The church and the family (Part 2)

My first post on this topic -- "The church and the family" -- asked a series of questions based on the following statement at a church's website:

"We believe that the family is the first and most important institution that the Lord created. Moreover, following God the family should hold the highest priority."

My first question, which includes a revision here, in response to this declaration was:

"Is this -- the assertion the family is the 'most important institution' and 'following God should hold the highest priority' -- what we see as we read the four gospel accounts, Acts and the letters in the New Testament?"

Please take some time to think about that question. Try to recall your impressions of the New Testament as you read the various books of which it consists. Consider how many times the nuclear family is the focus of passages in the gospels, Acts and the letters. Ponder the emphasis the New Testament gives specifically to the family.

Yes, there are references to the family. And there are a few instructions regarding the family, including Eph. 5:22-6:4 and Col. 3:18-21. Even those, however, are presented in the context of instructions to Christians in churches on what it means to follow Christ.

The nuclear family does not dominate the New Testament. That is not to say it is unimportant.

D.G. Hart, a religious and social historian, recently posted at Reformation 21 a review of Mary Eberstadt's new book, How the West Really Lost God. In her book, Eberstadt writes about secularization in America and the significance of the family to Christianity. Hart does not look as admiringly as Eberstadt apparently does on what the baby boom of the 1950s helped produce in American churches. He suggests Eberstadt "may inflate the family's significance beyond what Christianity has taught historically."

Hart also writes, "For conservative Protestants, the family is good but only in a proximate sense - not in an ultimate one."

You see, the family is important in both the Old and New Testaments, but something else -- really Someone Else and His family -- dominates the New Testament in particular.

The New Testament is about King Jesus and His work. It is a work that encompasses His perfectly righteous life and His perfectly atoning death. Christ's resurrection affirms His work was totally sufficient. That fully accomplished work produced a people -- or a family, as it is sometimes portrayed.

We even see it in the Old Testament. In that great chapter on the Suffering Servant's substitution for sinners, it says prophetically of Christ, "If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring" (Is. 53:10). Even 700 years before Christ, the Bible pointed to a family to be established by the blood of the Messiah.

The New Testament focuses much more on this family created supernaturally than the one created biologically or even by adoption. Adoption specifically pictures the reality of our spiritual adoption by God in places like Rom. 8:15-17 and Gal. 4:4-7. We find the bridegroom/bride or husband/wife relationship -- even in a go-to marriage passage like Eph. 5:22-33 -- points to the ultimate meaning of that union in Christ and his bride. We see God described as Father and we who are saved as His children in such sections as I John 3:1-2. And we see ourselves described as brothers and sisters with each other in books like I John.

Jesus Himself points in the gospels to the temporary nature of the nuclear family, when He says in Matt. 22:30 there will be no marriage in Heaven. Instead, all who are in Heaven will be bound together there as the truly forever family.

Near the close of his review of Eberstadt's book, D.G. Hart commends her defense of the family but not her handling of its significance in comparison to the church. "If the family ever becomes more important to the conservative Protestant wing of 'family values' voters than the gospel and the Christian ministry, then what happened to 1950s churches and families could well be the fate of Christian defenders of the family."