The Spirit-filled children

"Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.  HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER (which is the first commandment with a promise), SO THAT IT MAY BE WELL WITH YOU, AND THAT YOU MAY LIVE LONG ON THE EARTH" (Ephesians 6:1-3).

Sometimes ago, I have heard on CNN Internet News that three women who had been missing for ten years have been rescued.  A man named Charles Ramsey, who was waiting for food ordered at a fast food restaurant in Cleveland, Ohio, said he heard a woman’s screams and the sound of hitting the door.  He rushed to the front porch of the house and broke the door and rescued one of the three kidnapped women named Amanda Berry.  Then she ran out to go to the neighborhood and report to the police.  As a result, the police rescued two other women and one child.  And the man in his 50s who kidnapped them was arrested by the police and imprisoned in jail.  The mother of another woman named Gina DeJesus who had been missing for 10 years said to reporters as follow when she went to the hospital to see her daughter: ‘In my gut feeling, I knew that my daughter was alive’, ‘I never gave up’.  And the parents who have been looking for their daughter for 10 years have been delighted that they received the best gift for Mother's Day (Internet).

                What is the best gift we, the parents, have received?  Of course, the best gift we receive from God is Jesus Christ and the eternal life, the gift of God’s grace in Jesus Christ.  Besides this gift, I think that the best gift we have received from God on this earth is our children.  In particular, as we are told in Ephesians 6:1-3, when our children practice the biblical ‘Hyo’(filial duties) in their homes, making us happy and making our home heaven, then we cannot but regard our children as the best gift.  Then what is the biblical ‘Hyo’(filial duties)?  The Biblical ‘Hyo’ is being saved by believing in Jesus Christ, and living according to the Word of God as God’s children who are filled with the Holy Spirit.  ‘The Hyo is not Hyo that is without serving God, and the faith that is without parental honor is a dead faith’ (Internet).

In this era, when the families are collapsing, we must keep our homes with the sense of divine calling and the sense of duty.  In order to do so, we must learn Biblical Hyo (filial duties).  The reason is because it is the key in keeping the family.  I want to meditate on Ephesians 6:1-3 and think about the biblical Hyo (filial duties).  I hope and pray that our children will be filled with the Holy Spirit and will obey the Word of God.  In Ephesian 6:1-3, the Bible teaches our children two lessons of God.

                First, the children must obey their parents in the Lord.

Look at Ephesians 6:1 – “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.”  Let me ask the parents.  How do you feel when your children don’t listen to you at all?  Aren’t you upset?  The children who are obedient to their parents are "good children," but disobedient children are "bad children."  The parents bless the good children, stroke their head and give anything they want, but advise, reproach the bad children and pray for their change.  That prayer is offered with sad heart.  The parent’s prayer, ‘Lord, please change my child,’ is done with aching heart.  Thus, the children who disobey their parents are the children who make their parents sad.  The children's disobedience brings deep dark shadows to the parent’s hearts (Internet).  Let me ask the children.  Are you obeying your parents?  

The command that God is giving to the children in Ephesians 6:1 is to "obey your parents in the Lord."  Here he word 'obey' in Greek means ‘to listen under’.  In other words, in relationship to their parents, the children must know their position and be quick to listen humbly (cf. Jam. 1:19).  This is what Pastor Yong Soo Hyun said in his book, ‘IQ is the father’s share and EQ is the mother’s share’: ‘It is of utmost importance that children receive training in the home to acknowledge the authority of the father and to obey his authority.  These trained children readily acknowledge and obey the authority of God.’  In order for the children to obey their parents, the biblical authority of the father must be restored in the family.  Here, the role of mother is very important.  In other words, the mother should show her children that she is acknowledging her husband’s authority by obeying him in the Lord.  In doing so, her children will learn to acknowledge and obey their father’s authority.

                The children should obey their parents “in the Lord” (Eph. 6:1).  What does it mean?  In general, we understand this as the opposite of 'outside the Lord'.  Therefore, we think that the children can choose to obey like there are things that the children must obey their parents and things that they don’t need to.  For example, when the parent commands something that is not biblical, we tend to think that we don’t have to obey our parents because it is not right in the Lord.  However, Pastor Dong Won Lee interpreted this phrase “in the Lord” as ‘if you are in the Lord ', 'if you have become a new creature in Christ ', or 'if your life has changed after you have believed in Jesus'.  So he said, 'If we have become new creation in Christ (if our lives have changed after we believed in Jesus) we must be more obedient to our parents.  In fact, this is what the Bible Colossians 3:20 says: “Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord.”  Why should the children obey their parents in the Lord?  It is because this is the right (Eph. 6:1).  This is because it pleases the Lord (Col. 3:20).  This means that obeying parents is not conditional and depend on how the children feel.  The children should obey their parents because the Bible says that that is right thing to do.

Second and last, the children should honor their parents.

Look at Ephesians 6:2-3: “HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER (which is the first commandment with a promise), SO THAT IT MAY BE WELL WITH YOU, AND THAT YOU MAY LIVE LONG ON THE EARTH.”  Let me ask the parents.  If you ask your children, 'Who is your most respected person?', how would you feel if they say ‘I respect my parents the most than anyone in the world'?  If we look at Matthew 15:1-9, we see Jesus talking to the Pharisees and teachers of the law who were religious leaders at the time of Jesus.  Then the Pharisees and teachers of the law treated their parents with this thought: “…  if a man says to his father or mother, 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,' he is not to ‘honor his father’ with it.  …” (vv. 5-6).  In other words, they said that they didn’t need to honor their parents by giving a gift to them if they honor God by offering a gift to God.  This was the tradition of the elders at that time.  To these Pharisees and teachers of the law who put emphasis on the tradition of the elders, Jesus said, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?”

                How can we say we honor the Father in heaven, whom we cannot see, without honoring our physical parents whom we can see?  Look at 1 John 4:20 – “If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.”  To us Apostle Paul said in 1 Timothy 5:8, “But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” 

Then why does Paul say to honor our parents?  The reason is because it is the first commandment with promise (Eph. 6:2).  There are two views to this “the first commandment with promise”: (1) The first view is Protestant’s position in which the Ten Commandments are written in two stones: First to fourth commandments are written in the first stone and Fifth to tenth commandments are written in the second stone.  First to fourth commandment is the commandment in the relationship between God and man, and firth to tenth commandment is the commandment in the relationship between man and man.  The first emphasis in the commandment in the relationship between man and man is to honor your parents. So this is the first commandment.  (2) The second view is that this is the only commandment with the promise of blessing added among the Ten Commandments, so it is the first commandment with promise.  Then what is the "promise" that Paul was talking about here?  Look at Ephesians 6:3 – “SO THAT IT MAY BE WELL WITH YOU, AND THAT YOU MAY LIVE LONG ON THE EARTH.”  Here, “it may be well with you” meant mostly material blessings in the Old Testament.  But as we come to the New Testament, the concept of this blessing changes, emphasizing spiritual blessings.  And the phrase “and that you may live long on the earth” is a promise that God will give us the blessings of long life when we obey and honor our parents.

One day in the Korean Chosun Newspaper, there was a sad story about a mother.  The title of the article was ‘[Today is Mother's Day]  Ah!  Mother …  When a truck was about to hit the back of her disabled daughter, she pushed her daughter and she got hit instead and died’ (Internet).  The mother (37 years old) was taking her 9 years old daughter with severe mental retardation to the place where the school bus comes.  When both the mother and her daughter almost crossed the crosswalk a 25-ton dump truck was coming toward them and didn’t stop even though it was the red light.  One of the people who witnessed the scene said that the dump truck suddenly appeared and the mother pushed her daughter who was with her and she got hit directly by the truck.  The daughter is being treated at a nearby hospital because the truck wheel rushing on her left leg.  The police said her injury is serious enough to require the he leg to be cut off.  Mother Bae has never missed a day in taking her daughter, who is in the fourth grade of special schools for disabled students, to the bus riding place from when her daughter was in first grade.  A school official said, ‘The mother was very thoughtful that she always took care of her daughter at the school bus riding place.’  The Korean hymn “Precious Love, the Love of Mother”, the first verse: “.Precious love, the love of mother, Broad and deep be-yond all praise!  Precious love, it stirs my spirit Gives me glad-ness all my days. Mother prayed when I was weeping, Made my sorrows all her own; And when I was glad and smiling Sang her praises at the Throne” (Internet).