Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
Ephesians 6:1-4, NKJV
I’m taking four weeks to really dig-in to this verse. Let’s break it up into four parts/weeks.
- Children
- Obey your parents
- In the Lord
- For this is right
(You’re catching me on part three so if you’d like to go back to last week’s reading, you can read about the first two points.)
IN THE LORD
This is the kind of phrase we can so easily just skip over when reading the Bible. But why did Paul say it? His sentence would make 100% without the phrase “in the Lord”. Paul isn’t just speaking to children and young adults, he’s talking to believing children and young adults.
Some simplify “in the Lord” to say “because you’re Christians”
Obey your parents because of the Lord.
In Colossians, Paul made it even clearer: “Children obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.”
It doesn’t matter if your parents are Christians or not. It matters that you are. Your obedience to them is required because of YOUR position in Christ! Your lives are no longer your own. You were bought with the precious blood of Christ. Now you follow His commands, and He commands to obey your parents.
Next week, we’ll look at the last segment “for this is right”.