The Christian Home

By Oscar M. Baker

There's nothing in all the world more beautiful than the Christian home. It's in such a home as that, that each member gets training for getting along with others in the world. If a family can get along under a Christian spirit, a person can go out and be meek and not quarrelsome and bossy in the world. They learn politeness, unselfishness, kindness, and all the other fruits of the spirit found in Galatians. Those are in a Christian home.

If we didn't have a Christian home, and a father to take charge of that home, and to teach the Word, and to give an example as to how to live, how would anyone have any concept of what God would be like as a Father? So you see, there has been a design. When God constituted holy matrimony, and the family, it was to help them to learn a relationship to Him and how to get along. Satan is doing his very best today to destroy the family so that children will not get any exalted idea of what a Father is. And Satan is doing a good job of it.

Children go to school and have no idea of what obedience is. They come from a home (we can't really call it a home) where members are constantly yelling at each other and quarreling. A child from a home like that goes to school and you can see the problem a teacher has. Then sometimes the teacher isn't any better because she came out of a home like that, too. This thing permeates society everywhere we go. So if we don't have a Christian home, we'll have no real concept of what God the Father is. If we can't realize that, how can one ever realize what it means to be a child of God? And, of course, what would home mean if it were a godless one, or would it be a home? We have some very practical things given us in the Word, right down to our home life, individual conditions and our actions.

As Christ is the Saviour of the church, or rather it's Preserver, as that Word really means, so ought the husband be to the wife, protecting and cherishing her in every way possible. A husband should try to keep her from suffering hardship and the like.

In the first book of the Bible, the wife is designed to be a "helpmeet" for the husband. A helpmeet is a helper, one that is suitable for the job, "meet" for it. In God's economy, there is no higher honor than this.

The true church recognizes Christ as Head. So the wife the husband. "Husbands love your wives even as Christ loved the church." If the husband loves the wife as Christ the church, what will be the home atmosphere? Will it make any difference? It's bound to! You can't keep a light shining too long before somebody begins to see it.

We come to the children. The first commandment to children is obedience to parents. Simply because it is right! You can take a child into your confidence and explain why, but a parent isn't required to, to just obey is right. When children are brought up in a home where the Bible is honored, they don't seem to go out and have quarrels with other children. Children reflect their home conditions.

From TFT tape Ephesians Practical Series 10-23-84