Christ Church

Fathers & Mothers

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INTRODUCTION

The US Congress recently introduced the rules for their new legislative session. They struck gendered familial terminology (i.e. father, mother, son, daughter, etc.) from the House’s rules for legislators. The recent events of our nation reveal our void of fathers and mothers. This is just one more effort by the godless to further erode the biblical structure for families.

THE TEXTS

“For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named” (Eph. 3:14-15).

“But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all” (Gal. 4:26).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXTS

When we think about Fatherhood and Motherhood we need to sweep out the clutter. These roles are not optional add-ons which you can discuss with the dealership. They aren’t social constructs which support the oppression of victims. They aren’t the evolutionary development of our species ability to babble some sounds and then linking them with our immediate ancestors. They aren’t interchangeable parts of machinery.

Your father and mother are earthly shadows of cosmic realities. God is your Father, the Church is your Mother. That is the evident in these two texts from the pen of Paul.

In Ephesians 3:14-15, Paul bends his knee to God the Father; every family derives its name from God’s Fatherhood. You don’t have family without fatherhood, and you don’t have any of it without God the Father and Creator. In Greek, you can’t say family (patria) without saying father (patera). In other words, God’s Fatherhood fills the world and fills our earthly families as the inescapable reality. In Him we live and move and have our being.

Furthermore, God has taken a bride for His Son, our Lord Jesus, and she is our Mother. Paul, while making the case that we are delivered from the bondage to sin which the mosaic Law revealed, he uses the imagery of Hagar and Sarah. Two mothers: one a slave, one a free-woman. Which one is your mother? Mother Kirk is a fertile mother, because she is marked by grace and thus life springs from her; whereas Hagar (the bond-woman/Sinai), brings bondage and death (Gal. 4:26).

CHILDREN OF PROMISE

Children who grow up without parents or with unmarried parents are faced with a deck of statistics stacked against them. With few exceptions, their lifetime income is significantly lower; their education level will not go as high; their likelihood of being abused and then abusing in turn shoots through the roof; their prospects are bleak by almost every metric. Children were not intended to exist in a covenantal void. Scripture is concerned with bastard children, which is why it placed heavy penalties on rape, pre-marital sex, and adultery (Cf. Lev. 18), as well as provision for the care of fatherless children (Deu. 16:11, Ps. 68:5).

So, if you are a father or mother, you must not think of your duty as being in a separate container from your marriage vows, and the consummation of those vows. You are a husband and a wife first. The potency of this covenantal love produces children. Your children are children of a promise, even as believers the whole family are children of the Promise.

COVENANT DUTY OF FATHERS AND MOTHERS

So Fathers are first husbands which are called to be faithful to their promise of loving and cherishing. Mothers are first wives which are called to faithfully fulfill their vow to submit and obey.

A father which exhibits for his children that he doesn’t beam with delight over their mother (Is. 62:5), isn’t attentive to her (1 Pt. 3:7), doesn’t shower her with love (1 Ti. 5:8) will teach them to railroad her (Pro. 10:1). Husbands love their wives practically by full bank accounts, full cupboards, full closets, and full wombs.

Mothers which run down their husband in front of the kids (2 Sam. 16-23), swerving the opposite direction he is leading (Eph. 5:22), or criticizing his leadership at every turn (Pro 21:19) is teaching her children to be lawless rebels. Wives respect their husbands by bearing his name, and being his glory; she demonstrates this respect practically by not being an indecipherable code to get into, but by being ready for him and responding to him in all spheres of their relations (sexually, directionally, financially).

Lazy, inattentive husbands and bitter, nagging wives are teaching the children more than just how to be unpleasant humans. A sin-riddled marriage is presenting a false Gospel, and marred understanding of God the Father, Christ the Son, and His Bride.

It’s vital that we see that Fathers and Mothers are cosmic categories. Husbands show their children how Christ laid down his life for the church. Wives show their children what joyful obedience to Christ should be. Not only are you teaching them about Fatherhood and Motherhood, but also the glorious Gospel of sacrificial love, responded to in joyful response.

COVERED IN SAWDUST & FLOUR

These covenantal duties are not pie-in-the-sky intangibles. Rather, these spiritual duties are earthy, and are covered in sawdust and flour.

In Scripture, fathers name; a fathers’ word carry great weight. Fathers provide and protect. Fathers represent God to their families and their families to God. Father’s correct and teach. Fathers sacrifice and intercede. Fathers rule and lead. Fathers head their home.

Mothers respond to this headship by being fruitful. Indeed without the Father, she cannot bear fruit. As the one who bears and nurtures new humans she is to be held in high honor. They are to be fountains of the sort of wisdom which might be worn proudly around the neck of their offspring (Pr. 1:8-9). They are to be industrious, and laugh at all the troubles which are around the bend (Pro. 31:25). Mothers give glorified life and nourishment that is provided by the Father.

ADOPTED AS JOINT-HEIRS WITH CHRIST

In Reformed theology we generally emphasize justification and sanctification. We blast through the mega-phone that you are not saved by your works of righteousness, you are justified in God’s sight only because of Christ’s righteousness and death in your place. We exhort each other to holiness and growth in sanctification because God has set us apart to be a holy people. But we must not gloss over the fact that one of the terms which is frequently included in NT descriptions of salvation is adoption (Gal 4:4-7).

>God the Father, by the redeeming work of His Son, has delivered you from bondage to the law of sin and death. This isn’t like one cruel slave-master defeating another cruel slave-master, and your just caught in the crossfire. Rather, Paul tells us that you are no more a servant, but a son. In other words, you now have a share in the inheritance which belongs to Christ Jesus: resurrection life, everlasting joy, unending glory. You have been adopted as sons. Your Father in Heaven has given to Mother Kirk the Bread of Life and the Wine of Relief, and she has spread a table for the nourishment of her children. The children of grace and glory.

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Training Up Children

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INTRODUCTION

One of the great mistakes of parenting is to get the stages of parenting backwards. When children are young, they need significant guidance and discipline and a very narrow, black and white path. But as children grow older, they need to internalize and love the standards and exercising them for themselves. Another name for this process is discipleship in Christ.

THE TEXT

“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6).

WHAT IS THE WAY?

The “way” a child should go is the way of obedience to Christ. When he is old, when he goes to college or gets married that is the path we want our children to remain on. How must we obey Christ? We must obey Him right away, all the way, and cheerfully all our days because He loved us first (1 Jn. 4:19, 5:2-3). “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (Eph. 6:1). “In the Lord” means to obey your parents because of what the Lord has done and in the same way you would obey Jesus. This is similar to the command given to servants, “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ” (Eph. 6:5). Slow obedience is not obedience. Fussing and complaining obedience is not obedience. Arguing and eye rolling are not compatible with obedience. Partial obedience is not obedience. Having to be told more than once is not obedience. Obedience coerced from counting to various numbers is not obedience. Obedience resulting from threats of discipline is not obedience. This is because obedience is love. Cheerful, prompt, and thorough obedience is not only possible but makes for a very pleasant home.

TRAINING UP

Training is primarily a matter of practice. When a pile of third graders show up for their first football practice in the history of ever, the coaches do not expect the boys to know how to play football. Likewise, parents need to remember that these little people just arrived on this planet, and that is why they act the way they do. They really do need to be taught and reminded a lot, especially when they’re very young. The fact that they need to be taught about everything is a design feature, not a bug. And parents must be obedient to that command – prompt, cheerful, and thorough – in teaching their children: “And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Dt. 6:7). Parenting is a full-time job, and it happens all day long, everywhere you go (and sometimes throughout the night, “when thou liest down”). This element of training includes lots of talking and lots of practice. To return to the sports analogy, you do not merely talk about the game and then go to your first game. You talk about it, and then you practice, then correct and talk more, then practice more. So too parents must talk a lot and prepare their kids for the game of life. What will they face today, tomorrow, or next week? What temptations will they face in the grocery store, when friends or cousins come over, at dinner time or bed time or at the birthday party or school? Teach and practice for them all. This is love. Love prepares. Role play lots. If you suddenly require your 3 year old to say hello or thank you to the strange dinner guest, have you prepared them to run that play? Same thing goes for church. Practice obedience regularly, and do everything you can to make practice a joy. Lavish high praise, high fives, and candy.

WHEN THEY ARE YOUNG

When children are young, they do not know the way. There is a sense in which they do not know the difference between good and evil, how to go out or how to come in (e.g. Is. 7:16, 1 Kgs. 3:7). And therefore, they must be taught. While you wouldn’t know it from most Disney movies, the hearts of children are not repositories of wisdom and knowledge. “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him” (Prov. 22:15). Therefore, the opinions, wishes, and feelings of young children need to be formed and informed, and not really given the time of day. How they feel about bed time, nap time, what’s for dinner, what to wear, who their friends are — are all opinions which need to be given to them. For the first ten or so years of a child’s life, he or she needs to live in a benevolent totalitarian dictatorship. It should be full of love and joy and laughter and hugs and a very a small, well-defined world, full of black and white. Do not ask a five year old how they think that makes you feel. The justly administered spanking is teaching him exactly how he should feel, and besides, your feelings are not the standard.

LEARNING TO RIDE A BIKE

Many parents will probably have the opportunity to help one or more of their kids learn how to ride their first bike. Lessons begin with lots of hovering and holding the bike upright, and you can feel the bike wavering back and forth. But as your child begins to learn how to peddle and balance, you begin loosening your grip, and you need to do that so that they can begin to feel the sensation of the bike’s motion and begin controlling the balance for themselves. Finally, at some point, you begin letting go. Maybe for only a few seconds at a time, but eventually you let go completely. That’s what Christian parenting should be like: lots of hovering in the beginning, then slowly loosening your grip with slight corrections, and by sometime in high school, you really should let go. Another way to describe this same process is internalizing the standard. What you were providing (balance/momentum) in the beginning is what they have to internalize for themselves in order to remain on the path of obedience. The Bible describes this process of internalizing God’s standards as coming to love them. “And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart” (Dt. 6:5-6). Far too often parents get this backwards: they give far too much freedom in the early years and then when things start looking wobbly in middle school, they begin trying to clamp down, often resulting in collisions.

CONCLUSION

The Bible teaches that the law of God is sweet (Ps. 19:10). Obedience is like chocolate cake, like milk and cookies, like frosted donuts, like candy. When God gave the Ten Commandments, He prefaced them with, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt…” (Ex. 20:1). God’s standards are the standards of freedom. We get to worship God alone, keep Sabbath, honor authorities, defend marriage, etc. We love because He loved us first. Loving little ones means lots of training when they are young, so that when they are old they do not depart from that love.

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