Set-Apart, Sent Family
From the very beginning, God designed mankind to live in three integrated rhythms.
In Eden we see mankind was first made in God’s image and was created to dwell with God in loving relationship (Gen. 1:28). One way to express this loving relationship is that mankind was created to live set-apart, uniquely created to enjoy God and dwell in love with him forever.
However, despite the first human, Adam, living in perfect, loving relationship with God, God actually exclaimed that something in his creation was not good! It was incomplete for Adam to experience this loving relationship alone (Gen. 2:18). Man was also made to dwell in loving communion with others. Thus God created the first family. One way to express this loving relationship is that mankind was created to live within family.
Despite mankind living in perfect harmony with God, each other, and within a perfect place called Eden - God again expressed that this alone was insufficient. As image-bearers of the Creator, mankind was commissioned to not stay in Eden, but be sent from Eden to finish cultivating the unfinished places of the world. Eden wasn’t a destination but rather a template. Mankind was commissioned to “multiply” and “fill” the world (Gen. 1:28). One way to express God’s purpose for mankind is that mankind was created to be sent to multiply families and thus fill the earth with God’s goodness and glory.
Mankind was created to live and flourish within set-apart, sent families.
Interestingly enough, we see Jesus, the second and better Adam (1 Cor. 15:47, Rom. 5:12-21), follow the same pattern. What the first Adam failed to do in the natural, the second and better Adam accomplished in the Spirit (and upon his return will accomplish in the natural as well). Jesus described himself as the Son who was set-apart and sent from the Father, “the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world” (John 10:36).
When Jesus called his disciples, he called twelve guys, signifying that he was creating a new spiritual family from the original twelve brothers that made up the nation of Israel in order that they might live both set-apart and sent. “He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out…” Right before Jesus went to the cross, the second Adam found himself in another garden and he prayed that his followers might be set-apart (John 17:16), sent (John 17:15,18), and live as one like a family (John 17:21-23).
Despite sin entering the picture, God didn’t deviate. Throughout the story of Scripture, we see the aim of God is to call a people to dwell in familial relationship with himself, with each other, and sent to cultivate spaces for multiplying spiritual family in the world around them.
To be the church is to be a community of set-apart, sent families. We are designed to live set-apart in communion with God, as family with one another, and sent with the Spirit of adoption to our world.
