From the beginning God made us humans to live in families. He commanded Adam and Eve to multiply and fill the earth, with one generation following another—fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, all in God’s own image, and shining his glory throughout the globe.

But, right away, families became broken. Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and so from them came generations of parents and children filled with sin and cut off from their heavenly Father. 

Yet God’s Father-love did not abandon his creation. He planned before the foundation of the world to send his own Son to save generations of people for himself—to take our sin and die in our place so that we could be reconciled to God. Through faith in Jesus Christ God’s Son, we are called God’s children.

Our human families are surely intended to let us taste and reflect the amazing love of God the Father who gave his only Son. Flawed and sinful as our families are, we know what it means for parents to love their children and for children to love and honor the ones who gave them life. These earthly gifts can help light up heaven. What wonder, that in human families we glimpse the love of the triune God (see John 5:20). What wonder it will be, when we see him face to face and live fully  in that love.

We followers of Jesus have found our forever family. Christmas celebrates God’s family created through God’s Son. Especially at Christmas, then, we stop to marvel with the apostle John: See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are  (1 John 3:1).

—Kathleen Nielson, author, Making Good Return