God's House and Mine

Introduction

In the book of Ephesians (and several other books as well) we find a great deal of family language.

What can we learn from all of this family language?

How does it help us to understand our own home and God’s home better?

Finally, where does the church fit into all of this?

The Picture of a Home

One of the primary pictures of our relationship to God in Ephesians is one of a household (Eph. 2:19).

This picture is used to show what great privilege we enjoy in Christ (Eph. 1:5).

But it was not the home as we know it today (cf. Eph. 1:10; 3:2; 1 Tim. 1:4).

This word means the economy of the home.

And economy means, home rule or law.

Our homes are not centers of economy in the ways they used to be.

Homes were the center of virtually all activity.

They were places of production, education, and the place where most people stayed most of their lives.

Going away was never considered a daily affair but rather an event.

There are reasons too numerous to review for why this all happened.

Our point here is not necessarily to say we have to go back to the picture here, but to at least understand it so that we can appreciate what God says about Himself and about us.

Losing the picture means we lose some of the instruction (cf. Col. 1:15).

Lost Connections

The concept of piety in the home (Eph. 5:22-6:9; 1 Tim. 5:4; cf. Acts 17:23).

The coin depicting Aeneas.

This was one element of piety that included God (the gods), the home, and country.

Separation of church and state is a fairly modern notion. More modern even than our country’s founding since the forefathers (even the deists) believed that the providence of God was guiding their establishment of this country.

There weren’t separate compartments to put things in. All of these elements connected to one another.

This sets duty as a key element in the home.

Far from the romance being at the core of the home, considerations were more practical. Romance was something built on top of the practical.

Has removing this sense of duty (or lowering it beneath the emotional) produced more lasting marriages?

This is why arranged marriages could last.

Making marriage into a primarily emotional institution instead of primarily a commitment has destabilized it.

When gay marriage was brought before the Supreme Court, they decided for it on the basis of everyone having the right to form lasting emotional bonds. They did not consider whether the participants were able to perform the actual functions of marriage. Because we don’t think about marriage as performing functions anymore. We think about falling in love and not much else.

Falling in love is one of many luxuries we enjoy. In most of history, you chose on more practical basis and then learned to love. Now, because “falling in love” precedes choice, we don’t well consider our duty one of which is to learn to love which doesn’t always coincide with falling in love. Falling in love is the sort of thing you don’t choose. Learning to love is.

Religion (which means to bind) has become a negative term. It’s relationship not religion.

Piety doesn’t say, “you do you,” or “whatever makes you happy” or “discover who you really are.” It says, this is who you are, do what is required.

The functions of the household have vanished (Eph. 5:22-6:9).

Husbands are no longer rulers of a domain. They don’t even exercise rule over what is left. The decisions and responsibilities of their domain have been reduced to decisions of mere preference.

Wives, have been reduced to domestic servants and interior decorators.

Xenophon outlines the tasks and duties of a wife. The document takes the form of a dialogue in which Socrates describes how a householder named Ischomachus taught his young teenage wife to manage his estate’s household budget, as well as its slaves and domestic production, and even what clothes to set out for him when he went out in public. He also relates how he trained her to control her passions, especially her speech, so as to assure his house was properly regulated and did not bring him public shame. (CR Wiley)

And the most gratifying thing of all will be that you may turn out to be better than me, and make me your servant. This will mean you need not worry that, as the years pass, you will have less standing in the household; instead you will have more standing in the household, in proportion to the increase in your value to me as a partner and to our children, as a protector of the home. For it is virtue rather than physical beauty of youth that increases the true goodness of human life. (Ibid)

We understand the need for roles and for submission to those roles in fewer and fewer areas of life.

But as those concepts breakdown, so do the institutions that they used to support.

Society once demanded these functions of a household if it were to survive.

It really hasn’t changed, it’s just that our prosperity is masking what is crumbling all around us.

The home is falling apart but no one cares so long as the bills get paid.

But what is important is WHY it is falling apart. And it is falling apart because no one knows what they ought to be doing in the home anymore.

But notice that Paul says all of this about husbands and wives and then says he is using that (that is the thing they already understand) to teach more about the thing they don’t (Christ and the church).

Our culture is arguing over the obvious part.

Even though we don’t have homes that function in the same ways, and maybe all the more important because our homes don’t function in those ways, we have to work harder to think about how to continue to be husbands and wives in biblical ways so that we continue to reflect the eternal truths that our marriages proclaim.

The same goes for children. Children are not brought up to be functioning and contributing members of the household.

They are considered in terms of expense but not value.

Regular reports are given of the “cost of raising a child” ($277,000 last I checked).

No thought is given that they might actually bring economic value to the home (we even make laws discouraging that kind of thing).

Our children have become very expensive pets and so many people realize that if they are gonna have a pet, they might as well have the kind that eats cheaper food and doesn’t get sassy.

People are having fewer and fewer kids because they don’t need them (at least they don’t know they do).

Children used to be part of the plan for how you would be cared for in your old age. We have retirement plans and social security and other social safety nets for all that now.

Used to, even the heathen believed in this ongoing function of the family (1 Tim. 5:8).

And of course we don’t have servants anymore so we don’t know how to be servants nor do we know how to treat them and we are worse off for this loss of knowledge as well.

The value of what it means to have an inheritance (Eph. 1:11; Gal. 4:1-7).

We think of inheritance as a sum of money collected by our parents.

It is what is left after we pay off the debts and sell whatever property that we take so we may consume it.

But inheritance was once the household and all that was in it (Lk. 15:31).

So when Paul tells children to obey their parents and reiterates the promise of so that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth, this is a natural connection like you will reap what you sow.

When children honored their parents, they contributed to their own wellbeing.

They were contributing to the inheritance they would receive.

And this sort of thing connected the generations and people cared about the generations going backwards and forwards.

Think about how God introduces Himself to Moses (Ex. 3:6).

But then consider God’s promise to Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3).

We are so disconnected from generations going backwards and forwards.

People throughout history have sacrificed much to maintain an inheritance that they received while others have sacrificed everything in order to establish the beginning of one that would not finally be realized until they were dead many years.

Establishing Connections

Families are God’s creation and they are connected to Him whether they like it or not (Eph. 3:14-15).

The ways we conduct our homes are meant to be instructive about the nature of God (Eph. 2:19; 5:32; cf. Rev. 19, 21).

And the most gratifying thing of all will be is you may turn out to be better than me, and make me your servant. This will mean you need not worry that, as the years pass, you will have less standing in the household; instead you will have more standing in the household, in proportion to the increase in your value to me as a partner and to our children, as a protector of the home. For it is virtue rather than physical beauty of youth that increases the true goodness of human life.

It means that, in a real way, conjugal marriage is the end of the world. It connects this world to the next, it unites Heaven and earth, and it is a sign that reads, “This is the way the world will end, not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with wedding bells.”

Well-ordered homes are how we go to war (Eph. 6:10-18).

The word for world is cosmos and means order.

The cosmos were put into order by God.

They have been put out of order by Satan and the sin of mankind.

We put them back into order in our own cosmos, the home.

Conclusion

Our homes don’t look like most homes throughout history.

We have more conveniences and less need for labor and planning and overall effort than most people in history.

We were promised this would free us up to engage in greater things.

I’m not so sure that greater things were available, but if they were, I think it is safe to say that is not how we have use the extra time we have been given.

We have a great challenge to think more deeply about things that used to simply be natural. We need to do this so that we are making our homes what God intended them to be when He created them. But we also need to strive to not lose the thought of who He is and what promises we have been given in His household.