The idea of “standing in for God” as a parent actually brings up a question that I get a lot: What about when you are older? Do you still have to obey your parents? (Of course, it’s also one of the biggest reasons that we shower our children with love and affection-so that our kids don’t grow up imagining God as a divine taskmaster.) By the time they leave our homes, they should shift the authority they recognized in us as parents to God. How our children learn to respect us and submit to us is how they will learn to submit to God. Parents, this is one of the reasons we take discipline seriously. That means, for those of you living at home, how you submit to the authority of your mom and dad is how you submit to God. We first learn to obey and submit to God by obeying and submitting to our parents. In a way, they stand in for God for a time. When we are young, our parents represent the authority of God to us. It acts as a hinge, reflecting both our relationship to God and our relationship to others. Right in the middle is this commandment, because it joins the rest. The first four commandments are about our relationship to God, and the last five are about our relationship to others. “Honor your father and mother” is the fifth commandment, which means it’s right in the middle of the 10. ‘Honor your father and mother’ (this is the first commandment with a promise), ‘that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land’” (Ephesians 6:1-3 ESV). Paul describes one of these laboratories as the family, where children learn to obey God by obeying their parents: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. When these relationships are focused on the gospel, we submit to one another out of respect for Christ and as a way of serving him. In each of these relationships, we learn a very important quality that defined Jesus, too: submission. God uses three very common relationships in our lives-marriage, family, and work-as laboratories to make us more like himself.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |