On Parenting and the 5th Commandment
Developing a Biblical Theology of Parenting from the 5th Commandment
Part 1: On the Duties of Parents
This will be a two-part series developing a biblical theology of parenting based on the 5th Commandment. In this first article, we will develop the duties of parents. In the second article, we will explore and develop the duties of children.
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. –Proverbs 22:6
Parenting is by far one of the most challenging, sanctifying, and therefore rewarding aspects of the Christian life. Man has been called by God to be fruitful and multiply, and yet we enter into marriage and then parenthood as if we have no clue as to what we are supposed to be doing in order to raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Fortunately, we are not left alone, we are given instructions, a guide, a map to help us navigate the perilous journey of parenthood. We are given the Law and the Gospel. We are given the Bible.
The Map—The Law of God
The law of God is given to us for our benefit and our good. Theologians have often referred to the ‘three-fold use’ of the law concerning its purpose and application to the Christian life. The law serves man as a mirror, a muzzle, and a map.
As a mirror, the law reflects to us the perfect righteousness and glory of our God. This is what theologians call the ‘pedagogical use’ of the law. The law teaches us about God as it reflects the perfection of God’s morality and character. However, at the same time, the law serves as a mirror to reflect to us the imperfection and sinfulness of our own nature. The law reveals to us that we have sinned, that we have transgressed the moral perfection that God requires and demands of us, and that we have fallen short of his glory. Paul says, ‘through the law comes knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:20) The law serves to reveal to us that we are sinners so that we would be led straight to Christ as our source of salvation. For the law itself cannot save, it merely serves to reveal the reality that we indeed need salvation. C.H. Spurgeon said, “As the sharp needle prepares the way for the thread, so the piercing law makes a way for the bright silver thread of divine grace.”[1]
As a muzzle, the law serves to restrain evil and sin within both the individual and society. This is what theologians call the ‘civil use’ of the law. The law with its threats of judgments and punishments serves to discourage people from sinning against God. Philip Graham Ryken writes, “the law has the power to encourage the fear of God, and at the same time to discourage any desire to sin against him. The law teaches that there is a great and mighty God who punishes people for their sins.”[2] For the Christian, the law serves as a deterrent, as it reveals to us what sin is, and because we desire to glorify God with our lives and be holy as he is holy, we strive to refrain from violating his commandments.
As a map, the law serves to guide Christian pilgrims on their journey to the Celestial City. This is what theologians call the ‘moral/normative use’ of the law. The law guides us in our conduct and leads us into good and God-glorifying works. The law shapes us and forms us into the image of Christ as it leads us and guides us in this Christian journey. As God’s children the law serves as our family’s code of conduct, it teaches us how to live and behave. As those who have been saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, we are called to live according to God’s perfect standard. The law instructs us in righteousness and teaches us how to love God and one another. Jesus himself said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” According to Jesus the keeping of the law is an expression of our love of Christ. In Romans 13:8-14, Paul argues that it is by keeping the law of God that we express our love towards one another. So, the law serves us well as it teaches us how to live this Christian life, how to love God, and how to love one another.
The 5th Commandment as a Map to Parenting
The 5th Commandment serves as a map that guides us in the parenting of our children. It leads us and teaches us what our duties are as parents. When we first read the 5th Commandment, we primarily take note of the duties of children, but when we give careful consideration to the commandment and God’s intentions in giving it, we also see that it has implications for parents.
The 5th Commandment reads,
Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. (Exodus 20:12)
The positioning of the 5th Commandment is instructional for us. We read in Exodus 31:18, “And he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.” When God gave to Moses the law written by the finger of God in stone, he gave to Moses two tablets. While God likely provided two copies due to the customary practice in establishing a covenant relationship, historically theologians have understood there to be a division of the commandments into two tables.
The first table consists of the first four commandments which govern man’s relationship with God and regulate man’s worship of God. The second table consists of the second six commandments which govern the way that man is to deal with fellow man. So, the first table teaches us to love God and the second table teaches us to love our neighbor.
There is some debate as to which table the 5th commandment should rightfully be on. This is because the 5th Commandment serves the purposes of both tables. It is purposed as a transitional commandment. As such, it establishes the household as the training ground for children to learn to obey the first four commandments and the second five commandments. With the 5th Commandment, God establishes the properly ordered household as the place where submission to authority is learned, where loving one’s neighbor is cultivated, and where the right and proper worship of God is taught and practiced.
God’s plan for a properly functioning society and church begins in the household. And rightly understanding this grounds us as parents in our proper function according to God’s design. As parents, the primary role that we are to play in the lives of our children is to teach them submission to proper authorities, to love others, and to love, obey, and worship God. This is what we are to be doing, cultivating these practices in the lives of our children. It is our calling and responsibility. It is our moral duty before God. And to abdicate this responsibility or to supplant it with ungodly worldly aspirations is to fail in the role of the parent. The law, serving as a map, guides us in this godly role of parenting our children.
The Duties of the Parents
While the duties of parents will necessarily include more than these three responsibilities, the parental duties can never be less than these three. Successful parenting will be determined by obedience to these three duties—teaching our children submission to proper authority, how to love their neighbors, and how to worship God.
For a more extensive list of the duties of parents towards their children consider the Westminster Larger Catechism’s question 129 and answer.
Q. 129. What is required of superiors towards their inferiors?
A. It is required of superiors, according to that power they receive from God, and that relation wherein they stand, to love, pray for, and bless their inferiors; to instruct, counsel, and admonish them; countenancing, commending, and rewarding such as do well; and discountenancing, reproving, and chastising such as do ill; protecting, and providing for them all things necessary for soul and body: and by grave, wise, holy, and exemplary carriage, to procure glory to God, honor to themselves, and so to preserve that authority which God hath put upon them.
The Duty to Teach Submission to Proper Authority
God has established the household as the training ground for learning to submit to proper authorities. It is the duty of the parents to teach their children proper submission to God, his Word, governing authorities, ecclesiastical authorities, and any other superior that God has or will providentially place over them. The parent does this by disciplining their children to both honor and obey their parents. It is rightly understood that the 5th Commandment extends beyond the household, but it establishes the household as the place where proper submission is learned.
The Westminster Larger Catechism understands this function of the household and asks,
Q. 124. Who are meant by father and mother in the fifth commandment?
A. By father and mother, in the fifth commandment, are meant, not only natural parents, but all superiors in age and gifts; and especially such as, by God’s ordinance, are over us in place of authority, whether in family, church, or commonwealth.
Father and mother are understood as the first and primary example of the superiors that God will place over a child throughout their lives. The parent is purposed by God to teach the child proper submission to proper authority.
An undisciplined child who cannot honor and obey even their parents will grow up to be a detriment to society, the church, and themselves. Augustine asks the question, “If anyone fails to honor his parents, is there anyone he will spare?” It’s a rhetorical question that emphasizes the importance of the 5th Commandment. The answer is, no! If a parent fails to discipline their children in the simplest and most basic practice of honoring and obeying their own father and mother, there is no expectation whatsoever that this child will grow and mature to submit themselves to the authority of God, his Word, the church, the governing civil authorities, or any other superior.
Our children are born sinners, just as we were, they don’t come out of the womb with a natural desire to submit and obey. This has to be nurtured through the loving discipline of loving parents. It is an act of love to discipline children. A failure to discipline exposes a significant deficiency in a parent’s love for their children. God has not called parents to be their children’s peer or their friends. He has called parents to raise their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
This discipline in the home prepares them for the world and it also prepares them for a proper relationship with God. For God as a loving Father disciplines his own children, for his glory and their good.
The author of Hebrews writes,
It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:7-11)
Our discipline of our children serves to prove to them that they are legitimately our children. That is, it proves to our children that we do indeed love them. It is a showing of affection. It singles them out as ours. I do not go around disciplining other people’s children, because they are not mine. I discipline my own children because they are legitimately mine. The act of discipline legitimizes them, it proves that I love them.
As disciplinarians, parents also serve as a type, a shadow however flawed, of our children’s heavenly Father. Our position is purposed to model the person and character of God for our children. In disciplining them and training them we are giving them a picture of God’s care and love for us. In disciplining our children we are preparing them for their relationship with their heavenly Father.
It would be unreasonable to rob our children of the discipline they need and crave. We live in a world of chaos and confusion today, and part of the reason is that we have raised at least two generations of undisciplined children who have grown up to wreak havoc on both society and the church.
This discipline must be pedagogical, punitive, and corrective. What I mean by this is that our discipline must include teaching. Our children are dependent upon us as parents to teach them why a certain behavior is sinful, wrong, or even correct. They must also be punished for their sinful behavior. At the same time, their parents must teach them the correct alternative to their sinful behavior.
Another point must be addressed. Parents must delineate between that which is sinful against God and that which is undesirable in the household. These things are often different. The goal of disciplining children is not to make a bunch of little legalists who grow up to be distorters of the Gospel. The purpose of discipline is godliness. (1 Timothy 4:7) Parents must shape godly behavior and desires in their children. Therefore, children need to be taught when their actions are sinful against God. These sinful actions need to be dealt with by showing them from the Scriptures how the child has violated the law of God, the severity of the consequences for the sinful action, and then shown the glorious grace of the Gospel. There can be no compromise on these issues, sin cannot be allowed or tolerated. However, there will be other household rules and expectations that are not necessarily sinful before God. Children need to be taught the difference, otherwise, the parent will cultivate legalism and confusion in the minds of their children.
For example, in our household, there is no alcohol allowed. It’s a household rule for anyone who stays in our house. My children have grown up in a house that has never had alcohol in it. However, we have been careful to teach them that alcohol consumption is not a sin, drunkenness is a sin. I have a friend who will not allow his daughter to have more than one ear piercing. He has been clear that having multiple ear piercings is in no way a violation of God’s law, but it is an expectation that while his daughter lives in his house, she will not have more than one piercing in each ear. You may not like either of these rules and that’s fine, you don’t have to live in our homes. The point is that there has been a proper delineation made in each house between which is sinful against God and which is undesirable behavior in the household.
Our goal as parents is to discipline to produce godliness in our children. Godliness that will reject the idolatrous extreme self-autonomy of our day and will understand the proper and orderly roles of authority and submission. This discipline will serve our children well as it will produce in them the ability to serve well in every aspect of their lives. A failure to discipline our children will breed chaos and confusion in their lives.
The Duty to Teach Love
Parents have the weighty moral responsibility to teach their children to love God (first table) and love their neighbor (second table). This is another reason why the 5th Commandment is placed where it is. It is in the household that the ability to love is forged.
Parents teach children how to love by loving them, by loving each other, and by loving God, the church, and their neighbors. We must remember that love is not a natural reality. Love is learned and it’s learned primarily by experience. As parents, we love because God first loved us. We are only capable of loving because God has first set his sovereign love upon us. Our children will only learn to love by experiencing love firsthand.
It’s helpful to think about it like this…
I love God.
But only because God first loved me.
I love my wife and kids.
But only because God first loved me.
I love my family, neighbor, and church family.
But only because God first loved me.
“We love because he first loved us.”—1 John 4:19
As we love our children, we are preparing them to receive the love of God the Father through Christ the Son as applied to them through God the Spirit. We are modeling for them the love of God. They need this modeled well for them. They need to have an example of love so that when God sets his love upon them they aren’t surprised and confused by his love. As a pastor, I have counseled many people who struggle to understand God as a loving Father because their earthly father has failed them so miserably. It’s heartbreaking and so unfortunate. Parents we must do better in loving our children.
One of the best ways to allow our children to experience love is by providing them with an example of love in marriage. Our children desperately need to see father and mother, husband and wife genuinely loving one another and sacrificing for the good of one another. They need to see their father loving their mother and they need to see their mother loving their father. Husbands should love their wives in such a way that their daughters want to marry a man like their father and wives should love their husbands in such a way that their sons want to marry a woman like their mother. Our children should desire to establish for themselves the same loving and nurturing household that they were raised in because they see its goodness and success. Children should not have to grow up desiring to create a household for themselves that is the opposite of what they were raised in because of the pain, abuse, and failure of their parents.
The most important relationship in our children’s life is the marriage of their parents. Even secular sociologists have long known that the number one indicator of the success of a child is having both biological father and mother married and living in the same home. Obviously, growing up in a broken home can be overcome, but it remains something that has to be overcome. Broken homes are a burden in a child’s life. Broken homes are outside the bounds of God’s design, they disrupt the natural place of the family that God establishes in the creation of marriage and the placement of the 5th commandment. Parents must fight for and defend their marriages for the sake of their children.
In the proper ordering of a family, the marriage always takes precedence over the children. This is for the good of the children. The relationship between a husband and a wife is a covenant relationship, therefore that relationship takes precedence over the individuals involved in the relationship—the husband, the wife, and therefore the children must serve to protect, defend, and grow the marriage relationship. In seeing their father and mother fight to protect their marriage, the children will be given a shining example of what love truly is.
This doesn’t mean they only experience a perfect marriage marked by nothing but happiness. That would be a fake and fabricated reality that wouldn’t prepare them for the real world ahead of them. They need to see sacrifice, repentance, forgiveness, and genuine concern for each other by their parents. This is love, a love forged through the fires of the trials and tribulations of life lived in a fallen world.
Parents also love their children by guarding and protecting them. We protect them from those who may desire to bring harm against them physically, but we also protect them from erroneous teaching and thinking that will bring harm against them spiritually and mentally. Children’s minds are malleable and not fully developed. They are easily tossed to and fro by every wind of teaching. They are easily confused. Because they have not developed the abilities to use reason, logic, and critical thinking parents must guard and protect them from the evils of this world. They must serve as the superior in authority and make the best decisions for their children. Protecting body, mind, and soul is love. It is loving for a parent to not allow their children to think and believe lies and falsehoods. It is the parents' duty to teach their children to obey the 1st and 2nd tables, and that necessarily includes guarding their minds against those things which seek to undermine God’s law.
Children will learn love as they see their parents living out the second table before them. As parents are seen to be valuing the sanctity of human life, remaining faithful to one another and not committing adultery, not stealing and unlawfully taking from others, being honest and not lying, and living content lives free from the idolatry of coveting, children will learn what loving others looks like. Understanding that love is learned through experience, our children need to see their parents also loving their neighbors, their community, and loving their church in everyday life.
While learning to love primarily takes place experientially, there remains the aspect of discipline and instruction. When our children fail to love properly, it is the duty of parents to correct their behavior. When their behavior towards their parents, siblings, friends, or neighbors is unloving they need to be taught why that behavior is unloving, and they need to be corrected and shown how to properly love. Our children are dependent upon their parents to show them love and to teach them love. It is the duty of parenting. Here, we also begin to see the overlapping nature of these duties, they all three require experience, instruction, and discipline.
The Duty to Teach the Proper Worship of God
The most important way that a parent loves their children is by teaching their children to love, worship, and serve God with all of their heart, mind, and soul. The primary duty of the parent is to teach their children to cherish and obey the first table of the law.
Again, the positioning of the 5th Commandment guides our understanding in this regard. God has established the household as the training ground for the correct and proper worship of God to be taught and established in the life of children. In a world where every aspect of the upbringing of our children has been outsourced to parties outside of the home, it is vitally important for parents to understand this reality. It is the primary responsibility of the parents to evangelize, disciple, and teach their children to properly worship God. This duty is not to be outsourced to the church, an elder body, a Sunday School class, a youth group, or any other means. While all of these things serve as a means of grace in the lives of our children, they will never make up for the lack of discipleship in the home. This is the most important responsibility of a parent—to teach their children to love and worship the One True Living God. The Bible is clear in its entirety that it is the purpose and responsibility of parents to disciple their children.
The Shema in the Old Testament reads,
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
The Proverbs say,
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction. (Proverbs 1:7)
Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching,
for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck. (Proverbs 1:8-9)My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding…Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path; (Proverbs 2:1-2;9)
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)
The Psalmist sings,
How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.” (Psalmist 119:9) It is the responsibility to teach young men and women the Word of God so that their way, their lives, can be guarded by it.
And the New Testament teaches,
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:1-4)
The first aspect of this training our children to love God is the evangelization of their souls. Parents must be ever holding the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ before their children. Explaining to them the nature of their sin and showing the great love and grace of God to be found in no other place than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. J.C. Ryle writes, “Train with this thought continually before your eyes--that the soul of your child is the first thing to be considered. Precious, no doubt, are these little ones in your eyes; but if you love them, think often of their souls. No interest should weigh with you so much as their eternal interests. No part of them should be so dear to you as that part that will never die. The world with all its glory shall pass away; the hills shall melt; the heavens shall be wrapped together as a scroll; the sun shall cease to shine. But the spirit that dwells in those little creatures, whom you love so well, shall outlive them all and whether in happiness or misery (to speak as a man) will depend on you.”[3] Ryle goes on to write, “He that has trained his children for heaven rather than for earth, for God rather than for man, is the parent who will be called wise in the end.”[4]
Beyond evangelizing their souls, parents play the primary discipleship role in the lives of their children. Parents must teach their children the Scriptures and sound doctrine. This can be accomplished by reading through the bible with them, the use of catechisms[5], reading books on doctrine and theology, and spending time in prayer with them. How parents chose to approach this task may vary, however, the responsibility cannot be forsaken. Whatever success we may have in this world, it will be worthless, if we fail in this primary task of discipling our children for the glory of God and their good.
Parents also bear the responsibility to teach children to properly worship God. This is accomplished primarily through three means. First, teaching children how to have their own time for private worship and devotion. Secondly, by parents regularly holding times of family worship in the home. This time doesn’t have to be overly stylized and structured; it can be as simple as a time of bible reading and prayer as a family. As children get older family worship may consist of singing, bible reading, prayer, confessional reading, and catechism training. However complex or simple, parents instill in their children the value of properly worshipping God by regularly holding times of family worship in the home. Thirdly, parents teach their children how to worship God by bringing them to corporate worship in the local church.
We are commanded by God in the Scriptures to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. (Hebrews 10:25) The corporate worship of the saints is the most important and valuable time of the week for both the parents and the children. It is the weekly opportunity to sit under the ordinary means of God’s grace and be sanctified in the faith. It is a time for the corporate worship of God and a time to be stirred up to good works and love by our brothers and sisters in Christ. The corporate gathering of the saints on the Lord’s Day is the closest experience to our heavenly reality that we have this side of heaven. It is the parents’ responsibility to teach their children the importance and value of this time. Parents must not allow travel ball, boating trips, hunting, fishing, laziness, or complacency to usurp the rightful position of this time in the lives of their children. It is our responsibility to teach our children to worship God in the way that God has prescribed in his Word.
The task and responsibilities of parents are never easy. We are sinners raising children who are also sinners. Both parents and children are in constant need of the grace of God in their lives. Let us recognize that it is a great means of God’s grace in our lives that he has not left us without any instructions or expectations. Let us praise God for giving us the law and the Gospel. We will fail daily in parenting but let us always be striving to be faithful to these duties.
A note to Fathers:
Fathers, the ultimate and final responsibility for the teaching of your children in these matters falls directly upon your shoulders. It is the responsibility of the father, as the head of his family, to ensure that his children are taught discipline, love, and how to worship God.
In Ephesians 5-6, in what is known as the household table, Paul quotes the 5th Commandment and then addresses fathers. He writes,
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “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.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:1-4)
Paul gives fathers a negative and positive instruction. Negatively, do not provoke your children to anger. This involves restraint on the part of the father. We are not to frustrate, belittle, or demean our children. Rather we are to exercise our authority in a balanced way that is purposed for their good and edification. Paul says a similar thing to fathers in Colossians, where he writes, “Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.” (Colossians 3:21) Fathers must discipline their children for their own good, but this discipline cannot be arbitrary and unkind, it must be rooted in the Scriptures so that the father does not embitter their children. Fathers, our goal is to produce godliness in our children. We must be restrained from doing anything that will hinder their growth in holiness.
Positively, Paul instructs fathers to raise their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. This instruction is based on the implications of the 5th Commandment. It serves as a reminder that the primary responsibility for the spiritual well-being of children falls upon the father. It is the father's responsibility to make sure that his children are raised according to the standards of God. It is the father's responsibility to provide his children with a loving example of godliness. It is the father’s responsibility to rightly apply the Word of God to the lives of his children. This does not by any means diminish the positive impact of the children’s mother. But it does however properly place the discipling of children directly on the shoulders of the one who is the head of the household, the father. It is the father who is responsible for the spiritual well-being of both his wife and his children. This responsibility is a burden that impacts every decision the father makes for his family.
Fathers, let there be no abdication of this responsibility in our lives. Let there be no dereliction of this duty on our part. For whatever success we may have in the raising of our children, if we as their earthly fathers fail to discipline our children, if we fail to teach them to love others, if we fail to disciple them in ways of God, if we fail to lead them to properly worship God, then we have failed them as their fathers. I know that language seems harsh, and none of us will be perfect, but let us repent of our complacency, trust wholly upon the grace of God in Christ, and let us strive to raise our children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. It is our calling and duty.
The very inquisitiveness of little ones affords their elders an opportunity to make known unto them the wonderful works of God that their minds may be informed and their hearts awed by His perfections. But note well, it is the father (the “head" of the home) upon whom the main responsibility devolves, to see to it that his children are taught by him the things of God (Eph. 6:4). Let him not pass on this task to his wife, still less to Sunday School teachers. -Arthur W. Pink
Grace to you,
Chase
[1] Charles Spurgeon. Parables and Miracles. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993.
[2] Ryken, Philip Graham. Written In Stone: The Ten Commandments and Today’s Moral Crisis. Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2003. Pg. 32
[3] Ryle, J.C. The Duties of Parents: Parenting Your Children God’s Way. Ichthus Publications, 2014. Pg. 17
[4] Ibid., 18
[5] For catechisms to use with your children consider The Baptist Catechism, Spurgeon’s Catechism, The Westminster Shorter Catechism, The New City Catechism
No sir. I have several articles I’m working on. The last six weeks have been very busy. (Youth trip to Louisville, covid, family vacation to Gatlinburg, pastors conference in Memphis, VBS at RBC) I plan to resume publishing next week. Thanks for checking in.
Did you decide to stop posting thought overflow?