Honour
thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the
LORD thy God giveth thee.
(Ex
20:12)
Here is a Commandment of far greater depth of meaning than most in Christendom
have understood. Of course, it must be understood that the Ten Commandments are
not ten separate laws each of which stand alone – the Ten Commandments are a
unified Code of God’s Laws to be obeyed out of love and not fear. However, many
in our day separate the Tables of the Law thusly: The first four Commandments
are considered to reflect our duty to God alone; and the last six are
considered to reflect our duty to mankind alone. Though this argument has some
merit, I believe it fails to recognize the fifth Commandment as belonging to
the first four and ALSO to the last five as well! I consider the fifth
Commandment a transition Commandment between the two major divisions of duty
and love.
You will recall, again, the summary of the Law given by the
Lord Jesus Christ: Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
(Matt
22:37-40) There is
a unifying thread that summarizes, even in greater detail, these two summaries
– that is LOVE! The kind of Love Jesus tells us to show to God first is the
same kind of love we are to harbor for our neighbors. How is that reasonable?
Because Love itself is indivisible! We are told to love God first because, without
love for God, we cannot love our neighbors in the way that we are commanded to
do. In fact, the unifying force that binds the Ten Commandments into one great
Unified Law is that of LOVE. We cannot, in any wise, keep the Commandments out
of a sheer sense of duty and responsibility – we can only keep them all out of
what Jesus refers to as AGAPE love (a love that places its object
above every personal consideration). If we love our neighbor as ourselves, our
neighbor will not go naked, hungry, or without shelter while we have the means
to provide for ourselves.
So the fifth Commandment, without overtly stating the
obvious, places LOVE at its heart. God has given us the benefit of a mother and
father so that we can know the kind of love He has for us better. The human
infant is born as the most helpless of all creatures. The foal of a horse can
immediately struggle up and walk after birth. Baby chickens can soon hop about
spritely after hatching. But the baby human is totally dependent upon parents
for its subsistence. It cannot speak, understand words, walk, or express love.
It can only express greed and want and dissatisfaction with its condition. It
cannot control its bodily constitution and must be fed, cleaned and pampered by
a mother and father who gain no visible reward from their labors – except
satisfaction of the love they have for the ungrateful, crying and mess-making
baby. Only a mother could believe a screaming child with dirty diapers is so
sweet and beautiful! The baby is a drain on the family resource of physical,
financial, social existence.
Is that not exactly how we must appear to God is our lost
and depraved state as willful sinners? We are constantly making a mess of
ourselves. We make decisions that only a fool could admire. We dress
disrespectfully, and we consume things we should not. But God knows us – He
knows that we are His (if we are) long before we know it. He watches and broods
over us. He saves us from destruction when we have not merited a kind thought
from His Divine Majesty. He may allow us to wander into dangerous playgrounds,
but He is there watching. He places challenges and restraints before us to
preserve our lives until we are grown up enough to realize that we have not
made ourselves, but it is He that hath made us. He slowly teaches us HIS
language and His thoughts. In time, if we become His Chosen Ones, our thoughts
will be His thoughts even if our outward manifestations fail to reflect the
inward grace of His love.
Honor is both a sense and a duty that we owe to a greater
power in our lives. We owe duty and honor to, first, our parents because they
are the first beings we are able to love. Loving them, and knowing them, will
lead us to know and honor better our Father in Heaven who has not only given us
life, but also parents to care for us until we are able to stagger along alone.
My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of
thy mother: For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains
about thy neck. (Prov 1:8-9)
We owe honor to our nation and fellow countrymen so long as
the laws of our country are subordinate to the Law of God – and they MUST
always be so to be legitimate!
The Person of God is clearly reflected in His use of the
term, mother AND father. It takes both mother and father to
provide for us in the likeness of God. Both represent the Person of God in our
early lives. The Lord not only gives us life, and bodies able to experience
joy; but He also gives us, in addition to caring parents, a land upon which to
place our feet and to conduct our earthly labors.
When we recite the 5th Commandment, what goes
through our mind most exclusively? Is it not always our earthly mother and
father? Have we forgotten that the 5th Commandment also refers to
the Father of us all? To Him be
all Honor and Glory, both now and forever!
Are you beginning to picture how the 5th
Commandment fits so perfectly between the first four and the last five
Commandments? It is a transition that God gives us between our duties of love
to Him and those same perspectives toward our family, friends, and neighbors.
The transition is the strongest example of sacrificial love that our mortal
minds can grasp.
If we love and honor our earthly parents, our lives will be
richly blessed by a lasting love and sacrifice those parents will make for us –
even at the moment of death. Our lives will be rich with the green pastures of
love at home where we feed in peace and joy. Our health, too, will reflect that
better breeding that comes through honor and love of parents. God tells that
keeping this Commandment will gives us longness of days upon the land He has
given us. He goes even further in another part of His Word: Thou shalt keep
therefore his statutes, and his commandments, which I command thee this day,
that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou
mayest prolong thy days upon the earth, which the LORD thy God giveth thee, for
ever. (Deut
4:40) Keeping the
Commandments of God will inure to the benefit – not only of our personal
spiritual and physical health – but also to the children with whom the Lord
blesses us.
To summarize: the Fifth Commandment follows those
Commandments that inform of us of Who God is, what He is NOT, and primary
duties that we owe to Him as our Lord and Sovereign. The fifth Commandment
follows on the same train of thought to inform us that we are to honor our
mother and father. He is our true mother and father in the sense that He is the
First Cause who gave us life, liberty and the joy that exceedeth all joys. Of
course, if we are disobedient and disrespectful to our earthly parents whom we
can see an touch, how much less will we be inclined to honor and obey, love and
respect, the God of Heaven who speaks only through the medium of His Written
Word to a warm and receptive heart? So all those things that we owe to Mom and
Dad are the same, to an even greater degree, that we owe to God in Heaven – our
Eternal Father.
