Last month, in our study of the Three Estates, we discussed the Estate of the Church. It’s the Estate in which the Lord Jesus gathers His little lambs unto Himself and distributes to them the gift of salvation which He won on the cross. Within the Estate of the Church, there are hearers of the Word and preachers of the Word, and they both belong together. The preacher is called to preach, and the hearer is called to hear. This month, let us take up the second of the Three Estates: the Home. 

The Estate of the Home is the foundational place where the Lord establishes order in His creation. From the family, God's ordering of creation extends into every other part of society. Luther writes in the Large Catechism on the Fourth Commandment, “God gives special honor to the estate of fatherhood and motherhood, and from that estate the authority exercised by masters and even civil rulers is derived.” Therefore, the home is the foundational estate from which the ordering of society proceeds.

We'll return to this theme next month when we consider the Third Estate. For now, it is enough to note that the foundation of the Estate of the Home is marriage. 

This institution of marriage reaches back to the very beginning. By His Word, the Lord created all things in six days. Again and again, the Scriptures tell us that God looked upon His creation and declared it "good." Finally, after completing His work, "God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). But even before the fall, before the temptation, before the disobedience, before sin, in God’s perfect creation, there is one thing that is not good. After all the animals were shown to Adam and he named them, he found that none of them was a helper fit for him. “Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

As Adam slept a deep sleep, the Lord took from his side a rib and made for Adam a wife that was fit and tailor-made for him. God brought her to the man and you can hear the elation in his voice as he receives his bride, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Genesis 2:23). Before there were nations or kingdoms, before there were rulers or kings, before there were even children, there was a husband and wife joined together by God. Marriage isn’t an institution devised by men; it’s a gift of God given to mankind. 

Within the Estate of the Home are several vocations, each with its own neighbors to love and serve. It all begins with marriage—with a husband and wife joined together by God. In marriage, the Lord places a man into the vocation of husband and a woman into the vocation of wife, with the other as their neighbor to love and serve.

There are several ways we could approach the relationship between husband and wife in the Bible, but let us start here with the Sixth Commandment. Every Commandment has a gift that the Lord seeks to protect. The Commandments are not arbitrary rules given to deprive us of joy. Rather, they are given as a wall or hedge around God's gifts. In the Sixth Commandment, the gift the Lord seeks to protect is marriage. 

In the explanation to the Sixth Commandment, Luther pithily writes, “We should fear and love God so that we lead a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do, and husband and wife love and honor each other.” Here, Luther not only points out what the Commandment forbids, but also what it requires. Husbands and wives are to "love and honor each other." In those five words, Luther summarizes the fundamental vocation of marriage.

First, husbands and wives are to live in marital fidelity. When the Lord creates the first marriage, after Adam’s elation, “This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” the next two verses are simple yet profound: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” In marriage, the Lord takes two individuals, a man and a woman, and unites them into one marriage, one couple, one household, one home. 

The Lord unites a man and a woman so closely in marriage; the Lord warns in Matthew 19:6, “So they [husband and wife] are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” God joins together a man and woman in marriage, such that for this marriage to separate and divorce would be akin to losing a limb.

Man does not make marriage; marriage is a creation and gift from God. In Ephesians 5, the Lord, through Paul, declares that “this mystery [the one flesh union of marriage] is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church.” Every marriage is a picture, an illustration of Christ, the eternal, loving Bridegroom, and His Bride, the Church. There is a reason in a wedding service that the bride is presented to the groom, for Eve was presented to Adam. There is a reason in a wedding the bride wears white, for Christ has sanctified His Bride, the Church, by the washing of water with the word (Ephesians 5:26). There is a reason in the wedding ceremony, the groom speaks his vows of love first. Before the bride vows to submit to her husband as the Church submits to Christ (Ephesians 5:24), she must first hear his vow to cover her with his banner of love (Song of Solomon 2:4), as Christ declares His love for the Church (John 10:11, John 15:13). 

In marriage, the Lord provides for procreation and gives husband and wife the vocation of caring for the children He gives. If the marriage equation is 1+1=1 (one man+one woman=one flesh), Lord willing, 1+1=one more. Children are a gift from God (Ps. 127:3-5). Children are not merely gifts given to parents, but in the Estate of the Home they are also neighbors whom God gives parents to love and serve. The vocation of father and mother begins when God places children into their care. Parents are called not only to provide food, clothing, and shelter, but most importantly to bring their children up in the fear and instruction of the Lord as their chief catechists. The Christian home is therefore the first school of the Christian faith. And children, as neighbors to their father and mother, have the duty to love and honor their parents, as the Fourth Commandment teaches. Likewise, through the Church, the Lord adopts His dear children through the new birth of Holy Baptism, bringing them into His household of faith.

The Estate of the Home is small and intimate, yet foundational. In this Estate, God gives us the neighbors who are closest to us to love and serve, namely, our family. In this Estate, the Lord beautifully orders the home according to His love for His Bride, the Church. As we will see next month, the Estate of the State will flow from the home. The Lord grant us fidelity and love in our marriages and love toward the children that God graciously gives.