1) “And Jesus said to him, Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:9).
This word of the Lord Jesus was spoken to a great sinner, Zaccheus the tax collector, confirming that a family is the unit of God’s salvation brought by the Lord. The Lord did not say that salvation had come to that person that day, but rather that salvation had come to that house. Undoubtedly, the Lord wanted Zaccheus’s entire household to believe in Him and be saved. The Lord’s word to Zaccheus was at once a suggestion and a notice to him!
2)“And leading them [the Apostles Paul and Silas] outside, he said, Sirs, what must I do that I may be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:30-31).
This is the dialogue between the Philippian jailer and the two apostles. The jailer asked what he himself should do to be saved; however, the apostles answered that not only he himself but also he and his household would be saved. This proves that in the heart of the apostles, sent by the Lord to preach His gospel, the Lord’s salvation was for the individual, while its unit was the household. Again, the apostles’ word to the jailer is both a suggestion and a notice that he should not only pay attention to his personal salvation, but also to that of his whole family!
1) “And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark” (Gen. 7:1); “In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark” (Gen. 7:13).
Here the Lord God charged Noah to enter into the ark with his entire house to escape destruction by the flood. This proves that God’s desire is to take the family as the unit to which He applies salvation. We are also told that Noah brought his whole house, his wife, his sons, and his daughters-in-law, into the ark according to God’s desire and that, as a result, he and his entire family were delivered by God. Such is the pattern we should all follow today.
1) “Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for a house: and if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbor [also an entire family] next unto his house take it” (Exo. 12:3-4).
When God was about to strike the firstborn of the Egyptians, He instituted the Passover for the Israelites to save them from the judgment of the destruction of the firstborn. What God instructed them to take was not a lamb for each person but a lamb for a house. This also strongly proves that the unit of God’s salvation is the family. Moreover, God charged that if a certain family was too small to eat a whole lamb, they should share one with their neighbor next door. Obviously, the neighbor was also counted as a family and not as an individual. This further proves that we should not only bring our own families to receive God’s salvation, but we should also lead our neighboring families to share in God’s rich and boundless salvation, which our family cannot exhaust.