Pauls's Epistle to the Ephesians
CHAPTER XXII.
THE PARENTAL RELATION - DUTY OF PARENTS TO CHILDREN.
"And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath; but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."
- EPH. vi. 4.

THE negative, or prohibitive, command, which here precedes the positive, stands alone in the parallel passage in Colossians, "Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged." It is almost as if the whole of parental duty were covered by it, or comprehended .in it. Evidently the apostle means to connect it emphatically with his strong and unqualified assertion of filial obligation. This is indicated by the connecting particle. On the one hand, it is said "Children, obey your parents in all things, in the Lord." "And," it is instantly added on the other hand "ye fathers," invested thus with such absolute authority, beware of using it so as to "provoke your children to wrath, whereby they may be discouraged."

Thus there is, as it were, an equitable counterpoise in a relation implying subjection and rule. The peremptory order to be subject is balanced by a counter-order to rule tenderly and not harshly. It is so put with reference to the marriage relation in Colossians, "Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them." And it is so put here with reference to the parental and filial tie. There is great wisdom and kindness in the arrangement. It is a needful warning against the abuse even of legitimate authority; apt to become irksome and intolerable. Still, it may be asked "Is the risk or danger, as regards the discharge of parental duty, in the line of such treatment as may provoke children to anger? Is it not rather all the other way?" So far at least as mothers are concerned, is there not hazard from treatment of the very opposite sort? However rough fathers may provoke, gentle mothers will caress and fondle. It is rough fathers therefore that are here addressed, and not mothers, who belong to the tenderer sex. So some would have it. But there is no warrant for this humorous conceit. The identity of oneness, as already taught, of husband and wife, precludes the idea. Mothers are embraced in the appeal; "And ye fathers." Their authority over the children is involved in and under that of their husbands. In point of fact, it is not true that fond female indulgence is, in this case, to be separated from masculine harshness and severity. It may, and often has, exactly the same effect. Nay, the more a child is treated as a favourite, whether by mother or by father - the more he is pampered and indulged - the more apt is he to be irritated and offended when his wishes are crossed; the more easily is he "provoked to anger." For the favouritism, the indulgence, on the part of the parent, is simply natural and wholly selfish. It is himself that he is gratifying when he covers his child's face with kisses; when he spares the rod of rebuke, and excuses faults, and smothers all offences in a weeping embrace of peace. And, moreover, that is not always his mode. The spoiled and privileged object of his partial affection presumes occasionally on his position. He becomes troublesome, unseasonably intrusive, pertinaciously persistent. The father or mother loses temper. Harsh dealing ensues. The child retires in indignant or desponding tears.

Ah! There is much in that thought. It is precisely what is suggested in Colossians, "lest they be discouraged." For that is not merely the motive, but the measure or limit, of this prohibitory enactment. Whatever mode of treatment tends to discourage children, is forbidden. For a child is easily discouraged; far more easily than many a parent, many a teacher or trainer, thinks. His mind and heart are very susceptible; very open to the influences to which they are subjected. And of all the results of mistake or mismanagement in his up-bringing this is the worst; his being discouraged; disheartened; having his courage, his heart, taken out of him; becoming timid and uncertain; weak and helplessly undecided; or wilful and wilfully capricious. There are many modes of parental discipline, or want of discipline, leading in these lines. But they may be best considered, perhaps, in.connection with the positive precept, to which I now proceed.

There are four particulars as to the parental training of children, suggested by the separate expressions that are used :
1. "Bring them up." The word is very wide, or rather long, in its usage here. It starts from the first entrance of the new-born babe into this world; his transfer from the mother's womb to the nurse's arms. It embraces all the nourishment he has in the maternal bosom. It covers the fond endearments of helpless infancy and childhood. It runs on through the house, the academy, the college - or whatever other means and appliances may be at hand - onwards to the stage of complete and perfect manhood. That is the upbringing here enjoined; beginning thus early; ending thus late. In this full sense and range, the parent is the upbringer of the child. From the child's birth to his maturity, the responsibility of this upbringing lies largely upon the parent.

2. This upbringing is, in the first instance, "nurture." The word is significant of outward culture or cultivation; and of all outward culture or cultivation. It takes in all that can be done in the way of fostering and guiding growth; by such pains- taking and kindly care as a gardener might bestow on the advancing progress, from day to day, of a favourite plant. The first drop of milk drawn from the mother's bosom forms part of this nurture; as does also the last act of the father's discipline, ere the child leaves the nursery and the school. All means and influences used, then and thereafter, to form the character, and mould the mind, and rouse the soul, constitute this nurture.

3. There is also in the bringing-up here enjoined, "admonition." The word points to a higher mode of the discharge of parental duty than the former. It assumes, as the result of "nurture," completed or in progress, the opening of the child's understanding and affections to such reasoning as might be addressed to a full-grown adult. It contemplates the child in course of becoming a man; and so capable of being dealt with by means of arguments and appeals addressed through his understanding to his conscience and his heart. He is to be admonished; warned; exhorted; expostulated with; as one having a mind of his own; entitled and able to judge for himself.

Thus, these two ways of training or bringing up, "nurture and admonition," differ from one another very much as childhood differs from incipient manhood. You do not attempt to govern a mere child through the medium of his own reason. You do not expect to carry his intelligent assent and approval along with you in all your treatment of him. You subject him to influences of another kind. You work upon him, as it were, by means of his natural instincts; his instinctive love and confidence toward you; his instinctive desire of pleasure and dread of pain. You win him by fond caresses; and occasionally, if need be, coerce him by the strong arm of force, or impose upon him the penalty of what he thinks good withheld, and the infliction of what he feels to be evil. But you do not stop to explain the meaning and grounds of your procedure. You simply aim at bringing him, by judicious kindness and salutary severity, into such a frame and habit of mind and character as meets your own views of what is best, and not his. You wait till he is a little older before you try the efficacy of the method of "admonition." Then, you invite and encourage him to exercise his own faculties. You take him into your counsels, and unfold and justify to him your plans. You consult him. You confer with him, and it may be, sometimes you defer to him. You bid him not merely hear, but consider, what you say. You desire the thing, whatever it is - whether it be a step in the line of departing from what is evil, or a movement in the direction of following after that which is good - you desire the thing to be done, not merely under your influence of favour or of fear, but because he himself sees that in itself it is the right thing to do.

Let it be noticed, however, concerning these two modes of upbringing, first, that you cannot so separate them as to say when the one should end and the other begin; nay, rather, secondly, that all through the time of the upbringing, they must to a large extent be plied and worked together. You cannot fix a time, the fifth or any other year of his age, at which nurture may be wholly dispensed with, and admonition alone relied on. For they are not incompatible with one another, or antagonistic to one another, but, on the contrary, quite consistent and co-operative powers. They can go together; and the more they go together the better - every way the better. The sooner you bring in the element of admonition into the nurture, the more pure and safe and efficacious will the nurture be. Yes ; and the farther you can carry the nurture into the admonition, the longer and-the more deeply will the admonition tell.

First; watch your little one from his very cradle. Mark the first dawn of intelligence in his brightening eye, and keen questioning gaze, and eager listening ear, as he lies on your breast, and you exchange with him fond childish prattle. Seize the first opportunity of trying to get him to understand you. Note the first sign of success in the attempt. Begin early, - at the very earliest symptoms of an intelligent response from him - begin to explain yourself to him. There is no risk, as some might think, of "the admonition" thus early tried making your child prematurely wise; not at least if it is subordinated to "the nurture," and enters into it and becomes part of it. There is no danger of the little man, early accustomed to be thus affectionately reasoned with, setting himself up to be a debater with you; questioning your ways and disputing your commands; no danger; not the least; if only you keep hold of him by those natural instinctive ties and cords by which God binds his heart to you, and by which you influence and mould his opening soul. No. He will yield all the more to your sweet and loving guidance, and the more willingly and lovingly consent to be led by you - even blindfold and dumb - the more he sees that you are ever ready, whenever you can, to satisfy and inform his mind. He feels with you the more, the more he finds that he sees with you as well.

And then, at the other stage of this process of upbringing - where admonition naturally and legitimately predominates over nurture - do not, 0 ye fathers, and especially ye mothers, do not, I beseech you, give up the nurture too soon! True, the character and manner of the nurture must in some respects be changed. You cannot caress and fondle, you cannot chastise and correct, that manly youth, all but six feet high - that blooming maiden of sweet sixteen - as you were wont to do some ten or a dozen years ago. They are now beyond the reach of means and appliances for your nurture of them, such as were available then. But they are not beyond the reach of the wise and holy and tender affection which moved and inspired it all And you have other means and appliances for bringing that nurturing affection to bear upon them still. They are growing to be men in understanding, and you must treat them accordingly as men; to be admonished, and not merely nursed. But if your nursing of them has been of the right sort, wise and holy and tender, they are children still to you in feeling. There is a soft place in the heart that your nursing hand, your nursing love, can still touch, and move, and melt to tears.

Ah! Thou fond mother, sending out thy son into life - launching him on the sea of this cold world's hardening cares and toils and trials; parting with him for far-off commerce, or the service of bloody war - see that he carries in his bosom, wherever he goes, sweet memories of home; of home influences; of home scenes; of home nurture. These may be blessed by God, not only to soothe him with a melancholy sadness in many an hour of sickness and sorrow and desolation, but to keep him true and loyal to the principles of his godly upbringing; true and loyal to the God he was taught to reverence and love, beneath a father's eye and beside a mother's knee.

4. The nurture and admonition in which you bring up your children are to be " of the Lord."
What does that mean? What does it imply?
Is it that they are to have the Lord as their object? That the training, having in it these two modes or methods, is to be all Godward? That it is of the Lord, in the sense of its being all planned and carried on with a view to the children becoming themselves the Lord's?

That is doubtless a great truth. And it may be held to be covered by this phrase, incidentally and imferentially. But it is not the direct import of the passage. Is it again that all this training is of the Lord, in the sense of its having the Lord as its source and origin; inasmuch as it is only when qualified and commissioned by the Lord that parents will undertake, or can conduct, the sort of education required?

That also is true ; but it is not the truth here inculcated. Nor is it enough to say that the education, in both its branches, of nurture and admonition, must be thoroughly pervaded and saturated by the Spirit of the Lord; imparting to it all - infusing into it all - the spiritual life which is of the Lord alone.

I take the words more literally; in the first instance at least. The nurture must be the Lord's own nurture. The admonition must be the Lord's own admonition. It must be the very nurture; the very admonition; which he himself uses, in bringing up the children, the little ones, whom the Father hath given him. For with respect to them, he is himself an educator, a trainer-up, a bringer-up, of children. And he educates them, trains them, and brings them up, by the twofold means of nurture and admonition ; nurture and admonition of a sort peculiarly his own.

Hence, first, when you who are a father are called to bring up your children in that very nurture and admonition of the Lord, it is plainly implied that you are to put yourself in his place, and consider yourself as acting for him, representing him and discharging his function in this whole matter. The nurture in which you bring up your children is not yours but his. The admonition is not yours but his. It is he who nourishes them, and not you. It is he who admonishes them, and not you. The nurture reaching them through you is not yours but the Lord's ; and so also always is the admonition. That is your real position in bringing up your children.

How solemn the thought! How great the responsibility! Consider it well. When, in the nurture of your child, you caress him, it is not you, but the Lord Christ who caresses him. When you smile on him, it is with Christ's own smile. When you frown upon him, it is Christ weeping over him. When you smite him, it is Christ who wields the rod. And so also, as regards the admonition. It is not so much by you for Christ, as by Christ in you, that it is given. He is the admonisher, and not you. The argument, the expostulation, the appeal, the entreaty, the weeping, is his far more than yours.

Ah! What would a Christian parent's training of his child be, if this, which is his real position, were thoroughly realised ? My nurture of him is to be identical with what the Lord's nurture of him, were he in my place, would be. And my admonition too! That is a high ideal. But let me make conscience of its being a reality. Let me deal with my child in the way of nurture and admonition, exactly as Christ would deal with him. Let my treatment of my child be what Christ's treatment of him would be. Let me see to it that whatever I do to my child is what Christ would do in my circumstances, and whatever I say to my child is what Christ would say. Let me apprehend and feel in this, as in every department of my life, that "it is not I who live, but Christ who liveth in me". Then may I have great and strong and high hope. It is in the Lord's nurture; it is in the Lord's admonition; that I seek and strive to bring up my child. The Lord will bless his own work. The Lord will hear my prayer for the child whom I try to bring up as he would himself bring him up, if he were in my position; if he did not honour me by letting the work be done by me, in his name and for his sake.

But, secondly, how am I to know what the Lord's nurture .and the Lord's admonition, with reference to my child, would be, were he undertaking the upbringing himself personally, instead of delegating it to me ? How otherwise than by my believing sense and experience of what the Lord's nurture and admonition are in his dealings directly with myself ? Is he, the Lord Jesus, bringing up me, as one of the children, the little ones, given to him by his Father? Is he training me up, for work and service now, for rest and glory soon, in the Father's kingdom and his own?

Nurture he employs: he "nourishes and cherishes the church as his own body." And the nurture is most loving and tender. Converted and become as a little child, he takes me in his arms and blesses me. He finds me in a desert land and in the waste howling wilderness; he leads me about; he instructs me, he keeps me as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings, so the Lord alone doth lead me. Gently does he lead me, carrying me as a lamb in his bosom. He hears my cry, and is not offended. He gives to me liberally, and upbraideth not. He heals my broken heart, and binds up my wounds. In all my affliction he is afflicted. He speaks to me a word in season when I am weary, and weeps with me when I weep. Nor is his nurture mere fond indulgence. He does not spare the rod. He visits me with seasonable and salutary chastening ; all the while pitying me as a father pitieth his children. Surely I may own that I have found his nurture of me very wise and good and kind.

And his admonition too, his manner of admonishing me - have I not had trial of that also? Do I not know something of what sort it is? He does not control or coerce me, as if, like the horse or the mule, I needed to be kept in with bit and bridle. He guides me with his eye. He gives me credit for watching every change in his countenance; catching every hint or indication of his will; and anticipating his command in my desire to do his pleasure. He treats me, not as a mere servant who knows not what his lord does, and must obey in utter ignorance whatever order may be issued ; but as a friend, whom he takes into his confidence, and makes familiar with his ways. He puts me on the same footing with himself in the Father's house, that my obedience may be like his. Thus gracious is his admonition; his manner of admonishing me; putting me in mind of duty, and putting me on the best footing and in the best mood for its discharge. Nor is it less faithful than it is gracious. In his providence, by his word and Spirit, he admonishes me of danger, of backsliding, of sinful unbelief. He deals with me as he did with the Asiatic churches ; not sparing me ; but not leaving me without encouragement. He breaks my slumber. He summons me to repent and do the first works. He gives me assurance of new pardon, and new life, and new sanctification.

But why need I enlarge? You yourselves experimentally know "the nurture and admonition of the Lord" in his treatment and training of you. And what is wanted is that you bring the whole spirit of it, as well as the whole manner of it, into your treatment and training of your children. Bring them up as the Lord is bringing you up. Apply fully and faithfully to your dealing with them all the principles which, as you know and feel, must inspire and regulate the Lord's dealing with you. Educate them as you would wish the Lord to educate you; as you know and feel that the Lord is educating you. Take as your model, in bringing up your children, the Lord's way of bringing up you. Get into the heart, the very heart, of his method of nurture and admonition. Get more of that nurture and admonition yourselves; dwelling in his bosom; growing up into him; learning of him; beholding his glory, and being changed into his image. Then come forth, bearing his image, shining in the beauty of his holiness, loving as he loves you ; and seek to make your children - like yourselves, shall I say ? Yes! And like the Lord! - " bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."

Let three observations close this discourse.
I. Returning to the first clause of the text, - and the negative or prohibitive form in which parental duty is there enjoined -"Provoke not your children to wrath" or "Provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged" - you may see what is your best and only security against so great an evil. It is to be found in the positive or preceptive form; that is, in your "bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord". For the risk lies in your "bringing them up in a nurture and admonition of your own. You have your own way of dealing with them, in the line of nurture and admonition. It may be a way on which you have hit, after much anxious parental thought. It may be fair in itself; and you may resolve fairly to abide by it. But it is your own; and you abide by it as your own. And you are yourselves inconstant; and in your application of it your way becomes inconstant. Incoherency comes in, and vacillation; fitfulness and caprice; than which nothing can be so irritating or provoking to your children. You mean to treat them kindly and equitably. You have a high ideal of what your kind and equitable treatment of them ought to be. But it is yours merely; your nurture; your admonition. You hold the reins; you guide the eager steeds; on a well-devised plan of your own. But what are you in such a capacity as that? An infantile wail, the cry of a spoiled boyhood or girlhood, breaks down your cold and cut-and-dry purpose of measured relaxation or unrelenting hardness. Or a defiant challenge brings you at once to a humiliating stand. So such risk is run if you make conscience of its being in the Lord's nurture and admonition, and not your own, that you bring up your children. For then, and thus, the element of caprice is excluded ; the caprice which is inseparable from mere human will.

Enlightened it may be, that will of mine; resolute it may be; in the determination on my part of what my training of nurture and admonition for my child is to be. But it is fond and fickle; apt to be swayed by partial leanings and partial predilections. It is only when I regard, and in so far as I regard, the nurture as not mine but the Lord's; and the admonition as not mine but the Lord's; that I can hope to make my child feel it all to be reasonable and right - reasonable and right, as being not my own, but the Lord's, Only thus can I prevent what is so sore and common an evil; the sight of a child growing up in a well-ordered home, a Christian home, yet growing up with broken spirits, sullen temper, disheartened, discouraged, open to be swayed by flattery or fear, accustomed to reserve, prone to equivocal and evasive ways.

0 fathers, beware of that sulky eye, that look of suppressed indignation, those tears of wounded feeling, that painful pathetic glance, which marks a secret sense of wrong, and an unsatisfied craving for redress. "Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, lest they be discouraged". And that you may be safe from the risk of so provoking them, see that you make conscience of "bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord".

II. How happy and hopeful should the bringing up of your children be, if it is to be identified, as I have shown, with his bringing up of you. You bring them up as you believe, and in your experience feel, that the Lord is bringing up you; in the same sort of nurture, in the same sort of admonition. It is a high and sacred function, involving deep, sacred responsibility. To transfer to the sphere of your fellowship with your children, the spirit, the essential spirit, of God's fellowship with you; to feel towards them as the Lord feels towards you; to act towards them as the Lord, in his providence and by his Spirit, acts towards you; thus to ascend into the heart of the Lord, and apprehend, so far as it can be apprehended, how that heart opens itself, and acts itself out, in wise and holy love towards you; and then to have your hearts exercised with the same kind of love towards your children, and to let it come out in the same kind of way - that is a great attainment. But it is very blessed. It infuses into all your treatment of your children a calm, serene, equable, uniformity of affection, far removed from anything like favouritism or partiality; safe also from the agitations of a soul apt to be swayed by passing influences and circumstances; always consistent, always the same; - such as can scarcely fail, with God's help and blessing, to fix the giddiest temper and command the most wayward and wilful heart. Working on thus, patiently and steadily, in the training of your children, you may hope to see them loving and honouring you with that pure esteem and perfect confidence and warm regard with which you seek to love and honour the Lord. Nor need you fear lest such a sort of training should make your relation to your children, and your intercourse with them, too solemn and stiff, gloomy and constrained. That is not the character of the Lord's dealings with you, and yours with him, if you are on a right footing with him; coming boldly to his throne, with a reverential yet confidential familiarity; going in and out in his house; walking with him as your Father and your friend. So let your children walk with you; in all the simplicity of mutual unreservedness and love.

III. All this, however, implies on your part a very watchful study and observation of the Lord's manner of nurture and admonition in his training of his children generally, and especially of yourself. Acquaint yourself well with the principles of his educational plan. Acquaint yourself still better with the practical working out of his plan. Submit yourself to his training. Read and learn in his school. Welcome his embrace, and feel his arms around you. Consent to his chastening you. Accept his rebuke. Kiss his rod. Know thus personally and experimentally, more and more, what it is to be brought up as children by the Lord in his own nurture and his own admonition.

Alas for you, if you know nothing of this divine upbringing ! Alas for you as fathers, and for your children! Alas for you as men! You can conceive of no other manner of dealing with you on the Lord's part, but only the way of arbitrary severity, or the way of weak indulgence. You can but deal with your children after the like fashion, alternating, vibrating, oscillating between facile fondness and passionate harshness! For their sake, for your own sake, I beseech you, brother, to let God show you a more excellent way.
Go To Chapter Twenty-Three

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