Children in The Home
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Children in The Home
Children in The Home
1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. 2 Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) 3 That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.
Parenting: to direct our children on God's behalf; a mission to rescue a soul from Satan and raise him to love and serve the Lord. — Ken Collier
Parenting: to direct our children on God's behalf; a mission to rescue a soul from Satan and raise him to love and serve the Lord. — Ken Collier
mission to rescue a soul from Satan and raise him to love
(1) The Principle (6:1)
and serve the Lord. — Ken Collier
The Child’s Simple Task (6:1–3)
a. The Child’s Simple Task (6:1–3)
(1) The Principle (6:1)
“Children obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.”
This verse summarizes the whole duty of a child, manward and godward.
His sole duty is to learn to obey authority, and his parents are to be his only voice of authority.
Later on, parental authority will compete with the school’s authority, the government’s authority, and possibly an employer’s authority.
We are born rebels.
Each of us raises the voice of selfishness and rebellion at an early age. We need to learn to obey.
Children who learn to defy parental authority will go on to defy other authority and will often grow up to defy divine authority.
There exists of course the sad possibility that parental authority might be arbitrary. Yet God’s rule still applies.
A child owes obedience to his parents. The larger issues must be left with God, the ultimate source of all authority. He can sovereignly overrule in the end the misuse of parental authority.
One could think of instances where a godless parent might demand that a child do things that are morally wrong and contrary to the laws of God and man. Paul was not requiring that children obey orders contrary to the laws of God. He had the Christian home primarily in mind.
Many children are born into homes where God is hated and atheism holds sway. Others are raised to bow to idols and false gods.
Others grow up in cruel environments. Of all the millions of children born every year, relatively few are born into Christian homes. We have no idea how the selection is made, but it has incredible advantages.
Children raised in homes where God is known, where Christ is loved, where the Bible is read and believed, and where the Holy Spirit is honored have great opportunities.
From their earliest days, these privileged infants are taught to say the saving name of Jesus, are taught to say childish prayers, are taken to Sunday school, are told Bible stories, are encouraged to memorize the living Word of God, and—above all—are taught the way of salvation through Jesus Christ. While others born the same day are being raised, in China for example, to chant the Communist International, to scoff at the idea of God, to revere Marx and Lenin, and to believe in dialectical materialism, children in Christian homes are being taught . While others are being taught to worship Krishna, bow before idols, believe in reincarnation as the secret of life and nothingness as its ultimate and most blissful goal, children in Christian homes are being taught to sing,
For the Bible tells me so.
(Anna B. Warner)
Children raised in Christian homes also have an awesome responsibility. A child who rebels against parental authority in a Christian home earns God’s displeasure. For him to obey is right. Anything else is terribly and criminally wrong. The whole duty of a child in a Christian home is to obey Mom and Dad. That is God’s supreme command to that child.
One could think of instances where a godless parent might demand that a child do things that are morally wrong and contrary to the laws of God and man. Paul was not requiring that children obey orders contrary to the laws of God. He had the Christian home primarily in mind.
We get just one glimpse of Jesus between His birth and His baptism.
We see Him when He was twelve years old, already in complete control of the knowledge that He was the Son of God.
Yet we read that He went down to Nazareth with Joseph and Mary “and was subject unto them” ().
51 And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart.
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What a lesson in obedience! To think of Him—the Lord of life and glory, the Creator of the universe, the One who was the express image of God, the One whom angels worshiped—being in willing subjection to a village carpenter and his wife!
II The Precept (6:2)
2 Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;)
“Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise.”
The ten commandments found in —is the essence of the law. It is the heart and core of divine legislation; the other six hundred commandments are expansions and expositions of it.
The Decalogue divides man’s duty into two categories: his duty to God and his duty to man.
The commandment concerning children, quoted by Paul in , is the fifth commandment. Because it deals with human relationships, it is often included with the last five commandments,
In chapter 5 we learned that one of the results of being filled with the Spirit is being submissive to one another.
We saw that a Spirit-filled wife, for instance, is submissive to her husband.
Now we learn that Spirit-filled children willingly submit to the authority of their parents. The fundamental duty of all children is to obey their parents in the Lord.
Whether the children are Christians or whether the parents are Christians does not make any difference.
The parent-child relationship was ordained for all mankind, not just for believers. The command to obey … in the Lord means, first, that children should obey with the attitude that in doing so they are obeying the Lord: their obedience should be as if to Him.
Second, it means they should obey in all matters which are in accordance with the will of God. If their parents ordered them to sin, they should not be expected to comply. In such a case they should courteously refuse and suffer the consequences meekly and without retaliation. However, in all other cases they must be obedient.[1]
The distinction is important, for the fifth commandment puts the parents in the place of God over their young children. And for the rest of their lives, the children are to render honor to their mothers and fathers as the human authors of their being—as those who loved them, protected them, taught them, and sacrificed for them.
[1] MacDonald, W. (1995). Believer’s Bible Commentary: Old and New Testaments. (A. Farstad, Ed.) (pp. 1949–1950). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
Failure to honor one’s parents is an insult to the God who chose them. Rebellion against
God, however, does not want children to honor their parents because of a threat, so he appended a promise to the fifth commandment. Paul reminded his readers of that promise when he added this to : “Which is the first commandment with promise.” That promise is the subject of the next verse.
(3) The Promise (6:3)
“That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.”
A child who grows up to love, honor, and obey his mother and father lays the foundation for a happier, more stable, and more successful life than does a child who is rude, disrespectful, self-willed, and rebellious. A stormy path lies ahead for a disobedient child. He will drift into bad company, resent all rule and authority, and in many cases end up on the wrong side of the law. Contemporary society has produced a bumper crop of young people who are determined to “do their own thing.” Many of them are enmeshed in the drug and sex scene, and are filled with restlessness and rage.
b. The Father’s Sublime Trust (6:4)
(1) A Word about Methods (6:4a)
“Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.”
The Bible is a balanced book. God does not command children to obey their parents without giving an injunction to parents. Fathers (or parents, as the Greek word pateres can be translated) are not to provoke their children to wrath by being unreasonable in their demands, outrageous in their punishments, or inconsistent in their examples, rules, and controls.
My father often referred to children as “the little people.” It was a quaint expression, yet a profoundly wise one. Children are people. They are not mindless objects to be bossed and bullied; they are people who have thoughts, feelings, hopes, fears, likes, and dislikes. As children grow older, winds of change blow over their developing bodies, minds, and personalities; life becomes more complex and decisions more significant. But children are people and must be respected as people. Because they are little people, they need constant supervision, counsel, and limits. They are growing up in a confusing world, and they encounter people whose values are quite different from those of their parents.
Parents need to study their children. The growing-up process takes every child through various phases of development. A parent ought to know about these phases and recognize when a child enters each stage.
No two children are alike. Some are strong-willed; others are passive. Some are clever; others are slow. Some are adventurous; others are timid. Some are bold; others are shy. Wise parents will study their children and make allowances. Many books on parenting are available today, but not all of them are equally good because much modern psychology leaves God out entirely. The best textbook of all remains the Bible, especially the book of Proverbs. Wise parents know the Bible, study its case histories of parents, and ponder its stories of boys and girls.
Every child needs to have a solid moral foundation on which all other Biblical instruction can be built. Parents should lay this foundation early. They should encourage their children to memorize the ten commandments, segments of the sermon on the mount, and many other Scripture passages. says, “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.” Parents should also teach their children to know, love, and sing good hymns and choruses with a message. In later years those ingrained truths will come back. The Holy Spirit will be able to draw on this material when confronting the boy, girl, man, or woman with the issues of time and eternity.
(2) A Word about Motives (6:4b)
“Bring them up in the nurture [discipline] and admonition [instruction] of the Lord.”
Spiritual education of children was a strong emphasis of Old Testament law. Israel was to keep the feast of the Passover, for instance, so children would ask, “What is meant by this feast?” Parents were required to put Bible verses on the doorposts of their homes. Children leaving the shelter of home would be confronted by those verses and would carry the haunting memory of some Word from God into their outside activities. Returning home, the children would again be faced with the verses on the doorposts. The verses would cause the children to think afresh, in the light of God’s Word, of where they had been and what they had been doing and saying.
Christian parents have no greater responsibility in life than to make sure that their children are raised in the fear of God, in the knowledge of God, in the knowledge of the gospel, in reverence for God’s Word, and in the presence of the Lord Jesus.
Television, that great thief of time and worldly molder of character, needs to be banished or put under severe restraint. In its place, parents must substitute good books, wholesome music, and Christian education—all bathed in godly example and fervent prayer for each child’s early conversion and lifelong consecration to the will of God.
Parents neglect these responsibilities to their peril. They will pay a high price indeed if they ignore and fail to heed this admonition from the Lord.[1]
[1] Phillips, J. (2009). Exploring Ephesians & Philippians: An Expository Commentary (). Kregel Publications; WORDsearch Corp.