What does the Bible say about family?

The family is especially dealt with in the letters that treat of the Church... Family relationships were instituted by God in Eden, and confirmed after the fall. Christianity does not change their outward character, but pours into them new and divine principles... The question is not one of rights on either side, but rather of the way in which each, as having the life of Christ, should show this in his conduct towards the other.

Not the Gospel only, but the beginning of creation, bore its witness to the true thought of God, who made them male and female. How admirably the Lord applies, not only the fact of Genesis 1, but the words of Genesis 2:24!

The husband is the head... The authority put into his hands is from the Lord, and it is his to use for Him, and it cannot therefore be handed over to another. The wife is in subjection to her husband, even as the Church is subject to Christ, the husband on his part having to love his wife even as Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it. The responsibility of children is to obey their parents in the Lord. Their obedience is to be absolute, qualified only by the condition — in the Lord.

The happiness of the families of Eli, Samuel, David, and many others, was wrecked simply because the parents in these cases did not establish and uphold the divine governmental order. And not only was the happiness of the family destroyed, but the sin, whether of parental failure or of the children's disobedience, brought with it the divine judgment.

The subjection of children to their parents is part of God's order as seen in nature... Christianity takes up the obligation, but transplants it from natural to divine ground... It is not merely the dictate of nature, though perfectly right, but the acknowledgment of the Lord's claims as represented in the parents. The blessed Lord Himself, who "learned obedience," was the beautiful example of this. Of Him in His lifetime it is recorded that He went with His parents to Nazareth, and was subject to them.

Placed under parental authority, they are at the same time recognised as being under responsibility to Christ... the commands of the parent, when rightly given, have a divine sanction, so that the child not only obeys the parent, but also the Lord. On the other hand, no command could be binding to which obedience in the Lord could not be rendered... It could not be right for the child to do anything which would be sin against the Lord.

From their earliest years parents should seek to teach their children the Scriptures, and store their minds with them, encouraging them to learn certain portions. All this, however, is like laying the paper and wood in the grate. God, by His Holy Spirit, must strike the light that shall produce the fire.

Adam falls into a deep sleep, out of his side is taken a rib, and from it a woman is built, and God Himself marries our first parents. Is not this a beautiful picture of Christ and the church? He falls into the deep sleep of death, and through His death is formed His Bride.

We often quote Acts 16:31, but too often we leave out the last three words. God loves to identify a man's house with himself and include them in His offer of blessing. Why do we not more often take hold of this fact in our faith?

He felt it was not enough that he himself should be personally free from all contact with the defilements of idolatry; he had also to look well to the moral character and practical condition of his house.

There is only one case in which the Lord shows the necessity of forsaking father and mother, and that is when the child is commanded to forsake Christ; in every other it is sin against Him who said long ago, "Honour your father and your mother," and also through the apostle, "Children, obey your parents."