Week 2 Day 1 - Faithful in Commitment

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Day 1 Faithful in Commitment


INTERDEPENDENT AS A FAMILY(Romans 12:9-12)
9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor; 11not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; 12 rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer,
(1 Timothy 5:1-2)
1Do not sharply rebuke an older man, but rather appeal to him as a father, to the younger men as brothers, 2 the older women as mothers, and the younger women as sisters, in all purity.

  Brainstorm for a minute. What are some different analogies to the church that can be found in the Bible? For instance, the church is called a Family, it is also referred to as a Body. 
   All this week we will see different analogies, but there is an old saying that “you can pick your friends, but you are stuck with your family”. That is especially true with the family of God. We will spend eternity with each other and with Christ. John concludes that we cannot honestly say we love God, whom we have never seen, if we don’t love His children, our brothers and sisters, whom we have seen.

The Church Family
         Our focal passage shows that we should have “brotherly love” and we are to relate to one another in the context of family relationships. We are to have a love devoid of conflict, contentions, or impurity.
         Our membership in Christ and in the church is like a family. We were born into the human race, but also into a family. In the same way, the born-again Christian is born into the universal church, but we also must be involved as members within the local family of believers.
         One qualification for a pastor in 1 Timothy 3:5 is that he manages his family well, with the reasoning that if he cannot manage his family, how can he manage the church? Why would that be a condition of a pastor if it was not also true that the church should be like a family? We as brothers and sisters should be faithful in our commitment to our church.
         Being interdependent on one another means love and faithfulness. One of the strongest passages on our relationships as a church family comes from 1 John 4:20, as the beloved Apostle wrote that anyone who hates his brother or sister in Christ is not truly a Christian. Earlier in the same letter, John stressed commitment: “they went out from us because they were not of us,” (1 John 2:19).

         Benefits of the Family. Galatians 6:10 says that we should do good to all people, especially to those who belong to “the family of believers” (NIV). Ephesians 2:19 says we are no longer strangers to God, but we are now “of God’s household.” We also are related to our spiritual family in order to meet the physical (James 2:15), emotional (Mark10:29, 30), and spiritual (1 Corinthians 8:11-13) needs of others. Members of the local church are to help one another to grow into a spiritual household (1 Peter 2:5). As a church family we should be available to help and benefit one another.
         Blessings of the Family. In Romans 8:15, we see that we have received a spirit of adoption into God’s family and are now able to cry out to Him as “Abba, Father.” And if we are children of God, then Jesus is our brother and we all have direct access to our Father’s throne to present our requests. Since we are blessed to have God as our Father, we should also be a blessing as brothers and sisters as members of the church.
         Behavior of the Family. 1 Timothy 3:15 says we ought to know how to conduct ourselves “in the household of God, which is the church of the living God.” Later in 5:1-2, Paul tells the young pastor that church members should be respectful and pure with our spiritual brothers and sisters. 1 Peter 4:17 says that judgment begins with the “family of God.” We then are recipients of God’s blessings, and of God’s benefits, but we also should expect to be corrected (Hebrews 12:5-11). As a family we are to be responsible and respectful to one another.

Click here for Day 2 Accountable in Stewardship

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