It Starts with the Family

Few things in life can bring us as much pleasure or pain as our families. When things are working well in the family, it’s great. When things are not going so well, it’s tough. Parents have tension with children. Children have tension with parents. Husbands have tension with wives. Wives have tension with husbands. Then there are the in-laws. Families are complex. But God established the family.

In the Ten Commandments, before a word is said about how we treat one another, God starts with the family: "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you" (Exodus 20:12).

In Genesis we have God bringing Adam and Eve together. He started with the family. He created the family. And He—and He alone—defines the family. God loves the family.

There is only one picture that God gives to a lost world to show His love for the church and the church’s love for Him. That is marriage. He says, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her" (Ephesians 5:25), and "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord" (verse 22).

Effectively, here is what God is saying: "Look at this Christian couple right here. See the way that husband loves his wife? That is how I love this church, My people. See how that wife loves her husband? That is how My church loves Me."

Because of that, when a Christian family starts to unravel and when Christian people get divorced, that is devastating in many ways to the testimony of believers in a given community.

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