Honour, Duty and Love Within the Family

This morning, we continue our look at the letter to the Ephesians. If you are new here this morning, we've been looking at the second half of the book of Ephesians. We are now in chapter six, and that means we have, I think, two more weeks to go. And then we are heading into the Easter time, and we're obviously preparing ourselves for Easter, and then after that. Last week, we looked and saw that Paul begins what's called the household code.

He begins addressing various groups, subgroups within the household. He starts with wives and husbands. Next week, he looks at slaves and masters. And this week, we will see Paul addressing children and parents. Let's read together from Ephesians 6:1-4.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honour your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise, that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. This is the word of the Lord.

There are, again, like last week, two groups that are being addressed here. In this instance, firstly, children with the command to obey their parents. And then secondly, in verse four, you'll see fathers specifically, but mothers secondarily are instructed to not provoke their children to anger, but to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Let's have a look firstly at that initial command for children to obey their parents. This first instruction from Paul is seen in verse one, that children, the Greek word tekna, which means child, is to obey their parents in the Lord.

In verse two, Paul quotes the fifth commandment of the Ten Commandments and uses a different word there, not the same word obey. This time to honour father and mother. What we see interestingly here is that two words are used: obey and honour. Two verbs, and it gives us the indication that those ideas, those actions are linked but not synonymous. They don't mean the same thing. You'll notice firstly that obedience is tied to children.

Now, while that the Greek word for child, tekna, is not necessarily referring to young children, so you can be a child of a parent, you can be an adult child. The fact that Paul uses the verb obey probably indicates that he was writing to the younger children in the Ephesian context. Paul goes, however, from a specific group, that specific instruction: children, young children living under the authority, the roof of their parents, obey your parents. He moves on to the more general command, or he references the more general command in the fifth commandment to honour father and mother, which does apply to children of all ages. So he moves from the specific to the general.

Whether you live with your parents or not, whether you are young or not, we are to have honour for our parents. So all children of any age are to honour their parents all the time, but when children are young, Paul says their honour most often takes the form of obedience. When you are a young child, you show honour to your father and mother by obeying them. The biblical definition of this verb obey is to submit yourself to the will of a person who rightfully holds authority over you. Seems pretty reasonable, that definition.

To submit yourself to the will of a person who rightfully holds authority over you. For young hearts and minds, obedience is often a child's best expression of keeping the fifth commandment. You can imagine honouring your father and mother sounds like an obscure abstract idea for a five-year-old, but listening to mummy or daddy, that makes a lot more sense. Doing what they tell you makes a lot more sense. And here, Paul says by obeying, young children are fulfilling that fifth command of honouring.

So obedience on the one hand can be understood to be one of action. Honour is one of attitude. The Bible is telling our young people this morning that we are to listen to our parents. We are to do as they ask us to do. It means we clean our rooms.

Reese, Mia? Nah, he's not listening. Selective hearing. We do our chores. We treat our siblings in the way that our parents tell us to treat them.

If they tell us to stop fighting, we stop fighting. If we're being too noisy, we go outside. In other words, when mum or dad speak authoritatively, when they say something that you know they are really serious about in telling you that, then you must do what they tell you. The Bible is telling us this morning, God is telling us this morning that this is not an option. Children, obey your parents.

Now, this also is helpful to remember: that there will be situations when our parents will not necessarily want to speak authoritatively to us. Instead of giving direct commands, they may give advice or suggestions as you grow up and mature. And then there is some scope of freedom. The older you get, the more leniency you may get in this area. For example, Alida, who is eight months old, doesn't get any advice or suggestions.

She won't listen to advice or suggestions. It is simply: no, you won't play with the blinds. No, you won't go and play with the bin. It's yucky. There are direct commands at that young age, but the older you get, you're in high school and there is that, how do I deal with this tricky situation at school?

It may not be a direct command, it may be just godly wisdom. On some occasions, therefore, obedience to advice is an option, but in many cases, when we know mum or dad mean it, obedience is not an option. We obey. So the primary command here is for younger children to obey their parents. And yet, by quoting the fifth commandment to honour our parents, surely there is a secondary application for the rest of us as well.

This is something that all of us can be reminded of this morning. To honour your parents is to attach great value to them and to the relationship that we have with them. To honour our parents is to regard them with seriousness and weight. That's the attitude. To regard them with seriousness and with weight.

What does that look like in practice? Well, it means that you show respect to them in your actions and your speech. You speak well of them privately and publicly. You work seriously towards forgiving them if they have hurt you. You seek their wisdom.

You treat them with kindness, with gentleness, with dignity, with esteem. And then in their older age, you honour your parents by ensuring that they are cared for. You make provision for them when it is necessary. It's been a wonderful thing for me to witness the honouring that John and Teja in our church have received from their adult children, Steve and Leanne and Angela and their in-laws. We know that after the accident, they were well and truly incapacitated and for months, these adult kids have cared for their parents practically and they have shown a testimony of respect and love that one should have for even your elderly parents.

I understand also this morning that honouring and even obeying parents can be very challenging and yet the command still stands. We aren't given any escape clauses here. None of us are off the hook. We are to show honour. If you are a young child, you are to obey.

But if you are anything like me, in my teenage years, the command to obey and honour will probably be followed in your hearts by that teenage whine: but why? Why are we to obey our parents and show honour to them? And Paul gives us three motivations for that. Very important. Three motivations for honour and for obedience.

The main audience, like I said, for Paul's command is younger children. And then in verse two's inclusion, adds the secondary generalised audience. In our passage, succinctly, and it's only four verses, we are given three reasons for giving obedience and honour to our parents. These have been summarised helpfully by a man called Tim Challies who is a reformed Baptist pastor and an author as well. And I'm sure this is not his summary because I've seen versions of this elsewhere as well.

But he gives us these three that are very helpfully summed up. Three motivations for obedience listed in this short passage. Firstly, why should children obey their parents? Because nature demands it. Paul simply says in verse one, children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

That word in Greek, dikeios, refers to what is correct, just and righteous. It's a part of what people like Brian and Rick who have studied law would refer to as natural law. To obey our parents as authorities over us is inherently right. In other words, this is the way that God has created humanity. And it means this as well, that whether they are Christian or not, those parents are humans and all humans in all of time have this knowledge and this same expectation. And all humans of all time have the same instinctive knowledge that it is good for our family and it is good for our society that we respect, obey and honour our parents. The fact that Paul says that we are to obey our parents simply because this is right helps protect us from the false idea that we could only obey our parents if they were Christian.

You might have read, obey your parents in the Lord, and think that's only referring to Christian parents who are in the Lord in their faith. And because my parents aren't believers, this doesn't apply to me. But the idea that nature itself demands it, the universality of it means we obey regardless of their Christian faith or not. We obey simply because it is right. But then secondly, Paul moves again and he gives us this second motivation: because God's law demands it, which is verse two and the reference to the fifth commandment.

You probably know that the role of the Ten Commandments remains critical for the Christian life because now they teach us how to live according to God's intended plan for us. In God's law, we understand how the God who created us intends for us to live the most satisfying life. The commandments provide direction for people who are disorderly. The Ten Commandments show us how to live an ordered life. The fifth commandment, in particular, speaks to our depraved understanding of our autonomy.

It rebukes our innate desire to rebel against authority and says in Deuteronomy 5:16, Honour your father and your mother as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. The Christian church in its history, in its tradition, has divided the Ten Commandments into two groups or two tables. The first group outlines our duties to God, while the second explains our duties towards others. This commandment, the fifth commandment, which is obviously in the middle of the Ten Commandments, falls beautifully between those two tables and it reminds us of the important role that a parent plays in our lives. Our parents are God's divine representatives to us, so that when we obey our parents, we obey God.

That's where the first instinct of the Romans 13 ethic comes from. We are taught to obey our parents and therefore we should be obedient to authority in general over us. Disobeying or disregarding this commandment in the Old Testament undermines all Ten and it leads to dangerous disobedience in general in society. Now, as people who have been born again, people who have hearts of flesh towards God, not hearts of stone, we obey our parents because at the heart of God's will for us stands His law, and that law has now become our joy to pursue. So the second reason, the second motivation there for us to obey our parents is because God's law demands it.

Then thirdly, we see this: we obey our parents because the gospel enables it. Paul tells children to obey their parents in the Lord. We saw almost universally, when Paul uses that term, he is referring specifically to the Lord Jesus Christ. The phrase in the Lord is also probably not referring to their parents being in the Lord, but is connected with the children themselves being in the Lord.

The children are in the Lord. In other words, these children are seen as being a part of the Christian community fully and they are able to exercise their own Christian obedience towards Jesus Christ. It is not merely then a social convention that Paul is calling them to. They are to obey because they love Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. Their relationship with their parents allows these children with an opportunity to carry out their obedience to the Lord.

So Jesus is their Lord and Paul is assuming He is their Lord because at one time He has become their Saviour. And now, because they are in the Lord, their motivation is the same motivation by which all Christians do anything: the renewing power of God's grace. It is the gospel that assures us that we are capable of joyfully honouring and obeying our parents because the reality of Christ's work on our behalf has finally given us the motivation to obey God. Our hearts have been melted. Our deepest passions and our longings have moved away from selfishness and rebellion towards serving and loving God.

And it's because our conscience is now liberated and free to follow God that a Christian is the only person enabled to consistently, honestly and joyfully honour and obey their parents. Why? Because they can do it in the renewing power of having found their Lord. So we see these three reasons: the fact that there is a natural and divine law that demands it, and the gospel story, the reality of Christ that enables it. But Paul doesn't end with the children.

Just as I said previously, both wives and husbands have been addressed before and their respective duties towards one another. And in the next section, we will see servants and masters, slaves and masters. Here, Paul talks to children and now also their parents. And this is our last point this morning: this reciprocal duty.

Fathers, treat your children right. Paul says in verse four, Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Now again, I think you could argue that there are two audiences in mind here. The main target are the fathers, certainly, but mothers are surely in view as well. In Roman culture, in which the Ephesian Christians found themselves, the Pater Familius was the oldest living male in the household, usually the dad, and there was a strict hierarchy within these Roman households where this father had supreme autocratic rule over the household.

They had absolute power over the family. Historical writings describe the types of power that would be allowed for these fathers that could allow a father to imprison, whip, enslave and even put to death their own children. They were the magistrates of their house. They had a power, for example, to kill a baby that they deemed weak or sufficiently disabled. That father would take that baby and drown them or put them out into the freezing cold overnight.

It is, therefore, not a surprise, these words, to those Greco-Roman listeners in the Ephesian church: this idea of authority. Even for the Jewish Christians coming from Judaism, there was a culture where the father's authority was paramount. We know from the Old Testament, the civic laws given to the Israelites, that the primacy of authority lay with the fathers. In some instances, for example, we see the penalty for a child disobeying or dishonouring a father being on par with a penalty for murder or rape. Exodus 21:15 and 17: Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death. Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death.

This is reinforced by the many wisdom teachings in the other parts of the Old Testament, places like Proverbs that talks about the need to show proper respect. Proverbs 30:17: The eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures. Reese, you better listen, mate. Proverbs 20:20: If one curses his father or his mother, his lamp will be put out in utter darkness.

So there is a strong culture of listening to dad, and that is the context into which Paul writes. But here, he tells them, the fathers: don't provoke your children to anger. Instead, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Think again of the context. The heads of the families, the fathers, are not to abuse their authority and thereby make their children embittered, angry, resentful.

Instead, the raising of these children should be marked by training and verbal admonition that is determined by their very own relationship to the Lord. Notice again that it is Jesus who is referenced here. It is the instruction of the Lord. And again, translators have different approaches to that. That could mean it's an instruction referencing Christ, so that the teaching of Christ that you instruct your child in, the idea of active disciple-making that parents are to do towards their children, but this instruction of the Lord also concerns how the instruction is shaped.

They are to instruct their children as the Lord has instructed them. So think about the way that Jesus Christ has taught you, how He has shaped you, and in the same patience, gentleness and kindness, you are to instruct your own children. So on the one hand, Paul very much upholds the authority structure of the family in the first century, but revolutionarily, he makes this subservient to the overall obedience to Christ as Lord for both the parents and the children. So what is truly revolutionary here is that Paul addresses both children and fathers in this same teaching. And in doing so, he is referencing back to the overarching teaching we saw last week in Ephesians 5:21.

Have a look there. Paul begins his teaching to these household structures by saying, Submit yourselves to one another in reverence to Christ. God's word, in other words, sees children as those who, in their own right, have a relationship with this Lord which both transcends and includes a duty to their parents. A father submits to their child somehow in instructing them and admonishing them to follow Christ. So to our fathers and our mothers who are the disciple-makers of covenant children, here are the marching orders.

Treat your kids with the same respect, love and dignity that Jesus Christ gave you and offer yourself to them in mutual submission. Don't provoke them unfairly or harshly and cause anger. Don't make them bitter towards you. Make sure you maintain good control over yourself when you discipline your kids. In exercising discipline, first exercise self-control over your own emotions.

Discipline your own temper before you discipline their temper. Don't be fickle or erratic. There's nothing more embittering than a parent whose mood and rules are constantly changing. One day, you are kind and generous, very lenient, and the next, you are stingy and mean. One day, that parent lets everything slide, the next day they clamp down on everything because they haven't had their coffee or their smoke or their whatever.

Own yourself, weigh up your core values and stick by them in a fair and consistent way. In wrapping up this morning, we hear again God's word giving us instructions, and we are reminded, as we have been the last few weeks, that we hear these instructions in the light of what we have already received. Live as light, Paul says in the previous chapter. Live up to the calling you have already received, he says in chapter four. And in doing these things, you will be living up to that light.

This is why Paul references the promise you see given in the fifth commandment: do this so that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. Now, Paul knows that the Gentile Christians here don't live in Canaan. That's why he removes the second part of that, the land your God has given you, which is part of the Old Testament commandment. And yet something of the blessing still remains.

It will go well with you if you obey your parents. It will go well with you to honour them. If we live according to God's moral principles, we receive God's favour. And if we defy God's ways, we forfeit that favour. As children, we owe our parents the duty of obedience while we live under their roof and while we live under their direct authority, but we are always obligated to show our parents honour for the rest of our life and theirs.

Challies summed it up like this: Honour God by honouring your parents and expect that it will go well with you if you do. Dishonour God by dishonouring your parents and expect that it will not. In light of that, we bind it all together with the overarching statement again: that we have bound ourselves to each other in mutual submission out of a deep love for Christ who is our Lord and the love that He has first shown us. Let's pray.

Lord, there is perhaps no other single commandment in the Ten Commandments that is as widely misunderstood and as widely not practised as this commandment. And in our context, it can be really hard to think practically about what it means to show honour to our parents, what it means to respect them, what it means to appreciate them, what it means to listen to their wisdom, what it means to speak well of them. Lord, I know that many of us here have all sorts of different situations and contexts with parents. Some of us don't have parents left in order to show this honour to. Some of us were only raised by one parent, the other parent we don't know.

And then there are some of us who have been adopted or have been raised in foster care. Help us, Lord, in the complexity and even in the brokenness of this world and this age to understand what it may mean to show honour, respect and duty to our parents. Help us as young children, young people still living under the authority of our parents, under their roof. Lord, help us to show them honour by obeying what they ask us. Help us to believe optimistically with hope that they have our best intentions at heart, that they have a desire for our good.

And so help us, Lord, to believe them, to humbly and simply do what they say. And then help us to do that joyfully because we know that in that way we are serving You directly and You are happy with that. Help all of us, Lord, to live in submission towards one another and as fathers especially, and certainly mothers, to help us to disciple our children in the way of the Lord, in the instruction from Jesus and about Jesus and towards Jesus. Help us, Lord, to be patient as parents, to be kind, to be long-suffering, to not snap, but to have self-control, to listen first, to act decisively and carefully. Help us to remain consistent in spite of the great inconsistencies and stressors in our life. Help us as fathers, Lord, as Your servant wrote to Timothy, to be men worthy of respect so that it won't be difficult for our children to show honour. Bind us together in all of these things with this love and reverence we have for Jesus Christ as our Master, as our Lord, the one we submit to in His authority. In Jesus' name, amen.