40 Days Blog - Day 12
Ephesians 6:1-9 - More Instructions for Christian Households
Promises, promises! Marriage vows can, perhaps, be summed up in three compound words, company, compassion and compromise. Company literally means ‘with bread’ but has come to mean togetherness (the inference of sharing meals together should not be lost). Compassion literally means ‘with suffering’, married couples commit to each other for better or for worse. And compromise literally means, you guessed it, ‘with promise’. Marriage is a covenant based on promises, which will inevitably involve compromise. Of course, there is no promise that children will be forthcoming, but in today’s reading here they are.
Paul refers to the Fifth Commandment (“
Honour your father and mother….”) as the first commandment with promise; the promise being that life will be good and long. That’s some promise; is it possible to think of someone for whom this was not the case?
The account in
Luke 2:41-52 is a case in point: the twelve-year-old Jesus shows little regard for the feelings of His parents (though the identity of His ‘father’ is the real issue) as He takes His leave of them to spend three days in the Temple. We then read that He was submissive to them after this episode. Yet the promise of the Fifth Commandment appears not to have been fulfilled in His life, which did not last long and did not go well for Him. Of course, it should be said that the promise of Heaven is a better promise than long life on earth.
Nevertheless, the importance of Paul’s instruction to children is seen in the placing of the Fifth Commandment before murder and adultery: when love and respect are not on display and where there is lack of discipline in the home, society in general starts to degrade rapidly.
God made humankind straightforward, but he has devised many schemes (
Ecclesiastes 7:29). Faith may be seen as a journey back into childhood, learning to become dependent and trusting; a journey from duplicity to simplicity, from complicity to purity (
Matthew 18:3). Faithfulness, however, is about growing up, becoming trustworthy and dependable, which brings us to Paul’s instruction to ‘slaves’.
At the time Paul was writing, slaves were part of the household in a way which we would find unacceptable today, so it is perhaps best to think ‘workplace’ when we read these verses.
Yesterday (at the time of writing), Robert Jenrick defected to Reform, which coincided with the eighth episode of Traitors airing on the TV; enough said! The fourth series of Traitors has not been lacking in duplicity, deceit and people pretending to be what they are not, which is of course the general idea. Paul warns against ‘eyeservice’ (v6), being respectful and diligent when under the watchful eye of the master, but at other times being a slacker; or in a word, ‘duplicitous.’ He commends sincerity (what you see is what you get! (
v5)), not as people-pleasers, but out of a desire to please the Lord; His eye is upon us.
A Prayer
Faithful God, Your promises are like the layers of pitch on Noah’s ark, making it watertight. As a child of God, help me to become more trusting and respectful; as a servant of God, help me become more faithful and trustworthy. Remind me every day that Your loving eyes are upon me.
Amen.
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