Exodus 20:12 Honor your father and your mother: that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God giveth thee.

The fifth commandment says, Honor your father and your mother, and it’s the first one with promise.

To honor our father and mother, to honor our parents, is to begin with recognition that our very existence is dependent upon them. Especially here in the West, we live with such a cultural emphasis on the individual that we sometimes forget that we didn’t just spring fully-formed. We forget that our lives did not begin with us and what we did.

In the majority of instances, our parents were the first ones to nurture us and care for us. Most of us do not really understand that very well until we become parents. We should sometimes stop and think about all of those years that we don’t remember. There were many things they did for us that were necessary, that we could not do ourselves.

The Promise of the Commandment

This commandment has a promise, and the promise gives us a great clue to one of the reasons why it is so important. So that you may live long in the land your God is giving you. It is a way of saying this commandment is for the ordering of society, for human flourishing.

If you have a situation where parents are not ordered, then the entire culture will come undone over time. The entire society begins to unravel when values are not passed on. Godly values have to be taught and relearned again and again. This passing on establishes intergenerational stability. It is frightening how little honor of our parents actually takes place in our culture. Our children have to be taught this for their own future to be blessed.

In our Western culture, we stress personal freedom; the shortfall of that is by tradition alone or its absence, many things of importance are not passed on to our children. However, if we do not succeed at teaching and passing on the most important things to our children, what is this going to do to the very fabric of culture? If you doubt this, look around.

If you want to live long in the land where God places you, you’ve got to have this intergeneration stability. Today, all this individual freedom leads many young people to think that the whole universe begins with them. When we begin to think like that, we start to process everything through a lens that anything happening before me is not important. And we are then failing to give them what they most need.

This commandment does not apply only if the children have good parents.

Ephesians 6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. 2 Honor your father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise.

A close analogy of this is also seen when the apostle Paul wrote to believers in the first century saying, “Honor the king.” All those kings were wicked and cruel. That doesn’t mean you honor the king for absolutely everything that he does. You don’t want to get into the spirit of sneering condescension that begins to mock fatherhood, or even your own father.

To honor your father and your mother does not presuppose that at every stage of your existence you should obey them.

When a couple is married they become an independent home and are not supposed to be under their parents’ direct command all the days of their life. However, there is a way of honoring and respecting parents once we have become adults that does not mean simply doing exactly whatever they say whether we think that this is wise or good or godly or not.

The practical implications of honoring our parents, even when we live outside of their house are easy to flesh out.

It means we take on the responsibility for keeping in touch. Even if they take none.
Even when it’s awkward, we treat them with respect. Even when we’re not sure they’ve earned it, we treat them with respect.
We become interested in their opinions and outlook. This does not “bind” us, if after we’ve processed and prayed we are led otherwise. As their horizons sometimes grow smaller with older age we make sure we know who their friends are, and what is going on in their lives. And how we can help and bless them. Even if we believe they did not always do this well enough for us as children or adults.
We become concerned for their well-being. Hopefully, all of this springs from love and a heartfelt desire! But sometimes life is complicated. Even unfair. Ultimately we bless out of our love and relationship with Christ. Blessing our parents will bless us also.

We still listen to their instruction, advice, and correction, but we are no longer children simply obeying them. We’re in that broad domain that you find in Proverbs 1:8. “Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction. Do not forsake your mother’s teaching.”

When this commandment to honor our parents breaks down, not only is God being defied since He gave the commandment, but the stability of the entire culture is breaking up.

Paul Speaks to the Evidence of this Fault

Paul says this will take place in the sinful human race between the first coming and the second coming of Christ in what he calls the last times in 2 Timothy 3:2. “People will be disobedient to their parents.”

Jesus Speaks About Honoring Parents

Hate your father and mother. That’s a direct quote. It’s got to be put in context, but it is stunning. It comes from the teaching of the Lord Jesus himself. It shows up in several ways. in Luke 14:26 If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. 27 And whoever does not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.

Clearly to put the point so baldly as simply to say, “Hate your father and your mother,” demands that we unpack this. It is possible, after all, to abuse what Jesus is saying, We understand that. After all, Jesus himself elsewhere insists in the strongest terms that children must obey their parents and adults must honor their parents.
It is a comparison, if we compare our dedication to Christ with that to our parents, it would appear as hate, especially if it comes down to obeying Him or our parents. It is simply a way of saying, Christ is to be number one in our commitment in this life. Jesus rebukes the Pharisees in their day for playing fast and loose with the tax laws. You know they declared something was corban, something was actually dedicated to the temple, then money that should’ve gone to the support of their parents was funneled off and used for religious purposes that promoted their own reputations. Maybe they could even keep some on the side, but it didn’t go to their moms and dads.

Mark 7:9 And He said unto them, “Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor thy father and thy mother,’ and, ‘Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death.’11 But ye say that if a man shall say to his father or mother, ‘It is Corban’ (that is to say, a gift of whatsoever thou mightest have profited from me), he shall be freed;
Jesus says, “That’s wrong! It’s wicked! It’s selfishness because the Bible commands you, ‘Honor your parents. Honor your father and mother.’ By your tradition, you’re nullifying the Word of God. So Jesus is as strong as anyone on the issue of honoring your parents. The language in one sense, it’s already tied back to Exodus 20.

O Lord God, give us a hunger for eternal things. Give us a desire to honor and respect our parents. Then the fruit of this will spill out into our homes and lives, our relationships, our parents, our siblings, our children, our society, our culture. Forbid that we should try to invert this order and merely try to fix things at the horizontal level while ignoring You, thus perpetrating an endless idolatry.