In this lesson, Pastor Dave Capoccia explains the importance of the family as an institution established by God. Pastor Dave specifically looks to investigate and answer two main questions:
1. Why is marriage and family counseling important?
2. What is the family?
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Summary
We are reminded of the profound importance God places on the family and why the church must prioritize ministry to marriages and families. The family is not a human invention but a divine institution central to God’s plans for the universe — and Satan knows it, which is why he works so hard to destroy it.
Key Lessons:
- Wrong ideas about the family — that marriage is a burden, children are optional, or leadership in the home is oppressive — have serious and painful consequences at both the individual and societal level.
- The family is central to God’s self-revelation: God uses family language (Father, Son, bride) to describe his own nature and his relationship with his people, making the family a unique vehicle for reflecting who God is.
- Our obligations to our physical family — loving our spouse, raising our children, honoring parents — are among our highest callings as disciples of Christ, second only to Christ himself and his kingdom concerns.
- The church is also a genuine spiritual family with real obligations to one another, and when physical family fails us, our spiritual family is meant to provide companionship, support, and refuge.
Application: We are called to examine our own hearts for idols — desires for things like understanding, respect, or achievement — that have grown beyond their proper bounds and are poisoning our family relationships. We must put those idols aside and return to the satisfying worship of Christ, and from that place, love our families faithfully even when they sin against us.
Discussion Questions:
- In what ways have you seen wrong cultural ideas about the family produce real suffering in your own life or in the lives of people you love?
- How does understanding the family as a reflection of God’s own nature change the way you think about your obligations to your spouse, children, or parents?
- Where do you find it hardest to balance your obligations to your physical family and your spiritual family — and what would it look like to honor both faithfully?
Scripture Focus: Genesis 2:24 establishes the foundation of marriage and family; Proverbs 20:7 and Exodus 20:5 show how a parent’s faithfulness or unfaithfulness ripples through generations; 1 Timothy 5:8 makes clear that neglecting your physical family is a denial of the faith; and 1 John 4:20–21 connects love for God directly to love for family.
Outline
- Introduction
- Homework Review: Getting to the Heart
- Homework Assignment: Inventory of Desires
- Why Marriage and Family Counseling Matters
- The Family in God’s Grand Design
- The Family Reflects God’s Nature
- God Uses the Family to Describe His Relationship with His People
- The Family’s Impact on Its Members
- Loving Family Means Loving God
- Your Family Demands Your Top Loyalty
- What Is the Family? Nuclear and Extended
- Five Facts About the Family
- When Your Family Falls Short
- Q&A: Navigating Family and Faith
Introduction
Well, good morning. Welcome back to our new Sunday school series. I’m glad to have you here right at the start of the class. Allow me to open in a word of prayer.
Heavenly Father, we are so glad that we can call you Father, to be part of your family. What a joy, Lord! We want to learn more about the family today and your design for it in your universe.
I pray, God, that you’d help me to explain this well. I pray that it would be something that is both uplifting to the soul but also sanctifying, showing us, God, our need to pay attention to and prioritize ministry to marriages and families. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Okay, lesson two in our new series on biblical counseling for marriage and parenthood. Today we are talking about the importance of the family.
Before I get to that topic, though, as I told you I would, let’s go over the homework.
Homework Review: Getting to the Heart
Last time I asked you to read an article by Leslie Vernick entitled “Getting to the Heart of Marriage Problems”—just a five-page article. You were to read that and write down five observations or questions. So let’s take a little bit of time. Tell me some things that you observed or questions that you had from reading this article.
Tony, that’s right. Pleasing God has to be the motivation for loving your spouse, or really doing anything in the Christian life. It has to be motivated out of love for Christ. If it’s motivated by what you receive from another person, you’re not going to be able to continue that righteousness because they’re going to fail.
But you can be happy in pleasing the Lord even when your spouse is sinning against you or not providing something that biblically they should provide. Yes, that is definitely an important point.
What else? Mark, Lisa, Don, and Lisa? Right. Mark, you brought out an important aspect of the article. Were you surprised reading through it as to what was the heart idol? What was the intense desire in Don that was motivating not only anger towards his wife but slapping her?
What was the hard idol? Okay. Stephanie is bringing up another important point. You can see both in the explanation about Don and the explanation about Lisa how the past—even childhood—had an influence, a strong influence, on their current behavior and some of the desires that were gripping the hearts of these two people.
Now, I’ve said in a previous counseling class, and I’ll probably say other times in this course: the past is impactful, influential, but it’s not determinative. You cannot say, “Oh, because I was raised a certain way, that’s why I act the way I do.” No, you’re making choices. And it does come down to: are you going to love the Lord, or are you going to love an idol?
But you can see how, especially as a counselor, when you’re trying to understand a person and you see the past, you can say, “Oh, I can see the connection between what you’ve experienced in the past and what you’re clinging to now in your heart.”
Heart Idols and Lasting Change
Now, Stephanie began to talk about what was it that Don was clinging to? When his wife denied him, he felt justified in his anger. He wanted a deep relationship, and specifically he wanted to be understood. When he felt like his wife didn’t understand him and didn’t want to understand him, it made him furious.
Even though he knew that getting angry at his wife was wrong, even though he knew that hitting her was wrong, he felt he had no control in stopping those things.
So you could tell him all day long, “You shouldn’t do that,” and he will be—and even as the article writer mentions, he’s crying as he thinks about what he did: “I can’t believe I did that. That’s so wrong.” But he will not change until that heart idol is identified and removed, which is what the counselor helped him do.
“He will not change until that heart idol is identified and removed.”
And Mark, to go back to your comment: it isn’t that Lisa didn’t have things that she needed to change. She did need to actually want to understand her husband and seek to understand him better. One of the reasons that she wasn’t doing that, according to the author, is because she had her own heart idol—a heart idol of achievement and accomplishment. That’s where she found joy, felt that she had a need that had to be fulfilled.
Pursuing that left no time to really pursue a deep relationship with her husband. She preferred not to have those kind of heavy conversations because she wanted to enjoy the good life.
So she had things that she had to deal with. But the counselor doesn’t say, “Oh, you need to be understood,” and “You can,” and this is another point of the article I hope you noticed: there were many different ways she could have gone in this counseling session, and all of them would have been right. But what would have been the most important thing to talk about?
Not, “This is a wrong thing that your wife is doing. Let me talk about her.” Before we talk about her, let’s talk about you and talk about that thing that you’re clinging to in your heart that has to be removed, regardless of what your wife is doing. Because she can not understand you or not seek to understand you, and you can still be content in your heart.
You can still—to go back to your comment, Tony—you can still be motivated out of love for Christ to love and serve her. It actually isn’t dependent on whether she seeks to understand you or not. You have to get rid of that idolatrous heart desire, come back to the worship of Christ, and then it doesn’t, in a sense, matter what your spouse does or does not do.
“You have to get rid of that idolatrous heart desire, come back to the worship of Christ.”
Making Peace with God First
Yeah, Mark, something else? Before they can make peace with one another, right? That’s a good phrase, Mark. They needed to learn to make peace with God before they can make peace with one another. And how true that is!
Even from James 4, which we talked about in the first lesson as one of the passages of scripture that talks about where do our quarrels come from? They come from the desires in our heart.
But how does James describe it? You’re not simply at war with one another. You’re at war with God. You’ve made yourself enemies of God by enlisting with the world and their idolatrous rebellion against him. “You adulteresses,” he says. And we’re not just talking about Don and Lisa. We’re talking about ourselves. We go through the same kind of things.
This is why I said to you in that first session, and the article is just reinforcing it: until we get to the heart level, until we deal with those idolatrous desires, those wrong thoughts about God, we’re not going to see lasting change. We say, “Why do I keep getting angry? Why do I keep getting anxious? Why am I always depressed?” You haven’t dealt with the heart issues.
“Until we get to the heart level, until we deal with those idolatrous desires, we’re not going to see lasting change.”
But when you deal with the heart issues, then you can deal with those other things. It’s not that the counselor never had time to talk about good communication or forgiveness or things like that. But those things are not going to fall into place until the heart is right with God, unless, to go back to Mark’s comment, there is peace with God, until the heart is back into the pursuit of Christ. Yes?
Stephanie? Yeah, yes. That’s a good observation, Stephanie. Going back to even David’s Psalm of confession, where he says, “Against you only have I sinned, O Lord.” And you look at that and think, “Wait, Bathsheba? You sinned against her. And Uriah. And the whole kingdom of Israel. You certainly sinned against them. How can you say the Lord only?”
Well, as Stephanie says, it was first and primarily against God. And until there is repentance and restoration there, the other things aren’t really going to work. They’re not going to matter. So it’s not that he’s disavowing sinning against anybody else. He’s just talking about how primary it is that the sin is against God.
“It was first and primarily against God. Until there is repentance and restoration there, the other things aren’t really going to work.”
So I hope you see—this is just an exhibit of what we’re going to be talking about this entire course: how you’re going to help people. You’ve got to get to the heart. And how do you help people in the heart? You’ve got to reveal the idols, the wrong beliefs, the wrong desires—the desires that are for right things but have gotten too far beyond their bounds.
Show that to people, and then show them that they can, they must, and they can, and they should, and they have every reason to put that aside and embrace Christ instead. Embrace Christ in his way and find satisfaction there.
I hope that was a helpful article to you. I’m glad that you did that. If you didn’t get to read it, I recommend that you do so. Go back and listen to or read it. I have a few paper copies still of that because I think that’ll be very edifying to you.
Homework Assignment: Inventory of Desires
Let me talk to you about tonight’s homework. There’s going to be homework for every class except the last one—maybe even the last one too. This time I’m going to give you a little writing assignment. Some of you who’ve been with me in counseling before have seen this before, but this flows right from the assignment that you just did, building on the ideas we talked about last session and in the last homework assignment.
I want you to do a short writing activity that comes from the book “Uprooting Anger” by Robert Jones. This is from his appendix section. Robert Jones is a pastor and biblical counselor, and his book on anger is considered a classic for counselors. It’s a two-page activity in which you’re asked to check off from a list everything that you regard as a personal need, right, or intense desire.
This can be either currently, or this can be what has frequently been true of you in your heart in the past. You’re going to see a list of things—things like “I want to be understood,” “I want to be respected,” “I should be allowed to determine my own schedule.” You’re going to go through this list and just check off everything that you regard or have regarded frequently as a personal need, right, or intense desire.
Then you are asked to circle which of those is a currently unmet need or desire. “I want this. I regard this as a right, but I’m not getting it right now.” Finally, you’re asked to take the two most urgent unmet desires and answer a few questions about it, explaining who’s denying it to you, how are they denying it to you, and how do you tend to respond to that person because of that?
So for homework, I want you to do this exercise. I’m going to email it to you. It’s just two pages and shouldn’t take that long. What’s the point? It’s about you understanding your own heart. It’s about getting to the heart of maybe sin, idolatry, or a problem in your own heart, which is causing problems in your relationships.
Getting to the heart of marriage problems and getting to the heart of your relationship problems requires doing something like this. You need to be honest with yourself before the Lord about how you are thinking and acting so that you can identify what has become a heart idol for you. You can put it off and put on again the satisfying worship of Christ.
“You need to be honest with yourself before the Lord about how you are thinking and acting so that you can identify what has become a heart idol.”
Now, again, it may be something that you’re currently in, but recognizing a tendency toward that is going to help you immensely in your sanctification. You’ve got to actually take some time to use the Word, put yourself before the Lord, and examine your own heart. That’s your homework for next time.
Why Marriage and Family Counseling Matters
Questions about that? Okay, we’ll go over a little bit of what you thought about that, what you learned from that, in the beginning of next class. But now let’s get to our main topic for today: the importance of the family.
Looking to answer just two main questions in our class today. First: why is marriage and family counseling important? And then second: what is the family?
Start with the first question. Why is marriage and family counseling important? Does the church really need to prioritize ministering to spouses, parents, children? Or can the family do just fine on its own while Christians put their hard efforts elsewhere?
You can guess from the class title and the agenda I just showed you that ministry to families is critically important today. It must be a high priority for God’s church, even through biblical counseling and discipleship. Why is that?
“Ministry to families is critically important today. It must be a high priority for God’s church.”
Allow me to give you a few reasons. Marriage and family counseling is important for number one: because many today are minimizing the importance of the family or have erroneous ideas about what the family is and about what role the family should play in our society in general and in the lives of people in particular.
Wrong Ideas About the Family
Now, if you’ve lived a while in the world, this is probably a self-evident claim. But I will illustrate this in a few ways. Think about the confused or anti-biblical messages you hear about the family in our own country.
“Marriage is a social construct. It’s something that man came up with for his own convenience, so it can be freely redefined as circumstances or taste change.”
“Marriage is a burden. It’s a ball and chain that should be avoided if you can at all help it.”
“The single but sexually active life, or simple cohabitation, is much to be preferred. Why get married?”
“Children are a burden. Why would anyone voluntarily choose to have children? Oh, if you must, put it off as long as possible so you can really enjoy life.”
“Patriarchy—leadership in the home by a man—it is oppressive and outdated. Healthy family should be democratic in leadership, with both the husband, the wife, and even the children sharing authority and making decisions together.”
“A healthy household is built on self-esteem. If people feel bad, they will act bad. So stay away from correction and discipline and practice only positive reinforcement and praise.”
You heard sayings like these? Ideas like these? This is just a sample. Clearly, many people have wrong or misguided thoughts about the family today. And does that matter? It does!
“Clearly, many people have wrong or misguided thoughts about the family today. And does that matter? Of course it does!”
The Painful Consequences of Wrong Ideas
Because number two: wrong ideas about the family have serious and painful consequences. This is not just academic. This is not just theorizing. No, this manifests in how people live, and the consequences that come from that way of living.
Can’t we observe this also? Can’t we observe this in our own lives and in the lives of the people we love? Because people won’t follow the biblical pattern for the family, because they don’t believe that, they end up frequently having ongoing strife between husband and wife or between parents and children.
People enjoy the prospect of freedom of getting a divorce from a dissatisfying spouse. But have you actually been through a divorce? Have you ever observed a loved one going through a divorce? It’s agony. And it never ends. Even when it ends, it doesn’t really. Many times, the pain and strife that comes from divorce just keeps on going.
I have two relatives who I’ve seen go through that. But the consequences of wrong ideas about the family—they don’t just apply at the individual level. They apply at the national level too.
“The consequences of wrong ideas about the family don’t just apply at the individual level. They apply at the national level too.”
Perhaps you’ve heard this—it’s something that’s popped up over the past decade. Many people have observed that, statistically speaking, children are much more likely to fail in school or commit crime if they grow up in a household with just one parent.
Now, yes, correlation is not causation. And if you’re a single parent, you’re not by any means doing—but there’s little doubt that trouble in the home is a powerful influence towards trouble in other areas of life.
How about the demographic crisis that is increasingly gripping developing nations? So many people delay having children or simply choose not to have children that for many countries in the world, including the USA, the population is actually decreasing. There are fewer people being born than are dying.
That’s not true about the United States because we have so many immigrants coming to our country. But China, Japan, countries in Europe—the birth rate has declined so much we don’t even replace our own population. An aging population without a young generation to replace it will have massive social, economic, and political consequences in the future, and not in a good way.
Wrong ideas about the family have serious and painful consequences. I may look at all this and ask: why? If this is the case, why are people so attracted to these wrong ideas? Why do they implement these wrong ideas? Why do they become increasingly popular?
Well, the Bible gives the answer, doesn’t it? What is the answer? It is our natural bent and alignment. Because what are we? We’re looking towards sin—that which flatters the proud heart. And these wrong ideas, even when they clearly manifest destructive consequences, we’re still so attracted. That sounds good. That feels good. That strokes my ego. That satisfies my sinful heart.
And we have somebody right there to encourage us in that self-destructive pursuit. The Bible also makes clear: it is the devil and it is his forces. The wicked-hearted man naturally chases the flattering but self-destructive poison of sin, and the evil one, his forces, create a world system that exalts evil and destroys man.
Satan’s War Against the Family
And this is the third reason why marriage and family counseling is so important: because destroying the family is one of Satan’s primary objectives.
Now, does that seem a little overstated to you? I know sometimes you hear people make statements like that, and you’re like, “I don’t know, they’re just trying to be alarmist.” I’m telling you that is not an overstatement. The scriptures are clear that Satan and his minions are at war with God and are opposed to God in all that God stands for and desires.
We used to be on Satan’s side of the war. We were unwittingly assisting him and his schemes against God. Now that we’ve been born from above, we’ve been enlisted on the opposite side of the struggle.
As Ephesians 6:11-12 says: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
Because God created man and put man in a special, exalted position as God’s under-rulers and image-bearers on the earth, Satan hates mankind, and he will do whatever he can to ruin man. He did this in the garden, and he’s doing it even now—especially by attacking and ruining families.
“Satan hates mankind and will do whatever he can to ruin man — especially by attacking and ruining families.”
But it’s more than a simple hatred of God and mankind. Satan specifically hates the family because God created the family and gave the family a special and irreplaceable place in God’s glorious plans for the universe.
The Family in God’s Grand Design
I don’t know if you ever thought about how special the family is. But if you pay attention to the scriptures, the family is central to God’s glorious plans. Allow me to illustrate this.
First, think about this: how does the Bible begin? In Genesis 1 and 2, it begins with the creation of the universe and specifically the creation of man, woman, and the first family. What is this first family unit told to do? “Be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth. Rule it. Rule and multiply.”
This family was called to grow and make more families so that together they might rule the earth on God’s behalf.
Now, how does the Bible end? In Revelation 21-22, it ends with the recreation of the world and the bringing together of another and new family. We had a bride brought to the first man in the beginning of the Bible, and we have a bride brought to the last man at the end of the Bible—with the consummation of God’s people being given to Christ as a bride.
What is it that this last family will do? They will dwell with God and do what? They will rule. That’s what Revelation says. They will rule. They will reign with him forever.
Isn’t that interesting? We have the same thing at the beginning and the end of the Bible. The Bible begins and ends with a ruling family.
“We have the same thing at the beginning and the ends of the Bible. The Bible begins and ends with a ruling family.”
I was thinking this past week: what is the most important institution in God’s mind? Is it the family? Is it the church? Is it Israel? Is it the government? I narrowed it down to what I think is either the family or the government. But I couldn’t decide between the two because you see ruling in the beginning, you see ruling in the end. You see family in the beginning, you see family in the end.
But what I think—it’s not either/or. It’s both. When God created the family, he created that family to rule. And that’s what the last family will do too. God combined, in a sense, family and government, and it’s so central to his plans for the universe.
Therefore, I don’t believe it’s a stretch to say, as others have, that the family is the basic building block of every other social unit or institution. Everything else grows out of the family. The way we organize the world really grows out of the family and is dependent on it.
This is obviously true of the kingdom of Israel. Their societal structure was ultimately based on tribes, which all came from individual families. Sometimes in the Old Testament, you see an individual family looking up—because it’s like, “Why did this happen?” Okay, go to the tribe, go to the clan, go to the family, go to the individual household.
But the version of that is still true today, even here in democratic America. Our overarching government and other societal institutions are still ultimately based on the individual governance of families.
Unsurprisingly, distortions and deficiencies in the family—away from God’s design—what are they going to produce? Distortions and deficiencies in every other human institution. All comes from the family.
Appropriately, to forestall that kind of situation, God begins his revelation to mankind with extended teaching about marriage and family. That’s what we see in Genesis 2. It’s the foundation of marriage and family. Then you go on later in the Torah and you get more specific instruction about the family and the law of Moses.
The Family Reflects God’s Nature
Indeed, in God’s wisdom, God chose the family as a primary means of reflecting his own nature. Genesis 1 says that God created male and female together—even as a family unit—to reflect the image of God, to manifest who God is.
This is pretty clear, right? In the family, we see unity, oneness, and diversity, which is exactly what we see in God. Husband and wife are one, yet they are different. The children are the same bone and flesh as their parents, and yet they are different.
A family, when it’s functioning properly, is all going the same direction, even though it’s made up of individual parts. Unity and diversity—that’s not all. We also see in families, as we see in God: independence and interdependence, equality and subordination, creativity—that is, the creating of new life—and fellowship.
Now, I find very striking the fact that God’s main titles for himself are family terms. We have “God the Father” and “God the Son.”
Yes, these terms tell us something about our relationship to God. But even apart from that, these terms first describe the nature of God within himself—how God relates to God. It’s in terms of a family.
All this to say: there’s something about the institution of the family that makes it a perfect vehicle for expressing and reflecting the being of God.
“There’s something about the institution of the family that makes it a perfect vehicle for expressing and reflecting the being of God.”
God Uses the Family to Describe His Relationship with His People
The family is important to God. As I was beginning to say, God also uses the family as a means of reflecting the nature of his relationship with his people.
God the Father is not just the father to Jesus. He’s the father to all his people. Two specific relationships are highlighted again and again in the Bible: the marriage relationship, used to describe our relationship with God, and the parenting relationship. Both Israel and the church—God uses the family relationship of husband and wife to describe the relationship with his people.
Sometimes that’s a positive thing, and sometimes that’s a negative thing.
We see Ephesians 5:22-33 talking about how a husband ought to relate to his wife and says, “Just like Christ in the church—this is how the relationship with Christ and the church really is.” It’s a wonderful, loving thing. We know that Jesus nourishes us and cherishes us because that’s the way he designed marriage to be. He says, “That’s what we’re in with him.”
But in its negative aspects, just go to books like Hosea. God says, “I was your husband, but you proved adulterous to me.” Having lived in the world and seen what marriage is, and seeing what adultery is, now we realize in a much more significant way what a crime it is to be unfaithful to God. It is so reprehensible. It is the disgusting type of activity that adultery is. God says, “That’s what you’ve done with me.”
“We know that Jesus nourishes us and cherishes us because that’s the way he designed marriage to be.”
God uses the family relationship of a father and child to describe his relationship with both Israel and the church. Again, this is in a positive way and a negative way, depending on the circumstances of the scriptures.
In Isaiah 1:1-4, God says, “I’m a father, but I’ve got rebellious children. They won’t listen to me. They won’t give me honor. What could I do for them I haven’t already done?”
By the way, side note: that is proof that the way your children turn out does not necessarily tell you whether you’re a good parent or not. Because God’s the perfect parent, and he had children that came out totally rebellious.
But there are positive aspects too. Romans 8:12-17 talks about how we cry out, “Abba, Father,” because now we’re children of God. We have such comfort. We have such assurance because that’s the relationship we have with him.
In the same vein, in the same picture, we have Jesus as our elder brother and really our family head.
The Family’s Impact on Its Members
Along with the idea of the family being a central part of God’s self-revelation, we also see from the scriptures that God designed the family to fulfill important functions in the lives of its individual members. It’s not just a great picture. It actually serves a great purpose in the world.
The family fulfills important functions in the lives of its individual members—or at least it was designed to. This means that if individual members of a family will follow God and his way, the family becomes a strong influence towards blessing and human flourishing.
But if the individual members of a family will not follow God in his way—because God designed the family to be so important in the lives of people—the family becomes a strong influence towards cursing and human suffering.
And we see both of these explained in the scriptures.
On the one hand, we have Proverbs 20:7, which says, “A righteous man who walks in his integrity—how blessed are his sons after him!”
But on the other hand, we have Exodus 20:5, which says, “You shall not worship idols or serve them, for I, Yahweh, your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children on the third and fourth generations of those who hate me.”
What are these two verses saying together? How a parent—and how particularly a father—lives before God will have a very significant impact on his children, on the rest of his family, for good or for evil.
Or we can consider some other Proverbs. Proverbs 12:4 says, “An excellent wife is the crown of her husband. Wow, what a joy and a blessing! But she who shames him is like rottenness in his bones. What a curse!”
Proverbs 10:1 says, “A wise son makes a father glad. Wow, what a joy to add to your life when you have a wise son! But a foolish son is a grief to his mother. Want to make your life sad? You want to bring so much sorrow in your life? Have a foolish son.”
You see? Because God made the family central to life, family can be such a blessing or such a curse. God designed the family to be a blessing, and the more members of the family the better. But sin has made it so that even one family member opposed to God can make the whole family’s experience miserable.
“God designed the family to be a blessing, and the more members of the family the better.”
And I think many of you can attest to that. Maybe you were that family member, or maybe it was someone else in your family. Maybe it is someone else in your family now.
I might think, “Well, my family is hopelessly messed up. I don’t really want to deal with them anymore, so I’m just going to cut them off. Tired of that.”
Loving Family Means Loving God
Well, this thought is natural if you’ve endured prolonged suffering from your family or from a family member. However, considering the family’s importance to God, God has called his people to act righteously and faithfully even with and to ungodly family members, out of a desire to please Christ.
To say that in another way: the Bible is clear. You cannot say you love God and are part of his heavenly family if you do not love and act righteously with your earthly family, even when they sin against you.
1 John 4:20-21 says, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar. For the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: that the one who loves God should love his brother also.”
In that same context, we hear from John that God is love. God’s people are going to be loving. If you find that you only love people who love you—either within your family or in other contexts—John would say you don’t yet know God.
If you love God, you will not only love your brothers and sisters in Christ despite their failures, but you will also love your physical family despite their failures and hurts against you.
1 Peter 2 and 3 applies this concept specifically to the household and family, exhorting and encouraging members to follow Christ’s example by doing good to those who do you evil, while you wait for the deliverance and justice of God, which will be revealed at the proper time.
This is just doing what Christ did. How you treat your family says a lot about your relationship with God. If you love God, you will love your family.
“How you treat your family says a lot about your relationship with God. If you love God, you will love your family.”
Now, that doesn’t mean that the way this all works out, you’re going to have a close relationship with everyone in your family—especially if there are certain members who continue to sin against you. But that means you’re always going to act righteously towards them. You’re characteristically going to act righteously towards them.
When you sin against them—even when you sin against those who sinned against you in a greater way—you repent and you seek to make it right.
Because loving family is one of the ways—one of the most obvious ways—that you show that you love God.
Your Family Demands Your Top Loyalty
Actually, the family is so important to God that, after God and God’s kingdom concerns, your family demands your top loyalty. Don’t say that you’re too busy serving God to serve your family, to love your family. No!
Prioritizing your family and meeting your biblical obligations to your family is one of the most important ways that you serve God. And yes, indirectly, one of the most important ways you serve the church, you serve Christ’s church.
1 Timothy 5:8 says, “But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
The context of that statement is a specific discussion of widows needing to be supported by their children before they are supported by the church. That’s only right, Paul says. But you can see the underlying principle for that whole discussion: if you are not faithful in your relationships to your spouse, your children, your siblings, and your parents, it doesn’t matter what else you do for Christ. You have missed one of your primary obligations as his disciple.
I remember hearing in seminary: “You can lose your ministry and keep your family, but you cannot lose your family and keep your ministry.” Your family is a primary obligation. It demands your utmost loyalty, short of Christ and his kingdom concerns.
“You can lose your ministry and keep your family, but you cannot lose your family and keep your ministry.”
Consequently, God values the family so much that our harmonious and orderly family life is one of the key qualifications for leaders in God’s church.
See this: 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. Not only is this a matter of basic faithfulness as a Christian, but it’s simple wisdom. If a man cannot faithfully lead his physical family, how could he faithfully lead his spiritual family as an elder in the church?
Scripture shows us in multiple ways that the family has a special and irreplaceable place in God’s glorious plans for the universe. And this is why Satan and his dark spiritual forces hate the family and are committed to its corruption and destruction.
If God so values the family, and Satan so despises the family, can you see why ministry to the family—even biblical counseling, discipleship—is so important?
Because of how God values families, because of the central place families have in human existence, because of the many attacks on the family from angels and men, we need to prioritize ministry to marriages and families in the church. They cannot be left alone to just get by on their own. No, they need purposeful ministry.
What Is the Family? Nuclear and Extended
But what exactly is the family? From everything I’ve said thus far, I’ve been assuming that we all have the same definition of family. But do we? Better question: according to the Bible, what really is the family to which we are to prioritize ministry?
This is the second question—the second main question we want to look at today. What is the family?
From one angle, this is a simple question to answer. The Bible speaks about the family. The Bible primarily refers to one’s nuclear family—that is, parents, husband and wife, and children who are siblings with one another. We can see this even from that fundamental family-defining verse in Genesis 2:24.
After the creation of man and woman in the first marriage, we read this word of application from Moses by God’s spirit. Genesis 2:24: “For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
We’re going to probably keep coming back to this verse in this course because of how foundational it is. But notice, just from that first hearing or reading, how this marriage has the effect of both dividing and uniting.
When a person gets married, there’s a kind of break with his parents, with the old nuclear family unit. The husband leaves father and mother, and the wife does too. But then there’s a joining, a cleaving. Husband and wife come together and form a new family unit, symbolized in their sexual union and in the results of that sexual union—children.
You have the dividing off from an old family unit and the creation of a new family unit. These would be nuclear families.
When we think of the family in the Bible, we are talking first and foremost about the unit of parents and immediate children living in the household—the so-called nuclear family.
Notably, when the Bible gives specific commands about family obligations, the Bible speaks most of the time about the nuclear family and how the nuclear family should live together. “This is how a husband should act,” the Bible will say. “This is how a wife should act. This is how parents should act. This is how children should act.”
“When the Bible gives specific commands about family obligations, it speaks most often about the nuclear family and how it should live together.”
Yes, we do have commands to slaves and masters at times. This is because in ancient days, slaves would actually be considered, in a way, part of the family. They were considered part of the household. They lived within the same house. But commands to families are usually, apart from that kind of exceptional situation, directed to the nuclear family.
You don’t see—”and this is how grandparents should act, and this is how cousins should act”—usually in the Bible. The focus is on the nuclear family.
But it’s not as if the Bible is unaware of the concept of the extended family. By no means! The Bible makes many references to one’s brothers, sons, and fathers who are not literally one’s brothers, sons, and fathers. They’re just your extended family. They are distant relatives.
Let’s not forget that Jesus himself is called a son of David. But he is not literally the son of David. He’s just a descendant of David.
Furthermore, when nuclear families break apart to form new families, those old relationships to parents and siblings still exist as a kind of extended family. There is some measure of obligations to these relationships, as we see from 1 Timothy 5. Your mother is widowed. You live on your own now. You can’t say, “I’m sorry, I’m a new family unit. I don’t have any obligations to you.” No, he says, “If you don’t provide for your mother in this situation, you’re worse than an unbeliever.”
So there is some measure of obligation even to extended family. But while the Bible never specifically defined what those obligations are, there clearly is much less of an obligation to extended family than to your nuclear family—to those in your own household.
You may not need to come to the aid of your third cousin’s brother’s step-niece’s great aunt. But you must honor your parents, love your spouse, and raise your children faithfully.
We see certainly the nuclear family and the extended family discussed in the Bible. Primary obligations are to your nuclear family. But these are both families from physical relationships or, in some cases, adoption relationships.
The Spiritual Family
The Bible speaks of another kind of family. What would that be? Mention the church, body of Christ. To generalize that just a little bit: spiritual family. Because there are two spiritual families according to the scriptures. It’s the family of God. Yes, there’s also the family of the devil. Often we don’t think about that one. The Bible doesn’t draw a ton of attention to it, but Jesus does mention it, and other places do.
1 John 3:10 says this: “By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious. Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.”
For honest with ourselves, according to the scriptures, we have to admit: we used to be part of the devil’s family. He was our father. We followed him as our head. And we learned from him, did what he did. That’s what Jesus says about the Jews when they reject him. He says, “You don’t know my father. You do what your father does. Your father’s a devil.”
We were in that same boat. But that was not a good family to be part of. The devil’s a cruel father. And the judgment awaiting him is the judgment that awaits his children.
But by God’s grace, we in Christ have become part of a much better family.
If you read the New Testament letters at all, you will notice the language of family abounding in describing the relationships of those in Christ to God and to one another: brother, sister, father, son, daughter. This is not from pious emotional sentiment. This is describing genuine spiritual reality.
We made an allusion to this earlier in this lesson. But if you were in Christ by repentance and faith, you are not only regenerated by the very life and seed of God—rewriting your spiritual DNA, as it were—according to 1 John 3:9, so you become his children. But you’re also adopted by the father as children and fellow heirs with Christ, according to Ephesians 1:5.
You have the language of regeneration and adoption describing our relationship to the father. But spiritually speaking, you really are God’s child, and you really are brother and sister to those who are also God’s children in the church.
As many of you answered me before: we are family. We are family. Family! And what a comfort that is when the reality of your physical family is depressing.
“We are family. And what a comfort that is when the reality of your physical family is depressing.”
Jesus tells his disciples in Mark 10:29-30: “Truly I say to you, there’s no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms for my sake and for the gospel’s sake but that he will receive a hundredfold as much now in the present age—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms—along with persecutions. And in the age to come, eternal life.”
Now, obviously, in light of other scriptures in these verses, Jesus is not commanding or excusing that his followers forsake their physical family, especially if they’re unbelievers. But Jesus is comforting his disciples in that whatever family relationships are restrained or lost because you seek to follow Christ faithfully—don’t worry. You gain a hundredfold more when, according to these verses, eternal life in the life to come.
And there certainly will be family in the life to come. But he says, “Now in the present age, how is that possible?”
Well, it’s through the church. When you become a follower of Christ—a true follower—you become part of a new family, a much bigger family. And one would hope a much more loving family, much more purposefully kind, God-seeking family.
And it’s not as if this family only is concerned with spiritual, abstract things. Because notice what Jesus also promises: “You lose houses and farms. You’ll gain more houses and farms.”
What does that ever strike you as odd? “I’m gonna get more farms? I’m gonna get more houses? What’s that all about?”
Well, just like a physical family, your spiritual family has obligations to one another—even to commit to one another in love and even help out with physical needs.
If you had a physical family and you were in some financial trouble, it would be expected that your family members would help you out. Those same obligations and that desire to help is and should be true in the church.
You lose your livelihood for following Christ. Your physical family won’t support you. Guess who will? Your spiritual family.
This is what we see in the scriptures, book of Acts, right? People lost their livelihoods. And what were other people in the church doing? Selling their lands so that they could support those people till they could get more livelihoods.
You see that in 2 Thessalonians 2. It says, “Don’t go weary of doing good, supporting those who can’t support themselves in your family in the church. If a man doesn’t work, he doesn’t eat. We’re not going to excuse that kind of behavior. But family supports one another.”
James says, “What good is it, brother? Somebody says to someone in need, ‘Be warm, be filled,’ but he doesn’t do anything about it? That’s not going to work in God’s family.”
Indeed, many of the same obligations to the physical family now exist for us in the family of God. And even more so, because we are committed together in following Christ.
“Many of the same obligations to the physical family now exist for us in the family of God — and even more so.”
Physical vs. Spiritual Family Obligations
Side note: what about when biblical obligations to physical family seem to bump into biblical obligations to spiritual family? Who wins out?
Well, Christ always gets priority in everything. But practically speaking, when it comes to your obligations, you are commanded to take care of your physical family as top priority, even before you seek to take care of your spiritual family, as we’ve already seen from 1 Timothy 5:8.
Now, you can’t use that as an excuse to neglect your spiritual family. I’ve definitely heard that before. “Oh, I can’t do this, can’t do that with the church because I got to take care of my family.” And really the person is just watching TV or something.
But you actually serve Christ in his church. When you fulfill your obligations to your physical family first—again, it doesn’t mean you do everything that your physical family wants—but in terms of what they are obligated, what is their right according to the scriptures, you fulfill that. You make sure that you fulfill that as your top priority, and because that’s what Christ has called you to do.
“You fulfill your obligations to your physical family first. That’s what Christ has called you to do.”
Now, there’s a way that those things kind of fit together in some nuanced ways which you can’t get into right now. But you have obligations to your spiritual family. You have obligations to your physical family too.
Now, does the Bible say more about what family is? We’ve gone through nuclear family, extended family, spiritual family. The Bible does say more. We’re running short on time, but I do want to tell you a little bit more.
Basically, I’m just going to list some things and mention some scripture references. Up to this point in the second question, we’ve been mainly talking about the basic, practical level as to what family is.
But the Bible also speaks about the family on a more abstract level. You’ll see what I’m about to talk about having application both in your physical family, your homes, but also in your spiritual family. It should be applying in both places.
Five Facts About the Family
Five more facts about the family according to the Bible.
Number one: the family is God’s antidote to loneliness and the place where the deepest kind of friendships are forged and experienced.
Remember the observation that God made that resulted in the first family? Genesis 2:18: “It is not good that man should be alone. I will make her a help. I will make him a helper suitable to him.”
We seek companions. We desire companionship in this life. God says, “I’m going to provide it primarily through the family.” Both your physical family and spiritual family are to be sources of refreshing companionship. That’s God’s design.
Number two: the husband-wife relationship is the most important family relationship. Consequently, it is the relationship that is to take precedence over every other human relationship—not before Christ, but every other human relationship.
God designed the marriage relationship to be the most intimate relationship and thus the family relationship with the highest obligation. Genesis 2:24. Others have said: the best way to love your children, or even love others in the church, is to love your spouse first.
There’s a pointed parallel in considering our spiritual marriage to Jesus Christ.
Number three: the family is to be a place where all members are shown honor and shown respect.
We are used to hearing that children should show honor to their parents, Deuteronomy 5:16, and that wives should show honor to their husbands, Ephesians 5:33. This is due to the God-given positions of authority that God has given to parents and to husbands. That is true.
However, the Bible also says husbands should honor their wives, 1 Peter 3:7, and that fathers must be careful not to provoke or exasperate their children, Colossians 3:21 and Ephesians 6:4, but keep their children under control with all dignity, 1 Timothy 3:4.
If Christians are called to honor all people because they are made in the image of God, 1 Peter 2:17 and James 3:9-10, then that must start in the family. Family is to be a place where all members are honored, not because they deserve it, but because God calls for it.
Number four: the family is a classroom in which the most important lessons of life are taught and learned.
In families, parents pass the baton, as it were, to the next generation in a kind of life-on-life training and discipleship that is far more impactful, far superior to attending a school or a college.
Deuteronomy 6:6-25 talks about the obligation of parents to train their children, especially in the Lord. Ephesians 6:4 also. The whole book of Proverbs shows that parents cannot outsource this obligation but must embrace it for the Lord’s sake.
Remember: if you’re too busy to model or teach, you are actually modeling and teaching, but not the right kind of lessons.
“If you’re too busy to model or teach, you are actually modeling and teaching — but not the right kind of lessons.”
Finally, number five: the family is to be a place of safety, a refuge in the times of storm.
The Bible is clear that life is full of all kinds of troubles, even for Christians. Psalm 90:10, John 16:33. God designed families to be a source of comfort, security, and refreshment amid those troubles. Proverbs 5:15-20, speaking about the marriage relationship, Ephesians 5:29, and also Ecclesiastes 4:9-12.
You remember those verses? It talks about when one falls down, if he has a companion, that companion can raise him up. How can one keep warm alone? There’s such benefit in companionship. God’s primary place of finding companions is the family. Family helps amid the troubles of life.
This does not replace Jesus Christ. It’s not superior to Christ. Your ultimate comfort must be from Christ, especially when your family is not able to comfort you. Philippians 4:13.
Nevertheless, we are meant to find encouragement, consolation, and help both in our physical families and in our spiritual families amid the hard developments of our lives.
“God designed families to be a source of comfort, security, and refreshment amid the troubles of life.”
When Your Family Falls Short
I may look at these five facts and think, “Wow, that’s not what—like, that’s not like what my family is like at all. It’s not what it was like growing up. It’s not what it’s like for me now.”
And if that’s the case, I hear you. I’m sorry. Because we live in a world broken by sin, because man is enslaved to idols, we’re not surprised that physical families—many, even most physical families—will fall short of what God designed family to be. Even church families frequently fall short of God’s desire.
But what are we going to do about it? How should you respond when your marriage or your family isn’t what it’s supposed to be? How does God take families and make them more like his original, true, and good design?
Well, that’s where the ministry of the church and particularly biblical counseling comes in. This is all just a setup for the next lesson. I want you to see how important the family is to God and what a central place it plays in your life.
Yes, this is where we need to focus in ministry. How do we do it? That’s what we’re going to talk about next time. Practically, how do we in the church use the Bible to minister to our own families and to others’ families?
“This is all a setup for the next lesson — how do we in the church use the Bible to minister to our own families and to others’ families?”
That’s it for today. Don’t forget your homework. Fill out the inventory of personal felt needs and rights, and be ready to talk about it. Be ready to talk about what you learn next time.
Q&A: Navigating Family and Faith
Got about two minutes for questions. Questions about what you heard today?
Yeah, Mark. Not father, right? Right. And I know—yeah, good question. Mark brings up another passage of scripture: “He who loves father, mother, son, or daughter, family relationship, more than Jesus is not worthy of following Jesus.” Jesus says.
How do you navigate that as a Christian? We’ve got things in tension. I don’t think I can speak about the specifics right now. Unfortunately, I’m probably not going to be able to answer your question super well. But we do have these two things in tension: where God says your physical family is top priority outside of Christ and his kingdom concerns. And yet following Christ is going to mean not doing what your family wants or even losing a family relationship.
The only thought that comes to my mind right now is: in the commanded modes of ministry that the Bible says to your family, you make sure that you fulfill those as far as you are able to your physical family before you seek to minister to the ways that God commands you to speak or to minister to your spiritual family.
A lot of times those things are not going to necessarily be in conflict. You can do one and the other at the same time. Probably the most practical example—maybe it sounds a little bit silly to you—but if you have an opportunity to serve someone in the church by preparing food for them, that’s good. But have you prepared food for your individual family first?
I remember reading a blog by a Christian mother talking about how she was struck by how she would make such kind, elaborate, compassionate meals for other people in the church, but she gave her family the leftovers. That can kind of make sense. We can fall into that kind of mode. But we want to make sure that in terms of what God has called you to do with your family, as far as you were able, you start there. And then you seek to minister to your spiritual family.
Don’t neglect your family for the sake of serving the church. That’s the first area in which you are to manifest your discipleship to Christ.
“Don’t neglect your family for the sake of serving the church. That’s the first area in which you are to manifest your discipleship to Christ.”
Now, sometimes serving your family means not doing what they want. And that’s where I think we really see a manifestation of: are you going to love Christ, or are you going to love your family?
Sometimes your families will specifically object to you doing certain things. You say, “You don’t love me. You don’t care about me.” But you say, “No, this is actually—first of all, I love Jesus more. And he says the most important way that I can love you—yes, even the physical family—is by prioritizing him.”
I will mention one other extreme to avoid. You should never be in the place where, because you need to minister to your physical family, or—no, how should I say this? I can imagine a situation where somebody says, “I can’t be in church anymore. I can’t have anything to do with my spiritual family because I need to take care of my physical family.”
I do recognize there are some extreme situations—maybe medical or whatever—where you might not be in church for a time. But we cannot ignore the spiritual reality that the Bible talks about at length: you need the body of Christ.
Yes, you might need to do something special for your physical family for a time. But you cannot continually remain apart from the body. That’s why I say there’s a little bit of nuance where it’s not just like, “Oh, I can totally forget about my spiritual family.” It’s not that. But you have these things in tension. The scriptures indicate you do have a primary duty to your physical family before your duties to your spiritual family. That’s what I’m trying to get across.
I don’t know if that’s the most satisfying answer, but I tried to illustrate it as best I can. Sorry, we’re out of time.
It’s okay. What is it? ID? Yes, that’s right. Family can become an idol. And what family can provide can become an idol. You might look at that list that I gave today and be like, “Oh, family should be this, family should be that. I want it to be that. It’s not. That’s why I’m so upset.”
You might have a desire that is going beyond the proper bounds. That’s a good desire, and that’s a good goal. But if God doesn’t provide that, can you be satisfied in Jesus Christ?
Maybe you got more questions about that. But you can email me or talk to me later in church.
Let me close our time in prayer.
Lord, I thank you for your word. I thank you for the family of Jesus Christ. But I also thank you for physical families. This is a good design that you made, Lord. It is sad—because of the devil, but because of our own hearts—that we take the good design and we turn it into a curse, which is what many of us have done, what the world has done with families.
And yet it is not a bad thing. The family is good. And you love families. You have such an important place for families in your universe. God, I pray that we would be applying the things that we learned to our own families and then helping one another, especially in a church, in ministering to their physical families and walking in the way that you’ve called them to when it comes to physical families.
Do this for your glory, Lord God. In Jesus’ name, amen.
All right, thank you everyone.