Chapter Three — The Family in the Circle (1 of 2)

Written for a church that is safe. If yours is not, go to Chapter Two.

"Then Jesus' mother and his brothers came. Standing outside, they sent word to him, to summon him. A crowd was sitting around him and they said to him, 'Look, your mother and your brothers are outside looking for you.' He answered them and said, 'Who are my mother and my brothers?' And looking at those who were sitting around him in a circle, he said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.'"

— Mark 3:31–35 (NET)

Look at what Jesus did in that room.

His mother and His brothers had come to take Him home. A few verses earlier Mark says His family thought "He is out of his mind" (Mark 3:21, NET).

Jesus did not disown them. He loved His mother to the end. From the cross He gave her into the care of the disciple He loved (John 19:26–27). After He rose, His mother and His brothers were in the upper room, praying with the disciples (Acts 1:14).

What He did in Mark 3 was say what makes a person His kin. Not blood. Not being in the right room. "Whoever does the will of God" (Mark 3:35, NET). Luke gives the same saying this way: "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it" (Luke 8:21, NET).

His mother had been the first to do it: "let this happen to me according to your word" (Luke 1:38, NET).

So the family of God is not a club that replaces the family you were born into. Scripture never lets faith become an excuse to abandon the people at home. Jesus rebuked religious men who used a gift to God to dodge caring for their parents (Mark 7:9–13). Paul wrote, "if someone does not provide for his own, especially his own family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever" (1 Timothy 5:8, NET).

Your church family is not more than your family by blood.

But it is far more than a room full of strangers. They are the brothers and sisters who are, for now, nearest to you on the vine.

That is the picture to hold. Christ is the vine. Every believer is a branch joined to Him. The people of your congregation are the branches growing closest to yours: fed by the same sap, pruned by the same Gardener, tangled together in the same weather.

You did not make yourselves neighbors on the vine. He placed you there.

The New Testament uses family words for this kinship. Paul calls believers "members of God's household" (Ephesians 2:19, NET). He calls the church "the household of God" and "the church of the living God, the support and bulwark of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15, NET). He tells the Galatians to do good to everyone, "and especially to those who belong to the family of faith" (Galatians 6:10, NET). Believers are brothers and sisters throughout the letters.

No one leaves the vine by moving from one part of it to another. (Some traditions teach that knowingly leaving the Church itself is another matter; Chapter Four lets them say so.)

But the branches nearest you are the ones you are given to love first, because they are the ones you can see. John put it bluntly: "the one who does not love his fellow Christian whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen" (1 John 4:20, NET).

Whom he has seen.

No one loves the family of God in general. We love the particular brothers and sisters God has put within reach. That is why leaving them is never nothing, even when it is right.

People come to their church family by different roads.

In many traditions you choose a congregation and join it by a covenant you make on purpose. In others you are joined to a parish and to the Church by baptism, and the parish is simply where you live. And for a great many people the road was simpler than either. Their parents went there, so they did. Some of them never made the faith their own. That matters enough that Chapter Six gives it a section of its own.

Whatever road brought you, here is what faith confesses. It is a confession, not something anyone can measure: the people beside you on the vine were placed there.

You may have chosen the door. You did not choose them.

Jesus said to His disciples, "You did not choose me, but I chose you" (John 15:16, NET), and faith confesses that the ones He chose, He placed beside one another. That is just as true of the people in the church down the road.

The conviction of this book: the burden rests on leaving, not on staying. Preference alone is not a reason to trade one set of brothers and sisters for another.

This is where you learn to love people you would never have picked. It is where your rough edges meet theirs, week after week, until both are worn a little smoother. Paul's description of what that takes is not written for people who agree about everything:

"with all humility and gentleness, with patience, putting up with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you too were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."

— Ephesians 4:2–6 (NET)

"Putting up with one another in love" assumes there will be something to put up with. Patience assumes delay. Gentleness assumes someone has given you a reason to be harsh.

Paul wrote this to real people in a real congregation. He did not think the friction meant the church had failed. He thought the friction was the ground on which unity is kept.

Paul's other great picture is a body:

"The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I do not need you,' nor in turn can the head say to the foot, 'I do not need you.' On the contrary, those members that seem to be weaker are essential, ... so that there may be no division in the body, but the members may have mutual concern for one another. If one member suffers, everyone suffers with it. If a member is honored, all rejoice with it. Now you are Christ's body, and each of you is a member of it."

— 1 Corinthians 12:21–22, 25–27 (NET)