Ephesians 6:1 – Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
The Bible is clear that young children are supposed to listen to and obey both their mother and father. This is necessary because the world is a dangerous place, children lack wisdom, and God has assigned the parents to protect, train, and raise the child to become a responsibly functioning adult.
While the Bible is clear on the role of parents to evangelize their child, who is a sinner by nature who needs Jesus Christ for salvation, and then disciple that child to live in obedience to the Scriptures by the power of the Holy Spirit, the primary influences in child-rearing in culture have been altogether wrong.
For example, Dr. Spock was an American pediatrician and very liberal political activist whose book Baby and Child Care became one of the best-selling books of the twentieth century with 50 million copies sold by his death in 1998. Spock denied that children have a sin nature and, rather than correction and instruction, they need freedom and confidence. This led to generations of children whose parents acted like peers rather than parents and kids who had a high self-esteem but foolish and self-destructive lives.
Admittedly, the parents are imperfect like their child, which means that parenting is humbling. Any honest parent will tell you that raising a child was like taking a class in character where the learning was happening every moment of every day. No child can raise themselves, and even a wonderful child still needs a functional parent. Even Jesus, who was the world’s only sinless and perfect child, needed parents and obeyed them, even though they were sinful and imperfect adults.
How can Jesus’ parents be a good example for you as a parent?
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