In the following chapters the writer has sought to expound the truth concerning God’s family. Commencement is made with Christ as the revealer of the Father, and then the various aspects of the family as presented in the Scriptures are considered. The subject is only dealt with in outline, in order that, keeping the volume within smaller compass, a wider circle of readers, with the Lord’s blessing, might be obtained.
The writer begs very earnestly to commend the subject to the reader, because, amid the many ecclesiastical questions which are continually exercising the people of God, it tends to warm and enlarge the heart to be occupied with the whole circle of God’s affections. In a day of controversy the heart is apt to be chilled and narrowed if it does not remember the claim of all God’s children. It is an unspeakable sorrow to be compelled, for the Lord’s sake, and in obedience to His word, to withdraw even from saints who are walking disorderly (see 2 Thess. 3:66Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us. (2 Thessalonians 3:6)); but on this very account it is the more needful to remind ourselves that our debt of love to them can never be discharged. The obligation of the Lord’s word ever remains—“This is My commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:1212This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. (John 15:12)).
And it is the writer’s hope and prayer that the presentation of the common relationship of all believers to God as their Father, together with the fact that all believers alike are the common objects of the Father’s heart, and that there is therefore of necessity a common tie both to God and to one another, may be used of the Lord to fasten anew His own word, in the energy of the Holy Spirit, upon the hearts of His beloved people.