The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

by Russell D. Moore

Family is like that too: the source of life-giving blessing but also of excruciating terror, often all at the same time.

Jesus, of course, grabbed him by the hand. In this, of course, Jesus was doing what he would do for all of us. He would endure the sign of Jonah, go into the storm of sin and death and hell, and take us by the hand to pull us out, safely toward home.

The imagery in the song might be trite in some places, but the central picture is visceral—the hand that reaches out to us is scarred, and scarred not with abstractions but with nails.

To make it through, we must recognize why family is so important to us, and why family can never be ultimate to us. We must see the family clearly, but we must see beyond it. The only safe harbor for a storm-tossed family is a nail-scarred home.

Family can enliven us or crush us because family is about more than just the life cycle of our genetic material. Family is spiritual warfare.

The family is one of the pictures of the gospel that God has embedded in the world around us.

Family will, sooner or later, reveal that we are not the person our families need us to be. We are naked before our illusions, and those closest to us eventually learn that we do not have it all together. In the fullness of time, we will feel not only the cross on our back, but the sword through our soul.

We will never be godly families until we are brothers and sisters to one another.

Something has gone terribly wrong when a Christian feels she must protect herself from her church, for fear that her daughter’s spiritual crisis will be discussed as part of a debate over whether she should have breastfed longer or whether they should have chosen homeschooling over public school. That’s especially true when literally every family in Scripture, without exception, has prodigals, including that of God the Father.

The gospel informs our place in the family because the gospel redefines two points at which the devils rage the most: our identity and our inheritance.

If we seek first the kingdom, we are better able to seek the welfare of our families. If we love Jesus more than family, we are freed to love our families more than we ever would have otherwise.

Family is a blessing, yes. But family is only a blessing if family is not first.

The church is not a collection of families. The church is a family. We are not “family friendly”; we are family.

My marriage is my church’s business. My fellow church members’ struggles with matters unique to singleness are not his issues alone but mine too.

The same applies to marriage. Christ and the church don’t illustrate marriage; marriage illustrates Christ and the church.

A cross-shaped masculinity walks not with Esau’s swagger but with Jacob’s limp. A cross-shaped femininity comes not with the glamour of Potiphar’s wife but with the Bible-teaching prowess of Eunice and Lois.

If divorce is a possibility for you, you will find a reason to pursue it.