The Duties of Parents toward Children

It does: “Fathers, do not drive your children to anger, but nurture them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph 6:4; see Q360). The commandment of honor runs in both directions, for the Apostle sets the two duties side by side in the same breath (Eph 6:1–4; Col 3:20–21; see Q490, Q530), and authority over children is given as a stewardship, not a possession: children are “a heritage from the LORD” (Psa 127:3; see Q569), entrusted to parents by the Giver, who will require them again. The parental duty is therefore twofold. Negatively, nothing that crushes: “do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged” (Col 3:21), no harshness, injustice, favoritism (Gen 37:3–4, with its bitter fruit), broken promises, or contempt, for a child’s heart wounded by a father learns with difficulty to trust the Father in heaven. Positively, everything that builds: provision for their needs, since “if any one does not provide for his own family, he has disowned the faith” (1Ti 5:8; 2Co 12:14, “children ought not to lay up for their parents, but parents for their children”; see Q442, Q551); loving discipline, measured and never cruel, “for the LORD disciplines him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights” (Prv 3:12; Heb 12:7–11; see Q429); and above all instruction in the faith, the duty the Scriptures press most insistently: “these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deu 6:6–7); “train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prv 22:6; see Q292). The parents are the child’s first catechists and the home his first church: from Timothy’s mother and grandmother came the “sincere faith” that dwelt in him from childhood, when “from infancy, you have known the Holy Scriptures” (2Ti 1:5; 3:15). St John Chrysostom, who wrote a whole treatise on the raising of children, states the weight of the charge: parents are entrusted with the fashioning of “wondrous statues for God”, not adorning them with gold, but forming Christ in them, and warns that to neglect a child’s soul while laboring for his fortune is to care for the shoe and let the foot rot: “raising children is not a matter of nature but of neglect or diligence; consider that we have within our walls athletes for God in training” (St John Chrysostom, On Vainglory and the Right Way for Parents to Bring Up Their Children; cf. Homily 21 on Ephesians; see Q011, Q017). Parents who so raise their children render to God his heritage with increase; and their reward is the Scripture’s portrait of the righteous man: “his children will be mighty in the land… blessed” after him (Psa 112:2), and the joy of the Apostle made their own: “no greater joy can I have than this, to hear that my children follow the truth” (3Jo 4).