The Gospel Story: Family from A to Z

I hope the title for this post made you stop and think. Maybe you asked, “How is the gospel about family?” Eternity past begins (the irony of using begins to describe eternity didn’t miss me) with Trinitarian perfection in community. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are enjoying, glorifying, and loving each other perfectly. A model of the perfect family.

In this perfection God creates heaven and earth. He makes the sun, stars, and moon. He creates animals on dry ground, in the air, and in the sea. As He exercises his creative dominion, He stops after each stroke and says, “This is good.”

He then creates humanity out of a lump of clay. He breathes into Adam the breath of life. He forms Adam into his image. He instills within him creativity and the right to rule the earth and animals. But God stops short of saying, “This is good.” He says, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). God creates a family.

In this garden, the first family flourished. They fellowship with God. They tend the garden. They grow in love with each other. But sin slithered into the garden. Adam and Eve reject the covenant God made with them and fall into sin. From then on something was rotten in the state of man’s heart.

But God doesn’t leave man to himself. He promises the Seed of the women would crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15). He promises to create a new family, sound from the inside out, out of this Seed.

I could write an entire book about God using families through out Scripture. He saves mankind through Noah. He preserves the family of Seed through Abraham and Sarah. He rescues Israel from Egypt through the family of Moses. He brings forth David through the family of Rahab, the Harlet, and Esther, the Moabite. He saves Israel from the Philistines by the family of David. He saves the world through the family of Mary and Joseph. God reveals the families of the world are adopted in the family of Israel through the blood of his Son. God then reveals the mystery of the gospel through marriage (Ephesians 5:22-33). And finally, the story of the gospel, the story of God’s family, ends with a marriage celebration (Revelation 19:6-10). Timothy Keller says, “The Bible begins and ends with marriage.”

From A to Z the gospel is about family. It’s about a Father who “saw [his son] and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). It’s about a Father sending his Son to die to make rebels adopted sons and co-hears with Jesus Christ. It’s about a Father securing a bride for his Son.