(1) В¶ Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. (2) Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) (3) That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. (4) And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. (5) Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; (6) Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; (7) With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: (8) Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. (9) And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.
The Apostle, according to his usual method in the close of his Epistles, makes a distinct, and separate address, to the several members of the Church, on relative duties; and as an affectionate Apostle, and Father, speaks personally to every class. I need not offer a single observation on either, by way of comment: the whole is abundantly plain. What he saith to children, in relation to the first commandment with promise, it is scarcely necessary to say, is in allusion to the first of the second table of the law; and therefore as such, it stands, as is here said, with a promise, and which is the first. As if the Lord would begin, with the earliest dawnings of life, to intimate the graciousness of his promises, running from first to last, through all the departments of the time-state of the Church.