PARENTHOOD
a divine stewardship

How To Be An Authority

Our burden in publishing Parenthood is not to provide another type of family psychology or even to give advice on how to raise our children. Parenting is a divine stewardship. God has placed our children with us and given us a commission to raise them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Watchman Nee wrote: "We have to realize how serious this responsibility is. God has placed a person's body, soul, and spirit, even his whole life and future, into our hands. No individual influences another individual'ss future as much as parents. No one controls a person'ss future as much as parents. Parents almost have a say in whether their children will go to hell or to heaven" (Messages For Building Up New Believers, Vol. 2, p. 520, published by Living Stream Ministry.)

In the light of the Lord'ss commission, we are desperate to turn our children to the Lord for their entire life. We aspire that the children of the saints in the Lord'ss Recovery will be like Timothy who "from a babe" had known the sacred writings, which were able to make him wise unto salvation through the faith which is in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:15). Although we all delight to have children who are obedient, polite, truthful, excellent students, and diligent workers, all of this is vain if they do not love the Lord and seek after Him. We are believers! Our lives have been given absolutely to the Lord for His eternal purpose. Anything less for our children will never be acceptable to us. Therefore, we must experience God in us. What we print in this small periodical is strictly directed toward His working in us to achieve the goal and purpose of the Lord in our family life.

In this issue we apply to the care of our children some of Witness Lee'ss fellowship to the elders concerning authority in the churches. From their infancy, children need to meet and know authority. Authority in it highest definition is God Himself. Every parent represents God as His delegated authority. But how can we properly be an authority? Witness Lee responds with three crucial items: by being persons who live in love, in spirit, and in resurrection. We pray that we all may live to the Lord to be such persons for our children.

Down through the years, the matter of authority has caused me to realize that there is God and there is a sovereign One in the universe. If what we are serving is merely a name or some doctrinal terms, there will not be the reality of authority among us. But because the God whom we serve is real and living, the matter of authority is here among us….For this reason, democracy cannot be applied to the church. Moreover, neither can autocracy be applied, for autocracy centers around a single individual. With the church, it not a question of many or one. With the church, it is a question of God'ss presence and its representation. If this representation is with two or three, then it is a matter of these two or three. If this representation is with ten persons, then it is a matter of these ten persons. If this representation is with one individual, then it is a matter of this individual. The representation of God'ss presence is God'ss authority in that place. One cannot oppose this; he has to submit himself to this. For this reason, [we] have to learn to be those who submit to authority.

In the church not only is there the question of submission to authority, but there is also the question of being the authority. To submit to authority means that others have the authority and you submit to it. To be an authority means that authority is with you and you should act as the authority….On the one hand, there is the submission to authority, and on the other hand there is the exercise of authority. (W. Lee, The Elders's Management of the Church, pp. 80-81)

…Strictly speaking, the exercise of authority is part of the work of being the authority. If an elder knows how to be an authority, surely he will know how to exercise authority. For this reason, in this [issue] we will deal specifically with the question of being an authority. To know authority is for the purpose of being an authority.

I. IN LOVE

Ephesians 5 mentions the matter of the husband as the authority. There it points out specifically that the husband is an authority. The way this matter is presented is quite unusual. It says that the wives have to submit to their husbands. We know that the other side of submission is domination, yet God never charges the husbands to dominate over their wives. He only charges them to love their wives. The husband is an authority; he is the head. But how should the husband behave as the head? How should he behave as the authority? Ephesians 5 clearly tells us that the way is in love.

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