OK,
if what was intended to be expressed (not what was printed) was
As for the question what does "union with Christ" have to do with the matter?, Rich's original point was the older age commands weren't given as if they were doable without union with Christ. So exactly what change has occured?, where is the discontinuity? What is different about how BELIEVING parents are to treat with their children from that age to this? Aren't all the OT instructions for raising and instructing children in the OT faith (see Proverbs) essentially identical to today's?
Rich's problem (and mine) is that we're living in a day when there's this attack on solidarity, in favor of a kind of preoccupation with individualism. In the OT, people were saved on an individual basis. And in the NT, God deals with families. We think a denial of either principle is unsubstantiated and an arbitrary dichotomy. There isn't some cosmic meat-cleaver coming down, and establishing what is basically a dispensational division, whatever name it goes by.
if what was intended to be expressed (not what was printed) was
then no, I have no issue. My question was based on the actual words as printed.the child does not have to be in union with Christ in order" for a Christian to tell him "to obey the Lord
As for the question what does "union with Christ" have to do with the matter?, Rich's original point was the older age commands weren't given as if they were doable without union with Christ. So exactly what change has occured?, where is the discontinuity? What is different about how BELIEVING parents are to treat with their children from that age to this? Aren't all the OT instructions for raising and instructing children in the OT faith (see Proverbs) essentially identical to today's?
Rich's problem (and mine) is that we're living in a day when there's this attack on solidarity, in favor of a kind of preoccupation with individualism. In the OT, people were saved on an individual basis. And in the NT, God deals with families. We think a denial of either principle is unsubstantiated and an arbitrary dichotomy. There isn't some cosmic meat-cleaver coming down, and establishing what is basically a dispensational division, whatever name it goes by.