Who's In Charge Of The Family?

From The Christian Reader:

Who’s in Charge of the Family?


by Robert Andrews



No question is more basic to family life, indeed to life in general, than “Who is in charge?” Satan questioned the authority structure of the universe when he rebelled against God by challenging His place as the “most high” (Isaiah 14:12-14), and there has been an intense battle on the earth over that question ever since.



Wars are waged as nations fight over who has authority over a piece of real estate and those who live on it. Individuals disagree about authority over possessions, and families and churches struggle with the question of who makes decisions, which is, at its root, an authority issue. Conflicts, from the minutest personal disagreement, to the largest world war, are generally conflicts in some way over authority.



God claims to have all authority as the rightful King over all the earth and He tells us that He has delegated His authority to His representatives who are to exercise it according to God’s law, thereby establishing a divinely-ordained hierarchical structure called the kingdom of God. However, Satan resists that delegated authority with all the rebellion he can incite by using the main weapon at his disposal, deception. He tricks his unwitting human accomplices into either exercising their authority improperly by using some means other than the law of God or by rebelling against God’s properly instituted authority.



To those with spiritual eyes, it’s easy to see that history is the out-working of this invisible spiritual battle. What a tragedy that history, as taught in our schools, is often such a boring subject. History is generally presented as a random series of events with no meaning or purpose when in reality it is a cosmic war for ultimate authority, raging on the earth between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. Jesus Christ won the definitive victory at Calvary, but Satan, with fierce determination, continues to try to put off the inevitable outcome as we work to implement Christ’s victory in time.



A major portion of this satanic attack against God’s delegated authority today is within the family. The family, along with the church and civil government, are the three institutions God has ordained to be the primary vehicles to extend His victory at the cross over the earth. However, Satan has used the feminist movement, which hates the authority structure of the family as taught in the Bible, to neutralize the effectiveness of many families by attacking and ridiculing God’s design for family rule.



Churches that should be teaching God’s family authority structure have been intimidated by the world into compromising the clear, biblical pattern for family life. Not wanting to be called “chauvinistic,” or seeming to subjugate women and hold them back from realizing their “full potential,” churches have not taught their men what the Bible says about how to be husbands and fathers or their women how to be wives and mothers.



If it is the teaching of the Bible, will it keep women from maximizing all that God has given them? Of course not, but we have been deceived into thinking as the world thinks by the enemy of our souls and not as the word of God instructs us.



If churches have not taught compromise, they have often omitted any teaching at all about the authority structure in the family for fear of offending their members, whose only input then comes from the media and other sources in the world that Satan controls and uses. He knows that if he can wage a successful propaganda campaign and shape the views of God’s people in this all-important area of authority in the family, he will be able to disable them as an effective fighting force, for the family is the normal battle formation God uses to deploy His troops. Satan has been very successful in working out this plan.



Family authority structure



I Corinthians 11:3 gives the divine authority structure of the family. “But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.” The following diagram puts this family authority structure in visual form.



I have made two changes in the diagram. First, I have changed the word “woman” from the New King James to “wife,” as the Greek word is gune, which can be translated either “woman” or “wife.” Since there is no biblical evidence that God intends every man to have authority over every woman, I believe the correct translation here is “wife.” The other change is the addition of children under the authority of both man and wife. This is taught clearly in Colossians 3:23 and Ephesians 6:1-3, where children are instructed both to honor their parents and to obey them in all things.



God the Father

⇓

Jesus Christ

⇓

Man

⇓

Wife

⇓

Children



The submission of Jesus Christ



You might not have realized that God has had a family for all eternity. Before He was a Creator, a Savior or a King, He was a Father—the “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:3). As a matter of fact, His primary nature is that of a father, and that divine family, the Godhead, is the pattern for all earthly families. God the Father is the namesake, or the identity, of all fathers, in heaven and on earth (Ephesians 3:14,15). This means that fatherhood had its origin in God and that all fathers are to be replicas of Him.



Notice in the diagram that God the Father is the head of Jesus Christ, who is God the Son. What does this mean? The Greek word for “head” here, kephale, signifies “authority or direction.”1 Aren’t Jesus and God the Father both coequal members of the Trinity, with equal worth, equal holiness, and equal power? Aren’t we to worship each, along with the Holy Spirit, as members of the Triune Godhead? Without doubt that is true. But in the divine family, as in the human one, there is an authority structure that relates to function, not to value or worth.



Jesus said that He taught His Father’s doctrine (John 7:16,17), He spoke His Father’s words (John 12:49,50; 8:26-28; 17:8), He gave His Father’s commands (John 10:18), He worked His Father’s works (John 5:19,20; 10:32; 17:4). He said His Father was greater than He was (John 14:28), and He sought His Father’s glory and honor (John 7:18; 8:49,50). He said that He always did His Father’s will (John 5:30; 6:38), and His authority was delegated to Him by His Father (John 17:2; 5:27; Matthew 28:18), indicating His perfect submission in all things to His Father’s decisions. He always pleased His Father in all He did (John 8:29). In summary, Jesus was the least original Man who ever lived! He never thought, spoke or acted independently of God the Father.



Jesus’ subordinate functional position as Son in no way lessened neither His deity nor His worthiness as an object of worship during His ministry on earth. He simply did not function independently, out from His deity, but “emptied Himself of His privileges.”2 He was “very God of very God,” but lived for thirty years as the Son of Man. (That title, Son of Man, by the way, was Jesus’ favorite name for Himself). He lived in complete submission to the will of God the Father. His life was a demonstration of how God intends for man to live in His kingdom. Of course, the humanity of Jesus was sinless, and ours is not, but can you see how He could say, “The works that I do shall you do also, and greater works than these shall you do, because I go to the Father” (John 14:12)?



He was living as man, in the power of the Holy Spirit, under the authority of His Father, just as we are to live. When He “went to the Father,” He sent back the Holy Spirit, that third family member, on the Day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit was under the Son’s authority (therefore ultimately the Father’s), because He was sent by Jesus (and also the Father). The Holy Spirit had confined his activities to the earthly, fleshly body of Jesus while Jesus was on earth, but now the Spirit was released to dwell in His new body, the church, in fullness of power.



For Jesus, submission to the authority structure in the diagram meant being reviled and hated by the religious leaders of His day; being falsely accused and going through the mockery of a trial; being deserted by His friends in His hour of need; and then suffering the penalty for the sins of mankind as He died on a Roman cross outside Jerusalem. All this was the will of His Father. Jesus adapted Himself perfectly to His Father’s vision and purpose by learning His Father’s heart and then doing what His Father wanted Him to do.



Those in the world who do not understand spiritual truth associate submission like this with weakness. Achieving recognition and a place of prominence by being “captain of my fate and in control of my own destiny” is generally associated with strength. But for Jesus, the willingness to do His Father’s will was the way to power and authority, the avenue to exaltation. For “God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow . . .” (Philippians 2:9,10). The cross came before the crown.