“Honor your father and your mother, as Yahweh your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that Yahweh your God is giving you.” (Deuteronomy 5:16)
Consider the remarkable fact that the majority of the Ten Commandments govern relationships between human beings. Our religion is not just found in cultic rituals, but in our response to the personal God, which is often worked out in our relationships with one another as beings created in his image. When asked which was the greatest commandment, Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.” He couldn’t resist following it up immediately with, “And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39). For this God, the Triune God, these commandments go perfectly well together. To love God with all your being must include and cause love for those made in his image.
In the Fifth Commandment we are told to honor our parents. By extension, the Scriptures say that we are to honor all those in authority over us, whether political rulers (1 Peter 2:17), masters (1 Peter 2:18), elders in the church (1 Thessalonians 5:12-13)—or those who are simply older than we are (Leviticus 19:32). Authority is meant to reflect something good about God and our relationship to him. Parents, naturally and especially, reflect the image of God in their authority in our lives. God has made them to be, instrumentally, the earthly source of our lives in many ways, and we are dependent upon them in ways that reflect our dependence upon God himself. Parents are meant to care for us in our weakness, provide for our basic needs, seek our happiness, teach us wisdom for life, help us to grow to maturity, discipline us for our good, and shower us with love, affection, and gifts. Parents remind us that we are not self-made people. Without parents we would quickly wither and die.
The appropriate response to God is to honor our parents, which includes things like showing gratitude and reverence, remaining teachable, submitting to them in obedience, speaking well of them, finding respectful ways of correcting them as needed, and supporting them as they grow older (1 Timothy 5:4). We are so to honor our parents (and other authority figures in our lives) even if they are not worthy of such honor (1 Peter 2:18), because we are to honor them for the Lord’s sake, as our response to God. This commandment includes the promise of the reward of the inheritance of God’s people, because a key to living in God’s inheritance is our ability to live together in love, a major aspect of this being our humble submission to one another. Broken families don’t make for long, happy lives together. Sadly, because of our sin, our family relationships are often characterized by brokenness that doesn’t reflect God’s love.
The incarnate Son of God himself was content to honor his earthly mother and adoptive father, and all God-ordained authorities, as the outworking of his relationship to his heavenly Father. “He to whom angels were subject was subject to his parents” (Thomas Watson). So Jesus, the perfect Son, inherited everything. And he shares his inheritance—his eternal life with God in the New Heavens and New Earth—with us. He makes our relationships new in the family of God.
In what ways have your parents made sacrifices for you? Has anyone given you more than your parents have given you? How can you honor them, even if they weren’t the world’s greatest parents? Have you considered the significance of the fact that even little children are addressed by this commandment as part of God’s people (see Ephesians 6:1-3; Colossians 3:20), capable of responding to the Lord through their relationship with their parents? Who should be the greater servants of the other, parents or children, and why? Do you dwell on the ways people in authority (parents, civic leaders, employers, church leaders) don’t deserve your honor, to find reasons why you might be excused from honoring them? How do you think or feel about God’s institution of human authority, in general?
