Legacy of Faith
6 min read
5 So Moses brought their case before the LORD, 6 and the LORD said to him, 7 “What Zelophehad’s daughters are saying is right. You must certainly give them property as an inheritance among their father’s relatives and give their father’s inheritance to them.”
Numbers 27:5-7
This mandate from God had little to do with property ownership. It had to do with carrying on the family line. Throughout human history, carrying on the family line was incredibly important for pretty much every society until recently in postmodern Western society. At least, that is how it seems to me.
Even for myself, when I was young and single, I had no notion of the importance of carrying on my family line. However, that started to change as I got more in touch with my Korean identity.
I actually surprised myself when I insisted to CJ that she take my family name. Of course, I have probably the least common family name among Koreans. CJ had the most common family name among Koreans.
For the Jewish people, carrying on the family line carries extra significance, because the inheritance reflects God’s covenant faithfulness to His people. But again, reflecting God’s covenant faithfulness through the carrying on of a family line is not the endgame, in and of itself. Nonbelieving families do the same thing.
God’s endgame is always to fill the earth with glory of God in Jesus’s name through God-fearing, God-honoring, God-worshiping, God-loving communities and families, the church.
What matters is to carry on a spiritual legacy of faith in Christ Jesus. And that spiritual legacy of faith must promote a culture of loving God and loving others (Mark 12:30), being disciples and making disciples (Matthew 28:19-20), and building up the body of Christ through the equipping of God’s word (Ephesians 4:11-16).
Basically, that is how God’s endgame is fulfilled through His people. And God’s endgame will be fulfilled.
The only question for us is whether we want to follow Christ by seeking first (making it a priority to seek) His kingdom and His righteousness—and in so doing to be with Him and to experience the blessings and the fullness of life that are found in Him.
For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen us with power through His Holy Spirit in our inner being, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith. And I pray that we, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ—and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
