Family Purpose

So why families?  What is the point of having families? What is the goal of your family? What was God's intent for families?

The purpose of family is a hotly debated topic in our culture and within churches. What consists of a family? What is it's role? Where does its responsibilities start and where are their limits? What does "family" look like?

God's story of family begins at the beginning. Genesis 1 God creates the sky, sun, moon, earth, plants, animals and man. The first account of the creation story ends with:

So God created man in his own image.

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them. 

And God blessed them. And God said to them "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion...And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. 

God created man, in God's image, as male and female. The first thing we are told about mankind is its reflection of God as male and female. It is not the male that reflects God. It is not the female reflects God. It is male and female together that reflects God's image. Marriage, first and foremost, is a man and a woman united to reflect God.  The first command this Reflection is given, mirrors the very act God had just completed - be fruitful and multiply. Create children. And why children? To fill the earth and rule it as caretakers for the Creator. Chapter 2 goes on to give further explain God's arrangement  The female is created as a helper for the male. This is not a subservient arrangement, as both humans share the same task, but it is the man that is ultimately held accountable. It is man who is charged with naming all creation. It is the man to whom God gives His directions to pass on to others. It  is the man who is held accountable when things begin to go wrong.

The first 3 words of chapter 3 give the first hint of trouble: Now the serpent  What is a serpent doing in

a garden? And why is this serpent talking to the woman?  Not only is it talking to her, it is lying to her and taking advantage of the woman's exaggerations of God's initial commands. No one kept the serpent out of the garden. No one corrected the woman's understanding of God's command. (She states she is not allowed to touch the tree in the center of the garden. God had stated they were not to eat from it.) So Eve takes the fruit, eats it, and turns and gives it to her husband - who it seems had been next to her the whole time!  The first sin was not in Eve's eating of the forbidden fruit, but in Adam's failure to tend to, instruct, and  protect creation. 

It doesn't take long for the family, and the world to fall apart. By the 6th chapter of the Bible, God destroys the earth because of the corruption of humanity. God restores the earth from its watery grave, brings Noah and his sons onto dry land and commands them "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth....into your hand [all creation] is given". 

Again, it all very quickly falls apart and mankind must be scattered across the globe and nations begin to form.

Then God reveals the next part of his plan. He calls a man to leave everything, to start over, and to be set apart.  He promises Abram that through him, and his family, the entire world will be blessed. God sets aside a family to restore the earth to God's original intent. 

God gave His chosen people, His chosen family, a set of laws designed to set them apart so they would be an example of Him to the rest of the world.  God put into place a means of transmitting those laws, and assuring they are understood and upheld. Moses was to give them to the elders of each tribe. The elders of the tribes were to teach the adults. The adults were to teach their children. The nuclear family's main purpose was to transmit God's Word from one generation to another so God's redemption would be evident through the nation of Israel. 

They fail again, and again and again. For us, the hope lies in this: God used every failure of His people, of individuals, to bring about His ultimate plan of Redemption. It was through the prostitution of Rahab, the inter-faith marriage of Ruth and Boaz and the adultery of David, that Christ was brought into the world.

So what does this have to do with us, as post-resurrection Christian families?  We have been given the exact same purpose. The famous Ephesians 6 passage on wives, husbands and children comes in the middle of an explanation of how Christians are to live as "imitators of God". The purpose of the Christian family, wife, husband and children, is to fulfill the mission of the Church and pass it on from generation to generation.  Our families exist to fulfill the Great Commission - to preach the gospel to all the world. Our families' purpose is to declare the glory of God. 

This is vastly different from many of the current understandings of the purpose of family. Families do not exist primarily to raise a lot of well-behaved, God-fearing children. Families do not exist to make its individual members happy.  Families do not exist primarily to provide structure to society, to educate children, to transmit culture, to ensure people are cared for etc...etc...etc....  All of these are great benefits of family, but not its purpose. Our concern with things like education, discipline, marriage, communication, and nurturing is not that we have a healthy family, marriage and children. It is not to somehow earn God's favor. It is not even to guarantee the salvation of the next generation. It is because those are the means we use within our family, and as members of the Church, to glorify God and to declare His love, grace and mercy to the rest of the world. Our families will never be perfect, but God will always use our imperfections to His glory.