God's Word does not contemplate that the newly married young couple should establish themselves in the home of their parents. The husband is to leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife. In Rebekah we see how the wife left her father and mother to be joined to her husband. It is only as they set up a new home (be it ever so humble) that godly order can be instituted. The young husband could not be the head in his father's home, nor in his wife's father's home; nor could the young bride carry out her new responsibilities in another's home.
We have spoken in the previous chapter of the need of weighing our responsibilities in each new position we assume. This is also important for the fathers and mothers of the bridegroom and the bride. This may be an entirely new experience for them, and one that requires serious thought before God regarding how it should be fulfilled. It requires grace to be a good father-in-law, or a good mother-in-law.
The most important thing for the parents and the parents-in-law to discover from the Scriptures is that the young couple have now begun an entirely new home, and must be free to exercise their own faith before God in the ordering of their own household. They may seek advice from the older and perhaps wiser heads of their parents, but they must learn that they have to act on their own responsibility. It is never an encouraging sign to see young people assume an independent or self-confident air, but many marriages have been spoiled through well-meant but unscriptural and unwise interference in the affairs of the newly married offspring by over-solicitous parents. Young people should not get married until they are able to embark on a united pathway of their own. And unless both the bride and the bridegroom are willing to cut loose from their parental home and begin life in entirely new circumstances with each other they should not take the step. Those contemplating marriage should understand these things and be able to say with decision, as did Rebekah, "I will go.”
One of the saddest statements to come from a bride's lips when the first difficulty or disagreement makes its appearance is, "I will go back to mother." She should have so thoroughly weighed matters before the Lord, and have been so sure of having His approval before taking the step, that the very thought of a return should never enter her mind. The same can be said for the young husband. May they remember, "They are no more twain, but one flesh." They are so indissolubly linked together in life that only the open breach of marriage or the removal of one of them from the world can make a change.