When I was growing up, I often heard my pastor read the Ten Commandments and our Lord’s command to love God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves. I knew I didn’t fully live up to those demands, but I took them seriously.

As an 8-year-old, I felt sadness when a 6-year-old neighbor boy in a non-Christian family died. But I also felt guilt because I was not as sad as I would have been if this had happened to one of my brothers. And still today, even though my brothers and I all have our own families who come first in our lives, we still take a keen interest in one another.

God is pleased when we cherish these family ties, but He also wants us to love all who have entered our spiritual family by being born again. This is the family Jesus referred to when He responded to a message that His mother and brothers desired to speak with Him. He looked at the audience before Him and said, “Here are My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of God is My brother and My sister and mother” (Mark 3:34-35).

Loving the lost is our duty, but loving those born into God’s family, no matter what their faults, should come naturally. It is, after all, a family thing.  — Herbert Vander Lugt