[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]
What Is a Family?
Modern man seems determined to reshape, revise, and redefine the family as God made it until it is unrecognizable.
Philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels declared the family as God designed it to be a tool of oppression, suggesting that the march toward communism would erase the roles God designed and make the rearing of children a function of the communal state.
Many feminists adopted a similar point of view, casting the biblical family structure as a means of suppressing women and robbing them of their rights.
All of these philosophies and their advocates pretend that the family is simply a social construction that can be taken apart and reassembled however we might see fit.
But this is a lie.
God Designed Family Structure
God created the family. It belongs to Him, and He has designed it to serve His own divine purposes. We suffer when we ignore those purposes, and we are blessed as we embrace them.
Now let’s dive into some of God’s divine purposes for the family. First:
- The family supports the fulfillment of human design.
It Is Not Good for Man to Be Alone (Genesis 2:18)
Western Civilization can focus so much on the individual that we can fail to recognize mankind was never designed to live in isolation—focused on our own individual needs, determining our own individual paths, concerned about our own individual rights. Our natural, carnal inclination is to think this way, to focus on ourselves, but this is not the way toward healthy fulfillment.
It is one thing when we desire a family and simply aren’t yet ready for one or are in circumstances that make having a family difficult. None of us are fully in control of our lives in this life—and faith in God is built on turning that level of control over to Him where it belongs.
Overcome Selfishness by Serving Others
Yet, sadly, there are many who could build a family who are increasingly putting off marriage for years, even decades—and putting off children until much later in life, if not indefinitely—out of a desire to pursue their individual careers or dreams of personal accomplishment.
Ironically, such individuals are putting off one of the greatest and most fulfilling adventures they could ever know: building a God-honoring marriage and family and learning to put the needs of their own spouse and children ahead of their own.
And when it comes to children, there is no greater environment for their development and nurturing than a loving family, with their own father and mother. Nothing else even comes close.
Parents Teach and Uphold Family Values
Look at God’s instruction to the parents in ancient Israel, recorded in Deuteronomy 6:7—instruction that all parents would do well to heed today. Speaking of His laws, commandments, and way of life, God tells them:
You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up (Deuteronomy 6:7).
More so than in a school room or daycare, it is in the day-to-day, common interactions of life that God’s commands and the teachings of Jesus Christ are made to come to life for our children. It’s commonly said that “values are caught, more than they are taught,” and there is some truth to that.
And it is the environment of family—having meals together, doing chores together, relaxing, laughing, struggling, and working together—it is that environment where children develop in the most important of ways. And, frankly, so do their parents.
Family Guides Interpersonal Relationships
One key way in which we develop is our next divine purpose of family:
- The family teaches us how to interact with the rest of society.
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but if you look around, it is beginning to look like society is forgetting how to be a society. Civilization is forgetting how to be civilized. And such times were not only prophesied to come but, frankly, to get worse.
We see this in many places in Scripture, but for now let’s just look in 2 Timothy 3, starting in verse 1.
But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away (2 Timothy 3:1–5)!
Pretty bleak! But there is a direct connection with this divine purpose of the family. Did you notice what it mentioned in verse 2? “Disobedient to parents.”
Relationship Skills Start in the Family
Keep that in mind as we turn to Paul’s earlier letter to Timothy and read about the connection between family and the broader culture. In 1 Timothy 5, Paul is instructing the young evangelist about how he should conduct himself as the leader of his congregation.
Do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger [women] as sisters, with all purity.
It’s very easy to read that too quickly and miss the lesson. Timothy had many different types of people to deal with, and Paul told him to learn from his interactions in the family to know how to handle himself.
Treat older men as fathers, older women as mothers, and peers as siblings.
Broken Families Destabilize Society
The family is where we all learn to treat everyone else in society with the level of respect, honor, and compassion that is due to them. It’s where we learn how to respectfully interact with those in authority, even when we disagree with them, and serve those weaker than we are.
My friends, it is not a coincidence that we see civilization unraveling around us after decades of media programming in which disrespectful children and dysfunctional families are held up as sources of entertainment and the God-ordained structure of the family has been under sustained attack.
When you dismantle the family—the very schoolroom God Himself designed for each society how to function—then you should expect an increasingly dysfunctional society.
Family Is the Foundation of Civilization
- The family is the building block of civilization.
Not only does God use families to teach us how to live with others in society, families—themselves—are the foundational building blocks of society. Like God builds matter out of atoms, He builds civilization out of families.
In Genesis 10, for example, we see what is often called the “Table of Nations”—a detailed listing of how the different nations and civilizations of men have descended from ancient families of the past, many often taking their name from an ancient patriarch or forebearer.
“Be Fruitful and Multiply” (Genesis 1:28)
In the beginning, God told Adam and Eve to “Be fruitful and multiply; [and] fill the earth….” This was God’s intention for families from the beginning—such that when families of mankind refused to spread out at the Tower of Babel, He confused their languages and forced them to do so.
Of course, as always, mankind has his own ideas. And we tend to define nations and states on purely political grounds and boundaries, with no thought to family or heritage. And, of course, that is going as well as ignoring God’s desires, designs, and plans has ever gone!
Large Families Became Nations
God’s own plan for the world sees nations as families grown large. Even in the Millennium, when God speaks of Egypt’s possible refusal to come to Jerusalem and keep the Feast of Tabernacles, He calls them “the family of Egypt” and refers to the nations of the world as “the families of the earth” (Zechariah 14:17–18).
In fact, let’s look in Genesis 18:19, where God explains part of why He called the famous patriarch Abraham.
For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him.
This is how God thinks. God’s calling of Abraham was never just about Abraham. It was about the family—and, eventually, civilization—He would found through Abraham.
That is how God builds nations—as families grown large—and it is how He continues to see humanity. In fact, one of the keys to understanding prophecy is to be able to recognize the modern peoples of the world in the families that are mentioned in prophecy.
Yet, the divine purposes of family are not limited to the physical world around us.
Family Structure Helps Us Understand God
- Let’s next examine how the family teaches us about our relationship with God.
Some wonder when we use words or phrases like “Father,” “Family of God,” or “children of God” if we are forcing human terms onto God where they don’t belong—as if we are trying to force God to fit human social structures.
In fact, the opposite is true.
God Created Family Roles in His Image
God explains in Scripture that He has created the world to reflect Him, not the other way around. Paul writes of this principle in Romans 1:20.
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.
God intends that we learn about Him through the things He has made—and about Jesus Christ, through whom He made them. And the family is a vital part of that Creation that teaches us about God.
For instance, in marriage and in the God-ordained roles in marriage, we learn profoundly about our relationship to Jesus Christ. Read that in Ephesians 5.
Marriage Shows How to Love Like Jesus Loves Us
After explaining there that a husband is to love His wife selflessly, as Jesus Christ loves His Church, and how a wife is to submit to her husband in the same way that the Church submits to the authority of Christ, he summarizes all of this in verses 31 and 32. Quoting what Genesis says about husband and wife, he writes:
“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:31–32).
The husband-wife relationship is literally designed by God to teach us about this profound divine relationship between Jesus Christ and the people called together to form His Church.
Becoming Parents Shows How God Cares for Us
And turn to Matthew 7 where we see Christ’s instruction about how to understand God’s willingness to give to us and care for us. After telling us to ask, seek, and knock, He explains:
For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him (Matthew 7:8–11)!
Jesus isn’t “forcing” on God the attributes of fatherhood. Rather, God is the ultimate Father, and human fatherhood is designed as a reflection of His eternal qualities—the love, care, and compassion He has for His own children.
Yes, if we will pursue building families as God designed them, and learn to see them that way, then lessons about God and Jesus Christ Themselves and Their relationship with us begun to unfold before our eyes.
God’s Plan Is the Ultimate Family Plan
This last purpose of the family concerns, perhaps, the greatest truth mankind can come to comprehend.
- The family points us to our eternal purpose and destiny.
This beautiful, divine purpose of the family becomes obvious when you learn just what the purpose of your life really is. And that purpose is to become a part of the Family of God, itself, for all eternity—knowing life as God and Jesus Christ now know it and experiencing reality and existence as They now do.
The Family of God is not a metaphor, though many have a hard time realizing this, and many who do refuse to accept it. Again, we aren’t imposing our own ideas on God, but recognizing that He created the universe to reveal truths about Him, and the family itself is another example of this very thing.
Paul alludes to the Family of God that the Father and Christ are building in Ephesians 3:14–15.
For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.
There is a reason that the Bible calls converted Christians “sons and daughters.” It is not merely a metaphor.
Read for yourself the emphasis the Apostle John places on this fact, and how He describes our eventual birth at Jesus Christ’s return. His description is in 1 John chapter 3.
Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:1–2).
We Are Made in the Image of God (Genesis 1:27)
Just as a child grows and develops in the womb until he is born, fully formed and in the presence of his father and mother, so, too, do true Christians develop in the body of Christ, the Church, until that day when they, too, will fully develop and see the face of their Creator. At that time, they will reflect His glory with their own, as fully formed children of God.
It is an astonishing truth of Scripture that is hinted at from the very beginning in Genesis, where we read that, while all the animals were made after their own kind, man is made after the God kind.
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them (Genesis 1:26–27).
God Is Creating a Family Through Us
Yes, one of the greatest truths the human mind can possibly grasp is that God the Father and Jesus Christ are expanding Their own family to include more members, nurturing thousands of others in this life who will one day step into eternity to join Them—forever. And the God-ordained design of the family points us to this beautiful and life-changing truth.
My friends, if we will reject the ill-conceived and vainglorious attempts to take what God has created—the family—and reshape it based on humanly devised, devil-inspired philosophies and ideologies and simply embrace God’s own design for it and His divine purposes for it, then the family becomes a source of wonder, instruction, humility, and blessings.
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