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FORT WORTH?The epidemic breakdown of the family structure is fundamentally a gospel issue, Southern Seminary theology dean Russell Moore told the audience Sept. 13 at the annual Baptist Distinctives Conference at Southwestern Seminary.
Moore argued that understanding the identity and purifying work of Jesus Christ is the answer to what ails the family and that social ills are reminders “of the wreckage of Eden.”
Yet, Moore said, the solution is not so much about recovering a series of doctrines or abstractions or “communicating principals more clearly.”
“It’s about recovering a theology. It’s about recovering a big picture that ? understands what we mean when we talk about the family,” Moore explained.
MARRIAGE AS THEOLOGY
Moore said a casual reader might infer from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians that Paul begins the New Testament book with weighty theological issues, then moves to practical how-to’s before turning back to weighty theology again.
“Ephesians chapter 5 and Ephesians chapter 6 are set in a context, in a letter he is writing to a congregation, explaining to them, he says, the mystery of Christ that was hidden in previous generations and now has been revealed through holy apostles and prophets?a mystery that is seen in the church, a mystery that is seen in the diversity of gifts within the church, a mystery that is seen in marriage, a mystery that is seen that unlocks and explains and fulfills what God is doing from the very earliest chapters of Scripture,” Moore said.
Too often churches place a false dichotomy between so-called theological issues and practical issues, Moore contended.
“Unless we see how our families fit into the mystery of Christ, I do not believe we are ever going to be able to join the gospel with the family in a way that Scripture seems to do.”
Yet cultural norms war against the Scriptural model of family, Moore said.
“What do you do when within our Southern Baptist churches the average 16-year-old male sitting in the pew listening to you preach the gospel may have seen images of women involved in sexual poses that would have been unimaginable to his grandfather?
“How do you communicate the glory of womanhood, how do you preach 1 Peter chapter 3 about honoring the woman as the weaker vessel and about honoring the woman as a joint heir with you?”
Unfortunately, Moore said, “many evangelical egalitarians and feminists believe when they hear headship, you mean, ‘Woman, get me my chips!'”
On the other hand, many conservative complementarians believe headship means “Beloved, excellent wife, please get me my chips, and then let’s pray.”
“In reality,” Moore said, “the headship that is seen in Ephesians chapter 5 comes in the context of an entire canon that points to the responsibility of men to show real leadership. Often, we say we believe in servant leadership, but often what we mean is no leadership.”
True servant leadership, Moore said, requires what Paul described as the role of Christ to his church as he “washes her with water” as a loving, purifying servant companion.
The John 13 image of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet “is an act of real leadership.”
“Peter says to him, ‘Never will you be crucified,’ and yet Jesus sets his face like flint toward Jerusalem precisely because he is seeking the best interest of his church, the best interest of his creation. That means for men, they cannot be grasping for privilege. It must be the burden of responsibility.”
Furthermore, Moore said, the marriage relationship reflects the mystery of the gospel of Christ and the
church?not the other way around.
“Paul is not saying, ‘happy and sad, sun and moon, dew and rain ? Jesus and the church?that’s an image that will work!'”
Beginning in Genesis, “God models and creates an icon?for this reason a man shall leave his father
and mother and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
Moore said a teenage girl in a Baptist church who is inappropriately pursuing a young man “is picturing a false gospel of a church who pursues her Christ,” as does a teenage boy who “believes that he has kept his True Love Waits card because of the kind of sex that he has had.”
When families in the church are ripped apart by divorce, “How then do you communicate to them eternal security when they have seen the union of Jesus and his church week after week after week after week being destroyed?”
Teaching men to take responsibility to crucify their appetites is not done simply for the safety and protection of women and children, Moore said.
“It has everything to do with the gospel that we preach.’
THEOLOGY OF CHILDREN
Moore also said the Bible’s view of procreation reflects the gospel, as does the innate longing for identity with a father.
“The Bible itself from Genesis all the way to Revelation is patriarchal. It is the message and a revelation of a father who is promising something to his son.”
“That’s the reason you can drive down the street in any urban city in America and see signs on the benches out there by the bus stops advertising DNA testing. It’s not just for the purpose of child support. It’s to answer the question ‘Who am I?” That is built into the brain of the universe, because God intends for the question to be asked ‘Who am I? A son of the living God. It’s an issue of inheritance.”
At the core of a healthy family, Moore said, is “an indispensable mother ? who is nurturing the next generation and there is a father who is directing us toward the tilling of the ground, bringing forth bread from the earth to provide for his family. This is why the apostle Paul can write to Timothy, ‘A man who will not provide for the needs of his own family is worse than an infidel, worse than an unbeliever. Why is that? Because he is preaching to his family a false gospel. He is preaching to his family by his very activity what God isn’t.”
Consequently, many are not able to comprehend what it means to pray, “Our father,” Moore said.
On the other extreme, many families are sacrificing healthy relationships and father-mother roles on the altar of upward mobility and two incomes, said Moore, who argued it would be better to move to a small house on the worst side of town than to chase materialism at the expense of the family.
Often, young married couples are encouraged to wait awhile before having children, which wrongly suggests, “You cannot enjoy each other with the gift of children,” Moore lamented.
RECOVERING THE CHURCH
Moore also said that the church as an institution must be recovered in order to recover the nuclear family.
“The problem is we have entire generations of children who are looking and seeing those whom God has given as their leaders who have no commitment to their flocks because of the trouble that comes against them, and how then do we teach them, ‘Fathers provide for your children, husbands stay with your wife, even when the doctor says it’s cancer?”
Instead, Moore said, pastors must resolve, “You are my people, I am your shepherd. Yea, though you fire me, I will feed to you the Word of God.”
Furthermore, churches must have men teaching men not just in doctrines of the church but in what it means to be a man, women in the Titus 2 fashion teaching not just in the doctrines of the faith, not just in the spiritual disciplines, but in what it means to be women willing to be low-class in the eyes of the culture.”
Moore said Baptist churches too eager to accommodate the culture lead to “churches that look like the culture?only 20 years behind.”
“Perhaps the next generation of Baptists will not have multi-million dollar Family Li
