Dear Ray,
What troubles me is how easily we give Christ everything except the relationships we regard as untouchable. We invite Him to improve our household while reserving the right to decide how much of it He may govern.
A devoted wife, a faithful husband, successful children, a secure home—these become the shape of the Christian life we are trying to preserve.
But Christianity is not family-centered. It is Christ-centered.
Christ is our life.
Our husband is not our life. Our wife is not our life. Our children are not our life. None can supply the divine life we have received in our spirit. None can occupy His place.
My burden is that Zoe should have the whole ground.
Witness Lee states the issue plainly:
The world in our daily living consists of people, activities, and things which usurp the place of God in us.
In the surrounding passage, he specifically includes parents, husband, wife, and family among relationships that must be examined in light of their place before God. Their existence is not the problem. Their occupation of His place is. — Lesson Book, Level 4: Life—Knowing and Experiencing Life, chapter 14.
That reaches much closer to us than an argument about obvious worldliness.
Something precious can possess us. Something we defend as good can become the very place where we resist God.
Marriage belongs to this passing age. Jesus tells us that in the resurrection people neither marry nor are given in marriage. Our identity as husband or wife cannot be our eternal center.
Christ remains.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:29 that those who have wives should live “as though they had none.” He places marriage alongside sorrow, rejoicing, possessions, and our dealings with the world. The present form of this world is passing away. His concern is our undivided devotion to the Lord.
Marriage is included in that surrender.
Paul does not command abandonment or neglect. He strips the relationship of its claim to be absolute. It cannot determine the final meaning of our existence or establish the limits of Christ’s authority.
How readily we restore that claim.
We may surrender an ambition or release a habit. But suggest that our family cannot remain the governing center of our existence, and something rises within us.
Surely God would never touch this.
Yet even here, Christ must be Lord.
Family can become an enemy of God’s purpose in our lives. It can become a persistent source of opposition while we regard its demands as sacred.
Witness Lee does not exclude marriage from this possibility:
Persecution may come to a brother from his wife.
He describes opposition arising when a husband begins giving the Lord preeminence, and extends the discussion to parents opposing children and children opposing parents because of their devotion to Him. — The Overcomers, chapter 3.
A wife can resist Christ’s place. A husband can resist it. Neither is exempt because the relationship is intimate.
The resistance may welcome religion while refusing surrender.
We may attend meetings, provided nothing changes.
We may speak of consecration, provided nothing cherished is relinquished.
We may love the saints, provided their place in our lives never inconveniences our own.
Then the household has begun to determine what Christ may ask.
But often the conflict begins within me before anyone makes a demand.
Watchman Nee describes this struggle concerning the woman he later married:
I also questioned at that time whether she or the Lord would have first place in my heart.
He is recalling a period before their marriage, when his affection for her confronted him with the question of his deepest allegiance. — Watchman Nee’s Testimony, chapter 1, “Dealt With by God”.
That question searches me.
I can make my wife responsible for my peace. I can make my children’s affection or agreement the measure of whether my life has been worthwhile. I can depend upon their reassurance so deeply that I avoid whatever might disappoint them.
No one needs to forbid my obedience. My fear has already forbidden it.
Then I call this love.
There may be tenderness in it. There may also be the self seeking security through another person. I want those I love to remain within the picture I have made of our life together. Their disagreement disturbs me more than my own independence from Christ.
Something has taken the center.
Consider a household protecting its reputation. Someone has been treated unjustly, but acknowledging it would embarrass the family. We are asked to remain silent or defend what happened because the person responsible is ours.
We call this loyalty.
But affection does not make wrongdoing holy. Family cannot claim exemption from truth.
The same resistance can wear Christian clothing. We insist that our children reproduce our convictions because their questions threaten our sense of success. We pressure them to display a faith that reassures us.
The household becomes an instrument of spiritual control while speaking the language of devotion.
The larger horizon I associate with Gene Edwards’s emphasis on Christ and His bride helps expose how narrow our concern can become. God’s purpose cannot be contained within the preservation of my private household.
His intention is greater than my marriage being satisfying, my children carrying my convictions, or my preferred way of life continuing undisturbed.
The ecclesia arises from a birth that natural kinship cannot produce.
The unmarried believer possesses this life. The widow possesses this life. The person rejected by family possesses this life. None has a lesser portion of Christ because the household we regard as ideal is absent.
The quiet brother who brings nothing useful to my family shares the same Zoe. The sister whose history bears no resemblance to mine belongs with me in Christ. Their place cannot depend upon whether my household finds them convenient.
Family can become the respectable boundary beyond which our love is unwilling to go.
Yet I must bring this word first to myself. My wife’s disagreement does not prove that she is resisting God. My spiritual language does not prove that my plans came from Him. My ambition can oppose Christ as readily as another person’s expectations.
Neither does a minister’s demand automatically express the Lord’s will. Neglecting my household to preserve a religious enterprise may simply exchange one earthly master for another.
Both my attachments and my ambitions must yield.
Paul’s instruction in Ephesians 5 brings marriage under Christ’s self-giving love. It gives neither spouse ownership of the other’s conscience. Our responsibilities remain real, but they cannot become a reason to withhold ourselves from Him.
I can care for someone without enthroning them.
I can love my wife without making marriage the purpose of my existence. She can love me without making my approval the foundation of her life.
This is the freedom I long for: to love my family from Christ’s life rather than depend upon my family to supply my life.
The temporary must yield its claim to govern the eternal.
When family stands against Christ’s place, its claim must yield. When my own attachment becomes the resistance, that attachment must pass through the cross.
So I must ask myself, Ray: Have I given my family to God, or have I asked God to preserve my family as the center of my world?
Does my surrender end where my dearest attachments begin?
Or will Zoe have even this ground?
