Ephesians, Part 9 / Imitators of God / Ephesians 5:1-20
Imagine the first time these words were read aloud in a house church in first-century Ephesus.
There's a Roman father sitting on the floor. He's a recent convert. He still owns slaves. He's still working out what it means that Jesus is Lord. In his world, he holds absolute legal authority over his household—the power to punish, to imprison, even to decide whether a newborn lives. His wife has no legal standing at all.
And then the reader reaches verse 4: Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them.
His wife looks at him. His children look at him. And in the space of a single sentence, the gospel quietly rearranges his entire household.
That's what Ephesians 6:1–4 does. It's four verses—short enough to skim past—but it takes the most fundamental relationship most of us will ever be part of and reorders it around one thing: our relationship with Jesus.
And here's the honest starting place. You don't get to choose your kids. You don't get to choose your parents. But you absolutely get to choose how you show up in those relationships.
The most powerful evangelistic act you may ever perform in your home is apologizing to your child—because it teaches them, in a way no lecture ever could, that grace is real.
We Obey Because We Belong
"Children, obey your parents because you belong to the Lord, for this is the right thing to do." (Ephesians 6:1, NLT)
Look closely at how Paul addresses the children—because you belong to the Lord.
In that culture, children were essentially property. A father could do nearly anything he wanted with them. Paul had every cultural permission to lead with threat. Instead, he leads with belonging. You are His.
That's a completely different kind of obedience. Not the kind driven by fear of what happens if you don't. The kind that grows out of relationship. Sure, there's still a place for the parental look that means obey now—but that's not what Paul is after here. He's after something deeper. Kids can learn to obey because they understand they belong. You're part of this family, buddy. You're one of us. And in the same way, we love God back because we've grasped how much He loves us first.
There's an important boundary here too: obedience to parents must always align with obedience to Christ. If a child is ever asked to do something that conflicts with their faith in Jesus, Christ comes first.
Because the hard truth is that kids will figure out how to survive whatever situation they're placed in. They just want their parents to love them, and they'll adapt to make that happen—even in homes marked by addiction, cruelty, or self-absorption. That kind of obedience isn't what God intended for them, and it breaks His heart. So much of the pain in this world traces back to the sin of parents landing on their kids.
Now, let's be clear: none of us parent perfectly. Every one of us will mess up—that's different from doing harm, and there's no version of this where we get it all right. But whatever else we get wrong, we can lead with belonging.
Can you imagine being that first-century dad, hearing for the first time that your child has thoughts and feelings worth seeing and considering? That's how radical this is. Every part of this passage is about how we behave in our families because of our relationship with God.
My Behavior Reflects My Heart Toward God
"Honor your father and mother." This is the first commandment with a promise: "If you honor your father and mother, things will go well for you, and you will have a long life on the earth." (Ephesians 6:2–3, NLT)
Notice the shift. Children obey. Adults honor. The relationship changes as we grow, but the call doesn't disappear.
The word for honor means treating someone with respect, reverence, and kindness because of their place in your life. It's less about behavior and more about attitude and disposition. And here's the part that stings a little: we don't obey or honor because our parents are perfect. We do it because God asked us to.
That promise about long life deserves careful handling. It isn't an individual guarantee—it's a covenantal generalization. Honoring parents tends toward personal well-being and communal flourishing, but not every honoring child lives a long life. Consider Christ Himself, the perfectly honoring Son. The promise is genuine, but it's proverbial in form. And it's not merely about individual longevity—it's about communal stability. A society that honors its parents endures.
So what does honoring look like right now? For some of us, we're in the sandwich generation, caring for kids and aging parents at the same time, and honor looks like showing up in exhausting, unglamorous ways.
But some of you are asking a harder question: What if my parent was a terrible person? What if they still are? What if they're harmful?
Honor doesn't mean pretending harm didn't happen. It doesn't require access, and it never requires you to stay in danger. For many people, honoring a difficult parent is a forgiveness journey—one that unfolds slowly, often with the help of trusted people and sometimes a counselor. Parents do their best, but they don't always do it well, and God sees clearly what happened to you. Honor in those situations is less about restoring closeness and more about refusing to let bitterness define who you become.
My Job Is to Nurture Disciples
"Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord." (Ephesians 6:4, NLT)
Remember that Roman father on the floor. In his world, fatherhood meant absolute power. Paul takes that and reframes it entirely: authority that nurtures rather than crushes.
The home Paul describes isn't a place where the strong impose their will on the weak. It's a place where the strong limit themselves for the sake of forming the weak in grace. Scripture has understood for two thousand years what we've only recently put language to—that the way we treat our children shapes their capacity to receive the gospel.
So Paul redefines the goal. Our job isn't to control our kids. It's to nourish them in their relationship with the Lord—to cultivate their hunger for God and lead them toward Jesus. Christian parenting is a vocation of nurture, not domination.
There are two ditches on either side of this road. One is rigid control—obey all the way, right away—which too often leaves kids carrying trauma wrapped around the idea of God Himself. That's not what He asks of us. The other ditch is permissiveness, where there are no boundaries at all, which actually doesn't feel safe to a child. We don't want to fall off the horse in either direction. Honestly? The goal isn't even to stay on the horse. It's to be beside it, on our knees: God, help me do this well. Guide me.
Because the only reason any of us can parent well is that we have the ultimate loving Parent helping us.
Which leads to something counterintuitive: teach your kids that you don't have it all together. Let them see how completely reliant on God you are, so they learn to see that as strength rather than weakness. The most powerful evangelistic act you may ever perform in your home is apologizing to your child. That moment teaches them, in a way no lecture ever could, that grace is real—that the gospel actually works in skin and bone and broken pride. I am not the perfect authority. I am an authority, under the authority of Christ.
Practically, this looks smaller than you'd think. Tell your kid something you love about them—daily. Show gratitude out loud. Watch how you talk about other people, because your kids are listening from the back seat and learning what your family believes about how humans are treated. Paul already gave us the standard: "Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them" (Ephesians 4:29, NLT).
And it looks like weaving faith into ordinary life, the way Moses described: "Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up" (Deuteronomy 6:6–7, NLT). Not a lecture series. A running conversation.
Love your kids wildly. Give them the guardrails, then show them the grace. Parent for relationship. Draw your children to God through belonging.
Open Hands
Here's what most of us actually feel underneath all of this: powerlessness. We want the best for our kids so badly that fear creeps in, and fear makes us grip tighter—more control, more management, more anxiety—right when God is asking for open hands.
I can't do this on my own. That's true. And I don't have to.
So maybe the prayer this week is simply: God, grow my kids into everything You created them to be.
Share this with someone this week.
Almost everyone is somewhere in this passage—either as a parent trying not to repeat what they inherited, or as an adult child still working out what honor looks like from a distance. Send this to a mom or dad in the thick of it who needs to hear that imperfect parents can still lead with belonging. Or share it with a friend carrying a hard history with their own parents, who needs permission to hear that honor never requires staying in harm's way. Sometimes the most freeing thing someone can hear is that they don't have to have it all together to lead their family well.
What are you going to do about it?
Read Ephesians 6:1–4 slowly this week — once a day if you can. Notice that Paul doesn't lead with authority or threat; he leads with belonging. Then sit with two questions in your quiet time. First: What would my children say is the atmosphere of our home—grace, gentleness, and forgiveness modeled? Or anger, dominance, and fear? Second: What patterns from my own upbringing am I repeating in my home? If your parent was critical, notice whether criticism has become your default. Then pick one concrete step: tell your kid daily something you love about them, apologize for something you've been too proud to own, or simply pray with open hands, God, grow my kids into everything You created them to be.
About the Ephesians Series
God has always had a plan. The book of Ephesians reveals the incredible story of God’s plan to bring salvation to all people through Jesus Christ and unite them into one family. In this 13-week series, we’ll discover what it means to live with purpose as people who have been chosen, redeemed, and called by God. Along the way, we’ll explore how the Holy Spirit transforms our everyday relationships—with family, friends, the Church, and the world around us. Ephesians is an invitation to step into God’s greater story and live the kind of life we were created for.