Why the Household Is the Most Powerful Institution on Earth
If you’ve been following along in our series on sphere sovereignty, right now you might be wondering, What does any of this have to do with how I should be leading my family? That is a fair question. Here is why all this matters. You have seen that God has instituted the state, and that He has given some guidelines concerning it. Of the three spheres, the civil sphere is the biggest, but it is also the least connected of the three to your personal life. Similarly, you have seen that God instituted the church. The church is more closely connected to your personal life. God has given more specific instructions concerning the church than He gave for the state. Are you seeing the pattern here?
By the time we get to the third sphere, the household, we are dealing with the sphere that is most intimately connected to your personal life. Your household is the sphere where you find the people who are by nature closest to you. The home is where we have our first memories. It is where we gain our first and most foundational beliefs, and where our character is shaped during our early years of life. For the purposes of this chapter, when I say “household” I am referring to the people who live together in a home, related through marriage, procreation, or adoption—what we typically refer to as a family or “nuclear family.”
Certainly, there may be other members of a household, such as live-in servants, grandparents, foster children, etc. To the extent that they are considered part of the family, they are included in what follows.
Although a household may be more than a family, it is certainly not less than a family. And family is certainly the more common term used today. So you may find me alternating back and forth between both terms.
In his book, The Household and the War for the Cosmos, pastor and author C. R. Wiley has explained how, classically speaking, the household functioned as a mini-economy. In fact, the word economy comes from two Greek words, oikos, meaning house, and nomos, meaning law. The members of a household work together for mutual benefit and the common good.
What is the biblical meaning of household?
Genesis 2:24 says, “This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.” The origin of the household goes all the way back to the very beginning. Every new household begins when a man and women enter into marriage together. At that point they both leave their families of origin, and a new family is created.
1 Timothy 5:8 tells us, “But if anyone does not provide for his own family, especially for his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” Households are where close relatives live and take care of one another, per God’s design.
In Joshua 24:15 we read how families unite around the worship of God. They may rise and fall spiritually together.
“But if it doesn’t please you to worship the Lord, choose for yourselves today: Which will you worship—the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living? As for me and my family, we will worship the Lord.”
Psalm 127:3–5 says that,
Sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord, offspring, a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons born in one’s youth. Happy is the man who has filled his quiver with them. They will never be put to shame when they speak with their enemies at the city gate.
The household is where children are prepared to enter the world and make an impact. Parents “start a youth out on his way,” in hopes that, “even when he grows old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). Even when children grow up, their behavior and comportment is a testimony to how their parents raised them.
It is about this sphere, the household, that God gives the most detailed instructions. All three spheres are important, but the third one is closest to the heart and the one in which our lives are most intertwined. You can leave your state, and you can change churches, but you cannot easily change families.
Recall that we are talking about the spheres of authority in the broader context of the Great Commission. The household is where parents raise their children. It is where children have the best chance of being exposed to, and instructed in, the teachings of the Bible and the truth of the gospel.
The household is the fundamental building block of society. As such, it is the sine qua non—the essential precondition—of societal transformation. The first step in pursuing our mission of making a huge impact for the Kingdom of God in our local areas is to make a huge impact for the gospel in our own households.
Bearing all this in mind, it makes sense that God would give us such detailed instructions about this most-personal of the three spheres of authority. We need to take a closer look at what the Bible says about the family, but that will have to wait for future installments.
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