Part I: It Starts With Basics
In a hatred against both God and His elect, Satan wages a war nearly older than memory. It is against the family of God and the idea of family in general. Satan has targeted God's chosen children as objects of his displeasure. One of his primary objectives is to destroy things of God's creation and this is includes the fundamental ordering of God's creation. Where God has specifically intended order to be part of a system Satan intrudes and causes disruption in those systems. Nowhere is this more evident then in the intended order of families and marriages.
The intended deception and destruction of families and the family unit goes as far back as Cain & Abel in Genesis 4:1-8 (perhaps even Adam and Eve themselves) and proceeds in a solid procession all the way until today's societal "norms" (or should I say abnorms) and most likely will extend beyond as indicated in prophetic biblical passages. The list of deliberate attempts to undermine humanity are evident throughout the Bible. Of particular interest is the obvious concerted attempts to abort and/or destroy the line from which Christ would come. At a few points the entire lineage hinged on one or two ancestors.
Satan wants an UN-family or a non-family. It is just the opposite of God's intended order. The family order is pretty clearly outlined in Ephesians 6 but to fully understand its context we must visit a history lesson first. The letter to the Ephesians was more than likely a "circular or circulating letter that visited many churches or communities in an area such as Asia Minor. The reason it was circulated was because writing material/mediums were often in short supply parchment, papyrus, etc. Often parchment was reused as palimpsest. Since the gospel more or less moved with the people that spread it, it moved in a linear manner occasionally leapfrogging when someone would go by water route to places like Rome. Because of chain migration of the Gospel it made sense to circulate letters along the same paths people traveled. In doing so these letters addressed the day-to-day lives of Christians and converts along these routes and footpaths.
Ephesians consists of an "indicative" and an "imperative". The indicative or pertinent factual information and beliefs about Jesus, the Gospel and relationships among other things and this is covered in chapters 1-3. The latter three chapters 4-6 are the imperative that expresses direct commands or how to apply this information (i.e.: its application to real life in the circulation area of the letter).
What is specific and unique to the latter chapters of Ephesians is the specific application of structure and order to the family unit in a Christian household. This structure is abhorred and frowned upon in our society (and even within many of our churches) as being repressive to woman and children but this is a partial myth that is too often perpetuated by slightly Biblically illiterate exegetes:
Part II: Husbands, Wives & Children: Rudimentary Building Blocks
Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. "Honor your father and mother"—which is the first commandment with a promise—"that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth." Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Ephesians 5:22-6:4
Please note a few things about this passage:
(1) The woman is only to submit to the husband in everything IF...the husbands love their wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.
What is being said here? This is a sacrificial love towards the wife from the husband. "Just as Christ loved the church and GAVE HIMSELF UP". The cleansing and without stain means that He made them holy and blameless. Does your husband do this for you? Husbands, do you do this for your wives? What sins have intruded on your marriages that would prevent this? Do you recognize that this is Satan chipping away at the foundations of your marriage, or worse, perhaps your life in general?
The word "loved" in this passage as in "Christ loved the church" is a verb form of "agape". As I have mentioned in a previous post agapao is [Greek: agapao; agape] or [Hebrew: 'ahab; raheb ]. These loves are loves of self-sacrifice and for the service of others. They cannot therefore be used to refer to one’s self. They are one directional and for husbands it means it should be a love directed to their wives with no intent of gain or reciprocation/reciprocity. Love given to wives should not be self-serving at all, purely sacrificial like Jesus. Are you we doing this for our wives gentlemen? I struggle with it, do you?
(2) Another telling statement in this passage is what is deemed as the proper combination of people that constitutes a marriage. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." We again must revisit this passage which is a restatement of Genesis 2:24.
"Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." Genesis 2:24
Marriage is between a man and a woman. According to the original language in Greek and Hebrew there is no other combination for a marriage. Examining The Scripture LXXXVII: Righteous Sexuality vs. Unrighteous Sexuality, Sexual desire is best fulfilled in a marriage setting as God ordained in Genesis 2:24 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” The proper control itself is the marriage. This is the boundary. The implications of doing otherwise by moving outside or this preordained boundary are clear. Things become sinful, messy and uninhibited. Instead of clean, pure “unadulterated” water, your water becomes muddled, dirty, confused...like a fish flopping, churning and thrashing in water stirring up dregs and sediment.
Cain and Abel are a perfect example of how insidious evil and Satan are within a family setting. How evil's sole motive is to undo what God has done. We can see how evil, once it entered the family, begins to creep into all other aspects of the household like rot permeating the wood that holds up the roof and the walls...until it collapses. Two men within the same household raised one generation away from the curse and we encounter the first murder which is indeed, just the opposite of self-sacrificial love and giving to another person. Its actually a malicious taking away of a life. The ultimate seed of destruction come from without, from Satan, but the motive for the murder itself originates in the human realm. Had not God directly intervened with the replacement "Seth" as a godly line there would've been no line for the Messiah to come from. Man is responsible for his actions since God has stated that he will judge all of them. Right from the beginning we see Satan actively trying to subvert the burgeoning human race. First with Adam and Eve and then their sons. I'd like to tell you that this story improves but we need only read the news or see it on the telly to know the truth of the matter.
Families are being destroyed wholesale and the concept of the families is being relegated to the garbage heap of history. 50+ million abortions since Roe Vs. Wade in 1973, a divorce rate that exceeds 50% in the USA. Birth rates in the United States are now at 13.83 births/1,000 population or 1.3%. It requires at least a birthrate of 2.2 to replace a previous generation. Our recent generations in the USA are to first in the history of the USA to see a decline. We are no longer growing in terms of children folks. Families, birthrates and attitudes towards having children and families are in great part dictated by culture. Even within the Christian community these presuppositions and attitudes are being effected (in some case detrimentally) by cultures far-reaching influences. The United State's "disposable society" mentality, or the "if it don't work throw it out" is systematically disassembling the foundational substructure or the exact thing that creates society, a society that creates the culture. We have now entered a vicious downward spiral. By destroying the family we destroy society and subsequently any chance of correcting the culture that drove this lunacy. This attitude in our culture (the destruction of family/no value in a traditional family unit) is societal suicide. Culture controls thoughts. Thoughts control actions, actions shape families and society. These initial steps to change what society considers normal are the first steps towards decline. Look at the civilizations that rejected God's order in the past. Where are they now?
Part III: Building Strong Foundational Walls That Last
The natural extension of the Christian family is The Church, Jesus Christ's bride. A bride for which he paid a heavy price...the ultimate price. The kingdom of God begins individually in each believer. Each believer in abeyance constitutes a family both in terms of offspring and in terms of The Church. The Church is ultimately the proper end result of the Christian family. Not divorce, not a single parent, not abortion. None of the above. The Church. How do we expect to have a proper church when 1 out of 2 people are bailing on their marriages, breaking up families and dividing children's loyalties? Even within our own congregations! The last I checked, the divorce rate among Christians was nearly as high as the rate among non-Christians. Sure, we as Christians are not as inclined to abort children but is a divorce any less damaging to a child's life in the long run if they fail to gain a relationship with their God due to bitterness or a broken household? Sin is sin folks, God views them all the same. THEY'RE BAD!
If the blocks you are building a house with are compromised, the house will be compromised also. In line with this same metaphor, good blocks/bricks solidly constituted, shaped, formed and aligned to "The Cornerstone" must first endure heat of an oven or intense sunlight to harden them. That heat tempers them against the things that the world will send its way to wear them down and make them crumble. What kind of blocks/bricks are we using to build our families, our households, Jesus Christ's church? Are they being made and used they way He has prescribed? If not we are compromising the entire structure of our communities by compromising our families by allowing the prescribed formula laid out by God to be twisted, polluted or redefined. This has spelled doom for everyone that has ever tried this in the past, bar none. Name one empire that has succeeded once the family units were compromised and society began to breakdown because of it.
Part IV: It Grows Into Community and Fellowship
If we jump ahead to the story of the tower of Babel we jump ahead to see how messed up minds and messed up spirituality begins to affect entire communities. In Babel and Nimrod we see a similar pattern that looks like an overhaul of God's order and social requirements at the community level. We see Nimrod the great grandson of Noah and the Mesopotamians begin to build the tower of Babel in direct defiance of God. The tower itself isn't the sin any more than a skyscraper is today. It was the intent that they no longer needed God and would depend on themselves and what they could do in this world by themselves. Encouraging one another to "think positive" and "you can do anything you put your mind to". Let's build a tower to sky! Forget God, who needs Him? We will rely on one another and the things of this world! Things we can touch, feel, SEE!!! Who do we suppose is the power and "god" (lowercase "g") of this world? The evil god building on the corruption of the flesh of men. Assuring them that their "works" and "deeds" could save them. Their pride shines through in statements like:
"Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth." Genesis 11:4
Their arrogant pride costs them everything they had built up to that point. Who's story of pride resounds throughout the ages as the root and beginnings of rebellion. Rebellion against God and what is God's is the incubus of evil as we understand it in the Bible. Satan's fall due to pride. We see the same repeated in man. The perversion of God's perfect order though arrogant rebellion and this rebellion results in God needing to divinely subverting the demonic subversion by changing their tongues and confusing their speech.
In addition to the idea of community, when we have communal or societal violations of God's precepts we see catastrophic results. The society or community being more than a family but rather an extension of the family. The society or community is a conglomerate of families into clans/or tribes. The community allows us to avoid interbreeding as close family members cannot and should not intermarry and interbreed and create progeny. A created healthy natural order. When god's basic order and structure is either ignored or perverted...their is a price to pay as history has shown. Where the Hebrews practiced polygamy like the surrounding culture...in every instance, those effected by the polygamous relationship paid a steep price...Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon, etc. In the case of not propagating life correctly as in the case of inbreeding the results are obvious and rather...abominable...repeat after me, "Moab, incestuous, eeewww yucky"
Part V: It Forces Men to Either Obey Caesar or Obey God
The last order laid out by God that warrants mentioning is the main extension of power of individual, community and society...the government. Specifically, leadership for society. We need look no further than Romans 13. We obey the leader or the government as they are instituted by God, and those who rebel against government will bring judgment on themselves. Unless of course the government tells you that you have to do something/not do something that flies directly in the face of God or the Bible.
So...as the norms of society change, the laws in our once great country begin to change to adapt to culture. The farther that culture moves away from God and puts Him out of their memory the farther our society, our leadership and our laws will move away from Him. We already know from the pattern at the family level that when man moves away from God, destruction and degradation are soon to follow. The patterns of this are clearly being shown to us in our day and age. History is repeating. It is repeating because man is doing the same things he has always done. He rebels. God on the other hand does not change and is immutable. He is doing as he has done in the past when men have backslide this badly. He judges for disobedience.
I can continue on the topic of man ignoring God's perfect order and perfect plan at the behest and prodding of Satan, but I believe it suffices to just mention aspects that apply to families and their logical extensions: Society at large. The "order" or "structure" intended and created by God is now under serious attack both from man and Satan himself. To deny that the proper family unit is under extreme duress is obvious denial or willful ignorance whether it be by an non-believer or believer.
Of course there are many other things that play into the downfall of these carefully defined units such as drugs, alcohol, abuse, infidelity, etc but I am not here to define each individual ill that has chipping away like a hammer at what were once solid foundations underneath the American household. I am only trying to point out some of the more obvious effects of these moral and spiritual elements that permeate the solid mortar or the building blocks themselves and begin to make it crack. Anything that breaks down or destroys that tight cohesive bond of Christian unity I will always speak out against.Unity not disunity
Obedience not disobedience
Doing it God's way not doing it your way. You cannot do it your way and His. If you do it His way you need to do it by His rules, not yours. Man cannot serve two masters.
At the root of all these issues is an ongoing spiritual battle with man and by proxy, God. The root is rebellion. The root is the Devil putting himself before God. The root is man putting himself before God. Man is not in good company. The Devil knows he has lost the battle at the point of the cross but he is going to make it miserable for as many as he can for as long as possible until he is put out-of-commission permanently. Why as Christians should we make his job easier? Your family is worth sacrificing for, praying for and worth holding together at all costs. Try hard and don't give up so easily when things look bad. God never promised a beautiful flawless journey, He only promise a beautiful flawless destination.
I pray this reaches into some households that need bolstering. Please pass this on if you know a marriage in trouble. I have see too many recently. It saddens me greatly.
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