DOMINION MANDATE: FAMILY AUTHORITY

 

As Creator of all things, God is the rightful owner of all that He has created. God revealed

that truth to Abraham when the latter saved Lot from the kings who had conquered Sodom where

Lot then lived: “And Melchizedek…. priest of the most high God…. said, Blessed be Abram of

the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth.” So Abraham gave God a tenth of the spoils

that he obtained in recognition that all that he had was a gift form God.

 

As Creator, God is the sole rightful owner of all that He has created. In the book of Revelation,

John wrote of God: “[F]or thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”

Thus, Paul wrote about Christ, the Word by which all things were made by God:

“[A]ll things were created by him, and for him…..”

 

As sole proprietor of the heavens and the earth and all things therein, God has sole and

unlimited authority to determine how and by whom those created things will be used,

possessed, disposed of, and otherwise dealt with. In the beginning, God granted authority to

man over His created order with these words:

 

Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the

fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the

earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

 

This grant of authority was a limited one. First, God gave dominion authority to man and to

no other of his creatures. Second, God gave man dominion authority over all of the earth’s

creatures, including the birds of the air, but not over his fellow men. Third, God gave man

dominion authority over the earth, but not over the heavens, including the earth’s atmosphere.

 

Finally, God gave dominion authority to man in his capacity as husband or wife; In other

words, God gave dominion authority to the family unit, not to the church, or to the state,

or to any other institution. All of these limitations have significance for the law of

property, but the last one is the very foundation for the law of private property.

 

After God created man, both male and female, He blessed them and said: “Be fruitful, and

multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion…..” By these words,

God made unmistakably clear that dominion authority was to be exercised by the family. Only

a husband and wife were able and authorized to have children. By coupling His command to have

children with his grant of dominion authority, God specified the institution through which

dominion was to be exercised.

 

Thereafter, the Bible records from Adam and Eve onward that the family was to carry out, and

in most instances, did carry out the dominion mandate. It was, after all, Adam and Eve as

husband and wife who were to till the garden of Eden. Even after they were expelled from the

garden, their sons, Abel and Cain, exercised dominion, the former was a sheepherder and the

latter was a farmer. After the flood, Noah became a “husband man, and he planted a vineyard.”

 

Source: Biblical Principles Of Law | Dominion & Property

https://lonang.com/commentaries/curriculum/biblical-principles-of-law/dominion-and-property/