As a young Christian adult, you’re at a unique point in your life: no longer a child but either newly married or just stepping out on your own. Your relationship with your parents is changing. The next few posts will consider God’s desire for this new relationship.
Honoring parents is one of the 10 commandments presented in Exodus 20. We are no longer under Old Testament law, but we follow the OT laws which are repeated for us in the New Testament. This one is repeated in Ephesians 6. Finding answers for all the possible scenarios in the lives of young adults requires more than a brief reflection, but we’ll touch the highlights in this post and the following two.
In the interest of reviewing what your relationship with your parents should have looked like in the past, first consider the instruction in Colossians 3:20 and Ephesians 6:1 for children to obey their parents. This is a continuation of a principle of social structure laid out in the Old Testament. Obedience to parents usually doesn’t come naturally to children, so God clarifies its importance in these two passages. Society works better when adults rather than children are making the big decisions. 2 Timothy 3’s description of the “last days” of which we’re a part includes a reference to disobedient children. As with most of the adjectives in this list, this disobedience by children is one of the symptoms as well as a partial cause of the other descriptors.
Questions arise about specifics of the application of this instruction, however. One consideration relates to how far to carry the obedience. Consider Scriptural guidelines for several other authority situations: government (Romans 13:1-7), work bosses (Ephesians 6:5-8), and spiritual leadership (Hebrews 13:17). In all of these, Christians are supposed to recognize their position as being under the leadership. However, in none of these is the authority more important than God. Peter very clearly states in Acts 5:29, “’We must obey God rather than men.’” In fact, even in the Old Testament, the children of Israel were instructed by the prophet Ezekiel to disobey their unfaithful fathers: “And I said to their children in the wilderness, Do not walk in the statutes of your fathers, nor keep their rules, nor defile yourselves with their idols”(Ezekiel 20:18). Obedience to any earthly authority is required only as far as that authority does not ask you to do something contrary to God’s Word. If your boss asks you to rob a bank, guess what—you’re not supposed to obey her. More specific to our discussion, however, is that if a parent asks a child to do something morally wrong, the child obeys God rather than the parent.
A second important consideration in a discussion of your relationship with your parents is the definition of a “child.” Time periods and different cultures and societies view this differently, but if we want to obey Scripture we need to determine whether there is an end to a person’s classification as a child and when that is.
The account of Jesus in Luke 2 gives some insight here. The purpose of the passage isn’t instruction in child/parent relationships, so we can’t say that we have a directive in Luke 2; but the real-life situation provides an example to consider. In verse 40 we read of a young Jesus: “And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him.” In the next verses, we read that a 12-year-old Jesus and his parents traveled to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. When his parents left Jerusalem, Jesus was not with them. Apparently he had already achieved a degree of responsibility and trustworthiness with his parents because they didn’t realize he wasn’t in the group until they had traveled a full day. A 3-year-old in any culture wouldn’t be awarded such liberty, but a godly young person’s path to independence will probably happen gradually.
When Mary and Joseph became aware that Jesus was not with their group, they were alarmed and turned back to Jerusalem. Eventually they found him in the temple, amazing everyone with his knowledge and understanding. In so many words, Mary’s response to Jesus resembled your own mother’s probable response in a similar situation: How could you do this to me? His response was, “’Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’”(49). He was not disrespecting his parents; they knew from before his birth that he was the Son of God, and verse 40’s description of Jesus indicates qualities his earthly parents would have picked up on. At this unique juncture in time, Jesus had a duty to his heavenly Father which superseded any duty to his earthly father. We see here that obedience to God led Jesus to do something which his earthly parents weren’t happy about. However, lest we think that 12-year-olds should make all their own decisions, Luke writes of Jesus in verse 51, “And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them.” The perfect Christ-child was submissive to his parents; yet, even as a 12-year-old, he recognized that his ultimate authority was his heavenly Father.
The next reflection will consider more guidance on how the progression from child to adult affects your relationship with your parents.
Reflection 1 in a series of 3