Luke 2:51

Luke 2:51

The Christian Family.

I. The household is the parents' kingdom. Only here can each one find food for every faculty. The family gives a practical solution to the great problems of moral truth. It is the typical form of the vast organisations that belong to human life. It teaches subordination in love, and subordination is only another word for fitting together. In a society like this, though subordination inside of the family is natural and easy, outside of the family it is reluctant and mechanical, and is very often unjust. Weak men are perpetually governing strong men. Ignorance is in ascendency over knowledge. In a democratic community subordination is founded on the actual conditions which subsist between man and man; but in the family mutual subjection is taught, and the man who is thoroughly radicated in the intelligence and love of mutual subjection in the household is essentially fitted to become a peaceable and good citizen.

II. Order and government are likewise taught in the family, and it is the government or order which springs from parental love that carries with it a sense of its fitness and necessity. Love is the supreme necessity. Love is not a thing that is for ever submitting, as many suppose it to be. It is regent, it is imperial in its very nature. It tends to command, and in the family fitly. There we have the roots of order of government, and nowhere else in anything like so perfect a state.

III. The family also teaches, as we can scarcely find it taught otherwise, the true doctrine of sin and penalty. There is but one place where penalty can be justified; namely, where it is a remedy for the sufferer or a safeguard for those who are round about him; and where it is administered in the physician's spirit. The administration of pain and penalty in governments and courts is exceedingly rude and imperfect; but the administration of pain and penalty in the family is beautiful from the beginning to the end.

IV. We learn in the family, likewise, the doctrine of the liberty of law. There is no law in the household that overruns sickness or weakness, or change of mind. Law, if rightly employed, is helpful, is strengthening, is nursing; and in the household you see how expansible and adaptable it is.

H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 372.

References: Luke 2:51 . Preacher's Monthly, vol. x., p. 74; S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches, p. 125; Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 372.Luke 2:51 , Luke 2:52 . G. Huntington, Sermons for Holy Seasons, 2nd series, p. 85.