In Ephesians 6:1-4, the Apostle Paul gives instructions to children and parents (particularly fathers):
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER (which is the first commandment with a promise), 3 SO THAT IT MAY BE WELL WITH YOU, AND THAT YOU MAY LIVE LONG ON THE EARTH. 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (NASB 1995)
Paul begins by commanding children to “obey” their parents, which shows he is addressing younger children in their parents’ household (as distinguished from the “honor” that even grown men and women owe their parents). Paul supports his command to children by quoting the Fifth Commandment (Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 5:16). He even includes the “promise” that obedience to this command leads to blessing—“so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth” (quoting from the Greek Septuagint). Paul then follows his comment to children with a command for fathers to not provoke but train their children in the Lord.
It is of great significance that Paul restates the Fifth Commandment for the new covenant church. While the commands in this passage are clear, there are also some conclusions related to covenant theology that “by good and necessary consequence may be deduced” (WCF 1.6). I will argue for the following four points.
(1) Ephesians 6 supports the practice of infant baptism.
Paul’s quotation of the Old Testament’s primary commandment for children assumes continuity between the old and new covenants. Although the Fifth Commandment in its original context of the Mosaic covenant spoke of long life in the “land” of Canaan (Exodus 20:12), Paul restated it with the assumption that this refers to long life wherever you are on the “earth” (Ephesians 6:3). (The Greek word γῆ, used in Ephesians 6:3 and Exodus 20:12 [LXX] can be translated as “land” or “earth.”) Paul’s restatement of the Fifth Commandment for the new covenant church shows continuity, and particularly the continuity of the law. When the law was first given to Israel, children were included in the covenant (Genesis 17), and there is no indication that the law can be given to such children if they are not in the covenant. In other words, the Fifth Commandment assumes covenant membership.
Yet there is further covenant language in this passage. Paul commands children to obey their parents “in the Lord” (Ephesians 6:1), and then he commands fathers to raise their children in the discipline “of the Lord” (6:4). Paul even applies the Fifth Commandment to all children without making distinctions, showing there is a sense in which the children hearing the letter (children of believers in the church) were part of the church. Children are addressed with commands with no mention of profession of faith. And since children were members of the old covenant, it is assumed they are also members of the new covenant. Of course, there is no mention of baptism here, but the point about covenant membership presumes baptism. This passage may not be determinative in the debate over infant baptism, but it certainly fits well with Presbyterian ecclesiology. We command our baptized covenant member children to obey their parents in the Lord. They have the legal status that binds them not only to natural law, but to God’s special revelation found in the Ten Commandments.
(2) Ephesians 6 supports the mandate for Christian education.
Duties carry with them corresponding rights. The pastor is duty-bound to preach to his flock, and this assumes the right of financial compensation. In the same way, a child is duty-bound to obey his parents, and this assumes the right of provision and being raised by his parents. In particular to a Christian child, this carries the right of Christian instruction. Thus, Paul commands children to “obey” their parents who are “in the Lord” (Ephesians 6:1) and follows by commanding fathers to “bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (6:4). These duties and rights go hand-in-hand. The father has the right to be obeyed, and thus it is the child’s duty to obey. The child has the right to be instructed, and thus it is the father’s duty to instruct.
As those duty-bound to obey their parents under the Fifth Commandment, Christian children are entitled to be brought up “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). It is a covenant entitlement and thus a covenant responsibility. It falls on both parents, but Ephesians 6:4 shows this duty primarily falls on “fathers.”[1] Men are to lead their families, and thus men are to ensure their families are doing regular family worship and that the children are receiving a Christian education. This means they must not receive an atheistic or non-theistic education in their youth, but covenant children must receive the training “of the Lord.” This is in continuity with the covenantal rights of children in the Mosaic covenant, seen in Deuteronomy 6:4-9:
Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons 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 up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
So we see here that the Great Commandment—the very command to love the Lord with our whole being—is followed by a command for parents to teach God’s words to their children. This is a great parental duty that must accompany the Christian child’s covenant membership.
(3) Ephesians 6 supports Sabbatarianism.
Paul freely quotes the Fifth Commandment as if it is binding upon the new covenant church. This even includes the annexed promise. If he can do this with the Fifth Commandment, on what basis could he not do this with the Fourth Commandment? It is true that the New Testament never restates the Fourth Commandment to keep the Sabbath holy. Yet it does restate the other nine commandments (e.g., Mark 10:19; Luke 18:20; Romans 13:9). The point then is that the New Testament—including Paul’s full quotation of the Fifth Commandment in Ephesians 6—shows that the Ten Commandments are still binding on the new covenant church. And if the Ten Commandments are still binding on the church, then this includes the Fourth Commandment:
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. (Exodus 20:8-10)
Now why did the New Testament not restate this Fourth Commandment like the others? I think the reason is that the Sabbath command is the one that does involve some change and is thus more complicated than the others. That is, Christ was raised on the first day of the week, and now we gather for public worship on the first instead of the seventh day. The Lord’s Day is the new covenant Sabbath day. I have written more on this subject (here and here), but Ephesians 6 should at least get us thinking with a covenantal framework that leads us towards Sabbatarianism. The Ten Commandments still apply to the Christian life.
(4) Ephesians 6 supports understanding the Mosaic covenant as part of the covenant of grace (and not a republication of the covenant of works).
Some Christians today have argued that the Mosaic covenant was “in some sense” a republication of the covenant of works (which was made with Adam in the garden). What is meant by this is not always clear, but at least some, following Meredith Kline, mean the following—the Mosaic covenant was substantially part of the covenant of grace but on the national-typological level was a covenant of works with Israel concerning the Land Promise. Now there are a number of problems with this, including that the covenant of works required perfect obedience and such perfection is not possible for fallen man. So tying the Land Promise with perfect obedience would mean Israel could not have possibly kept the land. (This is why some have tied the Land Promised with imperfect obedience, but that is not the covenant of works.) Since God’s Land Promise could not have been conditioned upon perfect obedience, then the Mosaic covenant was not a covenant of works in any sense.
However, there is also an argument against the republication view that arises from Ephesians 6:2-3. After quoting the Fifth Commandment to “Honor your father and mother,” Paul says this is “the first commandment with a promise” and then names the conditioned blessing as further encouragement to obey the Lord here—“so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth” (Ephesians 6:2-3). The “you” language is singular in both the Greek of Ephesians and the Hebrew of Exodus 20. So this promise for blessing in the land was certainly for the individual, but it still had application to the nation when there was largescale national obedience or disobedience.
This promise cannot be related to the covenant of works because this promise is found in both the Mosaic covenant and the new covenant. All agree that there is no republication of the covenant of works in the new covenant, and it therefore follows that there is also no republication of the covenant of works in the Mosaic covenant. Like the new covenant, the Mosaic covenant was purely a covenant of grace. And there are conditions of earthly blessing in both the old and new covenants (which included the Land Promise of the Mosaic covenant). These blessings are not merited but received by faith in Christ.
In restating the Fifth Commandment, the new covenant (part of the covenant of grace) restates the same command-promise paradigm as the Mosaic covenant. It follows that the new covenant and the Mosaic covenant are the same in substance (i.e., part of the covenant of grace). The Ten Commandments were foundational to the Mosaic covenant, and they continue to bind the new covenant church. The Fifth Commandment included a promise of earthly blessing (particularly in Canaan) conditioned upon obedience, and that promise of blessing (on earth) continues in the new covenant (Ephesians 6:3). As Calvin said in his commentary on this verse, “The promise is—a long life; from which we are led to understand that the present life is not to be overlooked among the gifts of God... Those who shew kindness to their parents from whom they derived life, are assured by God, that in this life it will be well with them.”
While the Fifth Commandment promise was long life, it was life in the Promised Land (“in the land,” Exodus 20:12). This undermines any claim that the Land Promise of the Mosaic covenant was tied with the covenant of works, for Israel’s temporal, earthly blessings were tied with faith and obedience. (And Israel was exiled for national apostasy that was evidenced by idolatry and Sabbath-breaking, seen in Deuteronomy 29:25-26; 31:16, 20; Jeremiah 11:10; 22:9.)
But this also undermines the antinomian approach to the new covenant (often tied with the republication view), which says there are no temporal blessings for the Christian’s obedience, or at least minimizes such blessings. Paul says that honoring our parents leads to blessing in this life. That was true for Old Testament Israel, and it is true for Christians today. Yet the opposite is also true, as dishonoring parents leads to judgment in this life. And largescale wickedness can lead to national judgment even today. As with all God’s commands, we seek to obey them by faith in Christ. God blesses obedience—in this life and the next.
[1] While οἱ πατέρες can refer to “parents” in general, as in Hebrews 11:23, the context here indicates Paul is addressing “fathers” in particular (as translated by the ESV, KJV, NASB 1995, and NET). As O’Brien notes, there is a change in wording to οἱ πατέρες in Ephesians 6:4 from τοῖς γονεῦσιν (“parents”) in 6:1, and “in both Graeco-Roman and Jewish writings, fathers were responsible for the education of their children.” Peter T. O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Eerdmans, 1999), 445. Two additional points may be added. First, Paul uses the word παιδείᾳ (“instruction”) in Ephesians 6:4, which is a word used four times in the context of a father’s obligation to “discipline” his son (Hebrews 12:5, 7, 8, 11). Second, Paul distinguishes between “father” and “mother” (τὸν πατέρα σου καὶ τὴν μητέρα) in Ephesians 6:2, using the singular πατέρα and then the plural πατέρες two verses later in 6:4. Paul could have mentioned fathers and mothers in 6:4 if he wanted, but he did not. Yet if Paul wanted to speak specifically to “fathers,” οἱ πατέρες was the phrase to use.
