The Importance of the Family
R
UDYARD KIPLING wrote about families, “All of us are we—and everyone else is they.” A family shares dreams, hopes, possessions, memories, smiles, frowns, and glad- ness. A family is held together with the glue of love and the cement of mutual respect. A family is a shelter from the storm, a friendly port when the waves of life become too wild. No person is ever alone who is a member of a loving family. Although the Scriptures do not provide a systematic discussion of the family, they do contain important insights and specific teachings regarding the home. Some of the most significant les- sons in the Bible concerning the family can be learned by reading about the mistakes of individuals such as Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomon.
The Source of the Family
The first chapters of Genesis describe the source of the family. The creation of man and woman was the crowning act of God’s creative work. “God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. . . . So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (1:26-27). Both male and female were created in the image of God. This means that man and woman find their ultimate fulfillment in com- munication with Him. It also teaches that men and women, on the human level, find their most meaningful communication with each other as husbands and wives. According to Genesis 2:18, man and woman belong togeth- er. Just as two cogs of a machine are made to mesh into one another to turn the machine, so men and women are made for one another. Just as a violin and bow find fulfillment of their purpose in one another, so man and woman as husband and wife are created for one another.
6 EVANGEL • JUNE 2010
The Purposes of the Family
The first stated purpose for the family is the propagation of the
human race. After God created Adam and Eve, He said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it” (1:28 NASB). It is God’s ideal that children be brought up in established families with both a father and a mother. I know there are difficult circumstances (such as illness, death, or divorce) that sometimes prevent the fulfillment of this pattern, but it is still God’s ideal. Another distinct purpose of the family is the promotion of biblical truths. Moses states this purpose clearly and forcefully in Deuteronomy 6:4-9:
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (NASB).
“The family is a more important educational institution than the school, a more important institution for law and order than the state, and even a more basically important religious institution than the church.”
Parents are to promote biblical truths in both precept and action. It is contradictory to say, “Don’t do as I do, do as I say do.”
The Nature of the Family
The family belongs to the natural order of things, and not to a distinctly Christian order. This means that the basic purposes and laws of God for marriage and the home apply to all marriages—for unbelievers as well as believers. God does not have different funda- mental laws and purposes for Christian and non-Christian homes.
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