Front line

Dr. Renton Rathbun, host of The Renton Rathbun Show: A Podcast for Parents, defines biblical worldview as “God’s explanation of His world through His Word for His image bearers.” God and His view are primary to a biblical worldview.

“God’s image bearers use God’s Word to interpret His world and align ourselves with His explanation,” Rathbun added.

If we err at the beginning point, we will inevitably err in application.

For example, in bowling, a gutter ball begins with the release of the ball. The inevitable outcome of a poorly released ball is that it will hit one of the metal sides, leaving all 10 pins standing mockingly undisturbed.

To that point, let us consider a doctrine called the primacy principle, which is fundamental to the correct interpretation of Scripture (a discipline called biblical hermeneutics). In short, the primacy principle instructs the reader/interpreter to note “firsts” that occur in Scripture, particularly in biblical narratives. The first speech, the first appearance, the first question – they are all significant to our commitment to rightly divide the Word of Truth.

As we read God’s Word, we find that He has created three foundational human institutions to establish order, stability, and maximal flourishing. Those institutions are the family, with marriage between a man and a woman at its core (Genesis 1:27-28, 2:21-24; Matthew 19:4-6); the church (Ephesians 2:19-22; Matthew 16:18); and civil government (Romans 13:1-4). In God’s sovereignty, He intentionally founded the family as the first of His institutions for humanity.

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:27-28).

Verse 27 specifies that males and females are equal bearers of God’s image, while being simultaneously, complementarily distinct from each other. The following verse records the first scriptural command directed to mankind. Before God is ever recorded as saying, “You shall not,” He commands, “Be fruitful and multiply.”

Considering that the Bible is God-breathed, firsts in the text are divinely inspired. Therefore, it is exceedingly important for us to recognize and embrace the significance of the first command given to mankind in Genesis, the book of “The Beginning.”

Defining the family

It is God’s design for a husband and wife to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” God intends fruitfulness between a married couple to result in multiplication. A multiplying human populace will “fill the earth.” This populace will be made up of multiplied image bearers of God who will use their designed capacity to subdue the earth and rule it as His delegated authority figures. In fact, the Hebrew word for subdue in Genesis 1:28 is kāḇaš, which means “to make subservient; explore and utilize to the maximum capacity thereby rendering fruitful for [mankind’s] thriving.”

Though Adam and Eve had no biological parents from whom they descended, God defines marriage in a divinely particular manner according to Genesis 2:24: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” (Emphasis added.) This definition is affirmed by Jesus in Matthew 19:4-6. In fact, Jesus specifically quotes from both Genesis 1:28 and 2:24 in His address.

When God introduced the concept of fatherhood and motherhood into the human experience, He had something specific in view. That reality comes to bear through the Hebrew Shema found in Deuteronomy 6:4-7:

Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons [children] and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.

God designed husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, to love Him with all their heart, soul, and might, and – with diligence, fervor, consistency, incisiveness, and intentionality – to teach their love for God to their children.

Though Adam and Eve had no natural father or mother, as God defined to them His plan for their union, He also introduced to mankind His ideas of fatherhood and motherhood.

Instructing in the Lord

Many Christians are familiar with the Great Commission found in Matthew 28:19-20. Christ-followers are commanded by Jesus to make disciples, teaching them to obey everything Christ commands. This command enjoys a specified application within the familial context. The reason God ordained the family – with marriage at its core – as His first institution was because it is the institution primarily tasked with executing the Great Commission generationally.

Ephesians 6:4 is an example of this application: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

The command is addressed to fathers; yet because God designed the mechanics of procreation, the command includes mothers, too. But the command’s phrasing is meant to assign ultimate accountability and responsibility for its execution to fathers. For instance, when the rebellion occurred in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3, who did God call to account? … Adam.

Similarly, fathers are ultimately responsible for their children being reared “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

The phrase “discipline and instruction” is derived from the Greek phrase paideia kai nouthesia. The word paideia means “the whole training and instruction of the mind and morals,” and employs for this purpose “commands and admonitions, reproof and discipline.” It also includes “the training and care of the body.”

The word nouthesia means “calling attention to, rebuke, warning.” Ephesians 6:4 is one of the scriptural bases calling Christ-followers to reject the notion that “education” must necessarily separate academic pursuits from spiritual development. Other Scriptures condemning this unbiblical division include Psalm 127; Proverbs 1:7, 9:10, 13:20; and Luke 6:40, among others.

Some Christians have been gripped by a calamitous error: They treat God’s commands as mere moralistic recommendations. And while it may not be obvious on its face, the reality is that when examined in Koine Greek (the language in which the epistle was originally penned), Ephesians 6:4 is clearly a command by its very nature.

The first three chapters of the book of Ephesians are written in the Greek indicative mood. That is where we find glowing theological expressions that describe who we are now that we are in Christ. Ephesians 2:1-2(a) and 2:4-6 state:

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world. … But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

Chapters 4 through 6 of Ephesians are written in the Greek imperative mood. (Imperative is a synonym for command.) Having explained what regeneration produces in believers in the first half of the epistle, the apostle Paul turns to what God commands of believers in the second half.

That is where we find imperatives such as the following:

1. “[Be] diligent to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace” (4:4).

2. “Be imitators of God” (5:1).

3. “Walk in love” (5:2).

4. “Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord” (5:22).

5. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her” (5:25).

All these verses are commands, just like Ephesians 6:4. Fathers are ultimately responsible and will be held accountable to God for the paideia kai nouthesia of the children He entrusts to their care. Therefore, the first outpost for the Great Commission is the home.

Preserving a nation

This is something our nation’s founders recognized and anticipated. They knew our American experiment in self-governance required a populace of self-governed individuals. Self-government is not something that comes naturally to mankind’s fallen, Adamic nature. Self-government is a fruit of the Spirit, because self-government is self-control (Galatians 5:23).

In his Letter to the Massachusetts Militia, penned October 11, 1798, John Adams, second president of the United States, wrote:

While our Country remains untainted with the Principles and manners, which are now producing desolation in so many Parts of the World: while she continues Sincere and incapable of insidious and impious Policy: We shall have the Strongest Reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned Us by Providence. But should the People of America, once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another and towards foreign nations, which assumes the Language of Justice and moderation while it is practicing Iniquity and Extravagance; and displays in the most captivating manner the charming Pictures of Candour frankness & sincerity while it is rioting in rapine and Insolence: this Country will be the most miserable Habitation in the World. Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Adams recognized that our government, as remarkably constructed as it is, cannot produce the only type of people adequately equipped to operate within it. In other words, national preservation is contingent upon generational disciple making. The front line for that work is God’s first institution – the family.

Contrary to popular understanding, the family is more than a relational construct. It is God’s primary generational, disciple-making mission station.