Following is another in a series of columns on The Baptist Faith & Message 2000.

Marriage, family, and gender are gifts from God. They are established for the good of all people, who are created in the image of God.

Article XVIII of The Baptist Faith & Message 2000 reads:

“God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society. It is composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood, or adoption.

“Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race.

“The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.

“Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate to their children God’s pattern for marriage. Parents are to teach their children spiritual and moral values and to lead them, through consistent lifestyle example and loving discipline, to make choices based on biblical truth. Children are to honor and obey their parents.”

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Southern Baptists added Article XVIII to The Baptist Faith & Message in 1998, thus making it part of the 1963 confession and carrying it forward into the 2000 edition. Witnessing the erosion of our culture’s view of marriage and family, Southern Baptists boldly reaffirmed God’s unchanging standards as revealed in Scripture and embraced by Christians throughout the centuries.

Today, the prevailing secular view is that marriage is an archaic, man-made institution in need of revision, while family is an evolutionary unit that may be restructured to meet changing societal needs.

The Bible says otherwise. Marriage and family are gifts from God. They are established and fixed for the good of all people, who are created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27).

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