We often don’t take family and children advice from bachelors, but C.S. Lewis is an approved exception! In his article “The Sermon and the Lunch,” he gives several points of advice for familial living that still ring true today and will help us with our own families to honor Christ and his kingdom.

First, he reminds us that since the Fall, no organization or way of life whatever has a natural tendency to go right. The family can be offered to God, converted, redeemed, and offer a channel of blessings and graces. But like everything else that is human, the family needs redemption. Meaning, that the members must fight to put off temptations, corruptions, and miseries. He notes wisely, “Charity begins at home: so does uncharity.”

Second, while not against natural “affection,” it is not a cause of lasting happiness. “Love” in that sense can become greedy, solicitous, jealous, and exacting. There must be a deeper “love” to hold the family together, a “my life for yours” love, love based on the way of Christ: “we love, because he first loved us.”

Third, Lewis is very much against the supposed pro-family slogan “at home we can be our natural selves.” The lunch at the Vicar’s house destroyed that idea, for everyone in the Vicar’s family was rude to each other, and if those actions were practiced outside the family, they would simply be knocked down! Nowhere on this side of heaven can we simply “be ourselves.”

Finally, he asks, “must we not teach that if the home is to be a means of grace it must be a place of rules? There cannot be a common life without a regula.” The alternative to rule is not freedom but the unconstitutional (and often unconscious) tyranny of the most selfish member.

“…even denying the Master who bought them…” — from 2 Peter 2:1

This phrase, while a monumental theological brain teaser, is a great passage to encourage you to persevere in faithfulness and love for Jesus and his church.

How so? Well, it can’t be true that the decretally elect would deny Jesus who ransomed them on the cross. What good is the decree, then? It isn’t everlasting, because these people, by denying the Master who bought/ransomed them, bring destruction upon themselves three ways in the context: destructive heresies, which bring destruction upon these persons, a destruction which is not far away in time, v. 3. Most don’t believe the decretally elect are subjects of destruction.

So Peter must be talking about covenantal destruction, not decretal. About destruction of people who are in covenant with God but then who reject those covenantal blessings by being a false prophet and teacher among the church, teaching heresies that destroy people and cause them to fall away, heresies that even destroy themselves in the end, v. 1e. These are people in the church who have suffered shipwreck of their faith (1 Timothy 1:19), and have fallen away or are in the process as they prey on the sheep of the church. These are the Christians who haven’t been “diligent to confirm their calling and election…” (2 Peter 1:10). Like King Saul, like Judas (v. 20-22), like the guy in 1 Corinthians 5.

Peter is warning his audience, and you, to watch out for these false teachers, and to live by what is revealed (Deuteronomy 29:29), not by their false teachings. To live by what Peter the Apostle is teaching in chapter 1, versus their misleading beliefs.

In short, he doesn’t want you to deny Jesus your Lord who bought you with his ransoming death. He wants you to proclaim him, and live by His Word!

Peter’s statement in 2 Peter 1:14 that “the putting off of my body will be soon…” bears some wholesome and encouraging reflection by us as Christians. The context makes clear he is talking about his death, but his seemingly nonchalant attitude of “putting off his body” deserves some further thinking, and embodiment, by us. It appears that Peter is not at all frustrated, anxious, flummoxed, or worried about “putting off his body,” but almost speaks about it as one gets his old and worn out tires replaced for new ones. And that surely is his point, spoken as mildly as it is. Death is surely his entrance into glory, and putting off this sinned-inflated body is a right necessity: this body has to be put off, if we are to put on a new, sinless, immortal body, as Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 15.

Peter is a great double witness to Paul: your death is not something to be feared in Christ. In fact, it’s a necessary beginning to the rest of your life! It’s the putting off of this present body in order to receive another glorified and eternal body at the final resurrection. It’s our path as Christians to follow Jesus: “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore…” (Rev. 11:17–18). As Paul exclaimed in Philippians 1, “to die is gain…My desire is to depart and be with Christ.”

So let Peter’s “matter of fact” approach to the putting off of his body guide you, as it does him, to the right use of this present life (1:12–15). Jesus’ divine power has granted to you all things that pertain to life and godliness (1:3), and part of that “all things” is living faithfully for Jesus until your name gets called for a glorious body “putting off”!