The following sermon was delivered on 25 August 2024 as part of our ongoing Being Human Series. In it Tim Horman explores the truth that we are created to bear God's image in our relationships. We take a deep dive into Genesis 1 and 2, and we discover that at the heart of our humanity is the call to live in relationships with one another, reflecting the relational nature of God Himself.

If you prefer to listen or read, you can find audio and text summaries of this sermon below.

This week,we continue our journey through the Being Human series, exploring the theme of how people are created to bear God's image in their relationships. Relationships are central to human existence, and they are also at the core of God’s purpose for His people. This blog post summarises Tim’s sermon which delves into how connections with others reflect God's image and what that means for everyday life.

The Foundation of Relationships

In Genesis 1 and 2, the Bible shows that God created humanity in His image, a concept the church has been unpacking throughout this series. But what does it mean to bear God's image in relationships? God Himself exists in relationship—as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This divine community highlights the importance of connection in human lives.

People are not meant to live in isolation. God declared, "It is not good for the man to be alone" (Genesis 2:18), which is why He created Eve as a companion for Adam. This principle extends beyond marriage—it speaks to the broader truth that humanity is designed for relationship and community. Whether in friendships, family, or within the church, relationships are meant to mirror the love and unity within the Trinity.

The Heart of the Matter

When Jesus was asked to name the greatest commandment, He provided two: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength" and "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Mark 12:30-31). These commandments emphasize the centrality of relationships in life. At the heart of everything is love—love for God and love for others.

Relationships with others are not merely an extra component of life; they are fundamental to how people experience and express the image of God. God created the world so that humanity might know Him, love Him, and be loved by Him. In turn, people are to love others and be loved by them. This reciprocal love is at the core of human existence and the foundation of relationships.

The Joys and Challenges of Relationships

Many people have experienced both the joy and the pain that come with relationships. Some relationships bring profound blessings, while others may result in deep hurt. It’s easy to focus on how others have acted, but it’s also crucial to reflect on one's own role in those relationships. How have individuals been a source of blessing to others? Have they embodied God’s love, or have they caused pain?

Relationships hold significant power. They can be the source of the greatest joys and the deepest sorrows. During difficult times, the presence of others can make challenges more bearable. Conversely, isolation can amplify pain, making it feel overwhelming. This is why God’s design includes living in community, not just in a superficial way but in deep, meaningful connections.

Finding Fulfillment in Relationships

Society often suggests that personal fulfillment comes from within—by pursuing individual desires and goals. However, the Bible offers a different perspective. True fulfillment comes from loving outwardly—loving God and others. When people focus on these relationships, they grow into the individuals God created them to be.

C.S. Lewis famously said, "Give up yourself and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it." This concept may seem counterintuitive, but it holds profound truth. As people give themselves to God and to others, they discover their true identities. Loving outwardly leads to the discovery of true purpose and identity.

Building God-Centered Relationships

How can this be applied to everyday life? It starts with making relationships God-centered. Whether someone is married, single, a parent, or part of a church community, every relationship can reflect God’s love when He is the foundation. Relationships should be built on love, service, and mutual support.

It’s essential to remember that the ultimate expression of God’s relationship with humanity is found in the Church. As the body of Christ, the Church is called to be a new family—a place where everyone belongs, is loved, and is known. This concept extends beyond attending a service on Sunday; it’s about being part of a community that reflects Christ’s love in all aspects of life.

Questions for Reflection

• How have you experienced God’s presence in your relationships? Reflect on the people who have been a source of God’s love. When was the last time you thanked God for them?

• Are there relationships in your life that need healing? Consider how you might have caused pain to others or how others may have hurt you. What steps can you take to bring healing and restoration?

• How can you make your relationships more God-centered? Think about ways to prioritize love, service, and mutual support in your relationships.

• What role does community play in your life? Are you deeply connected with others in a way that reflects the body of Christ, or is there room for deeper relationships within your church community?

As the Being Human series continues, the hope is that members of the church will reflect God’s image in their relationships. Whether in families, friendships, or the broader church community, the goal is to love as God loves and to become the people He created everyone to be.

Transcript

This morning, we are in week six of our Being Human series, and today we're going to be looking at how we have been created to bear God's image in our relationships. To do that, we're going to look at a passage that we've already read in this series, Genesis 1 and 2. I'm going to read this, then I'm going to pray, and then we'll jump in.

Scripture Reading: Genesis 1 and 2

Genesis 1: "Then God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.' So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them. God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.' And God saw all that He had made, and it was very good."

The Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground—now we're in Genesis 2—and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. But the Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." The Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was sleeping, He took part of the man's side and closed the place up with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib He had taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man. The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman (or Isha in Hebrew), for she was taken out of man." That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

The Relational Aspect of Creation

We all know that passage of scripture very well, I'm sure. That's just a few verses from Genesis 1 and 2 that focus on the relational human aspect of the creation story. Now, over the last few weeks, we've talked about our image-bearing in relation to our minds, our emotions, our bodies, and in terms of community. Next week, we're going to be looking at this in terms of our sexuality, but today, as we think about relationships, I don't just mean romantic relationships—I mean every way that we have been created and formed to be relational as human beings.

Experiencing God in Relationships

You know, God has made us and designed us for connection with others in all kinds of different ways. As we've asked in each of these weeks, how does God reveal His image and likeness through all these different aspects of our humanity? So today, we're going to be looking at how God reveals His image and likeness in our relationships with each other.

Now, I wonder how you have experienced the glory or the likeness of God in some of your relationships—either as a parent, a friend, a spouse, a disciple, or a member of the body of Christ. In what ways have you experienced God's blessing, God's presence, God's likeness, and God's image in the people around you, in the relationships you have with those around you? When was the last time you gave thanks to God for that? That you gave thanks that God has revealed Himself to you through the people that you know, love, work alongside, and journey with in Christ?

Reflecting on Our Role in Relationships

So, I think as we journey into this question this morning, and as Linda said, we're not going to be covering everything that we can about relationships in one talk—otherwise, we'll be here for a very long time. But the reality is, and I'm sure that some of the relationships you have had have been really, really good, have been a huge blessing to you, have been God's gift to you. But I'm sure that some of them have also been incredible sources of pain and perhaps even trauma. Probably, if we're honest, most of them have been a bit of a mix of both, right?

It's really easy when we enter into a topic like this to just think about other people, what other people have done. But what about you? How have you been a source of blessing and joy to the people around you, to the people in your life that God has given to you as a gift? How have you served them? How have you demonstrated the image and likeness of God to them? How have you tried to be a faithful Imago Dei, an image-bearer of God, in your relationships? In what sense have you taken responsibility for that, or have you been a source of pain and hurt to those around you? Probably, if we're honest, it's likely a bit of a mix of both.

Maybe we should do an altar call right now.

The Centrality of Relationships in Our Humanity

Now, as I've thought about this all week, I have come to the conclusion that I think this aspect of our humanity is the most powerful and the most central to all of our image-bearing. This is really where it all comes together. I'm not saying that our emotional lives, our cognitive lives, our rational minds, our bodies—anything like that—I'm not saying that those are downgraded in any way. But the point is, I think it all comes together in this—in our relationships. Of all the aspects of what it means to be human, I think this is the most important. That's a bold claim, I know. But think about it like this: when Jesus was asked to name the greatest commandment in the law (now, Darren mentioned this last week), what did Jesus say? You all know it: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love the Lord your God with everything that you are." That's the greatest commandment. And the second, Jesus went on to say, is like it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus said that on these two commands hang all the Law and the Prophets—like, everything of the revelation of God throughout the old covenant comes together in these two commands.

The Heart of Everything: Love and Relationship

So, what's Jesus saying? I think He's saying that at the heart of everything is relationship: love God and love others. That's at the heart of the whole thing. That's the meaning of creation. The reason that God created the world in the first place is so that we might know Him and love Him, and that He might know us and love us, and also that we might know others and love them, and they might know us and love us. The whole thing centers around relationship. That is the purpose of the creation—that we might know God and love Him and be loved by Him.

So that's the cake, if you like; everything else is just kind of decoration. In my own life, I can easily say that it has been the relationships I have had that have been the source of both my greatest joy and my greatest delight, but also my greatest pain. The things that I've experienced that have blessed me the most but also hurt me the most are in my relationships, and that's probably true for you as well, I'm sure.

The Power of Relationships in Our Lives

But when we're going through hell, when life is hard, it's made so much more bearable when you know that you have people walking with you through it. Relationships also give us great strength to endure. You can face immense challenges when you know you've got people in your corner who are cheering you on and helping you. But when we feel alone, when we don't have that, when we are lonely or isolated, the pain that we experience is amplified like a thousand times. Loneliness is a huge epidemic in our culture.

On the flip side, you can have every material blessing that this world can give you. You could be as rich as you want, but if you don't have people in your life to share it with, then it's all meaningless. Ecclesiastes 4 puts it like this: "I saw something meaningless under the sun. There was a man all alone; he had neither son nor brother. There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth. 'For whom am I toiling?' he asked, 'and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?' This too is meaningless—a miserable business." So you can be the wealthiest person on the planet, but if you've given your life to pursuing material gain at the cost of your relationships, then it's meaningless. What's it for? Who are you going to share it with?

The Importance of Family and Community

I remember, I think it was C.S. Lewis—there's no sermon complete unless we have a C.S. Lewis quote—who said that the reason we work, the reason we work is not so that we can just gain wealth. I mean, that's part of it, but the reason we do it, at the heart of it, is so that we can be happy at home, happy with the people we love. I think that is so true, so profoundly true. As Proverbs 17:1 says, "Better a dry crust where there is harmony and peace than a house full of feasting where there is strife." What's the point of all the wealth in the world if you can't get along with the people in your life? If your relationships are hurting and damaged and broken, or if you've given everything of yourself to pursue those things—to pursue wealth—at the cost of your relationships?

We can put up with many deprivations where there's love, but no amount of material gain can take its place. So my personal vision in life, like the vision I have for the whole of my life, what I'm aiming for is this: that, God willing, one day when I'm old, I'll be able to sit down at the table with my family, with kids, grandkids, and friends who've become family to us, and share a meal with love in our hearts for each other. That is literally my vision for my life. That's what I'm working towards. That's what I want when I get to the end of my days—that I can sit at the table with my family, my loved ones, my grandkids, my friends, and share a meal, and we have love in our hearts for each other.

Pursuing What Matters Most

Now, that might not seem like a particularly grandiose goal, but I think it's probably the most important thing in life. And the tragedy is that very few people find that.

Sometimes the reason for that is that we are at fault—we've pushed people away, we've damaged our relationships through our foolish behavior. Sometimes it's because of the actions of other people. We're not at fault, but we are the victims of the foolishness of others. Nothing in life is guaranteed, and yet I think this is what we're called to as human beings, and I think it's worth pursuing.

Three Dimensions of Relationship

Now, as I said, this is such a massive topic, and there's so much I'm not going to be touching on today. But what I want to do is try and look at our relationships and our image-bearing of God in our relationships in three dimensions, and they're all profoundly interlinked. The first one is in terms of our understanding of God. What does God teach us about relationships? The second thing is in terms of marriage and family, but I'm going to do that in a way that I think will surprise you. And the third thing is in the Church, the family of God. So, with God Himself, with marriage and family, and with the Church—these are the three dimensions that I'm going to try and briefly unpack this morning.

Building on Community

Linda brilliantly covered the community aspect of our relationships a couple of weeks back, you know, how we live in community as the body of Christ and how that reveals God, and how important that is to our understanding of what it means to be disciples. So, I'm not going to unpack some of that, but where I'm landing today will go back to that. So, if you didn't get a chance to hear that message, I encourage you after today to go back and have a listen to Linda's because it will piggyback onto this one really beautifully because that's kind of where this goes in terms of thinking about our relationships ultimately centered on the body of Christ. Lots of overlap.

The Foundation: God as Relationship

But first of all, the foundation of all of this—our whole understanding of what our relationships mean—is God. And the reason for that is because God Himself is a relationship. So, it shouldn't be a surprise to us that our relationships are one of the main ways we image God's nature and likeness—that we display His nature and likeness—because God Himself is a relationship. Genesis even tells us this in the story: "Let us make man in our own image, our image. Let us make man in our image." So, God is, as we understand now in the fullness of the revelation of Scripture, God is a Trinity. God is a community of persons—one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And this means that at the very heart of the nature of God is community and relationship. That's who God is. He is a community and a relationship of persons—one God existing in a plurality: Father, Son, and Spirit—eternally existing in love for one another. And that is the nature of God.

The Eternal Love Within the Trinity

That is the nature of God. God is love, expressed eternally between one and another of the members of the Trinity, the persons of the Trinity—the Father loving the Son and the Holy Spirit eternally, everlasting to everlasting; the Son loving the Father and the Spirit eternally, everlasting to everlasting; the Spirit loving the Father and the Son eternally, from everlasting to everlasting. That is the nature of God—it's embedded in His very character. And so, therefore, it makes sense that the way He would make the world, the creation that expresses His image and likeness, would have at its heart, relationship. Does that make sense? And so, therefore, it makes sense that it would be central—that this would be central to our own image-bearing as human persons.

Created for Deep, Interconnected Relationships

We are individuals; each of us has a personal, individual integrity. We are one, as it were, but we're not just absorbed into the group. We're not just a brick in the wall. We're not made to exist alone. We cannot exist alone. I mean, it's physically impossible that we would exist alone, but in terms of our identity, we have been created for one another. We're made to live in deep, interconnected, and interdependent relationships with others. That's what it means to be human because that is what God is like. So, the point is here that you cannot be human as an image-bearer of God without needing to depend on relationships as a key part of how you'll grow into that. We cannot discover and express our true identities as human beings apart from our relationships.

Identity Through Relationships

So again, the two greatest commandments, if you think about it—to love God and neighbor—they're about relationships, of course, but they're also about your identity, who you are. And so, if you are a person who has been... Think about it like this: if you're a person who has been formed properly in love, if you know how to love God and others well, if you can do that well, you will also be a profoundly mature and flourishing person. You will have a rich, secure, confident, balanced, and God-glorifying personality.

Relational Health and Spiritual Health

We said back in our emotions section of this series that you cannot be spiritually healthy if you're not also emotionally healthy. And it's the same with our relationships—we cannot be spiritually healthy if we're not relationally healthy. And so, I'd say that contrary to the narrative that we live in in the West, we don't discover our true identities, our true selves, primarily by looking inward—although there is definitely a "me" that I need to learn and discover and grow into—but we don't primarily discover our true identities by looking inward, but rather by loving outward. By loving outward, right? This is the central principle of all Christian discipleship. If we focus on loving God and loving our neighbor, we will grow to love ourselves, to discover ourselves as well by looking and loving outwards from ourselves.

The Paradox of Self-Discovery

And so, as Jesus said, "Take up your cross, come and follow me. Die to yourself, give yourself entirely to me, give yourself entirely to others, and not only when we do that do we gain Christ, we also gain ourselves, we gain our true selves." And here we go—here's C.S. Lewis again: "Give up yourself," he says in Mere Christianity, "and you will find your real self. Lose your life, and you'll save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day, and death of your whole body in the end; submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing; nothing that you have not given away will really be yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you'll find in the end only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him, everything else thrown in."

The Vision for God-Centered Relationships

And this is the genius of it—this was God's vision for our relationships. If we're all doing that, then we have no need to worry about our "selves" at all because in the world that God intended, we would all be doing this for each other. We'd be loving and serving each other, giving of ourselves to each other, and so, therefore, we would live in a world where there is deep connection, deep relationship, deep affection—a world without selfishness and a world without lack. And that's kind of what communism and socialism are trying to aim for—it's just that they take the love out of it, take God out of it. You can't do it—it doesn't work if you're not centered on God. But in a sense, the heart of what socialism was about is to kind of rediscover what the world was meant to be—where there's mutual giving and sharing of life and of resources and of everything that we have. But you can't do it unless it's centered on Christ. I'm not saying we should be Christian socialists—just to be very clear about that. The point is, this is what God has wanted for us and for our relationships from the very beginning.

The Meaning of Marriage Beyond Marriage

And that's why the second point of this, when we come to talk about marriage and family, the second point I want to make is that the meaning of marriage is not marriage. The meaning of marriage is not marriage. So, when it comes to our relationships, the vision of family in the Kingdom of God is so much bigger than just the nuclear family—you know, mom, dad, and the kids—or even that everyone needs to be married or have kids. And this is where we have to be really, really careful because I think too often in the Church we have turned marriage and family into an idol, into kind of the primary goal of our discipleship—that everything we're supposed to be doing as humans is meant to lead to that, that you'd be happily married with children. But that is not the vision of life in the Kingdom of God. And I think we have turned that into an idol, and we need to dismantle it. And we're going to do a bit more of that next week. By the way, today is a kind of part one to next week's part two, so I'm not going to answer everything that we need to or address everything we need to here this morning, but we're going to try and keep unpacking that next week.

Gifts from God, Not Idols

But our relationships, yes, are gifts from God, absolutely. But if we turn them into idols—and we've talked about this in relation to every part of what it means to be human—if we turn anything that God has given us as a gift into an idol that we seek after and worship for its own sake, then it will destroy us, it will break our hearts. That is not how it is intended to work. These things are meant to fit underneath the authority and the rule of God, and we've been singing this morning about the reign and rule of Jesus. Everything we are as human beings is meant to fit under the reign and rule of Jesus. He is the center, He's the goal, He's the purpose, He's the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Our humanity only makes sense when it comes under His humanity and His divinity, and then everything can fit together. The same is true of marriage, family, and our relationships.

The Transformative Power of Relationships

I remember the first time I ever held my eldest daughter as a brand-newborn, and in that moment, my whole identity changed. I went from just being a husband to being now a parent, a father—I was a dad all of a sudden. Wow, okay, now what do you do? Where's the instruction manual, right? And this was my daughter—I was a dad, and this was my daughter. It was one of the most profoundly beautiful moments of my life. This new human being, this new relationship that I had just entered into, completely reorganized my identity, and obviously, there's no going back. And that's going to be true for the rest of my life. My dad used to tell me, "Once you become a parent, you're never not a parent." And all the parents said, "Lord have mercy." Relationships are powerful, deeply transformative. Like, in one moment, this small, tiny human being completely changed my life just like that, and there was no going back.

The Dangers of Selfish Attachment

The thing is, though, if I held on to that relationship with my daughter selfishly, as something I need in order to give me fulfillment and to complete me in some way, to give me meaning, then I would turn that relationship into something utterly destructive. It would destroy my daughter's life, and it would destroy my life. There's no way that this person can do that—can fulfill all my needs and hopes and wants and desires, can complete me in any way. And one of the hardest things we have to learn as parents is that as much as we love our children—and usually, right, we love them more than our own lives—this person is not ours. They don't belong to me; they belong to God. This person is God's, and my task as a parent is not to hold on to that relationship selfishly, but to give of myself to that relationship so that that person can grow up into maturity and then, as hard as this will be, one day move out and go on to start their own life, build their own family, maybe.

Humility in Parenting and Marriage

So if I can humbly receive my children as a gift of God for my joy, yes, and for their joy, for my growth as a person, yes, and for theirs, and not as something more than that—not as something that's intended to complete me or fulfill me in only the way that God can—then my relationships with my children can be healthy and God-glorifying, and we'll find their proper place. And hopefully, as I seek to love as best as I can that person, that I'm loving, that my children will grow up into maturity. The thing is, it's the same with marriage. God gives us marriage not to fulfill us or to complete us in any way that only God can. Again, no human being can do that. That's a totally crushing expectation. Like, if you go into marriage thinking, "This person's going to complete me, this person's going to fulfill me, this person's going to fill the void in my heart," then you are going to enter into a world of pain. Marriage is intended by God as a gift for my joy, yes, and for my spouse's joy, for my growth in character, and for theirs. But as deeply as we might love each other, marriage is not an end in itself. The meaning of marriage is not marriage. The point of marriage is not marriage. My spouse is not the reason that I'm living; they don't complete me. And marriage only finds its true purpose when it is entered into as a covenant with God. As a covenant with God, that's when marriage finds its true meaning—when it's entered into as a covenant between two people and God. Because it's only in God that marriage can make sense and can be what it is intended to be.

The Purpose of Marriage

As Tim Keller says in his book The Meaning of Marriage, "Both men and women today see marriage not as a way of creating character and community but as a way to reach personal life goals. They are looking for a marriage partner who will fulfill their emotional, sexual, and spiritual desires. And that creates an extreme idealism that in turn leads to a deep pessimism that you will ever find the right person to marry." And the reason you won't find the right person to marry is because if you enter into marriage, if you're seeking marriage for those reasons, that person simply does not exist. But if you see marriage as a way of glorifying God and creating character and building community, then of course, yes. And of course, it is to love someone and to be loved, but if you can see marriage within its proper biblical perspective, then you'll be able to enter into marriage realistically and with great wisdom.

Companionship and Family

Marriage has a purpose, friends, and it's not simply to be married. God created marriage, we're told in Genesis, because it was not good for the man to be alone, right? Everything else in creation is said to be good—you know the story. "It's good, it's good, it's good, it's good, and behold, it's very good." And then we get to this man, Adam, and when you think about it, he has God, and he has this beautiful creation. This is pre-Fall—like, you'd think he has everything he needs to be happy, and yet he's not. And this is one of my pet theological peeves, by the way, when people say things like, "Oh, I just need the Lord. The Lord's the only thing I need to be happy." You're lying, and it's also not biblical. It is not good, the scriptures say—God Himself says—it is not good for the man to be alone. So this aspect of creation is the only thing in the story we're told is not good. Everything else is amazing, not this. It's not good for the man to be alone. He needed human companionship. Even so, marriage is not the point of marriage, and marriage is not the only— The point of that is that marriage is not the only way that we find companionship.

The Two Reasons for Marriage

Okay, so what do we mean? What are we talking about here? Genesis 1 and 2 tell us that there are two main reasons for marriage. Number one: that it's not good for the man to be alone, right? So, companionship—tick. And secondly, because Adam and Eve are told in Genesis 1—what command are they given? They're told to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. So God gives marriage for companionship, yes, but also that this couple might start a family, that they might be fruitful and multiply, that they will have kids, that they will build family together. And marriage is needed for that, at least in God's idea. And so Genesis tells us, "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." What reason, friends? What reason? For companionship and for family. For companionship and for family. That's the reason—they can start a family together.

The Evolution of Marriage and Family

And really, and I'll talk about this more next week, up until the invention of birth control and particularly the pill, for nearly all of human history, when a couple got married, what was the next thing that happened? They had kids. They started a family. So everyone knew that marriage and family went hand in glove—they went together. You didn't get married unless you wanted to start a family because that's what's going to happen, whether you want it or not. That's what's going to happen, and usually very quickly. None of the stuff we have today where you might say, "Oh, I'll just enjoy time together on our own for a couple of years, maybe five, maybe ten, who knows. Then we'll start having kids." No. And you know, up until really 50 or 60 years ago, when you got married, you were having kids. So get ready for the honeymoon baby, right? Not everyone, of course, could have children or even should have children, but that's what usually happened. So that was how marriage was thought of—very much in connection to family, not as something that you just pursue for your own personal fulfillment as a life choice, which is what it's largely become now.

The Multigenerational Vision of Family

So, the vision of that sentence—"For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife"—the vision of that sentence is multigenerational. We have parents, and they have children, and then of course those children grow up to become a married couple—not together, you know what I mean, let's keep going. They have children, they get married, they have children, and so on. And then those children are given in marriage, and they have children, and so on and so forth. Be fruitful and multiply. And this goes on and on, so that families become—as it was in the beginning, it's just Adam and Eve and their children—but then over time, the family becomes an extended family, and that extended family becomes a village, and that village becomes a tribe, and that tribe becomes a society, and that society becomes a culture, and on and on and on.

The Heart of Society: Deep Bonds of Kinship

But the point is, no matter how large that culture becomes, at the heart of everything, at the heart of everything is family. And again, we're not talking about the nuclear family here, but the deep, deep bonds of kinship that exist between those who are known and loved and cared for from birth to old age in deep bonds of covenant love, regardless of their marital status or regardless of whether they have children or can have children.

Marriage is Not the Goal of Life

The point of marriage is not marriage. The point of marriage is that all human relationships are ultimately meant to be embedded in the context of family. That's what Genesis 1 and 2 are telling us. It's not telling us that marriage is the most important relationship you can have. Marriage is a gift of God, but it's in no way meant to be seen as the goal of human life. In fact, in the New Testament, as you probably know, Paul even discourages people from getting married if they really want to serve the Lord. Like, if their heart's desire is to give themselves entirely to the Lord, Paul says, "Don't get married because marriage will complicate everything. You'll have kids, and then you're going to have to look after them and provide for them. Like, it will hinder your ability to be fully devoted to Jesus." We don't often hear sermons along those lines, do we? "Marriage will hinder you from being fully devoted to Jesus." That's worth unpacking a little more—maybe we'll do that next week.

A Place to Belong for Everyone

What Genesis is telling us is that marriage is God's means for bringing about what He really wants for all people—that everyone, regardless of whether you're married, or whether you're an orphan, especially maybe if you're an orphan or a widow, if you've been separated from your biological family, but nevertheless, that all people everywhere will have a place to belong, to be known, and to be loved in the broadest sense of what we might call family. That's why Eve is called Adam's "suitable helper." That's not a very romantic way of talking about marriage, is it? Imagine if I'd said that to my wife: "I would like you to be my suitable helper" when I proposed to Melissa. "How would you like to be one another's suitable helper?" That's not very romantic. And yet, what it means, that word in Hebrew, just literally means someone who is like you but not like you, that you come alongside in order to serve, to help. And there's no sense here that Eve is somehow subordinate to or lesser than Adam, because that same phrase is often used of God in the Old Testament—that God is our suitable helper. He's not like us, but He comes alongside us to help us. And so that's the same word that's described of Eve here—that she is like Adam but not like Adam, and that's, you know, the gender difference. And yet they come together as husband and wife to help one another. To help one another do what? To build family. That's what this is all about—to work alongside one another to build the one thing that God wants for everyone, and that is family. And that is God's original vision for marriage.

A Vision of Covenant Love

God's vision for all human relationships is that husband and wife will form strong bonds of covenantal love and faithfulness that bind them together as one flesh. And that becomes the basis of flourishing for their children and their grandchildren, and then outward into interconnected relationships of cousins and second cousins and neighbors and friends and villages and communities and societies, and then the whole human family. Do you understand what this is saying? Do you get the vision here?

The Church as the New Family

Which means then, friends, even if you're not married or don't have kids—and this is something that we need to really wrestle with as a church, and I don't just mean us, I mean the whole Church needs to wrestle with this—even if you're not married or don't have kids or can't have kids, then you still have a profoundly powerful place to belong, to be known, and to be loved in intimate relationships within the context of covenantal bonds of love.

Redemption Through Christ

Now, I'm running out of time, but the point then of the New Testament in Christ is that the Bible is realistic about this. Human sin has completely decimated our relationships, damaged families, broken hearts—the whole world really is the way it is because of the mess we have made of our relationships, that we hate each other, we go to war against each other, we fight each other, we are violent toward one another. And yet God's intention was that our relationships would be harmonious and peaceful and loving, and that would be the basis of all human flourishing across the whole earth. And yet, because of our fall and our sin and our rebellion, like, what's the very first thing that happens after the fall? Adam and Eve do what? They turn on each other. They're accusing each other and blaming each other. The very first sign of sin is relational brokenness, and that is not by accident. And so, the New Testament is realistic about this—that we can't just fix this by saying, "Hey, let's all just get along and love one another." All you need is love. No. What we actually need is for our hearts to be transformed, for our lives to be redeemed, our humanity restored, and our capacity to love others restored as God loves. And the only way that can happen is when we come into covenant relationship with God through Jesus Christ, who became a human being, who took on our sin, who bore the brunt of the very worst that we can do to one another as human beings. He took all of that on. He absorbed that into Himself. He was killed on the cross. He was buried. He was raised again. And He has been glorified and ascended to the highest place.

The Church as the Locus of God's Work

Now, the Scriptures tell us, under the rule and reign of Christ, the whole of the human family is being restored and redeemed and brought back into God's original vision for covenant love. And all of that is happening in the locus of that—the very center of that—is what God is doing in His people, the Church. And this is where it gets really challenging, because if we just think of church as like one and a half hours on a Sunday morning, we're going to completely miss this vision. Like, we will just have no access to it. But as you read the New Testament, you see all the way through, from the day of Pentecost all the way through to the Book of Revelation, what God is intending to do through His body, the Church, is create a new humanity, a new family—not defined by biology, but defined by the blood of Christ. We're being brought together under the Father in order to be restored as human beings, and then brought back into covenant love for one another under the love of the Father. And so, in Christ, we're learning again how to love, how to love each other well, how to be family, how to serve each other, how to be suitable helpers for each other, right?

The Church as Christ's Family

And that's why when Paul talks about the Church in the New Testament, especially in Ephesians 5, what's the main metaphor he uses? Marriage. He says in Ephesians 5, he quotes Genesis: "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife," and then Paul immediately says, "And this is a great mystery, and what I'm talking about is Christ and the Church." So my point here, my big idea is that what God intends to do in us as human beings, to restore us back into right relationship, is not to try to reemphasize marriage as the location of that. It's one of the locations, but not the location. The primary place in which we're meant to discover this and exercise it and grow in it is in the Christian family.

A New Family Defined by Christ

And as we do this right, because it's not bound by biology or by race or by nationality or ethnicity, because it's all centered on Jesus, that means that we should together be working hard to make sure there is room for everyone to belong. Because it's no longer just about who you share a blood relationship with, who you're biologically related to—it's now about who are we together in Christ Jesus, and how do we make sure that the married people and the single people and the orphans and the widows and those who have experienced deep trauma in relationships and find it hard to trust people—how do we bring all of those people together into this new family that we call the body of Christ, where everyone can belong and be loved and be known and experience intimacy, whether you're married or not, whether you have children or not?

The Vision of the Church: A New Humanity

And that is what God is doing through His people, the Church. God desires that His Church be this new family. Now, I've run out of time, but I'm going to invite the band to come on up. But let me just leave you with this from Matthew: I mean, Jesus couldn't be any clearer. While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, His mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to Him. Someone told Him, "Your mother and brothers are standing outside, waiting to speak to you." And Jesus replied to him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to His disciples, He said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and my sister and my mother." This is God's vision for His Church. It's not a service on a Sunday; it's a family—a new humanity that is changing the world and bringing us back into God's original intention for our flourishing as human beings, deeply connected to one another in bonds of covenant love.