7/29/2009 6:00:00 PM
BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVES/The nurture and admonition of the Lord (1)
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By J. LIGON DUNCAN III
The following is the 128th in a series entitled "Ephesians: The Queen of Letters."
"And fathers, do not provoke your children to anger; but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.'"(Ephesians 6:4)
I invite you to turn with me to the Book of Ephesians again, chapter six, as we continue through this section on household rules. Last week we were looking at Ephesians 6:1-3, a section in which the Apostle Paul gives God's commands to Christian children, and we said that Christian children, in order to live out the gospel in the home, must obey their parents for three reasons or motivations: Because it's right; because it's commanded; and because obedience to this command is connected to a gracious promise from God.
Now Paul continues to talk to parents and children in the passage we're going to look to today in Ephesians 6:4. However, now his focus is on Christian parents; and, interestingly, having acknowledged the full parental authority that children are to obey, Paul then speaks to Christian parents, and especially to fathers, giving them a profound directive about their Christian parenting and asking them to exercise restraint in the way that they parent.
The passage begins with a negative command, and it proceeds to a positive command. That's a very typical Pauline way of talking about things. It's a typical way that he teaches, and it's a good model for us.
Well, let's give attention to God's word. And before we do, let's pray.
Our Lord and our God, as we consider this privilege and responsibility of Christian parenting, we ask that You would encourage us. How many of us question our parenting? We cry out to You, O God, and look for help. As we study Your word tonight, we pray that You would grant by Your Spirit much encouragement to faithful, earnest, Christian parents, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.
Hear God's word in Ephesians 6:4.
"And fathers, do not provoke your children to anger; but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord."
In this passage, the Apostle Paul gives a two-sided directive...or, if you will, a negative and a positive command to Christian parents. On the one hand, they are not to parent in such a way that exasperates their children. They are to exercise wisdom and restraint in their parenting so that, rather than being provoked to anger, their children are encouraged to righteousness. On the other hand, they are indeed to rear their children, to bring them up, in the discipline (notice again the negative and the instruction) of the Lord. There are to be constraints, and there is to be instruction. Let's give attention to the two sides of this directive. We will look at the negative aspect today and the positive next week.
Let's begin in the first part of verse 4 where the Apostle Paul says, "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger." Here, Christian parents are given the instruction by God through the Apostle Paul to take care not to provoke their children. Notice especially that this command is laid upon fathers, even though in the passage preceding children are called upon to obey their parents. This particular direction is pushed towards fathers. This may be for a number of reasons.
For one thing, in Paul's day, especially in the Roman world, a father had something akin to absolute authority in his home. His children were just another among all his possessions. You can imagine with that kind of a situation that there may have been a temptation to abuse that authority. We in fact know that that authority was abused very regularly in the Roman world by fathers. Perhaps for that reason, then, the Apostle Paul especially gives this direction to fathers.
Of course, there may be other reasons as well. In our own culture, there can be a temptation for fathers to have a passive role in the parenting, nurturing, and instruction of children, because the mother is with the children more and the father less often. There may be a temptation for fathers to cede some of their responsibilities, to dump some of those responsibilities, on their wives, leaving their own responsibilities personally unfulfilled. This again is a good passage to correct that kind of tendency to passivity.
But whatever the case is, the Apostle Paul especially directs this to fathers, because fathers will give an account for this before God. They are, in the final analysis, the ones who are responsible for the spiritual well-being of their whole families, and they, like the elders of the church, will give account for the church of the living God, so also fathers will give an account before God for the nurture that has gone on (or has not) in their homes.
Thus, in this passage the Apostle Paul is calling fathers (and parents) to a wise use of parental power. There's a parallel passage that you may already know of. I invite you to turn with me to it, to Colossians 3:21, which may help expand. These words are so brief, they're so terse, they're so packed with meaning it may be helpful to you to look at the parallel passage in Colossians 3:21: "Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart."
You see again the negative command there given to Christian fathers, that in the rearing of their children they take care not to discourage, dishearten, or exasperate their children. Perhaps again this command is given in the context of a destructive kind of pattern of parenting, a kind of criticism or perhaps harshness which breaks the spirit of a child. And the Apostle Paul is concerned that Christian children not lose heart. He's encouraging fathers to exercise a kind of restraint in their parenting, so that punishment and correction is balanced with time spent with children, and positive nurture and nourishment, teaching and entertainment, and encouragement both by verbal instruction and example, pointing them to Christ. And this passage perhaps helps us to understand a little bit about what Paul is saying when he says, "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger."
This is not a passage, by the way, that is saying to Christian fathers and mothers that you must never ever for any reason make your children mad. That's not what this passage is saying...sorry, kids! It is a parent's job to exercise their best discernment about their children's activities, for the child's own eternal well-being. There will be times when parents tell their kids that they cannot do certain things and also that they must do other things, and it will make the child mad. That is perfectly OK! That's not what the Apostle Paul is getting at.
To flush this idea out more, we will look at the application of this truth to real world situations and relationships. We will also finish the other half of Paul's admonition: the positive aspect of Ephesians 6:4.
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