Colossians 3:21
Fathers, provoke not your children to indignation, lest they be discouraged.
Open Colossians 3:21 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Patres, nolite ad indignationem provocare filios vestros, ut non pusillo animo fiant.
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- οἱ πατέρες, μὴ ἐρεθίζετε τὰ τέκνα ὑμῶν, ἵνα μὴ ἀθυμῶσιν.
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, Colossians 3:18-25
Ver. 21 . “Fathers, provoke not your children, that they be not discouraged.”
Rufinus The Apology of Rufinus. Addressed to Apronianus, in Reply to Jerome's Letter to Pammachius, The body as a prison
“Another contends that he speaks thus because of the body of our humiliation and the chain with which we are encompassed, so that we know not yet as we ought to know, and see by means of a mirror in a riddle: and that he will be able to disclose the mysteries of the Gospel only when he has cast off this chain and gone forth free from his prison. Yet perhaps even in chains that man may be considered as free who has his conversation in heaven, and of whom it may be said: “You are not in the prison nor in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the spirit of God dwelleth in you.”
St Gregory the Great The Book of Pastoral Rule, How subjects and prelates are to be admonished
( Admonition 5.) Differently to be admonished are subjects and prelates: the former that subjection crush them not, the latter that superior place elate them not: the former that they fail not to fulfil what is commanded them, the latter that they command not more to be fulfilled than is just: the former that they submit humbly, the latter that they preside temperately. For this, which may be understood also figuratively, is said to the former, Children, obey your parents in the Lord : but to the latter it is enjoined, And ye, fathers, provoke not your children to wrath ( Coloss. iii. 20, 21 ). Let the former learn how to order their inward thoughts before the eyes of the hidden judge; the latter how also to those that are committed to them to afford outwardly examples of good living. …