Proverbs 17:6 ESV
Americans have a cultural disrespect for familial glory. We have cultivated an attitude which says that one should have pleasure only in one’s own achievements. Taking pride in the lives of our elders, those who live and those who have died, is positively old-fashioned and silly. It’s stuck-up, too, a way of saying ‘me better than you,’ a callback to the aristocracy we’ve supposedly outgrown. Looking in the other direction, rejoicing in children and grandchildren, is a little more acceptable, but there we cringe too, regretting the reminder of age, of feebleness and approaching death. Solomon allows no such qualms.
First, we must all grapple with the second half of this verse. What does it mean for the “glory of children” to be their fathers? There is some truth in the American prejudice, after all: I did not make my father or my grandfather, my mother or my grandmother. I did, in a sense, make my father a father, being the firstborn, but I cannot take much credit for being born, having little choice in the matter. I have had a little influence on those generations who lived to see me, but I cannot claim some great work of improvement. I did not set out in life to improve my parents, being not immeasurably conceited, and so I cannot claim my parents as my work. So how is my father my glory?
The answer is this: humility. The glory of a child is to look to his father and say, “Look that such as I have this son of God for my father, this daughter of God for my mother.” It is to look at the faithfulness of God and the righteousness of God’s children in his own parents and to understand that he, the child, stands upon that foundation. It is by this, in part, that the child is made holy (1 Cor. 7:14), set apart to Him. Thus the glory of the child is that his father and his mother are children of God, that in them the goodness of God is declared, and that by them the joy of God is poured out upon him.
Second, we must not limit ourselves to the first blush of this verse but apply its principle. In history, then, we must look back at our fathers, biologically and culturally and theologically, our fathers of blood and steel and faith, and take all the image of God in them for a foundation of glory and a humbling. Consider the legacy which is America’s: Oliver Cromwell and William Wallace, John Newton and William Cowper, John Knox and Martin Luther. Consider too that these glories are not only for their descendants by blood or by culture but for all the children of God. Consider finally the ascent of glories which is given the Christian in Scripture: Moses, David, Peter, Paul, Elijah, Jeremiah, and finally, above them all, Christ the Lord.
Third, then, is this foundational glory of it all and the basis of the worth of the Christian to himself: that he is the child of God and made in His image. Where the world would put a man’s worth in his blood or his deeds or his self-assertion, the Christian is given the truth. He can say that his blood is that of Adam, depraved at its root (Rom. 5:12-14), his deeds those of a wretch, entirely polluted (Is. 64:6), and his self-assertion that of a realist, aware of his brokenness (1 John 1:10), but nevertheless he has glory, glory in the goodness and glory of God. Thus can the Christian boast, not in himself but in the goodness of God in him, that God has made his child a treasure beyond all man’s thought (Gal. 6:14).
Fourth, let us return to the first half of the verse in light of the full weight of the second half. Just as the blessing of God on our fathers is a glory, so is the blessing of God on a child or a grandchild a great glory- they are indeed themselves a great blessing, a great glory. Psalm 127:3-4 says thus: “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.” To continue the sanctification of the earth through the fruitfulness of the womb and of the parental hand is a glory which is a summit to man; therefore, is not the glory multiplied when these children have themselves children? Thus a grandchild is to a man and to a woman an exceeding joy- even apart from being (I am told, sometimes to my chagrin) exceptionally lovable.
Grandchildren are the crown of the aged, and the glory of children is their fathers.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+17%3A6&version=ESV]
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
