God’s Picture of Love

Few things in life can bring us as much pleasure or pain as our families. When things are working well in the family, it is great. And when things are not going so well, it is tough.

Parents have tension with children. Children have tension with their parents. Husbands have tension with wives, and wives have tension with husbands.

Interestingly, the Bible says that one of the signs of the end times will be a lack of respect for one’s parents: “Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy” (2 Timothy 3:2 NKJV).

The family is complex, but let’s remember that God established the family. As we see in Genesis, God brought Adam and Eve together. He started with the family. There is only one picture that God has given to a lost world to show His love for the church and the church’s love for Him, and that picture is marriage. The Bible says, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. . . . Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her” (Ephesians 5:22, 25 NKJV).

Effectively God is saying, “Look at this Christian couple. Do you see the way that husband loves his wife? That is how I love the church. Do you see how that wife loves her husband? That is how My church loves Me.”

When a Christian family starts to unravel, when Christians get divorced, it is devastating in many ways to the testimony of believers in a given community. Maybe that’s why the devil hates the family and has essentially declared war on it.

It has been said that a family can survive without a nation, but a nation cannot survive without the family.