Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
––Exodus 20:12 (NIV)
The love of a parent, and especially that of a mother, is the closest thing we will find in this life to the love of God. It is a love that is rich and deep and almost impossible to describe. We have heard of people who were somewhat lacking in the beauty department described as people who "had a face only a mother could love." Well, that is precisely the point. Mothers do not love based on physical beauty, they just love. Parents are like that. They just love their children, warts and all. Apart from God, our parents are the ones who first loved us.
We all come into the world at a very early age in life. We come in as babies –– little bitty people who can’t walk or talk or take care of themselves. We are so helpless that if someone did not hold us and keep us warm and feed us, we would not survive. There is probably no more helpless creature born on this earth than a human baby. We are so totally dependent on our parents, especially our mothers that we literally could not live without them. And because of their love and care, we are here today.
It is because of this gift to us of our parents that God gives us the Fifth Commandment. It is the first commandment of the ten that marks the shift away from the God-ward focus to a focus on human relationships. The first four commandments focus on our relationship to God and the last six on our relationships to others. This is why Jesus could summarize the commandments by saying that we should love God and our neighbor.
But the Fifth Commandment is not merely some abstract principle. It is perhaps one of the most practical prescriptions to healthy family relationships you can find anywhere. In giving the Fifth Commandment, God is not merely making a statement concerning care for the elderly, He is speaking of your parents. How we treat our parents is the issue at hand.
And how we treat our parents not only impacts them, it impacts us. According to this commandment, there are grave consequences to be considered. There is a blessing or a curse for us based on our treatment of our parents. To honor or fail to honor our parents is a choice that takes us down one of two roads. These roads cause us to arrive at two distinctly different destinations. The journey may take us to a land of fulfillment or a land of frustration. The choice is ours.
We hear in our day a lot about children’s rights, but what about parent’s rights? God is saying something about parent’s rights here. He is saying that those individuals who brought us into this world, who nurtured us, who educated us, who cared for us deserve our respect and honor. So, how can we honor those who first loved us?
If We Remember the Principle …In the Fifth Commandment the Lord sets forth an important principle. He says, "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you." The principle spoken of here has to do with our giving honor in certain relationships. The Scripture says, "Give honor to whom honor is due." To honor someone because of that person’s position is a principle of Scripture.
In order for us to understand this principle, we must understand the concept of community. When the Fifth Commandment was written, the importance of community was clearly understood. Every person had his place in the community. People were known based on their family grouping, so that Jacob ben Isaac ben Abraham was a title to be proud of. You were not only known as an individual, you were known by whose son you were. Your identity as part of the clan or family was the important thing. You as an individual were secondary. For you to survive, you must maintain your relationship with the larger unit of the family.
It has been said that "no man is an island, entire of itself." The words of John Donne are true concerning our family relationships. The words are true as well concerning our larger relationships. We live in a community, as part of the whole. Donne goes on the say, "any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." In some sense we are all a part of one another. That is why the principle of honor and respect for one another is so important.
And Respect the People …In the Fifth Commandment there is not only a principle involved but there are people involved. If this were a play it would all take place within a single home. The characters would be a mother and a father with their children. You see, while we are involved in a larger society, there is a basic social unit within the society, the family. It is in the context of the family that we must work out our most important social relationships.
Within the context of our relationships with other people, there is always a potential for problems. But there is no relationship that has more potential for love and hate, joy and sorrow, then the parent-child relationship. The family is the place where we first begin to understand how to interrelate to one another. It is the place where we learn self-esteem. There, in the family, we learn our value as human beings. There we are affirmed, corrected, encouraged, criticized, praised, and ignored. There are so many possibilities that present themselves within the context of the family.
It is in the family that we begin to learn about authority. There we either learn to respect authority or to scorn it. What we learn in this regard will either serve to equip us to live in the real world or cripple us so we fail. There are people who will exercise authority over us in this world. While it may begin with father and mother, it will continue after we leave the nest through teachers, employers, government officials, and God. If we do not have a healthy respect for and submission to authority, if we do not know where the lines are drawn, then we will reap the whirlwind. But, on the other hand, if we have learned our lessons well, we will move forward and be successful. It all begins at home.
It is at home that we learn the importance of values. By the example of parents every child learns what is truly important to those parents. It may be money, prestige, power, position, material possessions, pleasure, or obedience to Jesus Christ. Children learn it not only by what we say, but especially by what we do. It is more likely than not that the child will incorporate many of these values into his own adult life. It is easy to see that the home is the birthplace for many important life molding experiences.
Seeing that our parents have invested so much in our lives, why would we not want to honor them? There was obviously a reason why God wrote the Fifth Commandment. It seems that He gave this commandment because there is a propensity for us, if not to dishonor our parents, to fail to honor them. There is a tendency within all of us to take for granted what our parents have done for us. There is the capacity to be uncaring, unthoughtful, indifferent, and unfeeling. Perhaps it is a residue of our fallen nature inherited from Adam. Perhaps because of our selfishness we see our parents as an impediment to our freedom. Whatever the case, God has given us a clear word that we are to honor our parents.
What does it mean to honor them? Well, it means different things depending on the context of our relationship to them. If we are still in the home as their children, we relate to them in one way. If we are out of the home as adults, we relate to them somewhat differently. But in both cases, we are commanded to honor them. Quite simply, we are to honor them because they are our parents. No where is this commandment does it ever tell us that we are to honor them because they are great parents, or even good parents. We are to honor them because of the position they hold in relation to our lives. We are to honor them because they, as parents, deserve our honor.
If you are a child still in the home, the Bible calls on you to give your parents honor by both respecting them and by obeying them. The Bible clearly exhorts children in the home to obey their parents. Here is where the rebellious child is seen. And we see it all too often in our society today. There’s hardly anything in our society so sad and at the same time so detestable as a defiant, rebellious, insolent, boy or girl openly and callously flaunting a rebellious attitude. When you’ve seen it, you can understand why the Old Testament penalty for cursing your parents was death by stoning!
But one can be outwardly obedient and still rebellious at heart. You can outwardly obey your parents and still show a lack of respect for them by harboring a rebellious attitude toward them. It is like the little boy standing in the back seat of the car, riding down the road with his parents, who was told to sit down and put on his seat-belt because they were encountering a lot of traffic. His father told him once, then twice, then a third time. His mother looked back and asked him to sit down. He defiantly said, "No, I will not sit down!" His father told him if he didn’t sit down he would give him the spanking of his life. The boy sat down. But then he said, "I may be sitting down on the outside, but I’m standing up on the inside." Are you standing up on the inside?
If you want to honor your parents while you are still at home, you must make a determination that you are going to give them the benefit of the doubt. You must decide that you are going to love them, respect them, obey them, and maintain a right attitude toward them. As you give them that honor and respect, you will be surprised what is does for you on the inside. It will build your self-esteem, cause you to feel good about yourself, and free you of some very negative attitudes. It will do things for you on the outside as well. As a matter of fact, your parents, after they get over the shock, will begin to give you more responsibility, and put greater faith in your judgment. It’s a two way street.
If you are a child not living in the home, you also have certain responsibilities to honor and respect your parents. While, as adults, we are not commanded to obey our parents any longer, we are never released from the command to honor them. We must honor them by caring for them. I mean this in the broadest sense of the word. We must care for them and attempt to meet their needs both emotionally and physically. We must make sure their basic needs are met. They need love, affirmation, encouragement, and may one day need shelter, food, and physical assistance. We must never, ever push them out of our lives.
The cycle of love is not complete until we honor those parents who raised us. When we are born, we are totally dependent upon them. They must provide for all of our needs. As we grow we become increasingly more independent. Finally we arrive at adulthood and leave the nest in order to make our own. Then our parents, who were young and vibrant we they brought us to birth, experience the security of middle age and finally the vulnerability of old age. In that final stage, they become dependent on us, the children they have raised. It is then that the cycle is complete. It is a beautiful thing.
We must all grapple with what it means to honor our father and mother. You must allow God to speak to your heart concerning this matter. Perhaps you need to call them more often in order to tell them that you love them. Perhaps you need to show that respect in different ways. Let God lead you. Be sensitive to His Spirit.
We Will Receive the PromiseAs you are sensitive to the Lord is this matter, He has promised to meet your needs in a special way. There is a principle involved, people involved, and a promise involved. The promise of God is "that your days may be prolonged. (NAS)" There’s a promise of longevity of life to those who obey God by honoring their father and mother.
We see this promise repeated in the New Testament: "Honor your father and mother. This is the first of God’s Ten Commandments that ends with a promise. And this is the promise: that if you honor your father and mother, yours will be a long life, full of blessing. Ephesians 6:2-3 (LB)"
Honoring your father and your mother not only is a focus on the family, it is a focus on the future. Those who would depreciate the value of the family only depreciate their own value. This becomes extremely vivid when we consider the state of our contemporary society. We live in an era when all human life has been devalued. Abortion has devalued pre-born human life. Infanticide, which is becoming increasingly accepted, is devaluing the human life of infants. And euthanasia, the killing of the aged, will become an increasingly accepted practice.
When you look at the demographics of our population, it is easy to see that the post World War II surge in population growth, known as the baby boom generation, will become the largest single elderly group in the history of mankind. The frightening thing is that the generation following them is significantly smaller in number. I read an article in one of the newsmagazines several years ago which linked the economics of that situation to a possible increased acceptance of euthanasia. Considering the sheer number of retirees in the future, and the smaller base of contributors into the social security retirement system, the cost to the younger generation could grow to forty, fifty, even sixty percent of their income. The question was raised concerning how that younger generation would feel about killing the useless old people, and putting them out of their misery. It seems that our society at large needs to hear this Fifth Commandment. And we Christians, who are the salt of the earth, need to model it before the watching world.
And I believe that there will be a spiritual blessing as well for those of us who obey God’s word. We learn by honoring our father and mother to honor God. As we honor God, He honors us. We do not honor God because we always understand we He is doing. We do not honor God because we always agree with His ways. We honor God because He is God. And when we give honor, we receive honor. The Bible says, "Give and it shall be given unto you." Don’t miss out on the promise of God.
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