Ephesians 3:15 Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, Many of you remember those touching verses, in which a great poet tells us how he met a little girl of eight years old, and asked her how many brothers and sisters she had. She answered, "There are seven of us: two brothers gone to sea; two of us living at a place a long way off; two of us lying in the churchyard; and not far from them," she said, "I live with my mother." The good man tells us how he went on to say to the child, that if two out of the seven brothers and sisters were dead, then there were only five in the family now. But he tells how the little girl resisted such a thought: how she would count in the number of her brothers and sisters the brother and sister that were in heaven. "How many are there of you," once more said the kind poet, "if there are two in heaven, and only five left in this world?" But you remember how she still answered, "Seven." When she counted up the number of her brothers and sisters, she counted the dead ones too: she could not think that though her brother and her sister had gone away, they were not her brother and her sister yet. Quite true, they no longer lived in her home, nor played with her on the green: quite true, that now for many a day she had not seen them, nor talked with them: quite true, they were living now in heaven, with One who was so kind to little children when on earth. But for all this, the wise little girl knew that they had been her brother and her sister once, and she was sure that wherever they were, her brother and her sister they would be. St. Paul would have said she was right. If you had asked him how many there were in a Christian family, of which five were in this world and two with our Blessed Redeemer, he would have said, "Seven." He would have sided with the little girl who, in reckoning up her brothers and sisters, did not forget the dead ones. See how, in my text, the great apostle speaks of the Church of Christ, the great company of all redeemed and sanctified souls. He calls it, "the whole family in heaven and earth." Nothing can be plainer. All Christians, whether in heaven or on earth, make one great family. The stream of death runs through this family, indeed: part of the family is on one side, and part on the other: but that does not make two families of it; it remains one family still. And yet, plain as this is, it startles us at first: for it conflicts with one of those large vague half-conscious beliefs, which do us a great deal of harm. We have come to feel as if death breaks all ties. If we had lost two out of a family of seven, and if anyone had asked how many there were in the family, we should be ready to say, "Once there were seven: now there are only five." But it is not thus that St. Paul reckons. All Christians, he says: all pardoned through Him who bade us rather show forth His death than remember even His blessed birth; all sanctified by the Holy Spirit He sends us: however divided they may be — even though divided by that most complete of all severances we know, death — are yet so closely united as to make but one family. Death may divide the family; but only into two companies, not into two families. And first, a word may fitly be said as to the propriety of this imagery: as to the resemblance between the company of all believing people, and our idea of a family. Not that any good will follow of our pushing figure into fact, or trying to carry out the resemblance into too minute details. Let us remember that all there is to be traced between the earthly and the heavenly is an analogy; and an analogy, as we all know, is a resemblance in some respects between things which markedly differ in other respects. I. Now the first idea which commonly enters our mind when we speak of a family, is, that the members of it have all one father. And you know that this is emphatically so with the great family of which St. Paul speaks in the text. Each member of that great community, the Christian Church, is taught to look up to God in that kind relation: He is "Our Father which is in heaven." II. Then, we know a family by the common name all its members bear. And who needs to be told that Name, above every name, into which we are baptized, which we bear, on which we call, which we fear and glorify? III. Next, it is an interesting thought, that among all true Christians there is a strong family resemblance. You know that between the members of an earthly family, amid all the great differences of look and bearing we see, we can still make out a certain likeness: an indescribable something in feature and gesture, which makes a felt resemblance amid real great diversity. And just in that way, amid all the differences of age, temperament, character, advancedness in the divine life, there are yet strong and marked features of family resemblance among all Christians who are Christians indeed. The grand feature of renunciation of self, and of simple trust in Christ for salvation, is there in all. All look for strength and holiness and comfort to the same Blessed and Holy Spirit. All can testify to the needfulness and power of prayer. All have known, more or less, what it is to be convinced of sin: what it is to repent: what it is to commit the soul to our Saviour: what it is to strive after holiness, and to resist the law in the members by the law of the mind. IV. A further note of this great family is this: that all its members have one home. Of course, looking even to that little portion of the Church of Christ which is still on earth — for by far its larger part is in heaven, the harvest of many generations is gathered there — we see that this one home of all believers is not as yet inhabited by all the family together. But still, every member of the family looks to the same home at last; and though we may live long elsewhere, and grow attached to other places and form ties to them, yet, till we enter that home never to leave it, we are no more than strangers and pilgrims everywhere. This is not our rest: our rest is beyond the grave. By the make of our being, we never shall be right, never quite as we would be, till we enter our Redeemer's beatific presence; till we enter forever that peaceful and happy place, of which it has pleased God we should know so little, yet whose name is so familiar on our lips — heaven. (A. K. H. Boyd, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,WEB: from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, |
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