I wandered the church halls in a fog, shaking hands and forgetting conversations moments later. As the lead pastor of a year-old church plant, I usually carried a hundred small responsibilities in my head on a Sunday morning. But that day, there was only room for one thing.
I kept glancing through the glass toward the parking lot.
Ten o’clock came and went. Then 10:15. A text came through: “We’re here, just getting settled.” I called. He said they were around the side of the building. My wife spotted them first through the children’s wing and ran to open the door. I followed close behind, heart pounding.
And then I saw him. My brother. His wife. Their kids—my nephews, my niece. This was the first biological family member I’d ever met.
He was real—not a name in a file or a possibility I’d carried in my imagination, but flesh and blood. A whole branch of my story stood in the hallway of my church.
When my brother and I embraced, my body seemed to register the moment before my mind could. My heart pounded so hard that he later told me he felt it. Gratitude rushed over me. The day I’d waited for had finally come. A lifetime of wondering hadn’t ended in silence.
For many, 2020 disrupted everything. For me, it was 2019—the year I met my biological family as a 30-year-old adoptee. I expected emotion, awkwardness, even buried grief. What I didn’t expect was how deeply the experience would reshape my understanding of the family of God, not just as a concept but as a reality secured by Christ himself, who brings us into the Father’s household at the cost of his own life.
Family Before Familiarity
Over the course of a year, I met seven half-siblings, 15 nieces and nephews, my biological parents, and stepparents. As an adoptee raised almost like an only child, I had my sense of family expand almost overnight.
It was beautiful. It was disorienting. It was messy.
But over time, I came to see that this reunion gave me more than a personal story. It gave me a living parable: In learning how to belong to people I barely knew, I saw the church more clearly.
We were family right away. That was the strange part.
I expected emotion, awkwardness, even buried grief. What I didn’t expect was how deeply the experience would reshape my understanding of the family of God.
Most relationships move in the opposite direction. You start as strangers; become acquaintances, maybe friends; and eventually decide how much commitment to offer. Many adults know this pattern—especially in the church. You meet someone, grab coffee, test chemistry, and slowly build connection. And because the relationship begins in preference, it can end there too.
My reunion didn’t work like that. I was thrust into belonging before familiarity had time to grow. These were people who’d been strangers months before, yet now we were sharing meals, staying in one another’s homes, exchanging gifts, and trying to figure out in real time what family meant. The bond was real before the comfort came.
These relationships weren’t built on shared interests or chemistry. They were rooted in something deeper—something that existed before my ease, my preference, or my readiness. We belonged to one another before we knew how to be with one another.
That experience clarified something many Christians affirm doctrinally but struggle to practice: In Christ, commitment precedes intimacy.
This isn’t something the church creates; it’s something Christ has accomplished. Through his death and resurrection, we haven’t simply been forgiven; we’ve been adopted (Gal. 4:4–7). Our belonging to one another flows from our belonging to him.
The church isn’t first a collection of like-minded friends but a household (Eph. 2:19). We’re brothers and sisters not because we would have chosen one another but because we share one Father through the reconciling work of the Son (Rom. 8:15–17). This reframes how we endure awkwardness, difference, and disappointment in the church. We don’t approach one another as consumers deciding whether a community suits us. We approach one another as family.
Commitment doesn’t make intimacy automatic, but it makes perseverance possible. We stay at the table longer. We lean in when things feel uncomfortable. We don’t treat friction as failure. Often, it’s what happens when real people learn to love one another under the same Father.
This kind of family doesn’t come cheaply. It’s held together by a Savior who bore with us at our worst. The patience we extend to one another isn’t self-generated. It’s learned at the foot of the cross.
In our lonely age, many want intimacy without obligation. The church offers something deeper: a covenant-shaped family where belonging isn’t the reward for perfect chemistry but a gift of grace. In Christ, we don’t become family over time. We begin that way.
Learning the Father Through Family
Joining my biological family after 30 years placed me in a humbling position among my siblings. We shared the same father, but they had shared far more of life with him than I had.
Meeting your biological parents as an adult is complex in a way I can’t adequately explain. The circumstances surrounding my birth and adoption carry a weight that isn’t easy to revisit. That history doesn’t erase love—but it complicates conversation. Some questions feel harder to ask. Some stories feel harder to tell.
My siblings don’t carry that same weight. They speak about our father with a kind of ease I’m still learning. They tell ordinary, unfiltered stories: what he’s like when he’s tired, what makes him laugh, how he shows love. They say things I wouldn’t have known to ask. Over time, I began to learn my father not only through direct relationship but through shared testimony. In many ways, my siblings became interpreters of a relationship I was still learning to understand.
Years in, I can say this honestly: I’ve learned as much about my father through my siblings as I have through my own interactions with him.
That realization has reshaped how I understand the church. As Christians, we aren’t at a distance from our heavenly Father. In Christ, we’re fully reconciled and brought near. There’s no tension on his side because the Son has already borne it.
Yet we’re still learners. No single believer experiences the fullness of God alone. Each of us encounters him in particular seasons, through particular questions, and along particular paths. Some know him in suffering, others in celebration. When they speak, they reveal something real. They’re not replacing Scripture—they’re bearing witness to the ways Christ has made its promises real.
This is what makes the church indispensable. When we listen to one another across cultures, generations, and experiences, we see dimensions of our Father we might otherwise miss. One believer helps us understand his patience. Another his holiness. Another his nearness.
Spiritual family doesn’t just support our relationship with God. It expands it. Which means if we isolate ourselves, we don’t just lose community—we lose clarity about our Father.
More in Common Than You Think
It was disorienting at first to meet all this new family—people who had been strangers, yet somehow familiar. My features mirrored my father’s. My posture matched my brothers’. Even my tendencies were recognizable to them before they were to me.
“You’re one of us,” they said.
Over time, we uncovered countless similarities despite growing up in different homes. Each one felt like an invitation to lean in. These commonalities didn’t erase the differences. But they pointed to something deeper beneath them.
When we listen to one another across cultures, generations, and experiences, we see dimensions of our Father we might otherwise miss.
The same is true in Christ. Our union with Jesus is the most fundamental thing about us—more than background, preference, or personality. In him, we’re not only connected—we’re made new (2 Cor. 5:17). What unites us isn’t surface similarity but a shared life in Christ.
At times, it can feel disorienting to realize you have more in common with your spiritual family than with the people you grew up with. But that’s not a problem to solve. It’s an invitation to lean in, because in the family of God, what you share runs deeper than what separates you.
This is the quiet miracle of the gospel: that strangers are made family, not by time or effort but by grace. And because that grace has already secured our place, we’re free to move toward one another—not cautiously but confidently.
The home we’re learning to inhabit together is one Christ has already prepared.
The Gospel Coalition