Honor, Love, and Loyalty

Imagine if you were marooned on a remote desert island – sort of Lord of the Rings, or rather that that could work, too – Lord of the Flies, how about? Except it’s not just all children. Not to be too grim about it, but maybe it’s a giant Disney cruise with lots of ages and families and hundreds or thousands of people marooned on some remote desert island. And Lord of the Flies-like, you try to think about how you might establish some civilizing order. You gather, and you decide that you’re going to post a series of instructions to try to maintain some kind of social equilibrium. And for some reason it’s decreed upon you that you only get to establish for these relationships in your civilization six laws. And they can’t be long ones. They can’t be like the American legal code and books upon books, and people pass them without reading them. You only get six laws, and they can just be a sentence each, maybe a few words. What would be the most important commandments you would come up with in order to establish social harmony, good order, love, and kindness? Well, do not murder. That’s a foundational one. Let’s post that into the ground. Do not steal. That’s good. We need to respect private property. We’re going to be farming, and we’re going to have our tent. You can’t come in and steal from us. Do not lie. That’s necessary, that we can have the social capital to interact with one another. Maybe even you cannot sleep with someone else’s spouse. What quicker way to sow discord among a civilization than to have people cheating on one another with somebody else? But I wonder if you only had six commands, would you and I really choose as one of those “honor your father and mother”? Now all the parents are saying yes, we would. But really, might we think of it as a good piece of pious advice?

It’s hard to separate ourselves from Christian upbringing, and even if you’re not a Christian, people have a familiarity with the Ten Commandments. But really 10. So, the first four have to do with our relationship with God, and then the next six as we count them have to do with our relationship with other people. You get 10 commandments. You get just 10 words to give from on high. Would you really think that making the top 10 – and for our relationships with each other, the top six – I mean, maybe top 25. Maybe if we had 100, but not only in the six that relate to one another, but the very first of those would be to honor your father and your mother? It’s the first commandment in what we sometimes call the second table of the law, which shows us that honoring our parents is the starting place for learning how to love our neighbors. It shapes all the others. What sort of people are we sending into the world if they are not people who have learned to honor the very parents who gave them life? Augustine said, “If anyone fails to honor his parents, is there anyone he will spare? Whenever we talk about family, parents, we listen with a lot of emotion. Some can quickly think of very good parents, and you miss them, and they’ve gone on to be with the Lord. You may think of children who have gone on to be with the Lord. You may think with gratitude of what good parents you had – not perfect, but they were honest, and they loved you, and maybe they raised you in the faith. And others, maybe you never even knew your parents, or one parent left, or you think of Augustine’s line “if anyone fails to honor his parents,” and you think Augustine, you didn’t know what my parents were like. They would be among the hardest people to honor. You may think of wayward children, and you’re wanting very much to send them the link to this sermon. You may be thinking of wayward parents who are no longer walking with Christ, though they once taught you Christ. We come to a sermon like this with lots of emotions. And I can’t possibly deal with all of the ears that might hear, but we trust that when we deal with God’s Word, he tells us what we need to hear.

One of the reasons that this is first in the second table of the law is because this is where we learn to live with other people. There’s probably a reason why totalitarian governments, one of their chief aims is always to sever, to tear apart, the family unit, to have families not trust one another, to tear apart the marriage bond or recreate it, or to have parents and children spy and cheat on one another. Because it’s in the family that we learn about respect and obedience and love and protection. Civilizations do not flourish apart from the social order, the trust, and the mutual respect that is meant to be found in the incubator of the family. This commandment, among other things, is God’s way of saying loving your neighbor, believe it or not, begins with listening to your mom and dad.

There is a history of understanding this commandment, “Honor your father and mother,” as extending to a whole host of human relationships that have some kind of authority over us. We see this several times in the New Testament. Ephesians 6:5, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart as you would Christ.” So, there’s a relationship, we might say in our day, to a boss, to an employer, an employee. “Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.” The church, certainly, with its leaders. Hebrews 13:7, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account.” 1 Peter 5:5, “Those who are younger, be subject to the elders.” And the governing authorities: Romans 13, “Be subject to the governing authorities.” Titus, “Be submissive to rulers and authorities. Be obedient, ready for every good work.” 1 Peter 2, “Fear God; honor the king.” These are all important considerations. They teach us to consider the office, not just the person. It’s very hard for us to do. We have a bad experience with the person, and we think that the office itself ought to be held in derision.

But I want to focus on the parent child relationship because it is fundamental to all of these others, and it is the explicit point of the Ten Commandments. I want to work from a text. We’ll come to the catechism as an illustration in a little bit, but I want to work from a simple text from Ephesians chapter 6. You can follow along in your Bibles. Ephesians chapter 6:1-3. This is where Paul, in chapter 4, having urged the Ephesians to live a life worthy of the calling they received, gives explicit instructions, and what does it mean to walk the Christian walk? This is in the middle of a particular section sometimes called the household codes, where we have specific instructions with the various relationships that we might encounter in the household – wives and husbands, and now children and parents. Verse 1:

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother” – this is the first commandment with a promise – “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.”

Isn’t it interesting to note just at the outset that Paul addresses children as part of the covenant community, as those who belong to the church. He does not say, now children, if you hear this, I know that you have not yet made a profession of faith, and you have not yet joined the church, and you are not yet Christian, so I’m saying this to you, children, as simply children who are in earshot of my commands: this would be a good thing for you to do. He says, rather, children here is my command to obey your parents in the Lord. He gives this motivation for husbands, wives, parents, slaves, masters, children should obey their parents out of obedience to Christ. Of course, we pray for our children to have a heart that is truly born again, and that may happen from the womb. That may happen from infancy. It may happen in a noticeable way sometime later. As I always say, at the infant baptism, and we pray they would make all these promises their own. So, we want to see not a presumption, but a retaining and a grabbing hold of all these things. But notice Paul does not divide them up and say, “Alright now, mom and dad are Christians. Little Levi here is almost a Christian. Sweet Sarah definitely not a Christian” – but rather, he looks at them as a family, and he says, “This family is serving the Lord, and so I’m giving commands to you, children, in the Lord, like everyone else. You, too, are a part of the household of God.”

And if this isn’t too much of an implied truth, he expects the children to hear these commands. Now, think of about it. They didn’t have books like this in the first century. It was very hard to come by, and scrolls were very precious. Some people might have some reading material, but most people were illiterate. People were not bringing their Bibles, by and large, to church. And when Paul writes this, the New Testament canon is still forming, and people are instinctively holding on to Paul’s letters. But the only way that the Ephesians heard the letter to the Ephesians is when it was first read in the congregation, which means that there must have been an assumption that children would have been there to hear this command from Paul. Now, I think we can safely assume that there may be some smallest little ones that perhaps couldn’t understand. Did they have some infant nursery? We don’t know. I think there’s some freedom in Christ to determine which ones may have been such a distraction. I’m very thankful, especially when our kids were younger, for those dear men and women – some right now – who are laboring to watch our wee little ones. And yet, it’s for a deliberate reason, and our children’s ministry team shares this conviction as well, that as soon as they are able, and they’re often able sooner than we think – we have a patient congregation, don’t we? – that we would have children with us. The children here are presumably hearing this Word as it is read from Paul. Thankfully, we share this as a conviction at a church like Christ Covenant. There are many churches unfortunately that will separate, and you can grow up in in the church, and you can have your very own separate, and they’ll “conveniently” put Sunday (I put conveniently in quotes) – conveniently put Sunday school during the worship service, and the kids don’t have to do that, and then maybe sometime later they can have a special youth service so that they don’t have to do that. And then they can tailor something just for college students at a special time so they can just do that. And then we wonder why they might have a hard time transitioning into church when they’ve only ever experienced church with a cohort of people about one to four years different than them. Paul gives these instructions in this letter assuming that families would hear this.

So, what is required? There are two words. First, verse 1, obey; and then, verse 2, honor. So, the command to children is to obey their parents. The word to obey is not the same Greek word as submit. It’s a stronger word, so the kind of submission – that’s important, that’s biblical – that a wife ought to give to her husband, it is not the same word here that children give in obedience to their parents. Wives follow and respect their husbands. Children obey their parents. Parents have the authority to discipline disobedient children. Husbands are not given the authority to discipline an unsubmissive wife. In fact, submission is something the wife freely gives. It is not something that the husband forcibly takes. Children are told to obey their parents in the Lord.

Now, what does this look like? Of course, when they get older, it’s one thing. When you can, if they don’t listen to you, you can pick them up and physically bring them where they need to go in obedience to you – that doesn’t last very long. And as they get older, they desire more independence. It takes a lot of wisdom, doesn’t it, as parents, to know what kind of independence is a natural self-differentiation and which comes from a rebellious heart. It is true, we might say, that as our kids get older, parents, we have to move from commanding officers to coaches to counselors. Now, you don’t do that with a five-year-old. I’m just your coach. Go get them. You don’t do that with your nine-year-old, and you’re just a counselor. I have some advice for you. You don’t want to get this reversed. But likewise, if you try to parent a 20-year-old as a commanding officer rather than as one who is there now to help coach and counsel, you will find yourself in unnecessary fits. And we don’t have time this evening, but you see in verse 4, “Fathers,” – notice there it’s not excluding mothers, but there is a prerogative especially to fathers – “do not provoke your children to anger. Bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Yes, children must obey their parents. They must always honor them. But parents, especially dads, let us not use that as an excuse to provoke our children, to needlessly poke them in the eye, to strut around with our authority in a way that simply leads to their exasperation.

Now, why this first command? Obey your parents in the Lord. Paul says very simply, this is right. Almost as if he didn’t expect any other explanation. He’ll give one other reason in a moment, but as if he could assume everyone knows – and probably in that ancient culture everyone would have obviously agreed; may not be such in our day – that everyone knows this. And we who have the commandments in the Scriptures and have been taught this, we also ought to know this. It is simply the right thing to do that those parents who sacrifice for you – mother who gave birth to you, the father who provides for you and protects you – of course, to them we ought to show a special honor and obedience. Colossians 3:20, “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.” Any kids here? I’m glad we have some kids. Kids can come to Sunday evenings. It would be a very good thing. One of the absolute best things – I know I’m preaching to the metaphorical choir here – that my parents ever did for me is that they came to Sunday morning and Sunday evening service, and they brought me as well. Children, you think, what can I do? I’m a kid. I have dreams, but what can I do right now? Only eight years old, but I really, really want to please Jesus. That’s a good thing. Jesus is working that in your heart. What can you do? The Bible tells us one thing you can do is obey your parents. This pleases the Lord. When you do what your mom and dad tell you to do, children, Jesus gets a big smile. He says, “That makes me very happy.” He is pleased when we listen to our parents. He is not pleased when we lie to them or cheat or disrespect them or slam the door on them or roll our eyes at them. In fact, in the Old Testament, the punishment for disobeying parents is very serious. At the highest level. Cursing your parents, we find in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, was a capital offense. Deuteronomy 21:18, “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them, and they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.” I would be afraid.

And you don’t hear of that regularly happening in the Old Testament. Surely one of the things it was instructed was not just for children to be afraid but for parents. Notice it was incumbent upon the parents. It was something to enforce and inspire the parents for their instruction and their discipline, lest they would have under their watchful care such wayward, rebellious children that someone would say you ought to bring them before the elders. It was a word to be a warning shot both for children and for parents. Disobedience to parents is not a capital offense in the New Testament. We do not have those same judicial punishments in the church. Rather, we have transposed to a spiritual key. We have church discipline. But it is still a serious sin. We read in 2 Timothy, “Understand this that in the last days there will come times of difficulty for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” That is quite a list to describe what some people will be like. Unholy, heartless, brutal, lovers of pleasure, reckless, treacherous, and right in the middle, disobedient to their parents. That’s how strongly even the New Testament considers this sin.

You might ask the very natural question, are there limits to obeying our parents? And are there limits to what parents can require of their children? Yes to both questions. Authority can be abused. The antidote to bad authority is not no authority, but good authority. We know from Acts chapter 5 that if any authority should require of us what God forbids or forbid from us what God requires then we say with the apostles, it is right for us to obey God rather than man. And Jesus himself understood this, especially in that ancient culture where there was a much stronger emphasis on loyalty and respect for your parents. I know this is very anachronistic and maybe not the best way to read back into the New Testament, but it gives you a picture, maybe, if you’ve seen Fiddler on the Roof, the sort of authority that the father – though it was, you know, in that musical, a playful kind of authority – but what a serious thing it was to go against your father’s wishes. So, Jesus is saying something quite dramatic when he says, “I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.” Jesus is saying something that’s very counter-cultural to say, if obedience to me, Jesus, and obedience to your parents are at cross purposes, then so be it. You must obey me. As you’ve heard me say many times, quoting C.S. Lewis, these hard sayings of Jesus are only good for us if they are hard sayings. They’re not good for us if we like them. That’s right. Jesus said that, “Oh, it’s going to make us all fight in our family. We must be the godliest family ever.” We sure are fighting. No, it’s meant to counteract something that should be strongly and naturally felt – namely, you want to honor your parents.

The dynamic changes, as I’ve suggested, when children get older. You say, “Well, really, I mean, maybe that’s some common sense. Is there anything from the Bible that suggests that?” Well, there is. We get a clue from Genesis 2:24, “For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife.” Without dwelling too much on that verse, it is striking that it says the man will leave his father and mother. You might think of it because the woman usually takes the man’s name, and the man becomes the head of the family, and yet I think all of us, even today, understand that usually there is a sense in which that relational cohesion is built around the woman, and there is a natural link for the woman to her family – and the husband, yes, to his family – but there will be a stronger link usually from the daughter back to her mother. And so, a man leaves his father and mother, cleaves to his wife. The implication there is you’re part of a family, but you are forming something unique, and surely if the language of leaving a father and mother then there is a requirement that the parents can make upon their children that does change. Now in that time it would have naturally been when a child leaves and gets married, which would have happened very young. It would have happened often as teenagers or in their 20s – would have generally happened young. Today it may be older, or it may be when a child moves out, or a natural passage of life and leaving for college or graduating from college or being self-sustaining and self-sufficient. But we see the hint there that there is a difference in that relationship between the parents and the child.

We also know there are times when children will have bad parents. They will have, as Christians, non-Christian parents. Now, we ought to show even in those circumstances that being a Christian means we are more honoring, not less honoring to our parents. You never want, you know, a child who goes away and wasn’t in a very strong Christian home or didn’t have Christian parents at all who goes away to college and comes back that first semester, and she got plugged into a campus ministry, and she’s on fire for the Lord, and she comes back, and her non-Christian parents are very suspicious – “Did you join a cult?” No. Well, you don’t want the daughter to now be a worse daughter for having become a more serious Christian. You want her to be a better daughter, even if there may be some new points of tension. I can think several friends of mine over the years – and I know this isn’t always true culturally, but I can think several times with friends of mine from an Asian background – who were marrying and asking for permission, and the wife’s parents, whether they were Christians or not – think of two or three concrete examples – would have a hard time with the man that she was marrying, because he seemed to have a low-status profession, even if they were Christians, if he was going into the ministry instead of a high-status profession like a doctor or a lawyer. This can happen in any kind of ethnic group, we realize, but it would be very difficult. And in each one of these instances, the Christians that I knew, instead of coming quickly to these parents and saying, “No, you have no right over me, and we’re Christians, and you don’t understand us.” I do think it doesn’t mean that the parents have to have the absolute, ultimate say. We don’t see throughout Scripture – we don’t see that, you know, Jesse had to weigh in and had to give the final approval to all of David’s wives. And yet is certainly keeping with biblical principle that we have the tradition of seeking permission from parents and from the father in particular, and in each of these instances, as the man patiently and slowly worked his way and was able to gain trust of those parents over time and show that even though it was maybe not fulfilling the hopes and dreams that they thought they wanted for their daughter, they came to respect him and see that he was someone who would love and provide for and take care of their daughter. It may not always work out to a happy ending, but patience, kindness, showing that you are a better son or daughter or son-in-law or daughter-in-law because of your commitment to Christ.

We see the other word in verse 2, honor. Calvin says, “Honoring our parents requires three things. Obedience (we’ve seen that) and then reverence, and gratefulness.” So, a reverence because of the position that they hold. It’s a noble title to be a mom or a dad. It’s a noble title. There are more than the average number of people who can call me that, but still only nine. Only nine. Lots of people can call me Kevin. People can call me pastor. They could call me Reverend Doctor if they really wanted a good grade, but only a few people can call me dad. It is an honorable title. To honor requires gratefulness. The life of a parent is one of near-constant sacrifice of money, time, sleep, energy, desire. Now, most often when we have our wits about us, they are joyful sacrifices, at least when we keep the end in mind, but they are sacrifices nonetheless. Here’s how the Heidelberg Catechism puts it – you wonder if we’ll ever get to the catechism, but we’re getting to it here near the end – what is God’s will for you in the fifth commandment? That I show honor, love, and faithfulness. Now, the translation that I grew up on was just a little different, and it said, “Honor, love, and loyalty.” Honor, love, and faithfulness to my father and mother and all those in authority over me, submit myself with proper obedience to all their good teaching and discipline, and also (now this one is really pastorally rich) – and also that I be patient with their failings, for by their hand God wills to rule us.

Are you patient with the failings of our elected officials? Do you honor them of both parties for the office that they hold? Are you patient with those in authority over you in the workplace? Are we patient, in particular, with our parents? In many families, especially sincere Christian families, no one feels worse about parental mistakes than the parents themselves. No one tends to beat themselves up at night thinking about all the things that they could have done differently and unhelpfully comparing their children to the supposed nonstop success story of someone else’s children. Think about how patient your parents were with you when I bet you made a lot of dumb decisions and mistakes. And isn’t there something wonderfully realistic about the catechism when it tells children to be patient with their parents’ failings, it assumes yes, even godly parents will have failings. Kids, and all of us who still have parents that we can honor, are we willing to overlook not everything, not talking about giving a blind eye to abuse, real abuse, real injustice that you just have to sit back and take, especially as adults, you know, all kind of manipulation. But are you willing to overlook small things and in everything to be patient with your parents and their failings, their imperfections, the mistakes they make, when they embarrass you?

You know those Progressive commercials, you’re becoming like your parents? They’re so funny. And one of the reasons they’re funny is I watch almost all of them, and I think well, that’s really very sensible. Yes it’s very smart to leave a major sporting event a little early because parking is a nightmare. And how do these internet gizmos work? They seem very realistic the older I get. But the funny part is we realize that as we get older, we see the funny things and the things that maybe technology leaves our parents behind, and if we all live long enough, we will be those same parents. Children cannot imagine how much their parents love them. Even the best children will very rarely – I’m tempted to say never, but that might be extreme – even the best children will rarely love their parents as much as their parents love them. It’s one of the things when you have children, and if the Lord is kind to have a few light bulbs go off, you’ll have a moment where you realize, “My parents loved me way more than I knew.” Even if you had very imperfect parents who may have had themselves very hard upbringings and doing the best they could, it’s not to overlook very egregious and grievous situations. We’re not making light of it or presuming that all of us have had wonderful childhoods, but surely the catechism is right, and the biblical truth is wise to cut our parents some slack. Be patient with their failings. You notice the very final reason for this command is that it may go well with you. Paul tells the Ephesians, this is the first commandment with a promise. Isn’t that kind of the Lord? This commandment, which he could have enforced with an iron fist: children, obey your parents in the Lord if you know what’s good for you. Obey your parents, or be afraid. Instead, he reinforces it with a precious promise that it may go well with you. Now, he’s tweaked it just a little bit from Exodus, which says “and prolong your days or live long life in the land that the Lord your God has given you.” And there it’s looking forward to the promised land, a particular slice of land, and so we see in this New Testament economy, it’s the same promise, but it’s writ large to whatever land you may be in, and it’s not hemmed in particularly to one nation or people, but the promise is still there. And it’s not an exact formula: if you obey your parents, then you live a long life. We all know that that’s not the case. Sometimes people, sadly, their parents outlive their children. The promise is not a vending machine. I put in obedience, and I get long life. Jesus, after all, did not live a long life. It’s not a promise of health, wealth, and prosperity. But it is telling us intuitively and what social science would even back up, that obeying your parents is a good idea. It means generally more stability, order, discipline. Life will, all else considered, go better for us, and there will generally be less trouble, and therefore we will – on the whole people will live a longer, happier life if they honor their parents.

Now what does this look like for us, whatever age, if our parents are still living? Because the dynamic changes, and the way of obedience changes. This commandment to honor our father and mother is with us throughout our life. Five things you might say in order to obey the fifth commandment: “Yes, mom.” Prompt, cheerful obedience. “Thank you, Dad.” “I love you.” “What do you think?” – even when they’re older, and perhaps you’re less in need of what they think? And how about a fifth word? “Hello.” Stop by. Pick up the phone. Send a picture. Send a text. Tell them how you’re doing. Yes, mom. Thank you, Dad. I love you. What do you think? Hello. This obedience to the fifth commandment is part of our devotion to Jesus. Even Jesus obeyed his parents, and there was never a bigger gap between the perfection of the child and the imperfection of the parents. Luke 2:51, “He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them, and his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.” You remember at Christmas, perhaps, singing this hymn? “And through all his wondrous childhood he would honor and obey. Love and watch the lowly maiden in whose gently arms he lay. Christian children, all must be mild, obedient, good as he.” I admit I get a little twitch when I sing it. It’s just a little bit schmaltzy, a little bit saccharine, but it’s not wrong. It’s not wrong that Christian children ought to look at the Lord Jesus as an example. It’s not wrong in what that hymn says. It’s just by itself very incomplete, because more important than his example of obedience is what he accomplished by his obedience, that the Son was the perfect fifth commandment obeying, honoring Son to his Father for our sakes.

Here’s what we read in Hebrews. Notice, if you haven’t noticed it before, the familial language. “Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers” – so, it’s putting Jesus into the context of a family like us, his brothers, his brothers and sisters – “so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people” – ah, you all circle that. I know that word – “for because he himself has suffered when tempted” – so, he’s like the Adam that’s tempted, but he doesn’t fail – “he is able to help those who are being tempted.” Now, you have to go on to chapter 3: “Therefore, holy brothers” – speaking to us as a family – “you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God’s house.” It is putting it in the family, in the household of God, that Jesus came to be made like his brothers, like us in every respect except for sin, tempted except he did not fail, that he might be faithful to the one who appointed him, to his heavenly Father, so that in him as our brother, we might consider Jesus – his honor, his love, his loyalty to his Father to enable us to do the same to our parents and forgive us for our own failings. Let’s pray.

Lord Jesus, thank you for your Word, which is always right, always helpful, always true. Give us the grace to reinterpret our lives through your Word rather to try to reinterpret your Word through the painful experiences of our life. And help us in whatever stage of life we were in, so long as we have parents, that we might honor them, and we give thanks for the Lord Jesus and his work on our behalf. Amen.