All this week on Things Unseen, we've been thinking about the nature of the church.

It's important for us to do this because it helps us think more clearly about our own church.

And just as important, it should help transform

our churches so that we become the kind of fellowships our Lord Jesus intended us to be.

After all, it is the Lord Jesus himself and not ourselves who are building this church.

I mentioned four pictures the New Testament employs, body, bride, flock and temple.

I wonder which of these you think is the most important picture in the New Testament.

Actually, I don't think it's any of these.

In fact, the most important picture isn't ultimately a picture at all. It's

the reality. Body, bride, flock, temple. All these are metaphors. When the Bible uses them

it's saying, the church is like this in many respects. These are pictures. So what is the most important

picture that isn't a picture at all but the reality itself? It's this. The church is the

family of God. Here, family isn't a picture. It's not a metaphor, it's the reality. In fact, we might say that

it's the human family that actually is the metaphor. God's family is the real thing. God has

given us rebirth through his spirit. We've been adopted into his family. We're his sons and daughters.

We've received the spirit of adoption and we call him Abba Father.

And we are left for brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters spiritually.

And you remember that that's how Paul tells Timothy we are to treat each other as Christians.

But in fact, there's even more, although I don't think we meditate on it nearly enough.

God created two branches to his family.

There's an earthly branch to which we belong, and there's a heavenly branch to which the angels and archangels, the seraphim and the cherubim, belong.

And amazingly, wonderfully, through his death and resurrection, something the Lord Jesus has done is to bring us together into one family, united under one head, as Paul puts

...