Luke 2:50-51 And they understood not the saying which he spoke to them.… 1. The family gives a practical solution to the great problems of moral truth. It is the typical form of the vast organizations that belong to human life. It teaches subordination in love, and subordination is only another word for fitting together. 2. Order and government are likewise taught in the family, and it is the government or order which springs from paternal love that carries with it a sense of its fitness and its necessity. Love is the supreme governor. 3. It is in the family that we for the first time learn with some degree of clear intelligence what is the meaning of vicarious suffering. 4. The family also teaches, as we can scarcely find it taught otherwise, the true doctrine of sin and penalty. It is of the first importance that we should frame our theology respecting sin and penalty, not on the theory of universal civil governments, which is an artificial thing, derived from the ideas of different nations, and which has never been wisely administered. The administration of pain and penalty in governments and courts is exceedingly rude and imperfect; but the administration of pain and penalty in the family is beautiful from the beginning to the end. The mother's frown, the mother's refused kiss, the mother's hand, carries pain, or the execution of penalty; but it is never odious, and it is never cruel. 5. We learn in the family likewise the doctrine of the liberty of law. Nowhere else is there more law than in the household law unwritten, but well understood; and yet there is no law there that violates love. 6. We learn also, from the household, the true nature of forgiveness — what it is, and the conditions of it. Harmony with the spirit of love is forgiveness. (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them.WEB: They didn't understand the saying which he spoke to them. |
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