NOTES for Eph 6:4

Today’s reading teaches us “how we should act,” not “what we should demand from our parents or children.” Of course, the first verse about children obeying their parents is very important. But today, together with the apostle Paul, I would like to speak in defense of children. What is the purpose of upbringing? What do we want to achieve? When a child comes up and says, “Mom, may I...?” what answer do we give, and why? Paul says, “Do not provoke your children.” This is a fairly precise description of what “upbringing for upbringing’s sake” does to a child. What is my purpose when I say “no”? Simply to stop an unnecessary movement? For what reason? The meaning of upbringing is to raise a child in the discipline and instruction of the Lord—or, more briefly, in love. But can a little person be raised to love in any way other than simply by loving that person? The only way to raise a child “according to the apostle Paul” is love. If behind each of our “no” or “yes” stands “leave me alone,” we will only provoke the child. But if every “I permit it” or “I do not permit it” means “because I love you,” then we have hope of raising a person capable of love.

Speaking about the attitude of children toward parents and of slaves toward their masters, Paul refers to the fifth commandment. It may seem that, when the matter concerns relations between slaves and their masters, such a reference is inappropriate. And yet, if the discussion concerned a Jewish setting, it was to a certain degree legitimate: Jews never knew any slavery other than domestic, patriarchal slavery, where a slave was regarded as a younger member of the family, effectively as one of the children, who, unlike a child, could never come of age and forever remained legally in the position of an adolescent.

Of course, in the Greco-Roman world as a whole the situation was different, but Paul recommends that Christians who have slaves treat them as was customary in the Jewish setting: as children.

At the same time, for the apostle, keeping the fifth commandment is inseparable from keeping all the other commandments, including by parents or masters. The call not to anger, or "provoke," children, addressed to parents, has precisely this point in view: otherwise there can be no question of any upbringing "in the fear of God." This is understandable. The fear of God presupposes a serious and responsible attitude toward the commandments given by God, and if parents do not have it, their children will not have it either, whatever parents may tell their children and however much they may persuade them of the need to keep what they themselves do not keep.

In general, the apostle places great importance on responsibility for the relationships that bind children to parents and slaves to masters. That is why he speaks of the need for obedience not simply from fear or self-interest, "as people-pleasers," in Paul's words, but also according to conscience, before God and for His sake. Only such responsibility for relationships can be the basis of normal spiritual life; otherwise inner division and all its negative spiritual consequences are inevitable.