This is what we talked about on Sunday in the men’s breakout session on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood. -J. Lawrence

Do your church members physically abuse their children? Maybe you think it’s so few that you don’t feel compelled to teach publicly what everyone knows: don’t abuse your kids. At most it’s one or two bad apples, right?

I’m not so sure.

I cannot say that I want to write about this topic, and I’m no expert. But I keep stumbling into abuse situations in one church or another. And in every case it’s been a “model family” who abused their children in the name of what they thought was “biblical discipline.” In other words, I’m talking about well-meaning parents.

Sometimes anger was to blame. The parents confess that their temper got the best of them when their discipline left bruises. Then again, something about their overall approach regularly leaves cuts, welts, or bruises.

Sometimes a severe deficiency of wisdom was to blame. I heard of one couple who spanked their six-month old. Or another who would strike different body parts of their older children with a hard object. And all of these parents believed they were doing the right thing. 

Defining abuse would take another article. But like the Supreme Court justice said about pornography, you know it when you see it. You can see the frightened child backing away as their young eyes behold the grotesque ungodliness storming toward them.

Could this be a larger problem in Christian homes than we realize? I can’t imagine there are accurate statistics for this kind of thing. But whatever those statistics would show, I’ve become increasingly convicted that pastors, Sunday School teachers, and small group leaders need to teach parents to not abuse their children. And I think elder and deacon nominees should be asked if they ever have been abusive. I trust that many older and wiser pastors do, and I’m happy for men like this to chuckle at a younger man like me for finally waking up to what they’ve long known and practiced. Perhaps I only need to say it for today’s generation.

Why today’s generation? Western culture at large has become so undisciplined that churches are rightly taking more care in training parents to “raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” This is biblical. As the culture slides, Christian parenting should increasingly look different than the world’s, including in discipline.

I trust you’ve sat in a restaurant, as I have, and watched someone’s child assert dominance. The parent desperately tries to appease the child, but to no avail. You honestly feel sorry for both parent and child, wishing the parent knew that God had given him or her authority, because both parent and child are miserable together when God’s good gift of authority is abandoned. Christians, generally, understand that authority can be a good thing. God exercises authority for the sake of authoring life in others, and he means for us to do the same.

But friends, how capable of sinfully stumbling we remain. How quickly anger can get a hold of us. And how wrong our parental “wisdom” can turn out to be. We must not forget that all of us are prone to abusing authority. Do you think you’re exempt? Then I wouldn’t want to be your child.

Mark Dever often says that the abuse of authority is a particularly heinous sin. Authority abused, he explains, egregiously lies about what God is like.

Husbands, parents, pastors, employers, office-holders, be warned. God hates the abuse of authority, and he will punish it. He will bring justice.

Homeschooling parents, have you isolated yourselves and not invited other parents into your life to check yourself against? Double-income parents, have you piled so many things into your schedule that you have become short-tempered? Dads, do you labor all day to bring order to the office, and then blow a gasket when you find disorder at home? Moms, do you fear what other parents will think about your children and therefore feel the need to control them?

So back to where I began: Do you as a pastor assume that child abuse is so rare that it’s not worth publicly addressing? I increasingly wonder if there is more abuse going on among “good Christians” than we realize.

Let me then plead with you: instruct your members, for the sake of the impatient and the unwise. Exhort them to not abuse any of the authority that God has given them, especially over weaker ones. How we damage their understanding of God when we do. Explain what wise discipline looks like. Depending on the forum, you should probably get into the nuts and bolts. It might seem obvious to never spank a six month old, but you just might serve several families in your church by speaking those words outloud. I have also told members who struggle with anger to never, ever, ever pursue discipline when angry—to decide that it’s better “to let the kid get away with it,” if you must, than it is to risk abusing them. You should also define abuse more carefully than I have done here.

Then encourage your members to build friendships in the church where they can confess even their really ugly sin to one another. Assure them of the elders love and desire to help them fight sin.

And, of course, watch your own life and parenting. Invite younger parents into your home. My wife and I have learned scads about discipline by sitting at the dinner table of older and godlier parents, and even joined them upstairs after dinner as they read to their kids and put them to bed.

God is so tender, and gentle, and long-suffering with us. What a privilege we have to model that with our children, and teach our churches to do the same.

—Posted by Jonathan Leeman on 9Marks Blog

The Power of the Gospel and Marriage - John Piper

Last Sunday during family bible class we looked at three questions about marriage:

1. Where does marriage come from?
2. What is the purpose of marriage?
3. How can we live up to God’s design for marriage?

1. Where does marriage come from?

In the beginning God made marriage. It was his idea, not ours. Because of that, the essence of marriage does not change with time, culture or popular opinion. When a man and woman enter into marriage, God performs a supernatural union so that the man and woman become “one flesh” (Gen. 2:24; Mal. 2:15; Mat. 19:6).

Marriage is a common grace enjoyed by all humanity — not just people who acknowledge God as creator. Even without a knowledge of the truth, marriage is universally enjoyed as both good and beautiful. But as Christians, we have a distinct advantage, because we understand what Paul calls the “mystery of marriage”.

2. What is the purpose of marriage?

Marriage was designed to point us to something greater. Marriage is the creation of God, and the creator is always greater than the creation. Whatever we see as good and beautiful in marriage, we must know that God is all the more. He is the source of all truth, goodness and beauty. Marriage is designed to point us to God.

Marriage is about covenant-keeping

Furthermore, Paul tells us that from the very beginning, marriage anticipated the steadfast love of Christ for his people and his union with them. In Ephesians 5:22-33, Paul describes how husbands and wives should relate to each other. But at the end of the passage he reveals that he is actually talking about Christ’s love for his people, the church. When God established a covenant with Abraham, he said, “I will surely bless you” (Gen. 22:17). We know God’s promise is absolutely certain for at least three reasons:

1. Paul in Galatians tells us that God’s promise was made long before the law was ever given. Therefore, God’s promise of faithfulness can never be nullified by his people breaking the law and violating the covenant.
2. Hebrews tells us that when God made the promise he swore by himself. God was saying, as surely as I exist I will bless you — it is certain.
3. Paul says that even before the foundation of the world, God purposed in love that through Christ his rebellious people, his enemies, would be forgiven and made holy and blameless before him.

When Paul wanted to describe this steadfast, covenantal love that God has for his people, he didn’t just arbitrarily choose marriage as a good example. He called marriage a mystery, meaning that this was God’s intention all along, but only after Jesus came did it become evident what God’s intention was. Marriage has always existed to give us a picture, a small taste of what God’s love for his people looks like — faithful, unshakable and true. (The words of this song are a beautiful summary and expression of Christ’s commitment to bless his bride.)

Therefore, marriage should reflect the very love of Christ. In This Momentary Marriage, John Piper says that “the highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and his church on display. That is why marriage exists. If you are married, that is why you are married.” Then he says, “Marriage is not mainly about being or staying in love. It’s mainly about telling the truth with our lives” (pp. 25-26). Do you agree with those ideas? They may be hard to accept because our culture largely views the feeling of love as the basis of marriage. When the feeling goes away, so does the commitment and union. Of course the feeling of love is good and beautiful, but the act of our loving a spouse must ultimately be submitted to the truth of covenant faithfulness. Because marriage is a covenant that reflects God’s own commitment to faithfulness at all costs, in marriage we too must be committed, even when we don’t feel like it. By God’s grace, when we submit to this truth we will be blessed with the feelings of love that should characterize the marriage relationship.

Marriage isn’t forever

Because marriage is a picture of a greater reality, we will lose nothing one day when, as Jesus says, we neither marry nor are given in marriage (Mat. 22:29-33; Mark 12:24-27). One day marriage between husbands and wives will pass away. For those of us that love marriage or long for it, that might seem troublesome. But that’s because we are tempted to love the picture of marriage more than we love Christ and his church.

Getting analogies right

In Ephesians 5, Paul says that human marriage is an analogy, a picture of, Christ and the church.  Sometimes we use an analogy to explain a complex or abstract idea with a simpler comparison. For example, we can say the heart is like a pump. A heart is obviously more complex than a pump, but we’ve probably touched a pump and seen a pump and can relate to it better. In the end we can live without a pump, but we can’t live without a heart. In a similar way, the love of Christ for his church is more complex and more valuable than the love between a man and a woman. Furthermore, you can live without marriage on earth, but you can’t live without Christ and his church.

Just because marriage is an analogy, we shouldn’t despise marriage. Analogies, like marriage, are valuable, for at least two reasons:

1. They help us in our inability to comprehend something complex
2. They help us remember, because we’re forgetful

An analogy is like a photo of someone you love. If I want to tell you what my wife looks like, I can try to describe her features to you, but it will be easier to show you a picture of her. A picture of my wife also helps me remember who she is when I’m away from her. Similarly, marriage tangibly shows us what Christ’s love is like in a way that is universally accessible. Marriage is also a gracious reminder when we forget that Christ loves us.

However, we have to be careful not to get our analogies backwards. It would be ludicrous to love the picture of my wife more than her. Likewise, we shouldn’t love the picture of marriage more the person of Christ and his church. It’s easy to get analogies backwards in other ways. For example, Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.” We shouldn’t think that Jesus is like bread. Jesus is bread. Bread is like Jesus! You need Jesus more than bread. In the same way, Christ and the church isn’t like marriage. Marriage is like Christ and the church. Christ and the church are far more superior.

In The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis says that we lose nothing by turning from our earthly loves to embrace God:

We were made for God. Only by being in  some respect like Him, only by being a manifestation of His beauty, lovingkindness, wisdom or goodness, has any earthly Beloved excited our love. It is not that we have loved them too much, but that we did not quite understand what we were loving. It is not that we shall be asked to turn from them, so dearly familiar, to a Stranger. When we see the face of God we shall know that we have always known it. He has been a party to, has made, sustained and moved moment by moment within, all our earthly experiences of innocent love. All that was true love in them was, even on earth, far more His than ours, and ours only because His. In Heaven there will be no anguish and no duty of turning away from our earthly Beloveds. First, because we shall have turned already; from the portraits to the Original, from the rivulets to the Fountain, from the creatures He made lovable to Love Himself. But secondly, because we shall find them all in Him. By loving Him more than them we shall love them more than we now do. (p. 139)

Marriage is forever

In the eternal city, there is no temple: the temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. In that city, there is no sun: the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. In the eternal kingdom “they neither marry nor are given in marriage”: Christ is the bridegroom and his people are the bride. In this greater sense, marriage is forever.

Group Discussion: How can our marriages better reflect the relationship between Christ and the church?

God made marriage. He made it good for believers and unbelievers. But as members of the church we know what marriage has always been pointing to. We should let our understanding of Christ and the church actively inform, shape and transform our marriages to be a better reflection of ultimate reality.

Below are several truths about the marriage of Christ and the church:

1. How could you apply each of these truths about Christ and his church to earthly marriage? Think of several examples of what this should look like in marriage.
2. If you are married, think of specific examples from your marriage or think of new ways to apply this truth.

• Unity: Ephesians 5:28-29
• Lavish Grace: Ephesians 1:7-8
• Steadfast Love & Faithfulness: Hosea 2:19-20
• Unashamed Nakedness: Hebrews 10:19-22
• Forbearance & Forgiveness: Colossians 3:12-13

3. How can we live up to God’s design for marriage?

In conclusion, how can we possibly be committed and love like Jesus? How do I, an imperfect person, love an imperfect person? 1 John 4:7-12 is a beautiful passage where we find the answer. Our hope for loving like God is found in the very thing marriage is pointing to, God’s love for us in Christ whose death saves us from our lovelessness.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

Our only service this Sunday (Oct 16) will be 10:30 at Bald Rock. Please join us for a time of singing, Scripture reading, and picnicing!

Bald Rock is located on the way to Caesar’s Head State Park. It may be easiest to enter the following address into your favorite map program and follow those directions. (If you get to Caesar’s Head State Park you have gone too far.)

 Caesar’s Head State Park
 155 Geer Hwy, Cleveland, SC 29635

Essentially, from the Cherrydale area you will take 276 for about 30 miles.

• Take 276N (or Poinsette Hwy.) /25 towards Furman/Ceaser’s Head
• Stay on 276 through TR, Marietta, Slater and Cleveland
• When Hwy 11 & 276 splits, turn right to follow Hwy 276 up the mountain.
• There is a pull-off (on the right) for Bald Rock as you near Caesar’s Head State Park.
• There should be other cars along the pull-off giving you the signal that this is the place!

The last two Sunday’s we’ve looked at issues of headship and submission as they relate to gender roles.

Resources to listen to and to read about the issues.

TO LISTEN 

Tim and Kathy Keller gave a two part seminar in 2005 called “Cultivating a Healthy Marriage.”

Part One is a lecture. The Keller’s describe marriage as a garden.

1. Planning & Planting

• Gospel Reenactment
• Headship Role
• Submission Role

2. Fertilizing & Watering

• Communication Help
• Love-Languages Help
• Sexual Relationship Help

3. Weeding & Pruning

• Conflict Resolution
• Conflict Confronters and Conflict Avoiders
• Forgivness and Repentace

4. Harvesting & Enjoying

• Spiritual Development
• Ultimate Hope, Significance, and Serurity

Part Two is a Q&A Session.

• Can you talk about in-laws and the impact they have on the marriage?
• Do you have to have sex every time your spouse wants to?
• What is a healthy number of times to have sex, pre-children?
• How you make sex a priority with busy schedules?
• How do you get over damage in the sexual area that was done early in your marriage?
• How can I learn the love language of my spouse?
• What does the Bible say about children and contraception?
• In heaven how will we relate to our spouses?
• Do you have any recommendations for men leading their families?
• What do you recommend for a couple who are different places spiritually?
• How do you know your spouse should change a job for the benefit of the family?
• What if headship for the man is as hard as submission is for the woman?
• What do you say to the person who says I married the wrong person?
• What do you do when you try be the leader but your wife doesn’t follow?
• How do we keep working through our communication problems?
• How do you offer forgiveness without sounding self-righteous?
• My husband’s close relationship with other women is threatening to me. How should I deal with this?
• How do you get results from your husband without sounding like a nag?
• Can you have a good marriage without good sex?
• What do you do if you hard time respecting your husband’s intelligence and judgment?
• What’s the best way to give my husband advice without making him feel bad or nagged?
• How important is it for men to come in touch with their emotions in a marriage?
• Could you give a script for working through communication issues?
• What’s the wisdom in getting married (or being single)?
• Is love a choice?
• Is a difference of family size a suitable case to be resolved though headship?

TO READ 

Stephen B. Clark’s Man and Woman in Christ: An Examination of the Roles of Men and Women in Light of the Scripture and the Social Sciences.

When the book first came out Christianity Today named it as one of the most important
books of the year in 1981. Much time has passed since then, but the significant contributions of this book have not.

The book has four main sections:

I. The Scriptural Teaching

II. Assessing the Scriptural Teaching

III. The Scriptural Teaching in Contemporary Society

IV. A Christian Approach for Today.

A detailed viewed of the contents and issues the book covers can be viewed here.

Chapters 3, 4, and 12 are particularly relevant to issues of headship and submission.

Chapter 3 The Family: Husbands and Wives

• Of particular interest in this chapter is Clark’s treatment of womanhood in Proverbs 31

Chapter 4 The Family: Key Texts

• Ephesians 5:22-33, Colossians 3:18-19, 1 Peter 3:1-7

Chapter 12 Christian Family: Husbands and Wives

“The steady witness of tradition can help us see more clearly how the views of the present age color a reading of the scriptural message about the roles of men and women.”

He sketches the views of:

• The Apostolic Fathers
• Second and Third Century Fathers
• Fourth Century Fathers
• Post-Patristic Tradition

The entire book is available for free here.

Sunday we’re resuming our sermon series on gender identity issues called Biblical Manhood & Womanhood: Equal & Unique.

Here are some things that will make the series more helpful as we move along.

                               Three Talks on the Trinity & Gender Roles 

Andrew Franseen and Andy Naselli served our congregation well by helping us see how the Trinity relates to our roles as men and women in our world, our churches, and our homes.

If you missed those talks, be sure to listen to the audio and check out the helpful handouts Andrew and Andy provided for those sessions. 

                               Two Books & Two Chapters on Gender Roles

In combination with the sermon series, this week also begins our Family Bible Class discussions on the issue of gender identity and roles. (Mike Gray starts off the series this Sunday by talking about “The Origin and Purpose of Gender.”) 

Bruce Ware’s book Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance is the finest book to help think through issues of Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, particularly as they relate to the Trinity. (We’ll have some of this available in our bookstall.)

Wayne Grudem tackles some of the toughest questions relating to gender roles in his excellent book Evangelical Feminism: An Analysis of More Than One Hundred Disputed Questions. (It’s available as a free PDF.)

John Piper provides the most concise and nuanced treatment of the topic in the first two chapters of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Chapter 1 is available as a free PDF. Chapter 2 is a series of questions and answers. It’s also available as a free PDF. (The entire book is available for free or for purchase here.)

In the weeks to come we’ll list more resources as we think through yet another issue that displays the incomparable beauty and surpassing sufficiency of our great God. 

We are created for relationships.

Humans are made in the image of God who is a tri-unity—whose very nature consists in reciprocal love and communication among the Persons of the Trinity. This model provides a solution to the age-old opposition between collectivism and individualism. Over against collectivism, the Trinity implies the dignity and uniqueness of individual persons. Over against radical individualism, the Trinity implies that relationships are not created by sheer choice but are built into the very essence of human nature. We are not atomistic individuals but are created for relationships.

We are created for a new society—the church. 

In Redemption, believers are called to form an actual society—the church—that demonstrates to the world a balanced interplay of the One and the Many, of unity and individuality. In John 17:11 Jesus prays for the disciples He is about to leave behind, asking the Father “that they may be one, even as we are one.”

Jesus is saying that the communion of Persons within the Trinity is the model for the communion of believers within the church. It teaches us how to foster richly diverse individuality within ontologically real relationships “The Church as a whole is an icon of God the Trinity, reproducing on earth the mystery of unity in diversity,” writes Orthodox bishop Timothy Ware. “Human beings are called to reproduce on earth the mystery of mutual love that the Trinity lives in heaven.” And as we learn to practice unity-in-diversity within the church, we can bring that same balance to all our social relationships—our families, schools, workshops, and neighborhoods.

Nancy Pearcy. Total Truth, pp. 132, 133