Obedience is Accountable Authority

This week we’re going to wrap up our discussion the subject of authority. Today, we will look into an idea that we happenstance last week—that idea is obedience. If you ever had somebody say to you, “why don’t you ever listen to me?!” Then you know exactly what I’m talking about. You and I can’t get authority right because we can’t get obedience right. Last week, I started to veer off from authority that is the being under it, into a small crevice called, “obedience.” But this week, I want to jump into the idea ever so deeply. That’s because it’s the key that makes authority work. Let’s open the Bible up to Ephesians 6. 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 go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” ⁴ Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. ⁵ Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. ⁶ Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. ⁷ Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, ⁸ because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free. ⁹ And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him. (Ephesians 6:1-9) Here’s a question: why does Paul use the word obey instead of honor? Which has a greater meaning? It is because obedience is the evidence of that honor which children owe to their parents, and is therefore more earnestly enforced. But just think about it. It’s infinitely difficult for the human mind recoils from the idea of subjection, and with difficulty allows itself to be placed under the control of another. Yet this is authority or at least a part of authority that we must hold on to. Obeying our parents is an impossibility. Trust me, I know. Your grandparents can tell you how much your parents didn’t obey them. Here’s the easiest thing not to obey that comes from your parents: be safe. I mean, I’ve never really heard that growing up, but I’ve heard other parents tell their children that—they were my friends. At the end of the day, they did the opposite of safe, they played with me. That was the opposite of obedience, it was disobedience. But here’s the underlying assumption that Paul is making: we obey our parents because they have our best interests in mind. Look at verse three. Paul says that we obey “so that it may go well with you…” The thing about authority is this—the people who have authority over you, the reason you obey their authority is because they are seeking to enjoy a long life on earth for you! You obey your doctor’s order to exercise and eat right so you can live long. Likewise, we obey our parents in the LORD, that’ the key, “in the LORD” because it’s “right”. When our parents are telling us to do things, they’re not telling us to do them for themselves but for us to do it for God. I want you to keep that in mind. We obey in God, what our parents ask of us because it is in God they are asking. Our parents deserve our obedience in the commands of God. I don’t want you to apply that wholesale because you’ll get into a world of a lot of bad parents who will tell you to do things and invoke God’s name, but do it for the wrong reasons and wrong purposes. That is exactly what the Apostle Paul is not saying. When we are obeying our parents, we are obeying our parents in the commands of God. We obey our parents in what they are teaching us about how God works and does things. More than that, Paul mentions in verse 4 that the commands we are obeying from our parents should not be for our exasperation, but for our growth and learning to be like God. In essence, when it comes down to it, we obey our parents so we can grow to be more like God. This doesn’t only include our biological parents, but also our adoptive parents, our work parents, our spiritual parents. Let me give you some examples: teachers, mentors, bosses, leaders, managers, tutors, etc. I can keep going, but I won’t because I think you get the point. So the question is this: who are our parents and are we obeying them? I want to translate here and reapply what this is bit here in verse 5 means. The reason I want to translate here is because in the 21^st century we don’t have slaves. We don’t have slaves like we had slaves during the period of colonialism and imperialism. It’s not a slavery based on race, like the slavery we know. It’s not like that at all. I want to be clear here—slavery of any kind is wrong. People are not property to be owned like cattle or chicken. Please understand that. This is not the Bible not advocating for the existence of slavery. This is the Bible acknowledging that there are a class of people who had to, whether they intentionally or forcibly found themselves in a situation where they were slaves. So what is Paul’s point if he knows it’s wrong? His point is this: obey. You obey if you are slave because there is power in the act of obedience. That power is called favor. It comes from doing God’s will despite where you are and the condition you are in. I want you to understand here that I’m not telling you that it’s okay to be a slave. I’m not advocating that we, or whoever, would find themselves in a situation where they are enslaved, shouldn’t rebel and win their freedom like Gladiator. I am saying that this mentality of obedience supersedes societal predicaments. It is beyond social status. If we are slaves—whether to work, or to parents, or to school, and I will go on and on, but I won’t—you obey the masters as they are doing the will of God. Being a slave, in essence, here in the 21^st century must mean two things. It not only means that we obey authorities that are forcibly placed above us, but also the authorities that we place above us. In the first century, when this was written, people were allowed to become slaves. It was something people had the right to do. People were allow to have masters, it was like a job. It’s wrong, but people were allowed to do it. Our masters, I don’t mean things that control us – money, drugs, etc. I mean, things that we place in authority over our lives, whether freely or involuntarily deserve our obedience. They serve as a conduit to serve and obey God. I know people hearing snippets of this are going to get the wrong message, so I want to clarify this so that it is simple: our masters, are supposed to have our best interests in heart, having us do the work and things of God. Like our parents, masters serve as an authoritative figure extending the life God gave them to us. In return, we obey to receive the life God is giving us despite our circumstances. This has nothing to do with godless masters or godless parents. Case in point: Pharaoh. The hope is that from our obedience we wind up at one place: a faith that is accountable to who God is and what God does and why God does it. Paul writes from the perspective of parent and child and also as slave and master. He writes knowing that at least one of these exchanges applies to you and that at one of these relationships will lend themselves to finding Christ or being a conduit of Christ. God wants us to use authority in a way that is accountable to our faith in Jesus. That’s what this passage is all about. If authority is all about faith, then obedience is the accountability we have to the faith given to us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Let’s pray.