Love Within the Family

Christians love their family members -wives love husbands, husbands love wives, parents love children.  (Ecclesiastes 9:9;Ephesians 5:33; Titus 2:4) True, bonds of natural love exist in most families.  However, reports of broken marriages, spousal abuse, and neglected or abused children show that the family is under stress today, and natural family feelings may not be enough to hold it together.  (2 Timothy 3:1-3)  To make a real success of their family life, Christians need to exercise the kind of love that Jehovah and Jesus have. -Ephesians 5:21-27.

Christian parents view their children as a trust from Jehovah, and they look to him for help in raising them.  (Psalm 127:3-5; Proverbs 22:6) In this way they cultivate Christian love, which helps them to guard their children from the corrupting influences that young people may fall prey to.  As a result, many Christian parents have experienced a joy similar to that of a mother in the Netherlands.  After watching the baptism for her son-one of 575 individuals baptized in the Netherlands last year - she wrote  the following:  "At this moment, my investment of the past 20 years has paid off.  All the time and energy -as well as the hurt, effort and sorrow - are now forgotten."  How happy she is that her son, of his own free will, chose to serve Jehovah.  The peak of 31,089 publishers reporting in the Netherlands last year includes many who learned from their parents to love Jehovah.

Paul called love "a perfect bond of union," and it can preserve a marriage union even through stormy times.  (Colossians 3:14, 18, 19; 1 Peter 3:1-7) When a man in Rurutu, a small island some 450 miles from Tahiti, started studying the Bible with Jehovah's Witnesses, his wife was strongly opposed. Eventually, she took the children, left him, and went to live in Tahiti. Still, he showed his love by sending her money regularly and calling by phone to ask if there was anything she or the children needed.  Thus,  he did his best to fulfill his Christian obligations.  (1 Timothy 5:8)  He prayed constantly that his family would be reunite, and eventually his wife returned.  When she did, he treated her with "love, endurance, mildness of temper."  (1 Timothy 6:11)  In 1998, he was baptized and was later overjoyed when his wife agreed to study the Bible.  That study was one of the 1,351 conducted in the territory under the Tahiti branch last year.

In Germany a man opposed his wife's interest in Bible truth and was convinced that Jehovah's Witnesses wanted to deceive her.  Later, however, he wrote to the Witness who first contacted his wife:  "Thank you for introducing my wife to Jehovah's Witnesses.  At first, I was worried because I had heard so many bad things about them.  But now, having attended the meetings with my wife, I realize how wrong I was.  I know that I  am hearing the truth, and it has made our marriage much stronger.:  the 162,932 Witnesses of Jehovah in Germany - and the 1,773 in the islands under the Tahiti branch - include many families united in godly love.

Next time: Love for Our Christian Brothers

The Watchtower, 2001