VI.
(4 b.) In Ephesians 6:1-4. St. Paul passes from the detailed exposition of the true relation of husbands and wives, to deal with the relation of parents and children, far more cursorily and simply, but under the light of the same idea. It is to be thought of as existing “in the Lord,” i.e., within the unity binding all to Christ, in virtue of which the parental authority and the right freedom of the child are both hallowed.
(1) In the Lord. — The phrase itself, though familiar in St. Paul’s writings generally, is specially frequent in the Epistles of the Captivity, where it occurs in various connections no less than twenty-one times. (See, for example, Ephesians 2:21; Ephesians 3:11; Ephesians 4:1; Ephesians 4:17; Ephesians 5:8; Ephesians 6:10; Ephesians 6:21.) It is, in fact, a brief indication of their great subject — unity with and in Christ. Here to “obey in the Lord” is to obey under the light and grace of that unity, as already belonging both to parents and children, and transfiguring all natural relations to a diviner glory.
This is right. — Right, i.e., by fundamental laws of humanity, recognised in all races and all ages, declared and sanctioned in God’s commandments (Ephesians 6:2-3), which are at once both old and new “in the Lord.”