Colossians 3:20 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Colossians 3:20

Comments

This of course is a reference to the fifth commandment. Who do we include under the term children? If you are 15 years old, you think it is everyone who is 14 and under. It certainly includes 18-year-olds, but really it means all living at home with parents.This is God addressing all children; telling them there is parental authority over them. These children may be the unconverted children of Christian parents, or they may even be converted children with non-Christian parents. Regardless, Scripture has a word for them, for all human beings are under God’s law, and the law addresses children in particular. Christian parents have a particular responsibility to nurture their children and that necessarily involves teaching the children what are the standards of God for their lives. The word of God puts very positively for the child’s encouragement: this is well pleasing to the Lord. The child should be motivated by a desire to please the Lord, and they should see that above and beyond the authority of their parents is the authority of God himself who has set parents over them. ‘All things’ does not quite include everything (Acts five), but it means the difficult as well as the easy things, for this is well pleasing. God delights in it. It is important for the child to learn to throw in his lot and energy to support of home. If as young people we do this, God sees we are walking humbly. He sees, there is that young person naturally wanting to spread their wings – there is a tension – but there is humility in that teenager which God desires and approves. You are a young person who is prepared to go along with all the rigours of nurturing in the home. But if the opposite is the case, then it is a mark of arrogance, and that is greatly to God’s distaste. It is good when a young person is capable of self-control. Others who have not been nurtured correctly cannot stand self-control, and that is a matter of great shame, for if we don’t master ourselves then we never cope with the hardships of life.

Application

Today it is unfashionable to speak about parents or teachers having authority, but this is the necessary framework which the Lord requires for the raising of children. To obey means to listen as a subordinate. The nature of this submission will of course vary with the age of the child. As the child gets older, listen becomes heed; as a young adult obey becomes pay attention to.

There is a heavy responsibility on parents to exercise authority in a special way. We have to be clear, authoritative. We have to teach the children to obey. Sometimes the parent will explain why the child is to obey, but it should not be necessary to justify every command. The child needs to learn to respect authority for its own sake, and to recognise that authority exists in life not just in the form of parents, but of teachers, employers, and governments. The teenager is likely to go wrong if he has never had to obey without having every command justified to him or her. The child needs to learn to be comfortable with authority.

Today many people seem to believe in letting children bring themselves up; parents have abandoned ship. If you don’t learn as teenagers to know your place, you will be a much weaker person. We have seen many Christians who could have done a lot for the Lord, but they had a fatal flaw: they never learned to knuckle under. They had gifts, but they were blighted by moods, or had no capacity to cope with knocks. Nine tenths of this training comes before we are 20. You can still express yourself, and be brimming with initiative, but you become a habitual rebel, resenting all framework. By grace these things can be put right, but it is a lot harder if we have not learnt to work in a team.

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Colossians 3:20 Commentary and Bible Study