Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.
All Commentaries on Colossians 3:21 Go To Colossians 3
John Chrysostom
AD 407
Fathers, provoke not your children, that they be not discouraged.
Lo! Again here also is subjection and love. And he said not, Love your children, for it had been superfluous, seeing that nature itself constrains to this; but what needed correction he corrected; that the love should in this case also be the more vehement, because that the obedience is greater. For it nowhere lays down as an exemplification the relation of husband and wife; but what? Hear the prophet saying, Like as a father pities his children, so the Lord pitied them that fear Him Psalm 103:13, Septuagint And again Christ says, What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? Matthew 7:9
Fathers, provoke not your children, that they be not discouraged.
He has set down what he knew had the greatest power to seize upon them; and while commanding them he has spoken more like a friend; and nowhere does he mention God, for he would overcome parents, and bow their tender affections. That is, Make them not more contentious, there are occasions when you ought even to give way.
Next he comes to the third kind of authority.
There is here also a certain love, but that no more proceeding from nature, as above, but from habit, and from the authority itself, and the works done. Seeing then that in this case the sphere of love is narrowed, while that of obedience is amplified, he dwells upon this, wishing to give to these from their obedience, what the first have from nature. So that what he discourses with the servants alone is not for their masters' sakes, but for their own also, that they may make themselves the objects of tender affection to their masters. But he sets not this forth openly; for so he would doubtless have made them supine.
