The Nurture and Admonition of the Lord

God has so ordered the home that children render obedience and honour, and fathers render the Lord’s own nurture and admonition; where either part fails, the household fails with it.

“And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4).

The Orphaned Child with Both Parents in the Room

Walk through the yards of any town in late summer and you can read the gardeners off the trees. Here is a young fruit tree tied to its stake with a strip of old cloth, loose enough that the trunk still works against the wind. In the next yard is a tree that was tied with wire. The wire has been on it three seasons now, the trunk has swollen around it, and that scar will be on the tree the day somebody cuts it down. In the third yard is a tree that was never staked at all. It leans at forty degrees with half its roots lifted clear of the ground, and one more squall will lay it over for good.

Two of those three trees were neglected, not one; yet only one of them looks neglected. The man who tied the wire and walked off congratulated himself on being firm, rather than admitting his cruelty. The man who never staked anything congratulated himself on letting nature take its course, rather than providing support. Both of them will be cutting up firewood in a few years. The tie must be loose enough to let the trunk labor against the weather, because that resistance thickens the fiber; it must be firm enough to keep a hard squall from uprooting the whole root system. True cultivation requires patient judgment, not unthinking neglect.

Now walk into a house where the father is present only as the treasurer and the chauffeur. He funds the enterprise and drives its members to their appointments, but he never governs the soul of his house. Nobody shows the child where the channel runs; his own appetites set the course, and everyone else adjusts around him. That child is not free; he is abandoned. Look closely and you will find the anxious eyes of a boy who has searched his whole small world for a wall to lean on and found nothing solid anywhere. He has not been liberated by indulgence, but enslaved by neglect. He is an orphaned child with both parents sitting in the room.

Paul, writing from a Roman prison, gives us the mind of God for the home. He had called the saints to walk worthy of their calling (Ephesians 4:1) and commanded them to be filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), and then he traced that Spirit-filled walk straight through the front door of the house: wives and husbands, children and fathers, servants and masters. I intend to demonstrate that the household order in this passage rests upon two fundamental duties and two divine instruments, and that the Spirit-filled life is not proved in the sanctuary, but demonstrated at the supper table.

The Child’s Part: Obedience and Honour

Notice first to whom the Spirit of God speaks: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right” (Ephesians 6:1). God addresses the children directly. He does not route the message through the parents, which reveals His expectation for the local assembly: He expects children to be present when the Bible is read, and He expects them to hear and answer for themselves. Young person, that verse is God speaking directly to your conscience, not a memorandum to your mother about your conduct.

The command carries a divine qualifier, “in the Lord.” A child’s obedience is rendered as service unto Christ, not as mere compliance to house rules. When a boy answers his mother’s call immediately, he is serving the Lord; when he answers sullenly or delays his response, his rebellion is not only against his mother, but against God who placed her over him. And the ground of the command is absolute: “for this is right.” It is right not because modern culture approves it, for our culture promotes rebellion rather than reverence. It is right because God built the moral universe on this foundation. The parallel passage in Colossians confirms the principle: “Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord” (Colossians 3:20). Solomon pressed the identical duty upon the youth of Israel: “My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother” (Proverbs 1:8).

Consider the majesty of this command. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself stooped to obey earthly parents. At twelve years old in the temple He astonished the learned doctors with His understanding, yet the record states that He “came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them” (Luke 2:51). The eternal Creator of heaven and earth placed Himself in subjection to a humble carpenter and his wife. No child will ever possess wisdom so great, or gifts so remarkable, that he outgrows the duty to obey his parents.

Then the commandment goes deeper: “Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;)” (Ephesians 6:2). Obedience is an outward act, but honour is an inward disposition. Obedience belongs to the years of childhood and ends when a man establishes his own home; honour belongs to every age of life and never expires while parents draw breath. A man of fifty is out from under his father’s roof, yet he remains under God’s command to honour that father.

That is why the Lord Jesus rebuked the Pharisees when they used religious vows to avoid supporting their aging parents: “Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition” (Mark 7:13). And that is why Paul instructed Timothy that Christian children must “learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents” (1 Timothy 5:4). True piety begins at home, not on a public platform. The fifth commandment follows a man through every decade of life: into the hospital room, beside the nursing home bed, and across the family table.

The Father’s Restraint: Provoke Not

Now the Spirit of God addresses the head of the house: “And, ye fathers.” God places the spiritual weight of the home upon the shoulders of the father. Mothers labor faithfully in the nursery and the kitchen; Timothy’s unfeigned faith was nurtured by his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice (2 Timothy 1:5). Yet when God assigns final accountability for the governance and spiritual destiny of the home, He calls the man by name.

The first word spoken to the father is not a command to act, but a solemn restraint: “provoke not your children to wrath.” Before God tells a father what he must do, He tells him what he must stop doing. The companion epistle explains the danger: “Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged” (Colossians 3:21).

A father provokes his children in four distinct ways.

First, he provokes by harshness: demanding absolute perfection while offering no affection, ruling by fear rather than governing by love.

Second, he provokes by instability: enforcing strict rules on Monday and permitting total lawlessness on Tuesday, leading the child to conclude that righteousness depends on his father’s mood, not on God’s truth.

Third, he provokes by hypocrisy: demanding solemn reverence at church while exhibiting vulgarity and anger at home, showing that his religion is a performance for men, not a reality before God.

Fourth, he provokes by partiality, which the Bible exposes in the home of the patriarchs: “And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison: but Rebekah loved Jacob” (Genesis 25:28). That favoritism produced bitter harvest: deceit between brothers, threats of murder, and a mother who sent her favored son into exile and never looked upon his face again. A father who favors one child over another has already planted the seed of wrath, whether he speaks a harsh word or remains silent.

Children provoked by an overbearing father fall into one of two ruins. Some blaze into open rebellion; they become defiant adversaries who reject all authority. Others sink into silent despair; they conclude that their father can never be pleased, cease trying to earn his approval, and eventually view God with the same hopeless dread. Authority without tenderness produces an ash heap, not a holy home; and an ash heap is noticed only when the fire has gone out.

Nurture Builds, Admonition Warns

The verse rises from a negative restraint to an active charge: “but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” The phrase “bring them up” describes patient, steady cultivation over eighteen years; it cannot be delegated to a Christian school, surrendered to a youth program, or abandoned to an electronic screen. God provides two specific instruments for this work, and the Bible defines both.

First, nurture. Nurture is systematic training through loving discipline and continuous instruction. Hebrews shows us the heavenly pattern in God’s own fatherhood: “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Hebrews 12:6). Note that carefully: in the household of God, chastening is the supreme evidence of love, not the contradiction of it. Earthly fathers often chasten “after their own pleasure,” reacting in momentary temper to an inconvenience; God chastens “for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.” This divine standard condemns the angry outbursts that occur behind closed doors. Solomon declared the necessity of biblical discipline: “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes” (Proverbs 13:24); and again: “The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame” (Proverbs 29:15).

Yet nurture is far more than physical correction; it is spiritual saturation. Consider the pattern God gave to Israel: “And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deuteronomy 6:7). This is not an occasional lecture, but constant spiritual conversation: at the morning breakfast table, in the truck between chores, and at the bedside at night. Nurture feeds the soul daily; it cannot be accomplished in haste.

Second, admonition. The Authorized Version uses the noun admonition three times, and its other occurrences establish its meaning with precision. Concerning the historical judgments of Israel in the wilderness, Paul writes: “they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come” (1 Corinthians 10:11). Admonition is direct warning drawn from the Bible; God recorded those wilderness graves so that we would not follow the same path of disobedience. In Titus, Paul commands that an unrepentant heretic be rejected “after the first and second admonition”, which demonstrates that admonition is a warning given before judgment falls, not a post-mortem explanation after ruin occurs. And when Paul uses the verbal form, he defines its spirit: “Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother” (2 Thessalonians 3:15).

Nurture builds character, while admonition warns of peril. Nurture supplies daily bread and corrective discipline; admonition sounds the watchman’s trumpet, pressing God’s truth upon a child’s conscience before sin destroys him. A father who never warns his sons and daughters of the deceitfulness of sin, the certainty of death, and the terror of the judgment to come is a sleeping watchman, not a loving parent.

Third, note the possessive: the nurture and admonition “of the Lord.” The Lord Jesus Christ is both the origin and the measure of all true discipline. A Christian father does not enforce his own personal preferences; he administers the Lord’s truth as a steward in another’s house. The objective of parenting is not producing respectable citizens, but leading souls to Christ: “from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15).

Compare two fathers in the Old Testament to see the contrast clearly. Of Abraham, God declared: “I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD” (Genesis 18:19). Of Eli, the high priest at Shiloh, God pronounced judgment: “his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not” (1 Samuel 3:13). Eli was not silent; he spoke words of mild rebuke to his sons in the tabernacle. But his words were weak and late, lacking biblical restraint, and both sons perished under God’s wrath in a single day. A man may maintain a public ministry, yet forfeit his own household through neglect.

The Land, the Earth, and the Promise

Consider the promise attached to the fifth commandment, where the apostle demonstrates the precision of right division in the handling of scripture.

The original commandment given at Mount Sinai contained a territorial promise specific to Israel: “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee” (Exodus 20:12). God addressed a covenant nation concerning a specific plot of real estate in the Middle East.

When Paul quotes this commandment to the Body of Christ at Ephesus, he makes an inspired change: “That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth” (Ephesians 6:3). The specific land of Canaan disappears from the text; the broad earth takes its place. This is not an apostolic misquotation, but divine revelation adapting a moral principle for the church age. The land belongs to the nation of Israel and will be inherited in the literal kingdom; the Body of Christ is not Israel, and we do not claim Palestine as our spiritual inheritance. Replacement theology is refuted by the change of a single phrase.

Furthermore, quoting the fifth commandment does not place the believer under the Mosaic legal code. Paul affirms our dispensational standing elsewhere: “ye are not under the law, but under grace” (Romans 6:14). The believer’s rule of life is not the legal code of Sinai, but the grace of God revealed in the Pauline epistles. Paul cites the fifth commandment because honouring parents is a timeless moral duty ordained before Sinai and continuing throughout every dispensation.

We must state the promise at the exact strength the text sustains. Paul writes, “that it may be well with thee.” This is a general principle of divine order, not an absolute guarantee that every obedient child will live to advanced old age. Godly young people have died in their youth, and a grieving parent does not need a preacher inventing promises the Bible never made. The text reveals a path guarded by God’s blessing, contrasted with a reckless path leading to early destruction. We assert what the text states, label our deductions as inference, and refuse to preach beyond the boundary of the written word.

A Brand Plucked Out of the Burning

The duties of this passage are direct and searching. Children: obey your parents, because God has declared it right. Grown children: honour your parents, because that duty never ends while they live. Fathers: cease all harsh and bitter provocation. And fathers: establish the nurture and admonition of the Lord in your home through consistent discipline, daily prayer, and the faithful reading of the Bible.

In the year 1709, the parsonage at Epworth in England caught fire in the dead of night, and a five-year-old child was snatched through a second-story window moments before the roof collapsed in flames. His mother, Susannah, referred to him ever after as a brand plucked from the burning, and dedicated herself with renewed devotion to the spiritual training of that boy. She raised nineteen children under a disciplined biblical regimen: the Bible taught every morning, and an hour reserved each week to sit with each child individually to examine the condition of his soul. That boy rescued from the flames was John Wesley.

We cannot calculate the exact measure of revival that flowed from that mother’s faithful prayers, for God keeps that ledger in heaven. But the spiritual instruments she employed in that parsonage are the same instruments available to every Christian father and mother in Coden, Alabama. She possessed no secret method that you do not hold in your hands today.

Begin this week in your own house. Open the Bible at your table before you expect your children to read it on their own. Kneel in prayer with your family before you demand reverence from them. Admonish your children with brotherly love rather than angry shouting, while their tender hearts are still receptive to truth. Correct them for their eternal profit, not for your temporary convenience; that distinction marks the difference between the holy chastening of God and the selfish anger of a frustrated man.

Face the question put to every Christian father. The question is not whether you feel natural affection for your children, but whether you are training them in the Lord’s nurture or provoking them in your own temper. One builds a tree that stands through every storm; the other leaves a deep scar that remains until the trunk is laid in the dust.

Published Works by Pastor Thomas Irvin

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Thomas Irvin
Pastor, Victory Baptist Church, Coden, Alabama
www.VBCoden.com