Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

“Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with promise:

“that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.” (Ephesians 6:1–3)

Most Western teenagers believe in something called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. That’s according to a 2005 book called Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers by Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, which was compiled from interviews with around 3000 teenagers. As the authors interviewed the teenagers, they kept seeing the same set of beliefs, which they describe as follows.

A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem. Good people go to heaven when they die. In other words, such people were moralists – they thought we should be outwardly good, and that is enough to go to heaven; they thought that God was really like a therapeutic, someone to help you in your quest to feel happy and good about yourself, and they were deists – God is not personally involved in any real way. Moralistic, therapeutic deists.

Moralistic therapeutic deists do not love God with all their heart, soul and strength. They do not remain in churches, worshipping God, and evangelising the lost. They abandon church and live secular lives.

We have been considering why so many people turn out this way, and considering the words of Deuteronomy 6—that love for God needs to be taught by direct instruction, by observed actions, by priorities, pleasures, routines and rituals. And if our homes are practically secular, then by our deeds and actions and routines, we say that God does not really matter. God is a light concern, a once-a-week concern. Homes that are practically secular do not usually produce wholehearted disciples.

There is one more way that our homes can be practically secular: when the ideas of authority and love are worldly and not godly.

Before a child is old enough to understand the teachings from the Word of God, before he is old enough to recognise his parents’ priorities and pleasures and dependencies, before he is old enough to understand the routines and rituals in the home, he learns all about God by simply being in a home. The first people he encounters are his parents and brothers and sisters. They become to him not merely providers of food and clothing, but his primary models of reality. His family is more than a place of shelter and safety, it is like an acted out lesson, a living and ongoing explanation of who God is, who he is, who others are.

The home is like an extended role-play. Each member plays a role, and with that role come various relationships. The husband has one role. He acts in certain ways towards his wife. The wife takes another role, and relates to her husband in a particular way. Father takes a role, and relates to the children in a particular way. Mother takes a role, and relates to the children in a particular way. The children take a role and relate to father and mother in a particular way.

In the home, the children observe this role-play for nearly twenty years. Day-in, day-out they observe this play, this drama. And whether or not anyone in the home realises it, this play is teaching the children about ultimate reality. It is teaching about authority, and how it should be exercised. It is teaching about obedience and disobedience, the reasons for obedience, the consequences of obedience and disobedience.

Before your child has pronounced the word “God” he has an idea of authority. Before your child has ever heard about hell, she has learnt whether or not sin has negative consequences.

If ever we are to have children who go on to love God wholeheartedly, it will not only be because of our instructions, our actions, our routines and our rituals. It will be very much because of how we portray God’s authority and God’s grace.

If we do our best to be obedient to the biblical roles, we fill our homes with an ongoing, albeit imperfect picture of the God who rules, but who also redeems. They will learn that God is great, and God is good. Hopefully they reason, If God is a Father like my father, then I want Him to be my father. If God is both as strict and as forgiving as my parents, then I want to know God.

The best place to see this is the key parenting text of the New Testament, Ephesians 6:1-4. Here we will learn the fundamentals of a home with godly authority and a home with grace. We need both – not just authority, or the home becomes cold and people lose joy and hope. And not just grace, because then the home becomes permissive, without clear boundaries and limits and consequences. Godly authority and grace. Next week, we consider the two commands that teach the idea of grace in the home. Today we consider the two commands that capture the idea of godly authority in the home.

I. Loving Authority Teaches and Expects Obedience

Ephesians 6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

This simple command has a few built-in assumptions. One is that children do not naturally obey God or their parents, and that they have to be taught to do so.

Although the commands of Ephesians 6:1-3 are given to children, clearly they are also given to parents, because it is the parents who help their young children obey and honour.

Children obey your parents. Parents are the authority, and children obey that authority. This is the role you play. You make real and visible the authority of the invisible God. Through their parents, children can see, touch, taste, and feel both God’s justice and love.

The most important lesson for a child to learn in the first five years of life is that he is been born into a universe where he is under authority. They live in a universe which they did not create. They are guests, tenants, people who have been invited to live in God’s universe. And since they are in God’s universe, they are to submit and obey His commands.

Not everyone is convinced that parents need to be authorities, authorities that teach of the authority and power of God. You may have noticed that the word ‘authoritarian’ has a very negative connotation in our society. We no longer have teachers and students, we have educators and learners. We no longer have rulers and subjects, we have civil servants and taxpaying citizens.

Today, if you haven’t noticed, the terminology is no longer parent, guardian, it’s “primary care-giver”. As if that’s all parents do: provide care. Authority is ugly, demeaning and abusive, in the world’s eyes. Unfortunately, many Christian parents have embraced a secular view of authority. In their minds, authority is almost always a bad thing, and they don’t want to be perceived by their children as authoritative. They would like their children to like them, all the time. They want to be popular care-givers. For them, the worst thing that their children could ever say about them would be that they were authoritarian.

Many parents, bombarded by our culture’s constant questioning of legitimate, gracious parental authority, need to be reminded that the biblical truth that they are agents of God’s gracious but just authority.

When we speak of parental authority, we’re not talking about some kind of oppressive, Draconian, abusive approach to parenting. A parent can use his authority selfishly. He can be a bully. She can be manipulative. He can crush the spirit of his child. Do not exasperate your children. Inspire their obedience. Godly authority is firm and fair, disciplined but also patient and forgiving. Parents are not merely drill sergeants or moody schoolmasters.

You see, parents are the link to teach children what this God is like. The role of parents is to act as intermediaries of God’s authorities, so that the children are indeed seeing something of God on the doorpost, on their hands, between their eyes, when they lie down and rise up.

If you want your children to think that they can live in God’s universe and get away with disobeying Him, then let them get away with it. If you want to communicate the idea that God is satisfied with sulky, pouting obedience, then allow that in your home. If you want your children to think that God is okay with tantrums and excuses from adults, then let them have them when they are children.

If we want your children to think that God will bribe them to obey, then we should bribe them to obey. If we want your children to think that God only cares about outward behaviour, then we should only care about outward behaviour. If we want your children to think that God will plead or beg or negotiate with them to get obedience, then you should do that. But if that is not true of God, then it should not be true of parents in a Christian home.

So the point is, parents are to teach children what God’s authority is like. Obeying parents is like obeying God. “in the Lord”: the sphere or circle in which a child obeys. Children obey as if they are obeying the Lord.

So how should God be obeyed? Should He be obeyed immediately or with a delay, on our own time? Is it OK to say to God, I will, but later? Should God be obeyed with an argument, or with complete submission? Is it acceptable to say to God, “But God, I can’t do that, because..” Should God be obeyed with a challenge, or without a challenge? Should God be obeyed pouting, sulking, huffing and puffing, sighing and complaining, or cheerfully? Now, if the kind of obedience God expects is cheerful, immediate obedience without an argument or a challenge or delay, how do you suppose we go about preparing our children to relate to this God? What kind of obedience should we expect in our homes?

The kind of obedience which pictures God’s authority is first-time, cheerful obedience. We are graciously but firmly to help our children obey right away, the first time they are told to do something.

There is no reason why a child can’t obey the first time he is told to do something. If your child hears you, but only comes the third time you call, he didn’t obey; he disobeyed twice. First-time obedience eradicates delayed obedience, partial obedience, debating parental instructions, challenging parental authority, excuses, manipulation.

Every time parents allow their children to disobey, ignore, or manipulate them without graciously correcting it, something has gone seriously wrong with the universe. Obedience is God’s most basic command to a child. If we fail our children in this, we have failed them at the most basic level.

First-time obedience means a parent doesn’t have to repeat an instruction three times, ending with yelling and anger. First-time obedience prevents a parents from arguing with a person who can’t even tie his shoes yet. Small children don’t need explanations, reasons, or parental homilies on the benefits of going to bed on time. They just need to learn that it’s right for them to respond quickly and with a good attitude when their parents say No. Stop. Come. Sit. Quiet.

First-time obedience prevents parents from saying things like, “How many times have I told you … ?” First-time obedience prevents parents issuing continual and empty threats: “I won’t tell you again …”

And it is also to be cheerful. When a child complies with the instruction, but does so with a bad attitude, that’s not obedience. When a parent sees a sinful attitude in his child’s eyes, face, posture, tone of voice, or actions, he should address it graciously but quickly.

First-time obedience is hard work, but it brings peace and joy to homes previously filled with conflict and anger. Proverbs 29:17: Correct your son, and he will give you comfort; he will also delight your soul.

How do you teach this kind of first-time, cheerful obedience which explains what God’s authority is like? As Lou Priolo points out, the first rule for disciplining children is you must have more discipline than your child. In other words, however many times your child disobeys, you need to do what is right one more time than they do what is wrong.

Explain the rules, and from that point on, give your child a legitimate, biblical hiding every time he ignores your instruction to Come, Stop, or whatever. Once he realises that it hurts every time he disobeys, he’ll learn pretty quickly to do what is right the first time he is told. Children sense inconsistency immediately and will start to push the fences to see how much they can get away with.

Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. (Ecclesiastes 8:11)

If sinners don’t fear consequences, they drive at reckless speeds on the freeway, skip robots, cheat on exams, and so on. It works the same way with kids. If there are no consequences, their hearts will only be more and more given to do evil.

Proverbs 13:24

He who spares his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him promptly.

Proverbs 29:15

The rod and rebuke give wisdom, But a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.

What does God authorise the parent to do? Not to vent. Not to lash out. Not to take revenge. Not to express annoyance. To train. Every time we have to correct, we ought to be prodding our children to the cross of Christ. We are teaching that >>>

Why should children obey? “for this is right” Children obey their parents, not because their parents pay the bills, can run faster, are physically stronger, can bribe them, manipulate them, out-manoeuvre them intellectually, or scare them with adult anger. Children are to obey just because it is foundationally, categorically, intrinsically right. A child who doesn’t obey is as wrong as the sun rising in the west, fire being cold, or gravity being inverted.

When a resistant child asks “Why?” when you say it’s time to go home or to go to bed, the only reason that a young child needs is, Because Mom or Dad said so. As they grow, you’ll explain more so they can learn to make decisions on their own, but a small child? The only reason he needs for doing anything is Mom or Dad said so.

Objection: But my child is not a believer: how can he or she be expected to obey? Do you suppose we should teach unbelievers to disobey the law of God? We can and must expect our children to externally conform to the Word, until the day comes when they are transformed inwardly. We do not tell them that their good behaviour means they are saved. But it does make them pleasant children, enjoyable, respectful.

When this role is performed, children learn that God has Greatness. He is a righteous authority. He makes laws and expects them to be kept. He has great power, and great wrath at evil. God is a loving authority, that people ought to desire to submit to, trust, obey and be loyal to.

II. Loving Authority Inspires and Expects Honor

“Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with promise:

“that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.” (Ephesians 6:2–3)

This Scripture quotes the fifth of the ten commandments. The word for honour in the Hebrew is kabbed, which comes from words meaning heavy. The idea is, your parents should carry weight in your life. You don’t treat them lightly, because God commands you to feel the gravity, the importance of their presence in your life. They are God’s gifts to you, and you do not treat them, or speak to them as if they are otherwise. When Paul quotes this verse in Ephesians 6:2, he uses the Greek word tima which means value highly, estimate greatly. Honouring parents defined: Treat your parents like they are really expensive.

Children are to obey both because it is right and honour because it is rewarded. The reward here is life goes better for you and you will live longer. Life is better when you respect and submit to the authorities over you. Children who rebel against their parents are not happy children—even when they’re getting what they want. Peace, stability, and good relationships come from respecting authority, not from rebelling against it.

Children are taught to obey their parents as God’s representatives in the home so that they will know how to obey God one day. Children are taught to honour their parents so they will one day know how to fear God, how to worship God.

Question: when it comes to responding to God’s authority, how should God be treated? Should He be spoken to in a tone that says, “Yes, yes!” in an irritated way? Is it okay to say to God, “I heard you the first time!” Should God be responded to with rolling of the eyes, folding of the arms, and shaking of the head? Is it acceptable to be cheeky and insolent with God? If God tells us to do something, is it acceptable to say, “Why don’t you do it yourself?” Is it okay to stick out our tongues at God and whisper curses at him under our breaths?

How about calling God names? “You big silly” Is it okay to come up with nick-names for God and call him that?

Now if we parents, and particularly we fathers, are the first and primary link for our children understanding the greatness of God, how do we expect them to do so if we allow dishonour in our homes? If our children have no respect or reverence for the first authorities in their lives, where do we expect the fear of the Lord to come from?

Proverbs 30:11

There is a generation that curses its father, And does not bless its mother.

We’re living in that generation. And people who have no idea how to respect their elders are crippled when it comes to respecting God. If you have no reverence for the people in your life closest to you, whom God appointed to guide you, how in the world will you reverence a God you have not seen? Let me adapt 1 John 4:20, and use the word fear or reverence in place of love.

1 John 4:20

If someone says, “I fear God,” and disrespects his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not respect his brother whom he has seen, how can he fear God whom he has not seen?

What are some ways that children dishonour their parents?

• Ignoring their parents’ voices. When parents try to tell their child to do something, but the child ignores them, continues to play, or runs right past them, they are not teaching their child to honour them. When Mom and Dad speak in an instructional tone of voice, the world should stop until the child has confirmed that they are not speaking to him.
• Arguing or debating (Philippians 2:14). As children move into their teen years, you explain more, because you want to prepare them to make their own decisions. However, a two-year-old or a five-year-old just needs to do what he’s told (with a good attitude). He doesn’t need a twelve-minute exposition on the subject of why children need to go to bed earlier than adults. He just needs to say, “Yes Mommy,” and go get into his pyjamas. Reasoning with small children in an attempt to get them to obey erases the line of authority between the adult and the child and places the child on the level of the parent.
• Hitting (Proverbs 19:26) He who mistreats his father and chases away his mother Is a son who causes shame and brings reproach. Children do not show that they believe their parents are valuable by striking them in anger or by hitting them as if violence were a game and their parents a punching bag. Other physical actions such as trying to pull a hand out of the parents’ grasp, running away when a parent calls, and throwing themselves on the floor in anger or resistance are other physical acts that dishonour parents.
• Responding with anger when instructed or disciplined. Proverbs 13:1: A wise son accepts his father’s discipline, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke. If a parent verbally corrects or spanks a child and the child throws himself on the floor and screams—not from the sting of the hiding, but out of anger—that’s not counting the parent or the parent’s instruction as valuable. Hysterical anger during or after discipline dishonours the parent, and the parent should give a second hiding for it, because rejecting parental instruction is almost certainly worse than whatever the child did to get the first hiding.
• Speaking to parents with imperatives (Ephesians 6:2) Give me a drink of water. Get me this toy. In the parent-child relationship, imperatives go one way.
• Interrupting their parents’ adult conversations (1 Corinthians 13:4; Proverbs 18:13). Children honour their parents by not interrupting their conversations. That patience is hard for a child, but learning to wait your turn is actually a significant life lesson, so they might as well learn it early.

So what does it look like to treat your parents like they are worth a lot?

Some basic essentials:

• Respectful titles
• Eye contact and initiating the greeting
• Respectful tones in speaking
• The basic please, thank you, no thank you, excuse me, I beg your pardon, I’m sorry
• Expressions of gratitude, cheerful submission, responses to commands
• Polite table manners
• Respecting property and privacy

We teach this not to merely have children that are complimented for their manners. This is to help them understand reverence, honour for authority.

It extends beyond the home to all people.

As Peter put it, “Honour all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.” (1 Peter 2:17) Paul affirms this: “Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honour to whom honour.” (Romans 13:7)

Honour and manners help children to understand the difference between themselves and others in terms of age, sex, rank, and office.

Honour treat ladies as ladies, adults as adults, the elderly as elderly, magistrates as magistrates and so forth. We may be spiritually equal, and equal before the law, but our differing vocations, ages, and experiences call for different responses.

We tried hard to teach our children that adults are ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’, the magistrate is ‘your honour’, the policeman is ‘sir’, those adults they know are ‘uncle’ or ‘auntie’. This is not because we want to flatter the people who hear it; it is because we want our children to understand order, distinction in life, that they are just starting out at the bottom of an order in reality, at which the top is God Almighty. Unless they internalise that practically at home, and at church, and in society, it will be hard for them to imagine God as deeply worthy of respect.

A child without manners begins to lose a sense of meaning. Without the knowledge that age, rank, office or station represent real differences in reality, he learns to collapse all distinctions. All things and people are alike. Their only distinctions are their relative importance to meeting his own needs.

Imagine the experience of a child, slowly waking up to the world in your home. As he encounters you as his first authority figures, what does he learn about the ultimate authority – God? Does he learn that God is a loving authority who inspires and expects obedience? Does he learn that God is a loving authority who inspires and expects reverence? If so, you have helped put the knowledge of God on the doorposts, on the gates, when you rise and lie down. And it may be that your children will come to love God with all their heart, soul and strength.