November 30, 2024

I Timothy 5.8 (NIV)

If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

It is possible to deny the faith by conduct as well as by words; and that a neglect of doing our duty is as real a denial of Christianity as it would be openly to renounce it.*

You know people who have rearranged their lives for loved ones. (You may be one of those people!) I have friends who have cared for aging parents in their home, and friends who adopted their grandchild because the child’s mother – their own daughter – was unfit to care for him. Two different friends relocated to other states to care for an aging uncle. And get this story: After my friend’s mother died, her father, in his 70s, remarried. Then her father died and her stepmother remarried. After her stepmother died, my friend helped care for her stepmother’s elderly widower until his children moved him out of state to be with them. Was she just doing her duty?

In John 19.26 and 27, all our excuses for not caring for loved ones are put to shame. Jesus, from his vantage point on the cross, is not too busy or in too much pain, to make arrangements for John to take care of his mother after his death. John (who is not related to her at all), from that time on, “took her into his home.”

How far does our obligation to family go? Parents, children, grandchildren, siblings . . . or beyond? If we as Christians are to be superior to the unbelievers, should not our duty extend as far as our love can take us? I can’t answer the question for you and your family. Only you and the Holy Spirit can.

Charity begins at home, and so do all other obligations of the Christian life.*