What Jesus Says About the True
Home
For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.
Matthew 12:50
Happy, harmonious, godly homes do not simply happen. The attractive suburban house did not just fall into place. The lovely landscaping of the beautiful garden was not by accident. Behind it all was planning, purpose and intelligent labor. The owner first set down his needs and desires. Then he sought the help of an architect to shape up the plans, and a builder to execute them. He did not just dump the materials on a vacant lot and wait for them to form themselves into a house. No rational person would proceed that way. Yet the same family which gives thought and planning to the building of a house, will often give little thought to the building of a home for the glory of God. Then when a "jerry built" family structure begins to sag and totter because of conflicting wills and temperaments, even to the point sometimes of collapsing in ruin, the family will often pick themselves up from the rubble bewildered, embittered, and wondering why.
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Should we leave to chance the most delicate and demanding of all human relationships, that of husband and wife, parents and children? The family demands the very best that purpose, plan, and intelligent effort can bring it. Above all, the home needs God and His grace.
An architect asked a young couple, "What type of a house do you desire?" The husband said, "Well..." and he was cut short. The wife took over and ventured, "We are not really very particular, but we would like the type of house that would go with a cute little door-knocker we picked up in Vermont last summer." But a true home is far bigger than a place to hang gadgets or to satisfy personal and petty desires. A true home is built for God and His glory. The will of God is to be the master plan for every family.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the Master Architect and Builder of homes. So let us give attention to His teaching on this subject.
Our Lord teaches that the true home is a window through which we may look up to the living God and through which the light of God may shine. Dr. Alfred E. Luccock tells us that in the first edition of Edith Wharton's novel, The Age of Innocence, she made a glaring mistake. She quotes what she supposes is the opening portion of the marriage service in the Prayer Book, but in reality it is the beginning of the burial service. Dr. Luccock goes on to say, "Too often marriage introduces lives into a sort of grave, without light or contact with the larger human family, shut up into selfish living. Altogether," he says, "there are too many homes that might have for their ceremony words like this: 'For as much as John and Mary have consented to holy matrimony we consign their bodies to a five-room tomb without windows on the world.' "
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A house needs windows on the world and a home needs windows on God.
To convey the realities of God to us, the Lord has chosen as a favorite vehicle of thought the figure of the family. The deepest truths of the divine nature and purpose are expressed in terms of the home. God, Jesus says, is a Father. Repeatedly, this comes from His lips. "Our Father which art in heaven..." "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" (Mat. 6:9; 7:11). "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Mat. 5:48). For the heart of God is a Father's heart and He desires to enter into relationship with us as His children. The Parable of the Prodigal Son, the greatest of all our Lord's parables, was taken right out of the context of the family. In the forgiveness of the returning prodigal, He enables us to understand the forgiveness of God for those who come to Him in repentance. Thus, the human family becomes a microcosm of the Kingdom of God.
He teaches us that one enters the Kingdom of God by spiritual birth. "...Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3). Obviously, we receive our physical life through birth. Not one of us was ever in a position to bargain with our parents and say, "If you will make me a child, I will promise to be a good boy or girl all the time I am in your home." We may be appreciative and loving because of their gift of life and love, but we can never earn our relationship. So we are told by the Lord that we enter into the family of God by spiritual birth, a gracious gift received in Himself.
He also makes clear to us in His teaching, that sin is essentially a blow at a loving heart. The evil which curses humanity
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is our prodigal willfulness. We have chosen to go into a far country leaving the father's house, neglecting the father's purpose and plan and spurning His love. Sin in its essence is a clenched fist of rebellion thrust into the face of the Father in heaven. Likewise, He teaches us that forgiveness and fellowship are not to be had through a process of legal regulations but through reconciliation. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son..." (John 3:16). He seeks us with marvelous self-giving love. Not only like the Prodigal's father, does He see us a great way off and run to welcome us, but He reaches us in the far country and stirs us to return to Him. He Himself has provided that redeeming grace which bridges the chasm between ourselves and His holy life. He has come in the Person of Jesus Christ to lift the prodigal race to His heart by means of the cross. He makes clear that the supreme law of life is love, love which is self-giving and not self-seeking. This is the way He responds to us. It is important to note that Jesus teaches us these tremendous truths about the Father not only by declaration but by demonstration — more by what He does than by what He says. The lasting lessons of life are learned through example rather than precept. It is easy to forget what we learn in the classroom, but what is learned in the context of the family abides. Our children catch more from our actions than from our instructions.
"The mother of Sir Walter Scott was a lover of poetry and art. The mother of Lord Byron was proud, ill-tempered, and violent. The mother of Napoleon Bonaparte was full of ambition and energy. The mother of Lord Bacon was a woman of superior mind and deep piety. The mother of George Washington was a fine and good woman. The mother of Patrick Henry was eloquent in speech. The mother of John and
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Charles Wesley was pious and filled with executive ability. The mother of Philip Doddridge taught him the Scriptures from the Dutch tiles on the fireplace. The lives of these women gave content to their words, and direction to the lives and minds they were molding. These men all walked in the steps of their mothers. So it is with our children.
Our Heavenly Father teaches His children not only by word, but by deed. "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." "My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth" (1 John 3:16, 18). Through the marvelous self-giving of Christ, we learn the nature of real love.
We cannot fully calculate the transforming power of this life of Christ. For example, His attitude toward women in the gospels has brought emancipation to womanhood wherever the gospel is known, and crowned her with dignity and honor. He said of marriage, "What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder" and wherever He is recognized, marriage becomes a spiritual union in God. He has touched and transformed childhood. He brought a little child and set him in the midst of the disciples. Ever since that time, wherever Jesus has been known, the little child has been the center of love and concern.
Perhaps we do not fully appreciate the difference between the Christian and the pagan view of childhood. The radical change Christianity brought may be illustrated by a papyrus letter which recently has been uncovered. Written by a soldier to his wife back in Rome, the letter was dated about the year 1 A.D. — about the time Christ Himself was a baby. It reads "We are still in Alexandria. I beg you to look after the child
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and as soon as we get wages I will send you something." Many a letter starts like that today! But this is the point — the letter continues, "If it is a boy, let it live. If it is a girl, throw it away!" In those days the Roman father had the right to take every baby in his hands, and if deformed, weak, or unwanted, he would break its back and throw it away. But Christ did something to that calloused world. He gathered the little children in His arms and said, "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." Ever since, His followers have seen children through His eyes.
Let us see what Christ has done to love. He has shown us that love is the greatest thing in the world and that the nature of real love is self-giving. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).
This needs to be emphasized today when our ideas of love are so highly colored by that which comes from Hollywood and the contemporary novels. In an article entitled "The Romantic Road to Divorce," Denis de Rougement says: "The type of love upon which a great many marriages are founded is a fever, generally light and considered infinitely interesting to contract. This, the Anglo-Saxon calls romance. We are in the act of trying it out and miserably failing at it. One of the most pathological experiments a civilized society has ever imagined is the basing of marriage — which is lasting — upon romance, which is a passing fancy. It is clear that in speaking of romance we have not been speaking of love in general, but of certain aspects of love which our era cultivates and which, too often, are accepted as love itself." One of the greatest delusions of our day is the false, superficial and dangerous idea about the nature of love. Jesus shows us what love really is. He has defined it and demonstrated it. Writing to the
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Christian family, the Apostle Paul said, "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it" (Eph. 5:25).
It is my privilege to counsel with those preparing for marriage. I endeavor to give them one sure guide for every human relationship in the home, a key which will be the solution to any problem. Let them love one another and respond to one another as God in Christ has loved them. How has God treated me in my indifference, my willfulness, my failure, my ingratitude? He continues to remain the lover of my soul. How has Christ treated me when I have been unfaithful to Him, when I have rushed through my days without thinking of Him, when I have had no room in my heart for Him? Is He through with me? Does He turn His back and walk away from me? No! He is there to forgive me, to reach down and under and lift me in love to His own great heart. Let me remember how God treats me in Christ and I will understand how I am to love.
There is a story concerning an old philosopher of Greece. On one occasion his wife gave him a severe tongue lashing. He listened in silence which only infuriated her the more, so she took a bucket of cold water and threw it at him. Though drenched from head to foot, very calmly and philosophically he remarked, "After that thunder and lightning storm I rather expected a shower." God does not treat us philosophically. He does not bear with us in a detached way. He moves toward the point of our need and there He lovingly gives Himself to us. Oh, that every home and every heart had a window on God, and looking through it into the face of Jesus Christ, would see how families are to live!
A successful man in the community appeared at the home
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of a doctor friend. In obvious distress, he cried, "My car is packed. I'm leaving home. I'm through! I have done everything I know how and it just won't work." The doctor asked him to sit down. "Don't be a fool," he said. "Leaving your wife and family is not the way out." "Well," the man replied, "I have tried everything I know and there seems no way to get along." The doctor said, "I want you to try one more thing and if that fails, I have nothing more to say. I want you to go back to your home, say to your wife, 'Dear, let's pray together.' Then go into your bedroom, close the door and kneel down together. Pray to God and in the name of Christ, tell Him that you have sinned against Him and against your wife in that you have not loved her as He loves her. Moreover, you have done this and this and this and contributed to your problem." He continued, "Don't mention her mistakes and failures to God. Tell Him about your own and ask Him to fill your life with His kind of love for her." There was a window opened in that home and it brought the light and love of God.
I trust that your home is not a five-roomed tomb without windows on God. Rather swing wide the portals toward Christ and order your home in the light of His love.
The home is not only a window on God giving us light, but it is also a doorway through which He enters the life.
It is a source of unceasing wonder to me that when the infinite God became incarnate and walked among men in order that He might be joined with us forever, He entered through the low portal of a Nazareth home and was born a baby in Bethlehem. God came into the world through a home. It was the doorway of His deity in flesh. But there is another amazing miracle. Jesus Christ will come into our hearts and homes today. He calls, "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if
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any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me" (Rev 3:20). "Oh," someone says, "There you go again veering off on the mystical and emotional. I don't believe that God does this sort of thing." May I ask this question? If you were to hear a knock on your door this afternoon and glancing out the window, saw one who looked like Jesus Christ, would you eagerly welcome Him into your family and home? You say, "What has that to do with it? I just said I don't believe this sort of thing happens." I know you said that, but would you like Christ in your home if He should knock at your door? To me, this is the crucial question. Are we ready to make room for Him? Do we want His way of living in the home? Are we willing to acknowledge Him as Lord of the family and of the heart. If so, be assured He is truly knocking and the moment He is given a real, definite invitation from an earnest life, He is there.
I recently called on a couple in our community who had two lovely children. They said to me quite frankly, "I guess there is something wrong with our religion. We have the form of it but not the substance. It does not seem to click and there is no reality in our lives." As we talked a little further I explained to them that God stands ready to enter any life and any home that really wants Him. We turned to the Scriptures and read, "Behold I stand at the door and knock..." (Rev. 3:20).
Addressing the husband and wife, I said, "Would you really like Jesus Christ not only to be the guest of this household, but its Lord and Saviour?" "Yes, we really would," they both replied. The three of us knelt together and directly and simply they invited Jesus Christ first into their hearts and then into their home. When I left, I could tell by the firmness with
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which they gripped my hand and by the new light in their eyes that God was there in new reality. Prayer in the home opens the door to God. He steps into the midst of the family with new power as its members pray together.
The Bible is another doorway to God. His Word in the heart of a Christian family is the source of America's greatness. God dwells in the home where parents share the things of God with their children, teach them to turn to Him in prayer, to trust Him as "the way, the truth, and the life" and guide them in ordering their lives according to His will. Such a home has an eternal foundation and abides forever.
I had a home like this. My parents not only taught me the things of Christ, but lived them before me. I vividly remember my father leading the family in daily devotions about the table. He would read a few verses of Scripture from the well-worn Bible, explain them, apply them to our lives, and conclude with prayer. An oft repeated prayer remains with me to this hour, "Lord, grant to us in that great day that we may be an unbroken circle about thy throne." Into my childish mind there came an awareness that the love and fellowship of our home would last forever. This prayer follows me today. May Christ give us all a true home centered in Him.
