family matters
1: WHO FORMS A FAMILY?
Genesis 2:22-25, Ma hew 19:4-6
T
he word family is used for many things these days. As one modern writer
puts it, “Each individual should look to define a family by his own standards.
Regardless of how you choose to define your family unit, whether it is tradi onal
or unique, your defini on is of the family unit that works for you.”1
Perhaps it would be helpful to ask, where does the idea of family come from? or
be er yet, whose idea is it? Is it really something each of us must define for himself or herself according to what “works for you”? Even when we do, it seems our
redefini ons are always linked to some ideal in the back of our minds. You might
even say we have an ins nct for family.
According to the Bible, the idea of a family comes from God himself and is built into
our physical, mental, and spiritual nature as it was created by God. A er God made
Adam, He said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a compa ble
partner.” A er no such partner could be found among God’s other creatures, God
took a rib from Adam and formed Eve. Then God presented her to Adam, and he
immediately recognized her as the partner God had promised to make.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
When you got married, how much did
you no ce that God was crea ng a new
family?
If you’re single and thinking about
marriage in the future, does knowing
that God is the one who forms families
change anything in your approach to
finding a spouse?
If it is God who forms my family, it makes
sense to think that the other members
of my family are gi s from God. How will
realizing that change how you relate to
your family?
All marriages and families experience
conflict. Does the fact that God himself
has a ached you to the people in your
family give you any help or insight in
dealing with conflict?
Take some me to share some of the
struggles you face in your family. Pray for
one another about these things. Since
God is the one who created your family,
pray that he will strengthen it.
One important and some mes overlooked element of the story comes in Genesis
2:24, where the Bible says, “That is why a man leaves his parents behind and joins
with his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.” In other words, God’s crea on of Eve for Adam as a perfectly compa ble partner is the basis of all marriage,
which is the beginning of family. This text says that God made human beings so
that as adults, we would depart from our family of origin to join with someone of
the opposite sex, forming a new family.
In other words, the idea of family is God’s idea—an idea he had in mind when he
formed our bodies, our minds, and our spirits.
When a man and a woman marry and form a new family, it is not just something
they do, and it is not just something the church or the state does—or whatever
other social conven on might be involved. God himself joins them together. When
someone asked Jesus about divorce, he quoted Genesis 2:24 and added, “What
God has joined together, let no man separate.”
Maybe it goes without saying, but the prospect of children is also implicit in all of
this. In Genesis 2:24, there is not just a husband and a wife, there are also parents
and children—children who grow up to leave their parents and find spouses and
form new families which may produce more children, and so on. This is what God
had in mind when he said to Adam and Eve, “Be frui ul and mul ply and fill the
earth” (Genesis 1:28).
Of course, once sin entered the picture, families began to exhibit various levels of
dysfunc on. Because we’re sinners, none of us has ever seen a family that perfectly fulfilled God’s inten on. At the same me, we find the ideal inescapable, and
all of us have a deep longing to belong to a good family.
The simple biblical teaching is that family is created by God as an essen al part of
human nature. A family is not just a social contract or a legal en ty or a feeling of
a achment. And since we did not create it, our a empts to redefine it are simply
self-decep ve.
Michelle Blessing, “Meaning of Family,” at www.family.lovetoknow.com, accessed 13 August 2015 (h p://
family.lovetoknow.com/about-family-values/meaning-family).
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