This post is part of a series entitled “A Comprehensive Church-Based Ministry to Single Moms“.
As I showed from my last post, one very important message from the Old Testament is that the kingdom of God cannot be built on the basis of human families and family lines. When it comes to Jesus’ ministry, this lesson explains some important facts.
First, we have the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. The virgin birth of Jesus broke the line of descent from Adam (Matthew 1:16; Luke 3:23). Because of its fallenness, God could not be born into a true nuclear family. There had to be a break from it in order for the Incarnation to happen.
Second, while the Old Testament has several genealogies, there are no further occurrences of genealogies in the New Testament after the two genealogies of Jesus. In fact, they are frowned upon (1 Timothy 1:4).
Third, as the “Second Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45), Jesus is the founder of a new human race of born again believers. As such, Jesus is the “firstborn among many brothers and sisters” (Romans 8:29). It is this new family, called the church, that is God’s true ideal (1 Timothy 3:14-15).
These facts explain why Jesus’ ministry was so “extra-family,” so to speak. We see this extra-family emphasis especially when we compare the modern church’s almost exclusive emphasis on ministry to nuclear families — at the expense of those not in nuclear families, such as single moms, fatherless children, widows, and the disabled — with how Jesus trained his disciples.
Mirroring the lessons from the Old Testament and God’s practice of isolating his chosen leaders from their families, Jesus consciously and explicitly avoided any kind of “focus on the family.”
Instead, he insisted that his disciples leave their wives, children, farms and land to follow him as he ministered to those outside nuclear families — i.e., the outcasts of society.
Jesus demanded absolute commitment, even to the point where, using hyperbole, he said anyone following him had to “hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life.”
Why did Jesus rip his disciples out of the context of their families? The reason is because they and their families in their natural fallen state were incapable of transmitting spiritual life. As Jesus explained to Nicodemus, fallen human beings can only transmit fallen physical life. Consequently, all newborn babies are spiritually stillborn.
The entire Old Testament proves the impossibility of transmitting spiritual life simply by being born into a family, as we have seen. One must be “born again” by the Spirit, Jesus told Nicodemus. And the way one is born again by the Spirit is through believing in Jesus Christ (John 3).
In his radical call for his disciples to follow him, believe in him and love like him at the expense of family, Jesus was deconstructing the family, and along with it, the clan, the tribe and the nation of Israel itself, hence, the entire social order of his day.
In its place, Jesus reconstructed the family, not as the foundation of the new order, but simply as one expression of it, and a temporary one at that.
It was faith in Jesus, and membership in a group of people who love each other in the deep and profound way he does — that is the church — that became the foundation of the new order (1 Timothy 3:14-15).
True, Jesus, and later his apostles, applied this same absolute love to marriage and family (i.e., Matthew 5:31-32; Ephesians 5:22-33; 1 Peter 3:1-7), but it was not seen as the sole, or even the primary, application of that love.
The tragedy is that today churches focus almost exclusively on nuclear families because it thinks these families are God’s “ideal” and final goal of all ministry. Rare is the church that has an effective and ongoing ministry that really serves the needs of its single moms, or anyone else not in nuclear families.
Single mother families, along with everyone else outside nuclear families, deserve the redemptive ministry of the church just as much as nuclear families do. And because of their fallenness, nuclear families need the redemptive ministry of the church just as much as everyone else.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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3 thoughts on “How the Failure of Families in the OT Foreshadowed Jesus’ Ministry”
Somewhat controversial, but a very brave thing to say, full of truth!
Because of the ministry of ARMS (Abuse Recovery Ministry Services) I have contact with so many women who have left a dangerous abusive relationship that no one on the outside understands. Over and over I hear stories of how well meaning pastors and spiritual leaders counsel these women to hang in there and keep praying. Or worse, to change their attitude and be more submissive. Too many times they are forced to leave the very place that should shield them from harm and care for them. I am amazed and hopeful that some of these women continue to pursue a relationship with God after being criticized in their deepest moment of need. God cares deeply for the brokenhearted, and so should the church body. Keep sharing this, Herb!
Thank you so much, Marty. I will.