Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Listen to Your Parents

Ephes. 6:1-3 (ESV)
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. [2] "Honor your father and mother" (this is the first commandment with a promise), [3] "that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land."

Paul now turns from the relation of husband and wife to other family matters, those of children and parenthood. Obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Again the word obey here, also means listen. The interesting part of this sentence is “in the Lord.” There is a boundary to obedience. You don’t have to listen to your parents when they counsel you to sin. God always comes before man. But insofar as your parents are not commanding you to murder, steal, commit adultery or worship other gods, you should listen to them. They generally know what is best for you, and have wisdom that comes with age.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bror,

That's very helpful. Something I've wrestled with a lot in fully understanding.

I always easily understood the "...insofar as your parents are not commanding you to murder, steal, commit adultery", that is generally easier to see, at least for me.

It was the "...or worship other gods...". That one my wife and I have both struggled with. Especially her moving from a highly charismatic baptist background (too much detail to list here) now as we presently transition to Lutheran.

The "worship other gods" is often a bit less overt but more "oblique" if you will. That is not really denying Christ out right but not really preaching the Christ either. Kind of the "Gospel assumed" I suppose you'd say.

Anyway, very helpful!

Larry KY

Bror Erickson said...

Larry,
I know what you mean. I always find it funny how we assume commandments 5-8 are the more important ones, because they are the more or less enforceable ones. I don't know about ranking the importance of commandments and how advisable it is, but if I were to do so, my guess is God finds the first three to be more important which is why he gave them to us first.