Family Discipleship Minute 7: Laying a Foundation

 

Quick review. The point of this series is to help you become the primary spiritual leader of your children. To date, the posts have tried to exhort you that, one, you can do this even if you feel you do not have time or are not qualified, two, God will personally empower you for this, three, the Bible commands this, and four, you should have some spiritual objectives for your children. The next two or three articles will aim to help you lay a theological foundation for your journey into family discipleship. If you are brand new to this series, you can go here to get the gist of why I’m sharing this message.

Today’s thoughts. All Christians should work to develop their theology. Get help from your pastor, your church, and others, but do not surrender the task completely to others. Further, working out your theology is not a one-time task; you will spend your life doing it and some aspects of it will change as you grow deeper in your relationship with Christ and your understanding of Scripture. Regarding discipleship in the home and at church, two components of your theology will be especially applicable. One is your theology of family and the second is your theology of church. (To give credit where credit is due, I believe that Voddie Baucham Jr. was the first person I noticed to suggest the importance of having a theology of family. However, I do not remember the book I saw this in, and I do not have any copies of his books to look it up. Sorry.)

Let’s briefly examine some things the Bible teaches about family. Briefly is an understatement. Here I will only hit a couple of highlights. You will do well to delve further into this concept on your own using the Scriptures and  the writings of those much wiser than me.

Big idea one, the family is an institution ordained by God. In fact, it is the first societal institution God set up. Genesis 1:26-28 and Genesis 2:7-8; 18-25 describe this. We can glean a few important sub-points from these texts. First, as already mentioned, this was God’s doing; family is not merely a societal construct. Second, marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Third, woman is the helper and complement to man (2:20). As we learn in the New Testament, man was created first and has headship within the family. This in no way implies that he should be a dictator or slave master. The husband is a servant leader. The fourth idea here is that husband and wife become one flesh; which is an expression of intimacy beyond merely the sexual. This marital unity leads to the next big idea.

Big idea two, I believe the unity indicated here is important in understanding one of the purposes of marriage. One man plus one woman become one flesh in the sight of God, so there are three agents here resulting in a unity. This mirrors the godhead as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one. God desires marriage to be a temporal reflection of the fellowship He enjoys eternally within the Trinity. A godly marriage is a testimony to the world of who God is.

Big ideas one and two are tied together as well. Marriage is a picture of the unity existent in the Godhead. A part of this picture is the submission of wife to husband because it mirrors Christ’s voluntary submission to the Father. The Son and the Father are equal in being, power, eternality, knowledge, divinity, and wisdom, yet Jesus voluntarily submits to the Father’s headship. Likewise, as a wife voluntarily submits to the husband’s headship, she provides the world with a Christ-like image of God and godliness.

Further, this idea of marriage as a picture for the world is picked back up in the New Testament. Ephesians 5 tells us that the union of man and wife is an image of the union between Christ and His church. Clearly, the idea of a marriage covenant is an important part of communicating to the world what God is like and what the relationship between God and His people is like. (This is one reason that sexual sin is so heinous; it perverts God’s plan for sexuality-sex is to be expressed within marriage only- thereby distorting the reflection we are supposed to see of Him.)

Big idea three, God’s best plan for marriage is that it can only be honorably dissolved by the death of one or both spouses. Matthew 19:1-11 lays this principle out very plainly. The Bible does allow (not require) divorce for a couple of very specific reasons. However, divorce should be rare in the kingdom of God. God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16) because it hurts people and because it perverts the portrait of unity found in the Godhead that marriage is supposed to demonstrate.

To summarize so far, marriage is the first societal institution that God ordained, the unity found in marriage pictures the unity found amongst the Trinity and the unity found between Christ and His church, and God’s best plan for marriage is that it is permanent. Those are just a few highlights, but this is already longer than it should be. We’ll pick up here next week. Thanks for your time.

 

Questions to ponder (or discuss in the comments):

1.  Does thinking of your marriage as a picture of the unity God has with Himself challenge you, motivate you, or bother you? How so?

 

2.  Review the three things we’ve said about marriage so far. Would your kids say that they recognize these things in your marriage? Would your church family say that they recognize these things in your marriage?

 

3.  What are some other big ideas you see in Scripture about marriage?

Marriage and Discrimination

This post would have been a lot more timely a week or so ago, but better late than never; supposedly.

So suppose a man walks into a bicycle dealership and asks to buy a car. The salesman refuses to sell him one. The man cries foul. He throws a fit. He hires an attorney to file a lawsuit claiming that the dealership discriminated against him.

Does he win his case? Do you think that is a silly scenario? You probably think its a silly scenario. The bicycle dealership was not discriminating against the man. The bicycle dealership will not sell him a car because it cannot sell him a car. Bicycle dealerships are a different category of business than car dealerships. By definition, bicycle dealers sell bicycles, not cars. The man made a categorical mistake by trying to purchase a car from a bicycle dealer. He was not discriminated against.

I heard one of our Supreme Court justices talking about an issue before him last week. He asked if a man could marry a woman, how could it not be blatant sexual discrimination to tell him that he could not marry a man? He has made the same categorical mistake as the hypothetical man in the bicycle dealership. Marriage is, by definition the union of one man and one woman. If two men or two women want to pledge their lives and their love to one another and live together as such the rest of their lives, they can do so. However, one cannot call this marriage because that is not what marriage is. Same sex unions and domestic partnerships are in a different category than marriage.

Actually, the definition I gave of marriage is not quite specific enough. For example, a man cannot marry any woman. Suppose a man wanted to marry his mother. Most people would be opposed to that. Does that mean they are discriminating against the man and his mother? No. It means that the mother-son relationship places them in a category that prevents them from becoming married. Again, they could pledge their lives and love to one another and live together and even have sexual relations, but nobody would consider them married. Mothers cannot marry sons, fathers cannot marry daughters, and that is okay. That is the way God, nature, and western civilization have viewed this issue for centuries. There is a specific definition of marriage and none of the cases described above fit the definition.

Last week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in relation to the same sex marriage issue. It troubles me that our culture has reached a point where we want to call same sex union marriage. It troubles me equally that this is before the judicial branch. The judiciary is not supposed to create laws. If the legislature redefines marriage by law, then they are acting within the scope of their power. Courts should not be deciding these things.

One thing I know, whatever the court decides, this issue is not going away. Church, let's pray. The issue is not who wins the culture wars. The issue is people need Jesus. Let's pray that He shows up and saves many on both sides of the issue.