In Light of Our Present Darkness
Three Surprising Emphases about Family Life
In our fallen world, authority needs limits, and those under authority need safeguards. The Lord Jesus Christ is thus concerned for the weaker in domestic relationships. The wife must submit to her husband, but her husband is to be tender toward her, as Christ is toward his bride. Children are to obey their parents, but fathers especially must make sure they do not bring their children under hard bondage and make their lives miserable. This will frustrate and dishearten them. The Lord Jesus would not have his little ones spend their early years being ground down by harsh discipline, unfeeling authority, or a police presence in their lives. The same is true of masters and servants. The master is to be kind and fair to his slaves. He has a real authority over them, but in Christ, righteousness and mercy must meet and kiss. As we seek to defend the Lord’s authority structures, let us therefore equally defend the weak and dependent.
Second, those with authority must not dominate those under them, or abuse them. To abuse someone is to belittle them, to treat them as less than human, to diminish their personhood and dignity by mockery, degrading treatment, manipulations, and nitpicky oversight. We dishearten those under authority when we communicate in attitudes and words that nothing they do is ever good enough, or if we use our authority to punish them emotionally because we are exasperated or frustrated with life. These are evil abuses of authority. The Lord would have us exercise authority in imitation of him (Eph. 5:2): for the good of those under authority, to build them up, to love and sacrifice for them, and to help them realize their full potential as his redeemed image-bearers.
And third, the emphasis in all these household directives is that Jesus Christ must be front and center. We cannot submit, love, and obey unless we are made new creatures in Christ. We must be born again. Too often these domestic commands are isolated from their broader context – which is to put on the new man in Christ (3:10). These commands are based upon the natural order God created, but only in union with Jesus Christ is power to be found to live as God intends. If natural law and order were sufficient, Jesus Christ would never have been needed. But he is needed, for we have lost all created desire to be governed by the Lord and all ability to do what he commands. We do not want God to rule over us, and thus our minds must be illumined and our stony hearts cracked to pieces. Thus, we must be redeemed by Christ to live godly in our homes. The new birth is the invincible foundation of the Christian home. It is in Christ that we want to be what our Father has created and recreated us to be.
We must live in union with Christ, otherwise we have no strength to bear fruit in our homes. To be in Christ is to be in a living union of faith with him, to trust him as Savior, and walk with him as Lord in a relationship of friendly, intimate dependence so that he is our life and strength, our joy and motivation for godliness. It is in Christ that children and fathers relate to one another as he has intended. It is by the strength of Christ that children obey their parents. It is only by the strength of Christ that fathers avoid embittering their children but instead nurture them with kindness.
A Blueprint for Victory in the Authority/Purity War
To be in Christ and to live unto Christ in our homes means that we must imitate our Father, as beloved children (Eph. 5:1) and “walk in love, as Christ has loved us” (Eph. 5:2). Your obedience, children, and your kindness, parents, are the way we walk in love and imitate the way our heavenly Father parents each one of us. Such love and its satisfying fruits will enable us to prevail over today’s rebellion against God’s blueprint for the home. Many in our nation have made war against the Christian home for decades – getting women out of the home, getting children in government schools, and generally creating dependency upon government experts and programs. By separating children from parents, children have come under more direct satanic assault. Now, with their true colors coming out – the homosexual war against God’s holiness, man’s purity, and social righteousness – we should feel the weight of these inspired verses even more. We need to win our children with love and tenderness – not passivity about their faults or fear of applying the rod – but making sure that the dominant impression our parenting gives is the love of Jesus Christ, his nurturing and tenderness. Honoring and imitating Christ in our homes – wives, husbands, children, parents, fathers, masters, servants – is the way we fight and win Satan’s war upon our families and nations.
A Personal Christ-Challenge to Parents
If the devil can make authority ugly, if fathers frustrate their children, make them feel stupid by belittling, pick at them constantly, and teach them in a hundred ways that they never measure up, it is a practical certainty that they will run to the world at some point. We are flesh and blood, and we look for tenderness. A boy or girl who receives no kindness at home will seek tenderness with someone else, usually in a sinful relationship. All crave tenderness. Husbands, your wives crave it, and this is exactly the Lord’s command to you – not a hard and aloof husband, but a nurturing and cherishing husband. Children crave tenderness from their parents – not indulgence of their faults but gentleness in correction that woos their hearts. Thus, in these directives, we are given the greatest challenge most of us will ever face. It is not to pick up a gun and march on one’s enemies. It is for those in authority to look like the Lord Jesus in their use of authority. He came down off his throne, washed feet, humbled himself, and died. We are to imitate his lowliness. And how can the husband and father do this, when pride is a cancer consuming every sinful heart? He must live in union and communion with Jesus Christ. He must live seeking the Lord’s wisdom, asking the Lord to guide him, and exercising authority with tenderness that the Lord will use to gain our hearts for him. The Lord Jesus did not gain us by authoritarianism but by humbling himself unto death. This is his marching order to children and fathers.
Children, Obey Your Parents (v. 20)
Intentional Duty: Hear and Obey Your Parents
Your obedience, children, emphasizes hearing, listening, and then obeying. This is the constant refrain in Proverbs: “Hear, O children.” What is often not given a place is the way that the child’s obedience imitates Christ’s obedience. Yes, by creation arrangement the child is under his parent’s authority. The coming of Jesus Christ, however, gives new life to all the old structures of authority, which were teetering because of our sin and rebellion. The wife’s submission, for example, is a picture of Christ’s. Therefore, she should never feel that submission is beneath her – she looks unto Jesus and thankfully endeavors to imitate him. The same is true with the child. You are addressed directly, Christian children. Younger and older, the Lord is calling you to do as he did with respect to his parents: “And he went down with them and was subject unto them” (Luke 2:52). Here is the same word used of the wife’s submission – to place yourself under your parents’ authority. This is your duty by virtue of the creation structures God has ordained. It is your heightened duty by virtue of our Lord’s submission and obedience unto death.
Especially as you grow older, you must keep the Lord’s example constantly before you. Parents are not everything they should be. You are a sinner, and the flesh hates submission to authority. You will be exposed to young people who encourage your self-willed ways. You will often not feel “good” about obeying your parents, for your flesh will rebel. Are you a hypocrite for obeying anyway? No. Remember our Lord Jesus in Gethsemane. His whole soul convulsed at the thought of the cross; we might say his holy soul was repulsed by becoming sin. He obeyed anyway. He was no hypocrite. Neither are you. Do the hard thing and obey – in the Lord’s strength and for him. Obedient to your parents is the way the Lord wants you to live. His will should be enough for you. If it is not enough, your parents are not the problem – your own stubborn soul is the problem. Stop blaming your parents’ methods and harshness for your own sinfulness in not listening to them. If you are listening to them but they are harsh to you, pray earnestly for them and wait for the Lord to work in their lives. Give them no cause to treat you coldly or harshly, and if they persist, humbly ask them to stop and be more Christlike to you. If they will not, speak with an elder. No authority in this life is absolute and above appeal.
But, Christian young person, you must be persuaded that your submission to your parents is the spiritual service you offer the Lord. As you listen and obey, he promises to bless you in all that you undertake (Prov. 3:1-12; Eph. 6:1-2). But you must be intentional about your obedience – asking how you can please your parents, being honest about your stubbornness, and turning a deaf ear to other influences that encourage you to follow your own desires. Pleasing oneself is the devil’s way. Submission is God’s way of salvation. Our Savior submitted himself to the will of his Father in heaven, and to his earthly parents, and by his obedience and self-surrender we are saved (Heb. 10:10).
Breadth: In All Things
“In all things” is uncomfortably broad. What if I think my parents’ rules are unreasonable? Listen to them. What if no one else has parents as tough as mine? Listen to them. What if you think they are too hard on you? Try to understand their hearts. Recognize that the Lord has placed you under your particular parents because you need the pressure they place upon you. “In all things” does not mean your parents can command you to sin, or that the Lord has given them permission to belittle you and treat you coldly. Sometimes this happens, but a Christian young person – like our Savior – goes as far in obedience as the Lord asks you. You will be in your own home soon enough, and then you will learn the responsibility of exercising authority. Until then, the Lord is breaking your willfulness, humbling your heart, teaching you obedience.
Submission and listening are hard but needed lessons. What if an older Christian young person is being manipulated or abused by their parents? What if you are concerned that this is going on toward younger children? Can you appeal? Certainly – as long as you do so respectfully and perhaps in more difficult instances with the leaders of your church. But obedience is not required only when we agree with the authority. It is especially required when do not agree and must bend our will under the authority that the Lord has placed over us. This is like our Savior. It is also completely unlike the spirit of our times, in which parents are friends, parent “gently,” and set up a dangerous democracy in the home. This is the way we abandon parental authority and bring the world’s rebellion into our homes.
Motives: Well-Pleasing in the Lord
This is the reason that authority and purity wars being fought in our times are lost by many families. The children are not Christians – or they are poorly taught, or their parents do not personally and constantly hold before their children the highest motive for obedience: to please the Lord. Just as a Christian wife considers it her highest calling to imitate her Savior’s submission, so the Christian young person wants to please the Lord. This is because pleasing Christ is the fruit of a new heart that trusts and loves Jesus Christ. Obedience is the fruit of the new heart. Seek this, my dear young friends, from the Lord Jesus. Ask him to give you a heart like his – that loves to please your heavenly Father by obeying him in all things. A new heart is a heart ruled by the Lord and his word. A new heart will make your training years much much more joyful and productive.
Perhaps you have not thought about obedience like this before – it pleases the Lord. Above every other consideration, beyond what the world and your peers think, your willing obedience to your parents, a listening heart, pleases Jesus Christ. In the Lord teaches us that the strength to obey is found only in union with Jesus Christ. And where is the motivation to do this? It is actually the highest and heart-melting motivation – I am not my own, but body and soul belong to my Lord Jesus Christ. He has purchased me for himself. He poured out his blood on the cross to pay the whole penalty for my sins and to remove all my guilt before the righteous Judge. You and I literally owe everything to Jesus Christ. Without him, we have nothing but condemnation, judgment hanging over our heads, and misery in life. Even the fleeting pleasures of sin cannot quench this fountain of misery – only Jesus Christ plunged into the pool of our filth, became sin for us, and removed our sins by his sinless, worthy life. Love him! Loving him, you will want to please him by obeying your parents.
Thus, the level and joy of your obedience, my young friends, is a good mirror of your heart loves. Do you love yourself or Jesus Christ? You love yourself more than Christ if pleasing yourself is more important than pleasing him – or if there is no real power to please him. Be honest with yourself about your loves, and then look to Jesus Christ in faith for cleansing and new life. For, if pleasing the Lord does not motivate you, your parents are not the problem in your life. You are the problem – your heart idols are clashing with the Lord’s pleasure in your obedience. I recommend that in order to bring peace to your soul and to your home, that you immediately turn to Jesus Christ, see the evil of your stubborn heart, and ask him to save you from your devilish desire to be your own god.
Now, there is one last consideration, and I pray it will encourage you. When you resolve to please the Lord by obeying your parents, the Lord Jesus pledges his help to you. Never does he ask you to obey in your own strength. Never does he ask you to base your obedience upon how you feel at a given moment. There will be some difficult seasons in your growing years. You will find that obedience is something like this – it took the life out of him – remember Gethsemane! He knows how hard it can be to devote yourself to “not my will, but yours, Father, be done.” But he has overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil, and he will help you. He will help you obey. We have set our love upon him, and he will support us, and give us his Spirit. Trust and love him. Loving him, obey him (John 14:12). He will never leave you, never fail to give you help.
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