Piper-Perspectives on Family

In October 1995, John Piper, Pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, faced Ruth Tucker, Visiting Professor of Missions at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in a public debate held at Wheaton College, sponsored by the Wheaton Student Association. During the debate, Dr. Piper, longtime CBMW council member, challenged the audience to establish families on Biblical foundations, forsaking the broken cisterns of cultural conformity. Piper provided a basic statement concerning the family: "The family exists by the creation and design of God, it is sustained by the providence of God, it is ordered by the Word of God, and its reason for being is the glory of God."

Dr. Piper then set forth ten propositions on family, beginning with statements that would have most universal acceptance among evangelicals, moving toward those that become more controversial in our day when egalitarian positions have begun to erode Biblical truth. Following are ten propositions follow with appropriate Scriptures in parentheses.

1. The family is not God, and all the satisfaction that we get from marriage and children is potential idolatry, as are all other pleasures pursued apart from God. Even the innocent pleasures of family can choke out the seed of the Word.

2. The family is the first place, the last place, and the greatest place of pain and futility in human life. Thus the family is the primary place of learning the price of forsaking and neglecting God. (Gen. 1-3)

3. In a fallen world, God ordains the pain of loving discipline from parents to rescue children from folly and to reveal the holiness of God (Heb. 12).

4. God commands parents, especially fathers, to take primary responsibility for building biblical truth into the lives of children with a view to preserving confidence in God for all generations (Eph. 6:1-4; Ps. 78).

5. In a fallen world, the harmony and cohesiveness of human families are subordinate to the purposes of God in Christ (Matt. 10: 34-37).

6. While it is good for man not to be alone (Gen. 2:18), it is worse to be married when called and gifted to be single for the Lord's sake.The ideal aim of marriage in the created order is subordinate to the demand of devotion to Christ (1 Cor. 7:32-35).

7. Marriage is the one and only sacred haven for sexual union. This union is God's ministry of protection from Satan's temptation of husbands and wives. (1 Cor. 7:1-4).

8. Marriage is designed by God from the beginning as a model and manifestation of the relationship intended between Christ and the Church. Marriage has a divine purpose to portray the dynamic of love between Christ and the Church. (Eph. 5:25-32; Gen. 2:24).

9. The marriage portrayal of covenant union between Christ and His Church is clearest when the husband patterns his unique role of headship after the loving work of Christ, and when the wife patterns her unique role of submission after the calling of the responsive Church. (Eph. 5:21-24, 25-32).

10. The "mutual submission" exercised by Christ and His Church are not the same. Christ "submits" by sacrificial, loving leadership, provision and protection. The church submits by affirming Christ's unique role, responding to it with joy, and joining with Christ to carry through His world mission. Thus, headship is the divine calling to take primary responsibility for Christlike, servant leadership, protection and provision in the home. Submission is the divine calling of a wife to honor and affirm her husband's leadership and help to carry it through according to her gifts.