What Is Man? - All In The Family Week 1
Pastor Matt Bell
Sermon Summary
In this inaugural sermon of the "All in the Family" series, Pastor Matt addresses the cultural collapse of the family by examining its root cause: the redefinition of humanity resulting from secular materialism and evolutionary theory. Grounding his message in Ephesians 5 and Genesis 1, he argues that the widespread erosion of marriage, gender, and family structures—accelerated by movements ranging from the sexual revolution to the legalization of same-sex marriage—stems fundamentally from a rejection of the Creator-creature distinction. To rebuild strong, biblical families, Pastor Matt emphasizes that Christians must reject the godless assumption that human beings are mere cosmic accidents or biological machines. Instead, they must reclaim the truth that humans are distinct, morally responsible image-bearers of God, intelligently designed and called to submit their lives, marriages, and families to the loving lordship and restorative work of Jesus Christ.
Sermon Transcript
Introduction: All in the Family
If you have your Bibles open with me to Ephesians chapter 5 this morning. Ephesians chapter 5, we're starting a new series this morning that we're calling All in the Family. And this summer, we're taking a break from Matthew's gospel to focus in on the family.
We're starting this morning by reading from Ephesians chapter 5, these verses on the family that God inspired and gave to the apostle Paul. And I invite you to stand with me as we read them this morning. I'll be starting here in verse 22, and we'll work our way through chapter 6, verse 4. We are not going to have time to teach on every single one of these verses this morning, but this is the sort of the bullseye. This is where we all want to be as we endeavor to live our lives to bring God glory in our families.
Scripture Reading: Ephesians 5:22–6:4
So starting here in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 22, it says:
"Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church, and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
'Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 'Honor your father and mother' (this is the first commandment with a promise), 'that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.' Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord."
This is the word of God. Amen.
Opening Prayer
"So, Father, we do thank you for your word. We pray that you would use it, and the other Scriptures we're going to look at today, Lord, to press your truths into our hearts. Lord, even as we read in our passage this morning that you, Christ, are the head and we are your body, and Lord, that you are sanctifying us as your bride and that you are washing us with your word.
Lord Jesus, we pray that you would wash our minds today, wash our hearts today, wash our desires today with the pure water of your word, that it would wash over us today and make our thoughts clean. Help our thoughts, our desires, our will to align with your thoughts and purposes and will for each one of our lives, that we would go out from this place as your body, to bring you glory in the world, that we would live as lights to bring glory and honor to our Father, who is in heaven. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen."
The State of the Modern Family
You may be seated this morning. As I mentioned, we are taking a break from Matthew's gospel to focus on the family this summer. So we'll be in this series through June, July, and even into August, looking at God's plan for the family, for marriage, sexuality, raising children, et cetera. And we also have our family camp coming up in August, which we're very much anticipating and looking forward to.
Now, God's desire is for those of us who are married, those of us who have children, those of us who are part of families—which we're all part of a family—God desires for all of those to be strong. He wants your marriage to be strong, your parenting to be strong. And in this passage in Ephesians 5, God speaks through the apostle Paul to outline his design for the family. This is a picture of what a strong and healthy family looks like. This is where we all, who are believers in Christ, want to end up in our families. This should be the goal that we are shooting for, the target that we are aiming for.
However, if we took a pulse at the state of families in our community, in our culture, in our nation today, I think what we would find is that most families do not look like Ephesians chapter 5. Amen. Many families today are struggling, even on the verge of collapse. And this is because the whole concept of family has been under attack in our culture for multiple generations. So that today in 2025, 40% of the children born in our nation will be born out of wedlock. They will not be born into a marriage. They will be born to a single mother. 40% of all children.
If you look at individual demographics, that number begins to soar. As you look at different communities, if you look at the Hispanic population, that number increases to over 50%. If you look at the African American population, that number goes even higher to 70% of children born into a fatherless home. Fatherlessness in our country, in our culture, in our community, is an epidemic. And even many times, if the father is there physically, he is absent spiritually. And many, if not most, of the social ills that plague our nation, they would be solved simply by having a godly father in the home. That would take care of most of the problems in our country.
Now, this situation that we see today wasn't always this way. It wasn't always that 40% of children were born to unwed mothers. There used to be an idea that children were born into a marriage, that there was a certain order to things—that first came a marriage, then came sexual union, then the result of that was children. But in many people's minds today, those are all unrelated things. Those are all unrelated ideas and concepts.
The Historical Erosion of the Family
So how did we get here? How did we get to this point where we are today, where we're on the pathway to having most kids in this country growing up without a dad in the home? How did we get here?
Well, it hasn't happened overnight. It's been a steady erosion. We could look back to the 1960s. We could look back to the sexual revolution that promoted promiscuity, that delayed marriage, that made cohabitation without marriage the norm, and that separated the concept of sex from the idea of a covenant union in marriage. It brought a division between those two ideas.
In 1969, California was the first state to enact no-fault divorce. Before that, somebody had to be at fault for a marriage to separate. The blame had to go somewhere. What this allowed was for couples to divorce for any reason without providing fault, shifting marriage from a covenant union to a simple contract administered by the state. I mentioned California was the first state to enact that. I think many of you would be shocked to hear that it was Ronald Reagan who was the governor who signed that into law. Some people today think Ronald Reagan could walk on water. No, he had some issues, too. This began these seedbeds of this erosion of the family.
Of course, we know in 1973, Roe v. Wade, this great Supreme Court—great not because it was good, great because it was infamous, great in its wickedness and sin—whereby abortion was legalized in the 50 states. Where states who had laws against abortion and protecting the unborn, the Supreme Court ruled that those laws were unconstitutional, and that mothers could, on demand, take the life of their children all the way up until birth. Now, praise God that that was overturned just a few years ago. But the battle rages on. Instead of one battle nationwide, we have 50 battles statewide. In some states, it's still legal to terminate a child, murder a child in their mother's womb all the way up until birth.
Moving on into the '70s and '80s, we had the feminist movement, which vilified male headship in the home, which promoted for young women the idea of pursuing a career instead of pursuing motherhood, and encouraged women to be more like men. Frankly, that was the whole idea of the feminist movement. It's so absurd, but when you look at it, what it was really saying was, "Women, you should be more like men, and that'll make you happy." As it turns out, it doesn't make women happy to be more masculine. In fact, the depression rates and the number now of women in our country that are on antidepressant medication, because they've bought into all of these lies, has absolutely skyrocketed and soared.
In the 1990s and the 2000s, we saw the rise of pornography. When the internet came online and broadband, pornography went from being this thing that you had to kind of go to a weird place to get, and you were worried that people would see you there, or you could go to a hotel and watch it on pay-per-view. It went from that to now access to anybody, anywhere, at any time, immediately, to the most debauched behavior known to mankind. This proliferation of pornography and porn consumption that happened through the '90s into the 2000s, where now most children will not make it to their teen years without first being exposed to hardcore pornography, shaping the way children view sexuality and marriage.
Through the 2000s, marriage rates declined as fornication and hookup culture became normalized. There was no longer a stigma or shame attached to the number of sexual partners a person had. It was almost a badge of honor. And also in the 2000s and the '90s, it shifted the role of education, where now it became the government's job to educate children on sex and sexuality, and it no longer was a job that belonged to the parents. And our school systems began promoting all manner of what the Bible calls perversion to young children under the guise of education.
In 2015, we saw the Supreme Court decision of Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states, which legally redefined what a family was, removing the male and female requirement. And fast forward to where we are today in 2025, where we have a whole month of the year dedicated to celebrating lesbianism, gayness, bisexuality, transgenderism, and plus, whatever that is. And we know what it is, it's pedophilia. That's what plus stands for. And so all of these things must not be tolerated—which is what we were first told—they must be embraced, and now celebrated. If you don't do that, you're backwards, you're a bigot, you're a hater, you're a phobe, you have some sort of irrational fear. You're a homophobe, transphobe, et cetera, et cetera.
To the point where we who gather here this morning, who have been called out from the world by Christ, we are so inundated in this milieu of sexual chaos and confusion. It's to the point now today where many Christians, we stumble upon Ephesians chapter 5, and we read God's inspired instructions on the family and family relationships, and it sounds so foreign and alien to us. We read these things and we think, "What is this, some textbook from 1940? Where did you discover this crazy idea that a wife should submit to her husband? Where did that come from? That husbands should sacrificially love their wives and children, that children should obey their parents?" These ideas even to God's people, even to the church, sound so foreign to us because we constantly live under a different set of ideas and philosophies in our world and culture today. We read it and we say, "Does God really expect these things today? God, it's 2025."
The Root Cause: The Redefinition of Man
I shared with you some of the erosions, some of the big cultural events that happened that led us to this point, but there is an idea that I actually want to spend some time addressing this morning, which was much further upstream from the sexual revolution and the redefinition of sexuality and marriage. There's an idea that is further upstream that has led to this chaos and confusion and the collapse of the family. And it was the redefinition of man. The redefinition of man.
You see, before marriage and family could be redefined, what first had to be redefined was mankind. It was humanity. And this happened in the 1930s when Charles Darwin introduced his theory of evolution. He eventually published in 1859 his Origin of Species, which formally presented his theory of evolution. And this idea of evolution, coupled with the Big Bang theory, these ideas have radically restructured and redefined what it means to be human. The nature of humanity.
And this redefinition of humanity is what made the sexual revolution possible. Because we come here and we read wives should submit to their husbands, and we can't even define what a wife is because we don't even know what a human being is. We read that husbands should serve and sacrifice, and we don't even know what that means because we don't even know what a husband is, because we don't even know what a man is. Children obeying their parents—how could we have children obeying their parents if we can't even define what a child is?
These things that are so fundamental and so basic, to the point where the most recent Supreme Court justice, when she was being questioned before Congress on whether or not she was fit to serve in that office, was asked the question, "What is a woman? Can you define what a woman is?" And she replied, "I'm sorry, I cannot." When pressed on the issues, she said, "I cannot provide a definition for what a woman is because I am not a biologist." And this person was confirmed, and now sits on the highest court of our land, issuing rules that affect all of our lives. How in the world can you make a decision about anything if you can't decide something so basic as what is a woman? Now, of course, she knows what a woman is. We all know what a woman is. We all know what a man is. But there has been a steady undercurrent of this erosion in thought where it's not politically correct now to say these things.
But as I said, before marriage could be redefined, man first had to be redefined. And so if we're ever going to recover God's design for marriage and family, we must first start with God's definition of what man is, what mankind is.
Created in the Image of God
And so for that, we turn to Genesis chapter one. I invite you to turn with me there this morning, Genesis chapter one. If you don't know where that is, it's page one of your Bible. Just open your Bible and go all the way to the left. When you get to the cover, go back one page. Genesis chapter one.
These first three chapters of Genesis are so foundational to our lives as human beings. I would encourage you, implore you, to read and reread and study and restudy these opening three chapters of Genesis. I would encourage you to do it to the point where you pretty much have them memorized, because they are so foundational to living life in this world.
But I'm going to look at an excerpt here from Genesis one, just a handful of verses here. Look here at the first verse. This is the beginning of God's revelation to mankind. It says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." It goes on to tell the story of God creating the heavens and the earth, and this creation of heavens and earth culminates, climaxes with the crown jewel of God's creation, mankind.
In verse 26, it says, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.' So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'"
We began our service this morning with a reading from Psalm 8. Psalm 8 has in it this question: "What is man?" What is man, the psalmist reflects, that you, God, who created the heavens and the earth, you, God, whose majesty is above the heavens, you, God, who is infinite, who is without beginning and without end, what is man that you are mindful of him? And my argument to you this morning is that for you to be able to understand what marriage is, for you to be able to understand what family is, what raising children is, you first have to start with this question: What is man? Who are we?
The Bible tells us on the very first page that man is an image bearer of God. Bearing his image, no other creature, no other part of creation bears the image and likeness of God.
The Creator-Creature Distinction vs. Evolutionary Materialism
But before we can talk about what it means to image God, we first need to stop and think about this idea that God says, "Let us make man in our image." We need to think about this concept of being made. In Genesis, there's this distinction in this creation account. There's this separation, this division between the Creator, God, and his creation. This separation, this distinction: we are not the creators. We are part of God's creation. We live in the world that God made. This world operates according to the laws that God put in place. This place that we live is not our world. It is God's world.
The psalmist reflects and says, "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." Everything belongs to God. Even you. In the book of James, it tells us that every good thing comes from God, comes down from him. And God's word shows us that humanity is created, is formed, is fashioned uniquely by God. We are creatures. We are not the creators. There is a distinction, there is a separation between God who is eternally self-existent, no beginning and no end, who spoke the worlds into existence. In the beginning, God, he was there before time began, created the heavens and the earth. All the universe, all creation comes from him, and the separation between him, the Creator, and his creation.
Now, this again is in sharp contrast to Darwin and his theory of evolution, and what later developed as the origin of the universe, the Big Bang theory. These ideas say there is no God. There is no creator. This idea that there was nothing, and then nothing spontaneously exploded into everything. This idea that over billions and billions and billions of years, this nothing that exploded began to change, to form, to mutate, to evolve, until where we are here today. This idea that everything comes from nothing.
There is no spiritual world. There is only the material world. What we can see, taste, touch, hear, and smell. All there is is time and chance acting on matter. There's no purpose behind the universe. Therefore, there's no meaning behind the universe. There's no thought behind anything. That even our own thoughts here today, these ideas tell us, are nothing more than chemical reactions in our brain. Our brains are just fizzing like a can of soda that was opened, and our thoughts are just brain fizz. Everything is an illusion, all meaning is an illusion. Love is an illusion.
The Fine-Tuning of the Universe
Now this is a certain absurdity to all of this. Because I believe that every human being who's created in the image of God instinctively and intuitively knows that everything that was designed has a designer. We intuitively know that. Everything that is made had a maker. Everything that was created had a creator.
One of my children this week asked me to purchase for them for their birthday this year a Rolex watch. I had the same reaction. So they got on my phone, they Googled Rolex watches, they picked the one they wanted out. You know, it's a beautiful device. Incredibly crafted. The meticulous design, the precision, is world-class, world-renowned. And it's only the fool who would find a Rolex watch on the side of the road and think that somehow, time and chance acting on matter produced this masterpiece of a timepiece, that, "Oh, I guess maybe there was a tornado here that blew through, and maybe it hit a gold factory, and a sprocket factory, and a glass factory, and it threw it all together over time." It's absurd.
And yet, every single one of our organs in our body is infinitely more complex than a Rolex watch. Infinitely more complex. So why is it that we would look at something as elementary as a Rolex watch and think the idea that it ended up there without a designer, without a craftsman, without someone making it, is absolutely absurd, but then we come to looking at humanity, the crown jewel of God's creation, and we say, "Total accident. Total happenstance. Must have just gone that way."
The idea that nothing exploded, and time and chance, acting on matter, produced our planet, and just happened to produce it in such a way that the conditions were right for life to exist, but they can't even tell us how life began to exist. There's no idea about that. It was like there was some goop there that maybe some special lightning hit. And that goop turned into monkeys, and now here we are today, 2025. It's what people call "from the goo, through the zoo, to you." That's how we got here. Time and chance acting on matter.
I would encourage you to take some time and go study how finely tuned our universe is. It will blow your mind. Let me give you just a few of the conditions that have to be right for life to exist in our universe. And these are so finely tuned down to the most infinitesimal number that if they were to go one way or the other, there would be no reality. There would be no existence, there would be no universe, there would be no life.
The first is the constant of gravity. The gravitational constant. This determines the strength of gravity. It is so finely tuned that if it were weaker by one in 10 to the 36th power, by one degree, stars could not form. If it were stronger by one degree, stars would burn too hot and too fast. If there are no stars, there are no planets, there is no life. This number, one in 10 to the 36th degree, is like stretching a ruler—say you could take a ruler and stretch it across the known universe. That'd be a really long ruler. It would be billions and billions of light-years. And it would be like hitting the right mark on that ruler within the width of a single human hair. And if it varied by one hair all the way across the entire universe, one way or the other, life cannot exist. That's just gravity.
We have also the cosmological constant. That's the density of empty space, which controls the expansion rate of the universe, how fast the universe is expanding. This is so finely tuned that if it was off by one part in 10 to the 120th power—that's a 10 with 120 zeros after it—the universe would expand too quickly and galaxies would not be able to form.
I could go on and on and on. The strength of nuclear force, that's the power that holds protons and neutrons together in the nucleus of atoms. If it were 2% stronger, there would only be hydrogen in the universe. If it were 2% weaker, there would be no atoms that could be held together. There would be no chemistry, there would be no biology, there would be no life. There's also the ratio of electrons to protons in the universe finely tuned, and the initial conditions of our universe. Now, the probability that all of these conditions would just happen to be the way that they are, without a designer, without an intelligence, without a superhuman mind behind it all, the number is so staggeringly large, that number is larger than the number of atoms in the universe.
And we have people being taught today in our schools that your ancient ancestors used to be fish. And it's never explained, "Well, how did fish learn how to swim underwater? How do they develop that ability?" "Well, it evolved over time. They learned to breathe over time. They developed gills and over billions and billions and billions of years, the ability to breathe underwater." I don't know about you, but if I didn't know how to swim, I'd have about two minutes to learn how to breathe underwater before I was dead. If you can't breathe underwater, you don't have billions of years to figure it out.
These ideas are insane. But they've been accepted and adopted because it's a way to get out from living under God's rule and authority in his world and in his universe. And the Bible tells us that mankind, without Christ, without being born again, regenerated by the Spirit of God, that mankind is dead in his trespasses and sin, is blinded by his own rebellion against God. So that humanity will embrace insanity in an unconverted condition to live in that state of rebellion against his creator.
Our universe does not bear the marks of a cosmic accident. But rather something that was intelligently designed. Existence itself, the fact that we exist, the fact that anything exists, existence itself is proof that there is an eternal God outside of time and space. Because if there was no God outside of time and space, time and space could have never begun. There had to be an eternal God, self-existent, no beginning, no end, for anything to begin, for anything to exist at all. It requires the existence of Almighty God. Take away God, you take away everything.
What It Means to Be an Image Bearer
Now, we are made by God. We are part of his creation, but we are not like the lower part of creation. We are not like trees. We are not like the sand, we are not like animals and apes. We are distinct, though we're part of God's creation. We're distinct from creation, as we bear his image. What does that mean?
It means that we are equal, different persons. We are persons. We are distinct from one another. We think, we choose, we feel, just as God is a person. God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So too are we persons, individuals who think, who choose, who feel, who reason.
Human beings are not machines. Again, the materialist says we are nothing but biological machines. We're nothing but really good-looking meat. No. We are not machines. We are not animals led and dominated by our baser instincts. We are moral agents, endowed by our creator with a sense of what is right and a sense of what is wrong. We have a conscience. It is hardwired into us, and we judge ourselves and others by that standard of right and wrong. God holds us responsible for our actions of good and evil because we are moral agents. We are responsible for our lives. Our lives, our actions, our thoughts, our words have moral consequences.
If a tiger came in here and mauled someone to death, we wouldn't condemn that tiger for sinning. In fact, what we would do is we would prosecute the person who was so negligent with their pet tiger across the street that let them in here. The owner of that tiger would be morally responsible. Because humanity is a moral agent, and animals are not. They're just led by their baser instincts. But when we adopt the idea that humanity is no different than the rest of creation, then it brings in the possibility that we can just be led by our flesh. We can be led by our desires. We're nothing more than animals, so just do whatever feels good, do whatever comes naturally. But in fact, we are not animals. We are image bearers. We're able to think, we're able to reason, we're able to make choices, decisions that we are responsible for. We have feelings that are tied to all of that. We have the conscience, with God writing on our hearts good and evil, making us responsible before God for our actions.
Not only that, but we have higher intelligence. Humanity is capable of great feats of learning, discovery, of memory, recalling things, of logic, of reason, of producing arts and works of art, of music, of great cinematic feats that lift the soul and lift the spirit. We have the capacity for love. The capacity for love. No other creature has the capacity for love that humanity does, because we are persons made in the image of God. And we are taught to love first and foremost the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and strength. And finally, to be created in the image of God means that we are immortal souls. We have an eternal destiny. We will live on forever in one of two places. We will never cease to exist, but will exist for all eternity.
And so God created mankind in his image and likeness, giving us dominion over the earth to use our lives, to use the substance that he gave us to glorify and exalt him, to extend his glory over the creation and into all of the earth. We were not made to live for our own glory. But we were made to glorify, to reflect God's nature, God's character, God's attributes, who he is to the world.
Now, it says here that we were made male and female. There's sexuality there. This distinction between male and female, to be fruitful and multiply, again sexuality comes into play. We'll deal with that more next week of using our sexuality to glorify God. But where I want us to think just for a few more minutes today is that we have to recognize this: that so much of the messages, the words, the thoughts that's brought to us through conversations at work, through music, through media, through movies, through social media, through the news—we consume so much of it, if not most of it, if not 99% of it, is coming from a worldview with the assumptions that are radically different than what God's word says. It's coming with it baked in the assumptions of the redefinition of man. The assumptions of a godless view of the world.
So that we get now to the place where we see the family today eroded in our culture, and it becomes the result of people who are living in rebellion against God and their creator. And we have to recognize it as that. We have to see it as that. We have to see God's design. We have to see that we are not animals, that we are his image bearers, that we are made to give him glory, that our lives don't belong to us. They belong to him. He is our Lord, he's our Savior, he's our King, he's our God. We glorify him by bringing ourselves under his authority and word, or we live in rebellion against him and invite chaos and confusion into our world.
Christ's Restorative Work in the Family
Now in this Ephesians passage, it says that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church. And it gives us this beautiful picture of Jesus who sacrificed himself for his people to redeem us as his bride. And that he is working right now to purify us. He is washing us, it says, with his word. So that when he returns, he may present us, his church, to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that we would be holy and without blemish.
That's what God is doing in our lives now today. If you belong to Jesus, this is what he's doing in your life. He's washing you. He's cleansing you. He's making you clean. Cleansing you of what? Of all of the lies of the deceit, of the philosophies of this world that keep us bound. He's setting us free with the truth to produce in us the true image of God again, that was marred because of the fall, that is being renewed and restored because of the gospel, because of Jesus.
So Paul will say in Galatians 4, he says, "My little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you." This is what Christ is doing. He is forming himself in us. His nature, his character, his image again. Where we were marred by sin and Satan and death and evil, we are now being in Christ renewed. The image of God restored, Christ being formed in us, which is a conflict with the way our world thinks.
Romans 8:29 says that those whom God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. This is what God is doing in our lives. He's transforming us. He's renewing us. He's making us look more like Jesus. And the more we look like Jesus, the less and less we're going to look like the culture. The less and less we're going to look like the world. The less and less we're going to fit in. And in fact, the more and more we will be salt and we will be light, standing out.
You see, the gospel, what Jesus is doing is not just about saving our souls for heaven, which I'm glad that he did. But it's about Christ being formed in us. It's about being conformed to his image. It's a total redefinition of reality. Where I am no longer number one. He is number one. He is the Creator. I am his creature made in his image for his glory. Whereas before, I pursued my own passions, I pursued my own lust, I did what I thought would make me happy, but now in Christ, I pursue his will, his purpose. And yes, even when it comes to marriage, his word and what it teaches.
This means that now in Christ, every thought must be taken captive. Every philosophy must be evaluated and re-evaluated. Every emotion, every feeling, every desire that I have must be submitted to Jesus Christ. And this is not just a one-time thing where you walk the aisle and get baptized or say a prayer. This is an ongoing daily battle. This is a moment by moment, minute by minute, second by second, taking every thought captive, making it obey Christ.
The gospel is not only about going to heaven one day when we die, the gospel is about how we live on earth. And that by living the kingdom way on earth, we would see his kingdom come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This starts in our homes. It starts with us as individuals. It starts with us as married couples, a husband and a wife. It starts with us as parents. It starts with us as children being obedient to our parents. Living under the authority of God's word is how we seek first his kingdom. That his kingdom would come, and his will would be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
The collapse of the family in our culture, it is the result of a deeper rebellion against God's design for humanity itself. And if we are going to recover strong families in our day, we must begin by recovering this biblical definition of what it means to be human. God is my creator. I was made in his image for his glory.
And this starts and ends and continues at the very foot of the cross, which was God's plan to reconcile the world to himself. The cross shows us the lengths that God was willing to go to purchase us back from death and destruction, to bring us out of the chaos that our world lives in because of sin. And it's as we look to Jesus, as we look to the cross, as we look to his love and his great sacrifice, we see how much he loves us. And so as we begin to think about moving forward, putting some of these practices into place with regards to our sexuality, with regards husbands, and wives, and children, we need to never forget God gave us his word because of how much he loves us. Even if we can't see how this might work in our families, we trust him because he loves us. And he shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, he died for us.