The Remembrancer: 1901, Relationships of Parents and Children in the Light of Christianity, The (6:1-4)
PH 6:1-4
The exhortation to fathers is also remarkable-that they should not provoke their children; that their hearts should be turned towards them; that they should not repel them, nor destroy that influence which is the strongest guard against the evil of the world. God forms the heart of children around this happy center: the father should watch over this. But there is more. The christian father (for it is always those within to whom he speaks) ought to recognize the position in which, as we have seen, the children are placed, and to bring them up under the yoke of Christ in the discipline and admonition of the Lord. Christian position is to be the measure and the form of the influences which the father exercises, and of the education which he gives his children. He treats them as brought up for the Lord, and as the Lord would bring them up.
It will be remarked, that in the relationships we are considering (as well as that of wives with their husbands and of servants with their masters) it is on the side from which submission is due that the exhortations begin. This is the genius of Christianity in our evil world, in which man's will is the source of all the evil, expressing his departure from God to whom all submission is due. The principle of submission and of obedience is the healing principle of humanity: only God must be brought into it, in order that the will of man be not the guide after all. But the principle that governs the heart of man in good, is always and everywhere obedience. I may have to say that God must be obeyed rather than man; but to depart from obedience is to enter into sin. A man may have, as a father, to command and direct; but he does it ill if he do it not in obedience to God and to His word. This was the essence of the life of Christ: " I come to do thy will, O my God." Accordingly the apostle begins his exhortations with regard to relationships by giving the general precept: " Submit yourselves one to another," adding " in the fear of Christ " (corrected reading), that, in the obedience rendered, the Lord may be before the heart, This renders order easy, even when the order of institutions, and of authority may fail. Submission, moral obedience, can never in principle be wanting to the true Christian. It is the starting point of his whole life. He is sanctified unto the obedience of Christ (1 Pet. 1:2).
It is beautiful to see the way in which divine doctrine enters into the details of life, and throws the fragrance of its perfection into every duty and every relationship; how it acknowledges existing things, as far as they can be owned and directed by its principles, but exalts and enhances the value of everything according to the perfection of those principles; by touching not the relationships but the man's heart who walks in them; taking the moral side, and that of submission, in love and in the exercise of authority which the divine doctrine can regulate, bringing in the grace which governs the use of the authority of God.