The Christian family is a type peculiar to itself, not as a new institution, for it has developed out of earlier race experience, but as controlled by a new interpretation, the spirit and conception of the home and family given in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.  He did not give formal rules for the regulation of homes; rather he made a spiritual ideal of family life the basic thought of all his teaching.  He said more about the family than concerning any other human institution, yet he established no family life of his own.  He is called the founder of the church, yet he scarcely mentions that institution, while he frequently teaches concerning home duties and family relations.  He glorifies the relations of the family by making them the figure by which men may understand the highest relations of life.  He speaks more of fatherhood and sonship than of any other relations.  He gives direction for living, using the family terms of brotherhood.  He points forward to ideal living in a home beyond this life.  He teaches men when they think of God and when they address him to take the family attitude and call him Father.

If we sum up all the teachings of Jesus and separate them from our preconceptions of their theological content, we cannot but be impressed with the facts that he seized upon the family life as the best expression of the highest relationships; that he pointed to a purified family life, in which spiritual aims would dominate, as the best expression of ideal relationships among his followers; and that he glorified marriage and really made the family the great, divine, sacramental institution of human society.

We can hardly overestimate the importance of such teaching to the character of the family.  The early Christians not only accepted Jesus as their teacher and savior; they took their family life as the opportunity to show what the Kingdom of God, the ideal society, was like.  Family life was consecrated.  Men and women belonged to the new order with their whole households.  Religion became largely a family matter.  The worship that had been confined to the temple now made an altar in every home and a holy of holies in the midst of every family.  The scriptures that belonged to the synagogue now belonged in the home.  Above all, this family existed for the purposes taught by Jesus, that men might grow in brotherhood toward the likeness of the divine Fatherhood.  It was an institution, not for economic purpose of food and shelter, not for personal ends of passion or pride, but for spiritual purpose, for the growth of persons, especially the young in the home, in character, into “the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”