Welcome to YOU ‘Family’

And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole SPIRIT and SOUL and BODY be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. – 1Th 5:23

In trying to describe the nature of Man’s composition, I’ve found it particularly useful to compare it with a small family of three: a man, his wife and their child.

Under this analogy, the man is the SPIRIT, the wife is the SOUL, and the child is the BODY. The man and woman are co-heads of this family and both control the child. The child does not have a say in how the family is run (and does not even know how it is run); so all it does is make demands that will be to its own comfort and convenience. It’s left to ‘Daddy’ and ‘Mummy’ to determine what’s best for her.

Households where the ‘child’ is given free rein – complete freedom, with no restraints or limitations – inevitably end up in ruin and disaster. Households where the ‘child’ is kept in check (though not abused) by the ‘parents’, end up being healthy and productive.

Of course, there are certain restrictions to this ‘family’ that does not apply to real ones. For example, the three of them are always in the same place at the same time. Which is why when we see the ‘child’ at a raucous, indecent soirée, we do not scold her! Rather we confront the grownup ‘Dad’ and ‘Mom’ that brought her to such unwholesome environment (last week’s “BODY” series).

And here’s another peculiar limitation of our analogy. In this “family”, only the husband can be ‘Born-Again’; God only comes to ‘Daddy’. Therefore, after his salvation, it’s Daddy’s duty to see to the spiritual transformation of the rest of the ‘family’.

This is why Paul in Rom 12:1 orders the ‘Man’ to present his ‘child’ “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God”; and in the next verse tells him that the key to his transformation is in the renewal of his ‘wife’.

How well have you been running you family?

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN