Colossians 3:18-19
Rules for Christian Households
The family was the first institution that God ordained in creation: one man and one woman and then children. Later renditions strayed from this standard: polygamy, concubines, and now legal fictions and impossibilities such as same-sex marriage. Divorce and illegitimacy have worked unimaginable woe, especially for boys raised without fathers who then have no one to teach them how to be men. Feminism, which is responsible for much of this, denigrates manhood even more contriving such barbarisms as “toxic masculinity” which only furthers the confusion of boys over what manhood should look like. And girls also suffer when a father is missing and eventually wind up looking for love from males who care not at all for them. And now we even have calls for the dissolution of the nuclear family for a more tribal understanding, as well as the dissolution of gender altogether.
Yes, we have made a mess of things when all we had to do was obey God’s simple rules for households. But we must begin with some groundwork which previous generations took for granted. God has made men to be providers, protectors, and pursuers. (Of these three, protector is most crucial to manhood.) A man must earn his manhood in these three areas, and he spends both his boyhood and manhood doing just that. God has made women nurturers, which naturally follows motherhood. As the man is naturally the leader of the family, the woman is naturally the center of the family, the one who is closer to nature as she is closer to her own body than a man is to his. As such, she understands her children’s needs better than her husband; indeed, if she is a really good wife, she will even understand his own needs better than he does.
The gift of family God gives by his common grace to all. But in the Christian faith, it receives an anointing. And so wives are to submit to their husbands, “as is fitting in the Lord.” It is our relationship to the Lord that changes everything about our relationships with one another. It is not enough that she submits but must do so in the Lord. Likewise, husbands are to love their wives and not be harsh with them. A pagan might be as harsh as he pleased with his wife, but not a Christian husband. Just like his wife, his relationship with the Lord changes his relationship to her. He now must love her as Christ does and must lead her by godly example. Our pagan culture pulls us away from these truths with lies whereby they try to convince us that gender and rolls are merely social constructs. But Christians shall adhere to Scripture and have marriages which are “fitting in the Lord.”
