5 Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity. I Timothy 5:1-2
I want you to know how much I love my family. And I also want you to know that my family is growing. Maybe you ask, are you referring to your biological family or your spiritual family? My answer is, “yes” to both.
Keith and Amanda have been blessed by God to give birth to our grandson, Colt Matthew. Our family is growing and I love it.
Our spiritual family is growing as God opens the hearts of men and women to their need of Him. When repentance comes, the Lord gives new life to men and women. Such people become part of our spiritual families. Our family is growing and I love it.
In I Timothy 5, Paul instructs the church in how to correctly relate to each other in the family. In the book “What’s Next?” I ask this question: “Which family group has the hardest time fitting into the church?”
I believe the answer is this: The group made up of those who engage in a sinful lifestyle. Such people are swimming upstream against the will of God. Such people are unsettling to others and they cause division in the local church.
We see two examples given in the text. We see the example of younger widows and also elders who sin. The question comes, how do we keep the family together?
Let’s consider what Paul says about the elders (Vs: 19-21). There are two steps we must take:
- We must be accurate in our understanding if an elder has engaged in unrepentant sin.
- We must then hold the elder accountable for their sin.
We do this by seeking for the elder to repent of their sin. We do this by seeking for the elder to be restored to God and to the family,
This is often overlooked in our spiritual families. Because of this omission family members get hurt, hurt others, and often get picked off by Satan. Brothers and sisters, I love my family so very much that I will seek to invest in the family so that fellowship and love will be sweet.