Our culture does not like authority. It is not just that we do not like to be under authority, we do not like being authorities. One of the places where this is most clearly seen is in our discomfort with authority in the home. We need a biblical understanding of authority. Questions abound. What is the nature of the parent’s authority over a child? Is it absolute or relative? Is the authority vested in the parent because of the relative size difference between parents and young children? Are we in charge because we are smarter and more experienced? Are we called to rule because we are not sinners and they are? Do we have the right to tell our kids to do anything we want them to do?
If you do not answer questions such as these, you will be tentative and insecure in discharging your duty to God and to your children. If you are unsure about the nature and extent of your authority, your children will suffer greatly. They will never know what to expect from you because the ground rules will be constantly changing. They will never learn the absolutes and principles of God’s Word that alone teach wisdom.
Parents in our culture often improvise because they do not understand the biblical mandate to shepherd children. Parenting goals are often no more noble than immediate comfort and convenience. When parents require obedience because they feel under pressure, obedience of children is reduced to parental convenience. Christian parents must have a clear understanding of godly parenting and children must be trained that God calls them to obey always.
As a parent you have authority because God calls you to be an authority in your child’s life. You have the authority to act on behalf of God. As a father or mother, you do not exercise rule over your jurisdiction, but over God’s. You act at His command. You discharge a duty that He has given. You may not try to shape the lives of your children as pleases you but pleases Him.
All you do in your task as a parent must be done from this point of view. You must undertake all your instruction, your care and nurture, your correction and discipline because God has called you to. You act with the conviction that He has charged you to act on His behalf. In Genesis 18:19, “For I have chosen him (Abraham), so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the ways of the Lord by doing what is right and just . . .” Abraham is on God’s errand. He is performing a task on God’s agenda. God has called him to these things. He is not freelancing. Abraham does not write his own job description. God defines the task. Abraham acts in God’s behalf.
Deuteronomy 6 underscores this view of parental responsibility. In verse 2, God says His goal is for Israel and their children and grandchildren to fear the Lord by keeping His decrees. The person by whom God’s decrees are passed on is the parent whom God calls to train his children when they sit at home, when they walk by the road, when they lie down and when they rise up. God has an objective. He wants one generation to follow another in His ways. God accomplishes this objective through the agency of parental instruction
Ephesians 6:4 commands you to bring your children up in the training and instruction of the Lord. This is not simply a command to train and instruct. It is a command to provide the training and instruction of the Lord to function in God’s behalf. Our right to exercise authority at home is tied to what God has called us to do and not based on our own agenda.