“And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” As God created humanity, he assigned a huge two-part mission: one, be fruitful and multiply; and two, subdue the earth and exercise dominion over it. Both of these commands rely upon family.

In the last article on family I wanted to show that God created family and therefore it his to define. Now, I need to address the “why” question: Why did God create the family? I will answer this in two ways through two articles. The first provides this answer: God created family to carry out his will.

Before we get there, I want to acknowledge that family is a difficult issue for many people. Almost all of us have certain scars related to family matters. Some had very difficult family situations as children. Some who want to be married and start a family haven’t been able to find a spouse. Some couples who long for children cannot have them. I know those are very difficult issues that can make it very difficult to discuss family. For our purposes, we need to see that God’s general intention for humanity is marrying and having children, even while we acknowledge that God’s specific plan for individuals may be to not marry or to not have children. And in these situations we just need to trust that God knows what is best—that his specific plans are good, even if they may not always seem good.

Genesis 1:28 shows us God’s general intention for humanity as it pertains to family: “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” As God created humanity, he assigned a huge two-part mission: one, be fruitful and multiply; and two, subdue the earth and exercise dominion over it. Both of these commands rely upon family.

Procreation

The first part of our mission is to procreate—to be fruitful and multiply. Human beings are the crown of God’s creation so it’s not surprising that God wanted there to be more human beings. And while he could have continued to form people in the way he formed Eve from Adam—pulling out ribs and building people around them—he chose to do it differently. He chose to use the sexual relationship as the means of procreation and to embed the sexual relationship within the context of marriage and family. New flesh would be formed out of the one-flesh union.

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