Gentile in Acts to join the multinational family of God. What joy that is! 

From Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit by Christopher J. H. Wright.