Paul's advice to: children and parents; employees and employers.

Eph6v1to9: PAUL'S ADVICE TO CHILDREN AND PARENTS: EMPLOYEES AND EMPLOYERS

Paul adds to his advice on the relationship that should exist between a Christian husband and wife with instructions on the relationship that should prevail between children and parents and slaves and masters. So, following Warren Wiersbe, I will look at each party separately.

(1) Children.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. "Honour your father and mother" - which is the first commandment with a promise - "that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth."

This short passage makes three main points:

(a) It is right to honour and obey parents.

I think we all know what it is to obey! The Greek word translated honour is derived from a word meaning, 'heavy weight'. If a parent is honoured their words will carry weight and will not be treated lightly.

It is appropriate for children to obey their parents for a number of reasons:

Behaviour that is beneficial to others or to the individual has to be learned. Some behaviour does not have to be learned! A child will grab want it wants without having to be told to do so. I watched a toddler of about 18 months bite the finger of his 3 year old brother. When the older brother squawked in pain the toddler paused for a few seconds and then laughed to himself! The little rascal enjoyed it!! He didn't need to be taught that.
Children need to be taught what is not socially acceptable. When I started school at the age of 5 a bigger boy offered to sell me a wedge of cigarette cards for a shilling. Next day I had a shilling stolen from a pile of said coins reserved for the gas meter and completed the transaction. How my mother noticed the loss I don't know - but she did - and I recieved a stern lecture on why it was wrong to thieve. I never needed another lesson on the subject.
I can remember an occasion when one of my nephews had a toy tractor and was using it to bash my mother's television screen. She gave him a stern talking too - much to the annoyance of her son - who hadn't seen fit to remonstrate with him. But vandalism - the destruction of other people's property - needs to be discouraged!
Children must be taught prudent behaviour. It is not in a small child's interests to run off the pavement into the road. I can recall rescuing two little children who were running up the middle of the B1066. I picked one up and held the hand of the other and escorted them home. I doubt very much that they did it again - from the tone of their mother's voice.
Parents have more experience of both socially acceptable and prudential behaviour. They have had more experience of life than their offspring. So parents might insist their children are on time. Lateness should be discouraged as socially unacceptable. A parent will know that on a mountaineering holiday waterproofs should be carried on all occasions. It might seem unnecessary to their children but the parents know the dangers of getting wet through at altitude.
Children need to acquire self-discipline. This is developed as they obey first their parents and then later their teachers. Children who haven't been trained to obey run wild. In May I boarded a train at Chessington North station heading for Waterloo. I made the bad mistake of getting into a carriage occupied by a group of ferrel girls and their assorted mothers. The girls ran round the carriage, shouting, complaining, fighting, swearing, scratching and totally impervious to their mothers yells to behave. Animals in the zoo behave better. Those girls had no self-control and must have been a nightmare for their teachers to control.
Those girls will be handicapped all through life because they never learned to obey their mothers at an early age. Self discipline is crucial to success in almost all walks of life. It is something I acquired in the home, at school and during my university education and it has stood me in good stead until now.
Children need to develop a respect for authority. Children who never experience authority in the home rebel against it in school, on the streets, in the work place and in the courts.
The little girls described above did not honour their mothers, probably had no fathers and as they grew older would not respect anyone else.
If authority is not respected then order has to be established by the exercise of naked power. Whenever naked power replaces authority there is an inevitable loss of freedom.

(b) Jesus is pleased when children honour and obey their parents.

Children who submit to their parents follow the example of Jesus. Luke in his gospel tells us: Then he (Jesus) went down to Nazareth with them (his parents) and was obedient to them. Lk2v51. In the famous words of Cecil Frances Alexander:
It is impossible to become a child of God without submitting to Jesus. Submissiveness is a crucial ingredient of the child-like faith necessary for salvation. Jesus said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it." Lk9v23and24.
I believe it will help young people to be submissive to Jesus if they have learned to be submissive to their Christian parents. It helped me.
Furthermore mutual submissiveness of one Christian to another allows the church to thrive. Paul in his epistle to the Corinthians writes: But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way. 1Cor14v36. He did not want a state of anarchy in public worship.

Paul quotes the fifth commandment to reinforce what he has to say. Honour your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you. Dt5v16.

This is actually the second in the list of 10 commandments with a promise attached. So, perhaps, Paul means it is a primary commandment - in the first order of commandments - with a promise. It can hardly be taken literally. There are many children who have honoured their parents who have had short lives.

Perhaps, the promise attached to the commandment is recognition that if family life breaks down then ultimately society breaks down and degenerates into anarchy and chaos. No nation will survive long in these circumstances. I was also reminded today that the life expectancy of people living on the streets - a symptom of family disintegration - is 30 years less than the national average.

(2) Fathers and mothers.

Do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. v4. I don't believe fathers have a monopoly of exasperating behaviour!

Paul gives two instructions to parents.

(a) Don't exasperate your children.

There are a host of ways a parent or a school teacher can exasperate a child. These include:

Being over protective - not letting a child take risks. When I was a school teacher I used to let my 12-year-olds clamber up the unstable cliffs at Walton on the Naze to inspect firsthand the Red Crag deposits. This was probably in breach of health and safety regulations. Life cannot be risk free. When I was a boy I roamed free with my friends. No one supervised us.
Being too strict. My parents were not over strict but there were two things that exasperated me as a youngster. I was sent to bed far too early. I used to lie in bed on fine summer's evenings listening to other boys playing outside. I didn't mind going to church for two hours on Sunday morning but I deeply resented not being allowed to play football or cricket on the village green in the afternoons. This was old fashioned legalism.
I suppose my pupils would say that I was a strict teacher. I expected them to behave and work hard. However, there were times when I cut them a bit of slack and we: played a game, had a quiz, watched some slides, went for a walk.
Being habitually disapproving and discouraging. A parent or teacher might be disappointed sometimes with their children but to be always expressing disappointment will inevitably lower moral. It is very important to encourage children.
Edward Steichen, who eventually became one of the world's most renowned photographers, almost gave up on the day he shot his first pictures. At 16, young Steichen bought a camera and took 50 photos. Only one turned out well - a portrait of his sister at the piano. Edward's father thought that was a poor showing. But his mother insisted that the photograph of his sister was so beautiful that it more than compensated for 49 failures. Her encouragement convinced the youngster to stick with his new hobby. He stayed with it for the rest of his life, but it had been a close call. What tipped the scales? The vision to spot excellence in the midst of a lot of failure. From Bits & Pieces, February 4, 1993.
By never admitting to being wrong. Sometime ago I visited a family to discuss the funeral arrangements of their father. I asked those present if there were any characteristics of the deceased they would like me to mention in my eulogy. This was met with a stony silence. I persisted and said, "Look there must be some quality you admired in your father." After further silence the younger son eventually said in the broadest Suffolk accent, "He were allus right."
Taking it out on the children. A child shouldn't have to suffer because a parent or a teacher is unhappy. I am afraid to say that children would ask as they came into my classroom, "Mr Reed what sort of mood are you in today?" It is worse than exasperating when parents inflict their own misery on their children.
Being inconsistent. A child will be enraged if he thinks he is punished for misbehaviour that other children have got away with. If favouritism is suspected so much the worse.
Even grown men, eminent football managers, get angry at a referees' inconsistencies.
Never giving reasons for saying, 'No'. When a child asks, "Why can't I?" it is not enough to reply, "Because I say so." If a pupil asked me why I prohibited paddling on field trips to the seaside I would give a reasonable answer: "Because, little Sammy, when children paddle they splash, when they splash someone eventually gets dumped in the water and before you can say, "Jack Robinson," everyone is soaked to the skin."
Showing dislike.
Comparing siblings. This invariably kindles great resentment. If you really want to upset your son say something like, "Your sister never needed telling twice to do the washing up." It rarely pays a teacher to say, "It is a pity you are not like your brother - he always did his homework."

Well that's probably enough to be going on with.

(b) Teach and train your children.

These go together. You can't have one without the other.

Parents must train children so that become disciplined. They have to be schooled to: accept authority, acquire self-control, habitually attend church, pray, keep Sunday special, give, visit and do practical jobs. Some of these are neglected. How many Christian parents encourage their teenage children to visit the sick and old or do practical jobs around the church or for the elderly? My mother encouraged me to visit the housebound while I was still in my teens - a ministry I have never neglected.

Parents should teach their children about the Old Testament characters and especially about Jesus - what he said and did.

This is the twin approach I adopted as a school teacher. I disciplined my pupils and imparted my subject. I inculcated good work habits and taught the facts and skills of Geography.

Christian parents should heed the words of R.W. Dale written in his 1883 commentary on Ephesians: Parents should care more for the loyalty of their children to Christ than for anything besides, more for this than their health, their intellectual vigour and brilliance, their material prosperity, their social position, their exemption from great sorrows and great misfortunes.

(3) Slaves, servants and employees.

Paul wrote for the benefit of household slaves. When applying Paul's words to the modern day we need to remember that the slave had no rights. He or she could be treated like a living tool. Not all were; conditions varied widely, but nonetheless the owner had the right to throw out slaves too old or ill to work and leave them to starve. So it is no good ignoring Paul's message because our work is menial, degrading, unrewarding and poorly paid. We are likely to be better off than most slaves.

Paul deals with:

(a) The employee's integrity. Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. v5.

The worker should obey orders with sincerity of heart. His integrity should be unimpeachable. The employee doesn't show willing, agree to get a job done and then in the absence of the employer take it easy. Tom Wright, in his commentary on Ephesians, describes his experience of working on a building site in his youth. The labour force took it easy during their working day to ensure having to do overtime. As soon as the overtime started they worked at a furious pace to get jobs that usually took them three hours done in one. Then the foreman cooked the books and put them down for three hours overtime. Duplicity and deceit all round. Employers have got round this today by putting men on piece time. Brickies are paid for the number of bricks they lay in a day.

The truth is that a Christian should undertake every task in his secular employment as if it was set by Jesus!

(b) The employee's motivation. Obey them not only to win their favour when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. v6.

There are plenty of employees who work hard when they are being inspected to make a good impression, to acquire a good reputation and to get on. There are at least a few bone idle teachers who during an Ofsted Inspection will prepare brilliant lessons and pull out all the stops to mightily impress the inspectors. It is a different matter when they are unobserved. Then these lazy teachers take it easy doing the minimum they can get away with. Mind you, it is not so easy now with the publication of league tables and the setting of targets.

Christians are told to do their secular work as if they were doing it for Jesus. His eye is always upon us! It is in the will of God that we give of our best. What a difference this should make. William Barclay wrote: The conviction of the Christian workman is that every single piece of work he produces must be good enough to show God.

If the Christian finds this difficult surely he should be able to do church work for Christ's sake. Sometimes I would spend hours preparing a sermon and my mother would remonstrate with me: "John, why work so hard, you are only speaking to a handful of simple souls." Well, it is not good enough to have a, 'that'll do,' mentality when serving Jesus. I can honestly say it makes no difference to me whether I am addressing 5 or 500, I will make the same effort in either case - to please the Lord.

(c) The employee's demeanour. Serve wholeheartedly as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.

Christians should work wholeheartedly at whatever job they are doing. Now I am a realist and I cannot say that I undertook all my tasks as a teacher enthusiastically, cheerfully or gladly. I found some jobs very tedious. There wasn't much joy marking Geography coursework or writing hundreds of reports. I cannot claim that I always thought that I was serving Jesus when I wrote reports. I did quite often think, "I'll be glad when I've finished." However, I worked hard at them, took a pride in them and did them to the very best of my ability. I did consider that anything less would be unbecoming in a Christian.

Our society would be transformed if everyone was a Christian and made their work an offering to God. There would be no more lazy teachers, profiteering plumbers, officious policemen, corrupt politicians, uncaring nurses or inefficient civil servants.

I like this passage in George Elliot's, 'Adam Bede,' about the reaction of a group of carpenters to knocking off time:

All hands worked on in silence for some minutes, until the church clock began to strike six. Before the first stroke had died away, Sandy Jim had loosed his plane and was reaching for his jacket; Wiry Ben had a screw half driven in, and thrown his screw-driver into his tool-basket; Mum Taft .... flung down his hammer as he was in the act of lifting it; and Seth, too, had straightened his back, and was putting out his hand towards his paper cap. Adam alone had gone on with his work as if nothing had happened. But observing the cessation of the tools he looked up, and said, in a tone of indignation,

"Look there, now! I can't abide to see men throw away their tools i' that way, the minute the clock begins to strike, as if they took no pleasure i' their work and was afraid o'doing a stroke too much."

If Paul teaches what he does about secular work how much more it applies to church work. If we are expected to work wholeheartedly in the world then it is abundantly clear God expects us to give our all for the church. Yet a great many Christians shirk their responsibilities to the church.

(4) Masters or employers.

There are two clear instructions to employers:

(a) Reward good workers. And masters, treat your slaves in the same way.

In other words, just as Jesus the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does so should the employer. Christian employers should:

Aim to pay as much as they can, not as little as they can get away with. John Lewis sets a good example by making its employees partners and giving them a share of the profits.
Ensure the best possible conditions in the work place. Health and safety regulations have been established by law because employers didn't care enough about these issues.
Put in place benefits and pension schemes. Christian employers should be better than the slave owners of Roman times who discarded slaves too old or sick to work. It is a terrible thing when a Christian employer has a reputation for ruthlessness and harshness among his employees. It is a scandal when the church is a poor employer! If a church does not pay its minister enough to invest in a house and private pension scheme it should do without. Many Grace Baptist ministers retired with no property and no private pension. They relied on Social Security, charities, their family or a compassionate Christian to cope. God did usually provide - against the odds!

(b) Do not threaten.

The Christian plantation owners in the southern states of the U.S.A. took little heed of this God given instruction. Many beat their slaves to make them work harder.

Paul says it is wrong to intimidate employees. The macho culture in some businesses today would be anathema to the little apostle. Jesus does not expect Christians to throw their weight around.

Paul reminds Christian employers that they and their Christian employees have the same Master. He has no favourites and there is no slave nor free with him. Perhaps what is even more to the point: the Christian employer and his Christian employees are brothers with the same Father in heaven.

Many years ago now my father was a Grace Baptist pastor who needed to supplement his income with secular employment. For a few years he worked for a Christian farmer called Stanley Sharpe. Mr Sharpe treated my father with respect as a fellow Christian and as a Baptist minister. My mother told me that during the short time my father worked for Stanley he left home in the mornings whistling happily. He faced a bicycle ride of 8 miles to get to work on an old, single gear bike but he didn't mind - he was working for someone who treated him as a Christian brother. It makes me sad to think about it because my father also laboured for years on a farm where he did not whistle on his way to work.

ANY COMMENTS FOR JOHN REED: E-mail jfmreed@talktalk.net

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