You must be in fellowship prior to your Bible study, so that the spiritual information you receive can become a source, of blessing to your soul and produce spiritual growth.
1 Children,
obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. NASB
The husband is the head of the home and is commanded to love his wife as Christ loves the church. Love here is based on principle, and therefore the husband is the driving force for the principles of truth within the family.
The wife is commanded to submit to her husband, which establishes the principle of authority and respect which too is commanded of the wife.
Now, the children are commanded to obey their parents. Obedience here means to listen, to be attentive, to heed, to hearken, and thus to follow instruction.
It is presumed here that the parents are knowledgeable in life and thus have the wisdom to lead and to teach their children in the ways of the world and of life and especially of doctrine, which ties all of life together, making everything clear and understandable and discernible.
Children, is a reference to those who are living under the roof of their parents. Those children who have grown up and are off on their own, again, presumably learned what they have needed to learn and are thus prepared to lead their own families.
One of the objectives of the family, is to raise their children such that while they are under authority and responsibility to their parents, will soon learn to be independent from their family and able to function autonomously in life apart from their parents.
And so it is with the spiritual life.
God raises us all up in doctrine, so that we are not only complete, but so that we will be independent from the entrapments of this world, but so too that we will be able to live autonomously from this world, looking to God alone for guidance and safety in faith.
Likewise, the parents have been successful when their children grow up and are able to live life and function independently from them. They make their own decisions, they fall, they get up, they forge ahead with their own plans and goals and discover for themselves the purpose that God has designed for them personally.
This is right, means just that. There is but one way to live life and that is in accordance with doctrine.
For through doctrine all things come to us from God, and life comes to us in a phenomenal way, even beyond our imagination.
Bible doctrine is the foundation for all of existence, authority is the structure that promotes growth and containment within reality, and obedience is the discipline that leads us to great accomplishment.
