A Vision for PNW Churches (Part 3): Family
Christian patriarchy is reflected by a godly and loving man, one who knows and understands his wife and children, who leads them with the gospel and biblical principles into the fellowship of the Holy Spirit and a life devoted to Christ and God’s glory. Godly women welcome, honor, and celebrate such leadership in the Christian community.
In the first article of this series, I explained my desire to articulate a fresh vision for PCA churches in the pacific northwest for the coming generation. While the vision of the gospel-centered movement in the last generation celebrated important truths about salvation by grace through Christ alone and inspired many to plant churches and share the gospel, it often left important practical matters of the Christian life and culture insufficiently addressed. In the second article we looked at the topic of worship. In this third article, we will focus on the area of family.
The family plays a fundamental role in the establishment of God’s kingdom on the earth. That was true at creation (Gen. 1:26-28) when the cultural mandate was given to a husband and a wife and included bearing children, and it is true now. Paul indicates in Ephesians that part of the Jesus’ majestic and supreme reign over all creation—”far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Eph. 1:20-21)—is manifested in the practicalities of little family households: wives submitting to their husbands, husbands loving their wives, children obeying their parents (Eph. 5:22-6:4). After the church itself (Eph. 2–4), the Christian household is at the center of God’s redemptive purposes in the world.
Below, I offer a few correctives to trends in our culture and even our churches, with special attention to the issue of male headship.
Marriage
The family begins with marriage. In a culture that is facing chronic levels of loneliness, we must champion the importance of young people finding spouses and getting married. God’s primary solution to loneliness is not the church, but the family, for he said, “It is not good for man to be alone,” and he gave Adam a wife. There may be exceptional cases of missionaries, like the Apostle Paul, who are more agile in their service to the Lord because of their singleness (1 Cor. 7:6-8). But unless someone is planning to give their whole life to such a work, their desire should be for marriage. This is true even for people who struggle with same-sex attraction. The “gay and celibate” movement has left many young men profoundly lonely. They should instead be shepherded to put to death their same-sex attraction and seek to marry a godly woman and have children.
Children
The importance of children is another important message that needs to be articulated clearly to young people. Our culture has encouraged young people to live individualistic, selfish lives of self-actualization and pleasure. Many young people have given their prime childbearing years to living as DINKS (dual income no kids) and traveling, checking off bucket-list experiences. These experiences will not come anywhere near the kind of happiness and fulfillment that come from grinding through your thirties, loving your spouse, raising little children to love the Lord (which is a tremendous amount of work), and living stable lives within the covenant community of a church. Young people need to be told clearly that this latter vision of life is not only happier in the long run, but also far more God-glorifying and productive.
Often, pastors are silent about this, aware that some may providentially be prevented from bearing children. It is wise to be sensitive to this, as it is a deep sorrow toward which God is clearly tender (consider the biblical examples of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Samson’s mother, Hannah, the Shunammite woman of 2 Kings 4, and Elizabeth in Luke 1). But even couples who cannot bear children are called to be fruitful through raising children. That could be through fostering or adoption, or it could be through discipleship—spiritual childrearing, you might say. Paul saw himself as having many children (1 Cor. 4:17; 2 Tim. 1:2) because the gospel is fulfilling Genesis 1:28 by being fruitful and multiplying God’s family through the new birth (John 1:12–13). You can hear the echoes of the creation story in Colossians 1:5–6: “Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing …”. Working to make disciples is a form of raising children. The life of believers should be devoted to childrearing in its variety of forms.
Patriarchy
Another aspect of family life that needs to be clearly communicated to young people is the patriarchal structure woven into creation. I recognize that patriarchy is a word that sets off alarm bells in many people’s minds because it connotes self-centered, bossy men who want everyone to wait on them and treat women as less-than. Sinful forms of masculinity like this should squarely be condemned by the church. It is also important for us to face the fact that, though that word makes many evangelicals uneasy, the unease has largely been the influence of second wave feminism in the 1970s. I believe there is value in reutilizing the word “patriarchal” instead of the more common word “complementarian,” because much of the complementarian vision of the last generation has become functionally egalitarian. While the word complementarian does acknowledge that God has created men and women in complementary ways, many complementarians believe that if a marriage is going well, then basically a wife would never have to submit to her husband because they would talk through everything until they came to an agreement. It is thought that the man gets the tie-breaking vote in a disagreement, but if he really loved his wife, he’d probably sacrifice his own desire to give her what she wants.
It must strike us as strange that one of the main instructions given to couples in the New Testament would largely not apply to the day-to-day life of healthy marriages. The vision of righteousness is never actually practiced by the righteous. That cannot be what the Lord intended in giving us these instructions. Just as a husband needs to daily learn to love and cherish his wife and dwell with her in an understanding way (Eph. 5:25; 1 Pet. 3:7), a wife needs to learn to daily have a submissive spirit toward her husband and seek to be a helper to him. Submission is a pattern of heart and a way of relating, essential to feminine sanctification.
Our understanding of a husband’s headship is that it is primarily his responsibility to see to the well-being of his wife and children. It is also the responsibility of men to see to the well-being of the church and society as a whole. The key word is responsible. They must actively, obediently, and creatively see to a loving and free culture for his family and neighbor. The chief test of a godly patriarch is this: are the women and children under his care flourishing in the love and joy of Christ? Are they laughing and playing, confident and compassionate? Are they willing to take risks? Are they filled with wonder at the beauty of God? Christian patriarchy does not look like a selfish, harsh man expecting everyone to serve him. Christian patriarchy is reflected by a godly and loving man, one who knows and understands his wife and children, who leads them with the gospel and biblical principles into the fellowship of the Holy Spirit and a life devoted to Christ and God’s glory. Godly women welcome, honor, and celebrate such leadership in the Christian community.
Feminism
As the word “patriarchy” was the object of scorn in second wave feminism, the biblical vision of male headship is antithetical to the pervasive feminism of our day. Our church must come to terms with this reality: gender is the most contested theological issue of our generation, and feminism is a serious threat to the health and vitality of the church, Christian homes, and society. One natural consequence of feminism (basically the idea that men and women are interchangeable) is the absurd and widespread embrace of transgenderism. Patriarchy recognizes that the roles given to men and women in the home and in the church are not arbitrary, but that God has designed men and women differently. We must learn to respect that design if we are to flourish as human beings. And if our societies are to flourish, the design must also be acknowledged in the workplace and civil realm.
There can be fears that this means we have a low view of women and their contributions to the church and society. One of the strongest arguments a church can give against this charge is the educational investment we give to girls in our communities. We train our girls to be faithful, principled, learned, articulate, rational, and steadfast against the spirit of the age. We reject any kind of patriarchy that suggests girls don’t need an education because they are just going to become mothers. Motherhood is one of the most important callings in all of creation, and who would think a woman doesn’t need an education—especially a biblical one—in order to do it well? As Chesterton pointed out:
“How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.” (G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World?)
Christian patriarchy does not stifle the spiritual fruitfulness of women, but creates an ordered and safe environment for them to flourish.
Reversing Male Abdication
One of the biggest sources of temptation toward feminist influence in the church is male abdication of leadership and responsibility. When husbands are not seeing to the well-being of the family, women often begin to question the goodness of the biblical design. Husbands are forbidden from being harsh (Col. 3:19, 1 Pet. 3:7), and when men sin through disobedience to God’s word, sexual sin, or weak leadership, women are tempted to think, “If he won’t step up and lead, then I have to.” There may be situations in which that is the case (e.g. Exod. 4:25, Judg. 4:4), but the Bible does not necessarily call wives in difficult marriages to respond in this way (1 Pet. 3:1-2). Even more, the best solution to feminism is men who love and lead women well with godliness and strength.
So, the first way to resist feminism in our church is to call men to loving and godly leadership. In addition, the women have to be aware of their own temptations to be quarrelsome and fretful (Prov. 19:13; 21:9, 19; 25:24; 27:15-16) and disrespectful (Eph. 5:33). Our churches need to confidently call out the sins of both men and women.
The leadership of men in the home translates also to leadership in the church. Men are called to exercise authority in the church. It is enough that the Scriptures clearly say, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man” (1 Tim. 2:12), but there are practical reasons for this as well. Here are three.
First, Paul says that Eve was deceived, and seems to be suggesting that women are susceptible to deception—“and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (1 Tim. 2:14, see Rob Rayburn’s great sermon on this passage). This is not to say anything about the intellectual powers of women (you can be brilliant and deceived at the same time—consider many of the people with PhDs in our culture). The word of God was entrusted to the man in the beginning before his wife was created (Gen. 2:16-17), and it was his responsibility to clearly teach it to the woman. Hence, male spiritual leadership has been woven into the creational fabric of creation.
Second, the work of eldership involves a significant amount of conflict. The work of priests and Levites in the Old Testament was martial. They were to confront and eliminate any unclean thing that came into God’s house (e.g. Num. 3:5-10). It is not the work of women to enter this kind of battle. (Alistair Roberts has an excellent article on this topic.) The meetings of a session often involve conflict. To guard the church against false teaching, elders must engage in conflict with each other, with people in the church, and with influences on the outside. Often when women enter this conflict, men back away from it, because men do not want to hurt women. This is why the consistent pattern of egalitarian denominations over the past century is that they fall into tragic theological error.
Third, the God of the Bible is supremely masculine. He is a God of power and authority, everywhere referred to as “He.” When he became incarnate, he fittingly entered the world as a man. That is why C. S. Lewis in his essay “Priestesses in the Church?” does not say that women can’t be priests because they are less intelligent, pious, or gifted. There are many exemplary women in our churches. The main reason a woman should not be a pastor, elder, or deacon is because God is Father. Pastors and elders represent the Lord to the church. Because he is supremely masculine, he can only be represented to the church by a man. As Lewis says:
“Suppose the reformer stops saying that a good woman may be like God and begins saying that God is like a good woman. Suppose he says that we might just as well pray to "Our Mother which art in heaven" as to "Our Father." Suppose he suggests that the Incarnation might just as well have taken a female as a male form, and the Second Person of the Trinity be as well called the Daughter as the Son. Suppose, finally, that the mystical marriage were reversed, that the Church were the Bridegroom and Christ the Bride. All this, as it seems to me, is involved in the claim that a woman can represent God as a priest does. Now it is surely the case that if all these supposals were ever carried into effect we should be embarked on a different religion.”
Lewis is offering a crucial warning: when we embrace feminism, we obscure the bedrock realities of our faith. For this reason, matters of gendered piety are not incidental. Far from it, they brush against first-tier matters and either reinforce or detract from a biblical view of God, Christ, the Spirit, the church, and so forth.
And so, a defense of the faith and the health of the church in our generation includes clear and direct teaching about men, women, children, family, marriage, patriarchy, ordination, and gender. These patterns are part of the heavenly picture of a world rightly ordered under Christ's feet. May we not be found opposing his reign. (And besides, it would be to our grave harm.)
