Part of the Family (Friday Devotional)

 

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of his household. 

- Ephesians 2:19

For the last few days, we’ve had some interesting visitors in our household: three baby chicks, which we’re watching for my brother while his family is spending the weekend at the beach. My kids have been super excited; every morning has started the same way, with them sprinting into the playroom to check on the chicks. When I’ve picked up my son from school, his first question has been how the chicks are doing. And during bedtime prayers, when the kids give thanks for all the people they love, the chicks have made the cut more than once.

But as much as my kids have enjoyed having them over, those chicks have not become members of our family—when my brother comes to get them tomorrow, we’re not going to fight him over them or demand that they stay. It was fun to have them for a few days, but they were never intended to be a permanent part of our household. They were visitors, not family.

The Bible tells us that, for as long as we are held captive by sin, our relationship with the Lord is like that. Our flesh separates us from God so that, despite being created by God in his image, we are more like visitors than family, more like strangers than sons.

But the cross of Christ gives us an avenue to adoption, a way by which we can enter the family of God. By accepting the grace of God and believing in His Son’s atoning death on the cross, we are not only given new life, but a new identity in him. Faith in Christ welcomes you into the family of God.

Guests are nice and strangers are interesting, but family is forever. So may you know God as Father and, by faith, rejoice at the privilege of being his child.