Information Related to "The Family of God"
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The
Family of God
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The Father and Jesus have, from the beginning, planned to increase Their kind. The God kind is a family! It is headed by the Father and now consists of the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ.
These two have always existed and always will exist. Their plan and desire are to add to Their kind—“bringing many sons to glory” (Hebrews 2:10). Just as all life was made to reproduce after its own kind as stated throughout Genesis 1, so God patterned man after the God kind. This is the ultimate meaning of act6, where God says, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.”
This is a two-stage process. First, God made man physical, of the dust of the earth. Then, through conversion and faith in Christ and obedience to God’s spiritual law of love, men and women become a new “spiritual creation” (2Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 4:24). This leads to the final birth of new children into the divine family, who are then “like” Christ, Himself the firstborn Son of God (Romans 8:29; Galatians 4:19; 1John 3:2).
Indeed, just as human children are the same kind of beings as their parents (that is, human beings), so will God’s children be the same kind of beings as the Father and Christ (that is, divine beings). This is the awesome destiny of mankind! The God family will expand through God’s wonderful plan as revealed in His Word.
All children of this family—including Christ, who has always been with the One whom Christ revealed as “the Father” (John 1:18; Matthew 11:27)— will forever in the future willingly be under the ultimate sovereignty and leadership of the Father (1Corinthians 15:28). Led by the Father and Christ, the members of this divine family will share a glorious and righteous eternity into the future.
This, then, is the sense in which God is a family—indeed a growing family, presently comprising two divine Beings, the Father and Christ the firstborn, yet ultimately to be joined by a vast multitude of others.
© 2001 United Church of God, an International Association
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