Bringing light to friends and family

Introduction

Today we conclude our series on being in the world but not of it with the most difficult of all categories: friends and family.

Remember that the purpose of us being in the world is to be Jesus body, his representatives, in this dark and lost world. Towards the end of the high-priestly prayer for all believers that Jesus prayed just before his trial and execution, he said:

John 17:22–23 NLT

22 “I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. 23 I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.

We make Jesus known to our friends and family by our lives.

But our friends and family see so much of our lives. They see us warts and all. Especially family. They know the buttons they can push to get us to blow up or melt down. They have seen us at our nastiest, at our weakest, at our worst. Even friends have seen so much more of our ugly, selfish side than workmates or even many churchmates. On top of that, we have reason to fear our family and friends: they know the chinks in our emotional armour, and if they feel threatened, they can stab right through those gaps and cause us great hurt.

So how then can we show them Jesus? Haven’t we blown it already? Isn’t this just too difficult?

Let’s start with a difficult Bible reading and work from there.

Bible

Matthew 10:34–39 (NLT)

34 “Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth! I came not to bring peace, but a sword.

35 ‘I have come to set a man against his father,

a daughter against her mother,

and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

36 Your enemies will be right in your own household!’

37 “If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine. 38 If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine. 39 If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.

A sword

Phew! Before we continue, I think we need to pray.

Dear Lord Jesus, we know that you love us, that you love all people! So we know that these harsh words must somehow come from love. Help us to understand how, and help us to have your incredible, self-sacrificing love for our family and friends. Amen

Question:

How would you describe the meaning of this passage in one sentence?

When you come across bits of scripture like this, it’s easy to sympathise with people like Richard Dawkins who talk of God as a “moral monster.” And yet we know from our own experience that God is love. Why then is there so much pain in this short passage? A sword slicing through the bonds holding a son to his father, or a daughter to her mother! Jesus brought that to earth? He brought conflict right into a household? Why would he do that?

Well, despite our instinctive horror, this passage is the immediate consequence of two wonderful things:

1) God’s just and fair claim to be the boss of our entire lives

2) God’s grant of genuine freedom of choice to each of us

As Jesus says, if we love another, even our own parents, more than God, then we have become corrupted and twisted to the point where we can no longer dwell in the presence of a holy, good, loving God. Sometimes, of course, our love is actually selfish, and we actually value our parents over God because our parents give us a comfortable place to live!

The consequence of this competition of loves, this battle for who gets to be your number one, is that if our parent, or child, or other dearly loved one loves themselves more than God, and demands that we join them in loving them more than God, then we are faced with a stark choice.

If we love them more than God, we lose our lives, our hearts become darkened and sickened, and the holy light of God deals out death to us, instead of light.

But if we genuinely love them, and show that by loving God above them and then loving them as an expression of our love for God, then we are whole and clean and can live in the light of God’s presence.

The sword that Jesus has brought to earth turns out to be the sword of redemption—it cuts Jesus’s people away from the snares that trap them, even when those snares are selfish family members. But isn’t that itself selfish, to place God above your own family, you might ask? No, it’s not. Jesus’s approach, as harsh as it sounds, will at least save some—those who will obey him. But people who insist that others place them above God would doom both themselves and all those they claim to love—they are like people who refuse to jump in a lifeboat, even if there are plenty, and insist that their family join them to drown in the ocean together. They don’t really love their family at all—they merely need, they hunger.

But a word of warning: we cannot use this as an excuse to abandon people, to simply cut people off. Jesus is not commanding us to stop loving, he is commanding us to always love him more, and always put him first.

Question:

Does Jesus’s claim to have brought division between children and parents mean that you can disrespect your parents? Why, or why not?

Another perspective

Another way to look at this is from the perspective of how we should relate to friends and family who don’t know Christ in day-to-day life. Jesus’s words we’ve just looked at tell us that we should never let others compromise our love for God, but what does that look like in practice?

When we genuinely love someone, we want what is best for them, right?

From our perspective as followers of Christ, we know that, without saving faith in Jesus, all of our friends and family are doomed. Are we all on the same page here?

So, then, our number one priority is for our friends and family to encounter and accept the lordship of the risen Christ. Are we still in agreement?

Great. Now, the question is, how can we do that?

There are several key behaviors that persuade people of Jesus’ love for them, and their need for his sacrifice.

Our love for other Christians (Jn 17:23, Jn 13:35)

Our personal transformation (1 Pet 2:11-12, 2 Pet 1:5-8, Phil 2:14-16)

Sharing the Good News (Rom 10:14-15)

Now, it’s important to note that if we go straight to number 3 there, sharing the Good News, we’re probably not going to have much success. In fact, in our post-Christian culture, the history of the church and our culture is a barrier to sharing the Gospel, a barrier that we must first overcome.

Jesus encountered the same barrier in his ministry, the barrier of a long history of misunderstanding of God’s covenant with his people Israel. Jesus overcame that barrier only by personal discipleship, miraculous signs, and his self-sacrificing love. That worked for Jesus, who was God come as a human being, but it’s not how the early church worked. The early church consisted of normal human beings, like us. They overcame the cultural barrier primarily by living out Jesus’ new commandment: to love one another as he had loved them.

Acts 2:42–47 NLT

42 All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer. 43 A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. 44 And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. 45 They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. 46 They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity—47 all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.

By the way, don’t be too discouraged by that last sentence: you must remember that this passage is talking about the Jerusalem church, which is at the heart of the nation that God has been preparing to meet him for two thousand years! There was a lot of pent-up expectation that just doesn’t exist in our nation. If you read the rest of the New Testament, you’ll find that making new disciples was much, much harder outside Jerusalem.

Now remember: our lives are perhaps the clearest evidence our friends and family have of God at work in the world. Sometimes this will make them jealous of God, and they will try to pry us away from God.

Perhaps they’ll schedule birthday parties at the same time as when they know we go to church. Perhaps they’ll invite us to exciting adventures when they know we are gathering with our brothers and sisters to worship God. Perhaps they’ll cleverly point out that the church isn’t God, and that we might need to love God with everything, but we don’t need to love the church with everything. There are many ways that friends and family can compete with God.

But as Jesus made horrifyingly clear in the passage from Matthew, a natural consequence of his coming is division. Allegiance to Jesus demands division, and we are not going to be able to avoid it. Immediately before he said this, Jesus was warning his disciples that persecution would come, and his answer to that threat was to reassure his disciples that whoever stuck to him would be rewarded by Jesus’s acknowledgement of them in heaven. So the context makes clear there is a lot at stake here.

Let’s think about it. As Christians we profess to have given our lives to Jesus—he is now the centre of our universe, the ruler of every part of our lives. If Jesus’ lordship over our lives is to have any significance at all, we must demonstrate that somehow. A changed life, a genuine love for others, these are all demonstrations. But so too is a desire to join together with fellow servants of God in worship and praise and discipleship.

In fact, as Christians we are not merely individual adoptees of God, we are adopted into a whole family, with brothers and sisters. If this family means less to us than our old, biological family, then it is reasonable for that old family to assume that God means less to us, too. They will, rightly, conclude that our claim to have placed God at the centre of our world is, in fact, false. Anything we say to them about God will then be heard through this filter of skepticism about our faith and its centrality. Our witness will be hopelessly compromised.

It may sound harsh to draw such a strong line, as Jesus does, between our old families and our new family, but sometimes that line is necessary for the sake of both sides.

Reflection:

Have your friends or family tried to separate you from Jesus in some way, like purposefully scheduling things during church time or Youth Group? How did you handle it? How do you think you should handle it?

It is very difficult to win people over when you are not at least attempting to live out your values. For example, listen to this news story from last year:

About 400 private jets will fly into Glasgow for the climate talks, prompting accusations of hypocrisy against world leaders and captains of industry.

The sheer volume of arrivals by private jet has prompted accusations of hypocrisy. Matt Finch, of the Transport and Environment campaign group, said: “The average private jet – and we are not talking Air Force One – emits two tonnes of CO2 for every hour in flight. It can’t be stressed enough how bad private jets are for the environment, it is the worst way to travel, by miles.

“Our research has found that most journeys could easily be completed on scheduled flights. Private jets are very prestigious but it is difficult to avoid the hypocrisy of using one while claiming to be fighting climate change.”

US President Joe Biden touched down in Edinburgh on Tuesday AEDT. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and President Emmanuel Macron of France arrived at Glasgow.

Mr Biden’s entourage consists of a fleet of four planes, as well as his Marine One helicopter and a vast motorcade including The Beast and numerous SUVs.

Like the message of climate change, which tells us to act now or avoid a distant, future disaster, the message of the Gospel can be difficult to communicate. But if we are living out that message, if our lives show how urgent we think Jesus’s message is, then our friends and family are more likely to give us some credit, and perhaps listen to our good news.

Reflection:

What part of your life shows the urgency, the importance to you, of Jesus and his message of salvation?

Question:

If you wanted to invite a friend or family member to church next week, how would you persuade them of the value of church to you and to them?

Let’s pray:

Our Father in heaven, we recognise that you are the most important person in all of reality. We confess that we don’t always recognise how important you are, and when we do that we are not just letting down ourselves, but we are sending our friends and family the wrong message about you.

Help us to always treat you as God, as the majestic, all-powerful creator God, to whom we owe all our love, all our strength, all our lives. Help us to live out our love for you with such intensity that our friends and family want some of that wonderful joy that we have. And help us to share you with them.

In Jesus’ precious name we pray,

Amen.