The Fountain of the Family

Apologies beforehand if this is slightly incoherent. It’s been a long, good week!

To be Christlike is a far sweeter joy than we often think. Sometimes we can make it into a drudgery, or a loathsome duty – a test we feel required to pass in some way. But to be Christlike is to come to share in Christ’s heart. It is to know His love in truth. To be united with Him, seeing how He sees, thinking how He thinks, loving how He loves, more and more. It is to count Him as most beloved, and in that find those He has given us to love beloved.

This is the fountain of the whole of the Christian life. It is simple, undivided. And it flows from the life of God.

The Father and the Son and the Spirit, loving one another perfectly for all eternity, and sharing that love in the Spirit. The One God — perfectly united, perfectly harmonious — communicating goodness.

It is that Fountain that is the pattern for the fountain of the family. God has intended many of His children to enjoy a special image of the Godhead in a tangible, earth-bound way. Just as the love of the Father and the Son spill over onto His children, so also the love of a father and mother spills over onto their own children.

Paul describes this fountain of the family in Ephesians 5:22-33. I will leave that to your reading pleasure. Let me also commend to your reading the writing of Richard Steele on verse 33 of Ephesians 5:

The great duty of every husband is to love his own wife. This is the foundation of all the rest, this must be mixed with all the rest, this is the epitome of all the rest of his duty

Even if his wife’s beauty becomes decayed, her portion spent, her weaknesses great, and her usefulness small, yet she is a piece of himself. Here God in His wisdom has determined my affection. When all is said, this is the only sure foundation – that we are one flesh together before God – and this foundation holds perpetually.

The husband must honor his parents, but he must love his wife as himself and must (yet with all prudence) prefer her in his respects, whenever they come in competition…He must prefer her in his affection before his children and rather love them for her sake, than her for theirs, and before all others in the world. In short, he must so love her as to delight in her company above all others: “Be thou ravished always with her love” (Proverbs 5:19).[1]

The love of a husband-and-wife springs like a fountain from their union individually with Jesus, in being united in their marriage, and then overflows first to their own children. The father and mother love their children as their own flesh because they already love each other as their own flesh. This is the fountain from which the bond of the family flows.

If the spring is healthy, the stream will be healthy also. So, husbands, foster affection for your wife by your affection for Christ. Love her for His sake. Treasure all that you see of Christ in her, and value all that He has given you in and through her. This is the fountain of your family’s joy. Love Christ, and you will love her. Love her, and you will love your children well.

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[1] Richard Steele, A Husband’s Love for His Wife, https://heraldofgrace.org/a-husbands-love-for-his-wife-i/