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What the Bible says about Family
(From Forerunner Commentary)

Exodus 1:22

As long as a family is intact and its members love one another and share the privation and hardships, they can stand scorn, rigor, even slavery. But perhaps this edict to destroy the family and Israel's heritage was the most bitter element of all. Could the tenth plague have been a divine payback for what this Pharaoh did? Was the killing of Egypt's firstborn a retaliatory measure for what they did to the Israelites? Maybe.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Conviction and Moses

Exodus 20:12

Why does God want us to honor our parents? The family is the basic building block or unit of society, thus the stability of the community depends on the stability of the families that comprise it. A person's response to government derives from the parent-child relationship. The lessons and principles learned from honoring, respecting, and obeying parents will result in a society stable enough to promote development of the whole person.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Fifth Commandment (1997)

Exodus 20:12

God wants us to honor our parents because the family is the basic building block of His Kingdom. God describes the Kingdom in family terms. He is the Father, Jesus is the Son, and the church is the Son's bride. We are called sons, daughters, and children of the Kingdom. We are created and being created as sons in His image. God also uses terms like "beget," "born," and "grow up."

Immediately after creating Adam and Eve and announcing He was creating them in His image (Genesis 1:26), God established the first institution: the family through marriage. The conclusion is inescapable. The family would play a major role in creating man in God's image. Regarding marriage, family, and divorce, Malachi 2:15 says:

But did He not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring! Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth.

The godly principles learned and the character built within the human family are, upon conversion, transferable into the spiritual family relationship in the Kingdom of God. Parents are His representatives, and we honor and revere the creative majesty and power of God when we keep this commandment. God expects whatever we learned from honoring our parents to transfer into our relationship with Him.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The First Commandment (1997)

Exodus 20:12

Life begins at home and wisdom should begin there too. The home is the primary and most vital factor in a child's development into a mature and stable member of society. Church and school play secondary roles, if only because of the amount of time spent at home and all the personal interaction that takes place there.

In keeping this commandment, the Bible divides responsibility between parents and child, even though the child eventually bears the greater responsibility. It is his responsibility to learn from his parents, not just because they are his human lifegivers, but because the parents have been what the child has not—both young and old.

Therefore, parents should have accrued wisdom from situations the child has not yet experienced. It is the parents' responsibility to create an environment in which they can pass wisdom on so that the child can learn the lessons of life more easily. And so society benefits from the resulting stability of that family unit.

If the child learns these lessons, the wisdom will be an enriching ornament, a sign of honor, and a guide to long life and prosperity. These are the fulfillment of the fifth commandment's promise. The process begun in the home then prepares the way into the Kingdom of God.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Fifth Commandment (1997)

Exodus 21:15-17

The Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament (vol. 1, p. 133), commenting on Exodus 21:15-17, reads:

Maltreatment of a father and mother through striking (ver. 15), man-stealing (ver. 16), and cursing parents (ver. 17, cf. Leviticus xx.9) were all to be placed on a par with murder, and punished in the same way. By "smiting" of parents we are not to understand smiting to death, . . . but any kind of maltreatment. The murder of parents is not mentioned at all, as not likely to occur and hardly conceivable. The cursing of parents is placed on a par with smiting, because it proceeds from the same disposition; and both were to be punished with death, because the majesty of God was violated in the persons of the parents.

"The majesty of God was violated"! In this lies the importance of keeping this commandment. The relationship God intends within the family is an exact type of a Christian's spiritual relationship with God the Father and the church as mother.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Fifth Commandment (1997)

Judges 21:25

In the United States, we see the reorienting of culture around individuals. Culture used to be oriented around the family—around mom and dad and all of the siblings, cousins, and aunts and uncles. So the authorities to which people used to look have been diminished, and the traditions have changed.

Because culture has been reoriented around individuals rather than around family, community, or a respected central government, the individual becomes king. People stop looking to central authorities. They stop looking to the family and the cultural traditions, and instead, they set their own values. Goodness and evil become equated with what is pleasant and useful to the individual.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Submitting (Part 2)

Isaiah 3:5

Isaiah reveals a society that can be aptly described as "upside down." Those who should be leading are not and those who should not are. A central factor in this is that the immature are leading. A free-wheeling, laissez faire, hedonistic, immoral, and irresponsible culture exists. Verses 5 and 12 confirm that family governance and leadership are greatly affected.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Fifth Commandment (1997)

John 14:2-3

Many Protestants try to use these verses to "prove" that the saints go to heaven. Here, too, they make assumptions, such as understanding "house" only as a dwelling, rather than as a family or dynasty. Thus, they narrowly define place as "an ornate abode, a mansion or palace" instead of a "position," "office," "role," or "spot."

They gloss over the fact that Jesus says directly in this context that He would "come again." Where? To earth! He then says He will receive the saints to Himself. If He remains on earth to rule the nations, then the saints will rule with Him on the earth! Many scriptures show very plainly that God's Kingdom will be on the earth (Psalm 2:6-8; Jeremiah 23:5; Daniel 2:35, 44-45; 7:27; Zechariah 9:9-10; Revelation 11:15).

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Caught Up in the Rapture

John 14:23

Here Jesus shows the relationship of the Father and the Son with one who loves Them and is obedient to Them. They are all part of the same home! They have a warm and loving family relationship.

John W. Ritenbaugh
All in All

Romans 8:14-16

A Christian is one who has the Spirit of God. Notice the use of the terms "Father," "Son," and "children," while in other places, the terms are "Bridegroom" and "bride," all of which suggest a family relationship. A family of which God is a part is a spiritual organism, and we are in it in a spiritual relationship, gradually taking on the characteristics of that spirit Family. When scattering and division occurs within the church, it is because we are losing those God-Family characteristics and reverting to the characteristics of our former spirit father, Satan.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Holy Spirit and the Trinity (Part Four)

Romans 8:29

Think of this in terms of humanity. My wife is from a family into which nine children were born. One died in infancy; eight brothers and sisters grew to adulthood. The firstborn was a son, eight others were born after him. Were those born after the firstborn intrinsically any different from the firstborn? They were all humans, just as the firstborn was!

Transfer this analogy into the spiritual realm, into the Family of which we are already considered to be a part. We are God's children (Romans 8:14; I John 3:1). Our inheritance is to enter that Family by being born again (John 3:3). Jesus Christ is the Firstborn, and He is God (John 1:1; 20:28). We are to be conformed to His image. When we are born into the God Family, will we be any less than He is? No, we are going to be God. We have come later, but we will be just like the Firstborn.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Covenants, Grace, and Law (Part Thirteen)

Ephesians 2:19

Formerly, before God began to work in this way, there were two kinds of people on earth: the converted and unconverted. However, let us be a little bit more specific. In the context of Ephesians 2, the two kinds of people were Israelites and Gentiles. When we understand verses 16-20, He is saying now a third class of people is arising. There is the Gentile, the Israelite, and the Christian—the new man.

This is what God is creating, a family, a nation. He is creating something that is unique on the earth: a family that gets along with each other. Such a thing is unseen in the history of men. There are no wars (considering nations being families grown great) that are more vicious and terrible than inter-family wars, which we call "civil wars."

God is creating a family that gets along with each other, and this harmony begins with the acceptance of the blood of Jesus Christ. However, God expects that it will not end there. Because of the fellowship that we have with Him through Jesus Christ, as we begin to have more things in common, it will begin to expand out to others whom He is calling. It begins with the Spirit of God working with the person and eventually in him.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Truth (Part 4)

Ephesians 2:20-22

This creating, building, or growing that Paul writes about here is the process by which we come to have more and more in common with each other so that there can be a continuing fellowship. The Holy Spirit, mentioned in verse 18 and again in verse 22, is the mechanism by which this is accomplished.

The eradication of the differences that we bring with us into the church and the building of the commonality are primarily the creative work of God. He is the Artisan at work, and we are being created in Christ Jesus into a fellowship that is so close that it is likened to a family. Families have things in common. It begins with a biological affinity, and the children of a mother and a father are genetically closer to each other than they are to their parents. What are we called in the church? Brothers and sisters.

Families have looks and practices in common, too, among other things. What they have in common makes them a family. So, in the church, God has to build a commonality to give us the family and therefore the fellowship that will enable us to continue with Him and with our brethren.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Truth (Part 4)

Hebrews 11:23

Like us, Moses was born at the end of an age. However, he had an advantage of birth that most of us do not have: He was born into a truly God-fearing family, a family that had faith. This verse witnesses to the faith of his mother and father. God has always reserved to Himself a remnant of people that have faith, and Moses "happened" to be born into such a family.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Conviction and Moses

1 John 3:1

Christians are in the God Family already—in embryonic form. We are sons of God! When we were baptized "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," we were placed into the Family of God! We are now sons of God—we bear that name, and we had better do everything in our power to uphold it! It is the greatest name in the universe! There is none greater. In a very real sense, our last name is now "God."

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Covenants, Grace, and Law (Part Thirteen)


Find more Bible verses about Family:
Family {Nave's}
 




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