The Parent/Child Relationship

Jim ButlerColossians 3:20–21

Colossians 3:20–21 addresses both children and fathers as morally responsible members of the household of faith, calling each to a distinct duty within the domestic sphere. Children are commanded to obey their parents in all things — a command grounded in the moral law written at creation, codified in the Fifth Commandment, and motivated by the pleasure of Christ. Fathers are warned against provoking their children to discouragement, and are exhorted positively — drawing on Ephesians 6:4 — to nourish, instruct, and discipline with love, consistency, and dependence upon God. The sermon presses both charges as inseparable from the new life described throughout Colossians 3: orthodoxy must issue in orthopraxy, beginning in the home.