Ephesians 6:1 · World English Bible
Ephesians 6:1 Meaning Children
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
What does Ephesians 6:1 mean?
Household codes in that world addressed the father alone, who held legal power over his children. Here children are spoken to directly, which makes a child someone God addresses in person, not someone the father answers for.
From the Protestant reading below.
Ephesians 6:1 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Protestant
PROTESTANT
Protestant
Household codes in that world addressed the father alone, who held legal power over his children. Here children are spoken to directly, which makes a child someone God addresses in person, not someone the father answers for. The duty runs to mother as much as father.
Obeying in the Lord happens inside a child's own life with Christ, so a parent ordering what Christ forbids has no claim on it. Calling it right marks it as owed, matching the order God set for a household. So a child obeying answers God, who put that parent there.
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Protestant lens
Live Ephesians 6:1 today
- Call or text a parent today with no request in it, just to ask how their week actually went, and read the answer slowly instead of skimming it.
- The next time someone with authority over you asks for something small and inconvenient, do it without the sigh or the explanation of why you had a better plan.
- When a family conversation starts heating up, put the phone face down and let the other person finish a whole sentence before you answer.
Whose voice do I resist most, and what would it cost me to really listen once?
The same truth in other traditions
Confucius · Analects
He taught that care for parents is the root the rest of a person's character grows from, and it shows up in daily attentiveness rather than in grand gestures.
Taoism · Tao Te Ching
The Tao praises what yields and stays low, because softness outlasts hardness and the one who does not force gets further than the one who insists.
Buddhism · Sigalovada Sutta
The Buddha described family life as a set of mutual duties, children honoring parents and parents caring for children, each side owing something real to the other.
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