This month, when we have been remembering the events of sixty years ago, and recalling those who died – not to mention more recent wars – we cannot fail to realise that parenthood may possibly bring pain and heartbreak. It certainly carries responsibility – and afterwards we realise we were very much learning on the job! But we can also rejoice in its blessings and joys! Of course, not all of us are parents – but we are all children – and we can learn from this passage! And we should all have a concern in this subject – as relatives and friends of children, and as members of society at large.

Now, I am bringing not a word of experience – for yours may be better than mine – but the word of God, which we all need to obey. We were looking last week, at how this passage really began at 5:18: Do not get drunk on wine…Instead, be filled with the Spirit…speaking to one another…singing to the Lord… giving thanks… and being subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Paul is saying, That is the kind of life you Christians should now lead. You are indwelt by God's Holy Spirit and it should show in your relationships with others. And then he gives three practical examples. Children and their parents is the second of these. We need to appreciate this context. For neither as children, nor as parents, have we the ability to behave as God intends – unless we seek and receive his help.

Honouring our parents.

A society that has departed from God can be expected increasingly to depart from God's standards. One of the characteristics of Paul's day, as he portrays it in Romans 1:30 is disobedience to parents. And in 2 Tim 3:2, he says it will be one of the characteristics of the last days also.

So it is very right that Paul should say to Christian children, Obey your parents… Obey your parents in the Lord. It is part of our love and obedience to our Saviour, that we should express these in and through the love and obedience we give to our parents. That is what Jesus himself did – we have his example to follow.

Under God, our parents gave us life, and while we are young give us the love and care, the food, clothing and shelter we need. The whole pattern of nature teaches us this – that the parents of young are their natural, God-given protectors and providers, teaching their young the skills and knowledge they will need.

So Paul adds, for this is right. And he reinforces this by quoting the fifth commandment: Honour your father and mother. This includes obedience, but goes beyond it to the attitude of the heart. While we are growing up, we are to listen to our parents and do what they tell us - for God has set them over us.

Is there any limit to this obedience? In Col 3:20, Paul says children are to obey in everything, for this pleases the Lord. If you are a Christian young person and you have non-Christian parents, that is still true. Only two things can be regarded as excepted, because they would NOT please the Lord. One is a request that you do something wrong and sinful; the other that you cease to worship and serve God. These two may bring us into conflict – as Jesus warned us.

One of the hardest pieces of advice I ever had to give concerned my fiancée, when she was 23 and living and working 100 miles away from her 60-year-old father, widowed for 7 years. She believed the Lord was calling her to serve him in India, but her father wanted her to come back and look after him. I will have nothing further to do with you, he said, if you go out to India. I encouraged her to go, although I would be the loser, too. But the decision was very difficult.

In general, we should go out of our way to please our parents, even when we are independent – we are still to honour them – listen to their advice, treat them with respect, love and care for them – more and more as they become old and infirm. It ought to be the mark of Christians that we do so gladly and not grudgingly. They are our first responsibility after our immediate family.

Why does Paul describe the commandment as of primary importance – and remind us of its attached promise? Because the stability of society depends on the stability of our family life. Divorce, the break-up of families and the failure to care for our parents within our families, when we can – these things are not just private matters. God has bound up with them the whole well-being of society and its future enjoyment of security and peace.

And he gives to governments and to all who exercise influence in society the responsibility to promote family stability and not to destroy it. God judged Israel, when that nation forgot this, allowing it to be defeated in war and taken into exile. So this promise should be seen as a general promise, rather than one given only to individuals. However, the converse is often sadly true – those who rebel against their parents often follow a life-style that can end in sudden tragedy.

The responsibility of parents.

Now Paul turns to the parents – for, as in each of these reciprocal relationships, the one obeyed has great obligations. For God has a purpose for us to fulfil. Marriage and the family are God's idea – his creation, not ours. If we'd created the world and wanted to people it – we might not have thought of developing those people from babyhood to maturity within the somewhat fragile institution of the family – but God did. Within it we learn naturally the importance of mutual loving and caring, of growing in understanding and appreciation of each other.

Moreover, these things have their counterpart in the spiritual realm – for God is creating a spiritual family in Christ – which he wants each one of us to belong to, so that the human family becomes a unit within his family. A family in which we are to experience HIS love, as well as the love of each other. A family in which we are to grow in spiritual maturity and understanding.

Some people think that Christians invented God by projecting human fatherhood onto a cosmic scale. But the truth is the opposite: human fatherhood is meant to reflect – albeit imperfectly – the fatherhood of God. (Bible:Matthew+5:48)

Christian fathers – and mothers, too – have you experienced God's love and care for you? Do you know his forgiveness for you faults and failings? His discipline and patient teaching when you rebelled against his gentle insistence that you go in HIS way, according to HIS advice and holy laws? As God has been to you, so he requires you to be to your children.

Paul speaks to fathers, as the one normally responsible to lead the family, but the words apply to mothers as well, especially if they should be single parents. He speaks negatively, Fathers, do not exasperate your children (or provoke them to anger) – and positively, instead bring them up in the training – other versions use the word discipline – and instruction of the Lord. Training or discipline refers to what we DO with them, instruction to what we SAY to them. All good parents seek to train their children to do what is acceptable. They will spend time with them, encourage them and have fun with them.

But only the Christian parent longs to introduce his child to his own Saviour. Scripture encourages him to do so. God said, I have chosen Abraham in order that he may command his sons and his descendants to obey me and to do what is right and just. (Gen 18:19 GNB) Later God said through Moses, Impress these commandments on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. (Deut 6:7) I wonder how many of us do this in a way that makes our faith attractive and exciting! And do we find it natural to pray with our children about their crises and problems? I believe we should!

The discipline of children.

But perhaps our chief concern is, How should I discipline my children? Especially so, when the present climate of opinion in the world frowns on the word discipline, and all the more on punishment, especially physical punishment which, quite rightly, we hope we shall never have to resort to.

I believe that, understood aright, Scripture is balanced in this respect. On one side we have comments such as, He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him (Prov 13:24), and, Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him (22:15). But equally – here, in verse 4 – we are warned against too strict a discipline. We need to steer a course between being too lax and being too strict – which is not easy in today's climate.

Of course, we have rightly reacted strongly away from the harsh, self-righteous, repressive Victorian father. But the swing of the pendulum has taken us to the opposite extreme, and society is still reaping the consequences. Human nature is NOT basically good, as so many have taught. On the contrary, we are by nature rebels – we all want to do our own thing. We resent authority over us – whether it is God himself, or that God-given authority of home or society. We are sinners ourselves and so are our children. There is a need for discipline, which – if necessary – includes punishment.

The modern attitude is that discipline should only seek to correct and not to punish, whereas it should be both. If all we seek to do is to correct and control behaviour patterns – and mould them to what is acceptable – then we are looking upon wrongdoing as a kind of illness needing treatment. Ultimately that is all of a piece with putting society's nonconformists into psychiatric prisons. It concentrates on the deviant behaviour and dehumanises the person.
But punishment confers dignity because it regards us as responsible – and free to choose between right and wrong. To choose wrongly is then blameworthy and justly deserves a penalty. We speak of being just and fair when the penalty matches the crime. When we have paid it, that should be an end to our debt. But when correction alone is the aim, it can go on and on, until we have changed the person's attitude. But justice is important – even in the home – and we must not forget this difference.

God is a God who is holy and just. He treats us as responsible for breaking his laws. He is also a God of compassion and mercy – and he expects us to be also. The idea of mercy belongs with that of punishment. For it requires someone else to bear the consequences of wrongdoing – instead of the wrongdoer.

If my son breaks a window, when I have told him not to throw balls at the house – I shall be just, if I make him pay for its repair. Should there be good reasons for being merciful – then I must pay or do the work myself. We need to teach the link between these things. A broken window is a little thing – but a father who is always indulgent will one day find himself paying his child's fines and lawyer's fees.

At the same time this distinction – between correction and punishment – is liberating for parents. God doesn't judge our success as parents, by measuring the character and behaviour of our children – he judges whether we have done what is right, reflecting HIS mind and character. He calls us to be to our children - what he is to us. However model a parent we may be – our children have wills and personalities of their own and they will be responsible for their own choices, not us, if we have been faithful.

Parenthood is a stewardship.

Of course, we shall agonise over them and pray for them – because we love them. But being a parent confers a risk. God gives us children to be their stewards, not their owners. John White, in his book, "Parents in Pain", tells us he and his wife prayed for a child – they had had some difficulty – and he found himself bargaining with God: …of course, I want the child to be a credit both to me and to you. I would like him or her to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ. Otherwise, I'd rather do without. At that moment a thought exploded in his mind. God said, What about me and Adam?

God gave us, his children, the freedom to choose, knowing what we should do with it. Our children may disappoint us - we cannot control them, nor should we try to! We are not to clutch them – but from the beginning relinquish them to God – trusting him to work in their lives beyond the point where we are able to influence them.

Remember how Moses's parents had to do just that – and how Hannah did that voluntarily with Samuel. When my first wife was dying her hardest battle was to entrust God with the future of our children.

But when we give up seeking to make our children serve us – we can enter that peace which God wants us to have, to carry us through all the storms and difficulties of parenthood. We have no right to make our children fulfill our dreams, satisfy our ego, compensate for our failures. We have no right to go on enjoying them always or demanding their affection. We have no right to immunity from pain, sickness or death. If we understand these things we shall be content – as ourselves the children of our heavenly Father – to TRUST him, even when we don't understand his ways – just as a child of human parents may not understand them.

You cannot learn to drive a car with someone else's hands on the steering wheel. We must take our hands off, as our children grow up, so that they become mature adults. We must learn to trust our Father, who desires that we be to our children what he is to us.