One of my e-mail favorites: After the baptism of his baby brother in church, little Johnny sobbed all the way home in the back seat of the car. His father asked him three times what was wrong. Finally the boy replied, "That preacher said he wanted us brought up in a Christian home, and I wanted to stay with you guys."

So what is a Christian home, a Christian family? Through the miracle of birth or adoption, or through a series of decisions that may or may not make sense, we are all lodged with a certain set of people who are our earthly families, some combination of people who help raise us to adulthood. When we become Christians, we also become part of the bigger family, the family of God.

God has chosen us to be his children, his body, the family of God (Eph 1:4-6). Jesus said, you are my family … anyone who does the will of my father is my family (Mt 12:49-50). We are connected in and through Jesus: one baptism, one Lord, united in and through Christ (Eph 4:4-5). In Christ we are in a new family--a family that is bound by the grace of Jesus Christ.

The Bible has a lot to say about both of these families: God's big one, united in him, and our little earthly ones. To make his family, God chose Abraham and blessed him to be the father of many nations (Gen 17:4-7), growing into the people of Israel, the chosen ones into whom all believers in Jesus have been grafted (Rom 11). In Chronicles 1 and 2, the chronicler reports the history of God's people Israel, but more than that, he gives a picture of brokenness, forgiveness, covenant, grace, and the promise of hope for God's people. In name after name, story after story, we see the family of God in all its glory and all its brokenness.

Many years after the exile and return to Jerusalem, the people Israel were called to be a new family by Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. They were now united by one baptism, one faith, one church. Jesus himself modeled and taught how to be family to each other: Love one another as I have loved you (Jn 13:34); forgive others (Mt 6: 15); bear one another's burdens (Gal 6:2); and, if we participate in Jesus' suffering, we will be children of God, joint heirs with Christ, glorified with him. (Rom 8:17).

In Christ we find our identity, our salvation, our hope, our work for the Kingdom, and our future, or, as Eugene Peterson sums it up in The Message, "It's in Christ we find out who we are and what we are living for" (Eph 1:11).

In his book The Purpose-Driven Life, Rick Warren talks about the family of God in the chapter "Formed for God's Family":

"The entire Bible is the story of God building a family who will love him, honor him and reign with him forever. It says, 'His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure.'"

We yearn to make our homes with this family of God. We yearn to find a home (Jn 15), use our gifts (1 Cor 12), build each other up, and walk together step by step. We teach and minister and serve as God's hands and feet, doing his Kingdom work.

Earthly families and God's instructions

But what about the other family, the earthly one, where we live and die; where we work and struggle and laugh and cry; where we make a living and raise children and work out a daily existence? What about the days when the phone rings and it's your ex-husband with an excuse for not picking up the kids, or the nursing home calling about your dad who has fallen again, or the police who picked up your drunken teenager? Or you are tired of living with her nagging and bullying, and you just want out. Or you are frustrated and don't have the energy to be patient with your children. Living in a family is just plain hard! Often we find that we can grow and flourish in our adopted family of God more easily than in our earthly families.

During my son's freshman year at college, he watched some of his classmates struggle to find themselves, wandering into heavy drinking, drugs, alternative lifestyles, gender confusion, sexual activity. These kids were different, he told me, from the ones whom he sensed had a "center," an understanding of what is right and wrong. Families are complicated, messy, wonderful, horrible, and comforting, and they have so much influence in defining us as we grow up.

As Christians we look to the Bible to see what God says about these earthly families into which he has placed us. It seems that God has not been clear enough. If there were just one definite way to do it, we would know for sure that we were doing God's will! Instead of an actual picture of what these earthly families are to look like, Scripture illustrates that the only way family works in the long run is with the Living Lord at the center.

In Genesis 2 we see God's intent: the first couple, created by God as male and female, are called to be partners, coming together as one. We meet their sons and cringe over the tragedy of sin that separated and destroyed. Families grow and encounter life with all its wonder, heartache, sin, and hope. We read of families with multiple wives and concubines; the tribal upbringing of children; aging parents; blessings given and received. In the midst of all this daily living, God made his covenant with Abraham and all the people of Israel. In living out the covenant, Israel's call was to follow the one and only God and to live in earthly families as God's own people. Families were to be a place of blessing, grace, and hope. Children and parents were to honor one another.

In Scripture we see this God-given basic design for families, a husband and wife nurturing their children. We see evidence of living with grace, a foundation, that we might be strengthened to be sent out to use our gifts, to encourage one another, and to love one another as Jesus loved us.

"The logical beginning point of any family relationship is a covenant commitment, which has unconditional love at its core," write Jack and Judy Balswick. "Out of the security provided by this covenant love develops grace. In this atmosphere of grace, family members have the freedom to empower each other. Empowering leads to the possibility of intimacy between family members. Intimacy then leads back to a deeper level of covenant commitment." 2 The authors continue to unpack these four elements with insightful suggestions for making family better.

A process for growth

Covenant, grace, empowerment, intimacy. How do we do it? Why do we keep messing it up? I am convinced it is not possible in our own strength. First we must fall on our faces before Jesus, give up control over our own and others' lives, invite him to sit on the throne of our hearts and fill us with his grace, let him set limits on our absolute freedom to call any sexual grouping a family. In the center of every person is the call to give up to God, to say we can't do it on our own, to follow him, and to live in the power of the Holy Spirit. The family can only grow to wholeness when each member focuses on Jesus for meaning, definition, purpose, help, and hope.

Family is pretty confusing today. Some say that whatever comes together can be a "family." I have experienced firsthand many iterations of family. I have parents, stepparents, two sisters and their husbands and children. I have had two husbands, one deceased. I have two children, one stepchild, and two sets of in-laws and their related families. I have been a stepmom, widow, child of divorced parents, single mom, and part of a blended family. How does anyone get it right?

It's not just college students who are casting about for identity and definition. As I look around my suburban community and the church I serve, it is clear that we aren't getting it right by our own efforts. We have veered from the biblical design and gone our own way, "doing what is right in our own eyes." Covered-up sin, un-dealt-with grief, lack of communication, smothered or active resentment, anger, narcissism and self-centeredness all chip away at our families. Television, newspapers, and movies--filled with stories of drug abuse, violence, mental illness, learning problems, sexual dysfunction, and gender confusion--all scream that something is not working.

There is no cookie-cutter model for a family, but we are created in God's image and invited to live within a basic design. Sexuality, for instance, is intended for the intimacy of marriage of a man and a woman. We will never do this perfectly, because we are sinners who live in a fallen world--broken and desperate people who need Christ to put meaning and wholeness back into our lives. But there is a pattern to follow!

The family and its center

There is a center around which everything revolves: Jesus. He calls us by name to follow him, to come and see what his adventure is all about. When we fall on our faces before him, he writes a new covenant on our hearts: "Take on an entirely new way of life, a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you" (Eph 4:23-24, The Message). Jesus invites us to follow his design, not the world's, for relationships, marriage, and family. He calls us to admit our need for him and for one another, to confess our sin and failure, to put him, Jesus Christ, in the center of our lives and our families.

The only solution to this terrible state of the family in our society is to commit our hearts and lives to Jesus. Coming into an intimate, growing relationship with Jesus is the foundation for fixing our families. Falling more and more in love with Jesus is an adventure: growing in the life of discipleship, confessing, repenting, being washed clean, praying, worshiping, studying God's Word, serving, allowing the Holy Spirit to change and renew us. Only then are we fit for family life, fit to link arms with the husband or wife, children, parents, and brothers and sisters that God has given us and together take another step on the road toward him.

1. The Purpose Driven Life, by Rick Warren (Zondervan, 2002) p. 117.
2. "Elements in a Theology of Family Relationships" in The Family, a Christian Perspective on the Contemporary Home (Baker Book House, 1991) p. 21.

For further reading: In addition to the Balswick and Rick Warren books, the author recommends Families Where Grace is in Place, by Jeff VanVonderen, (Bethany House 1992).

Kristin Huffman is Associate Pastor for Christian Education at Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas.