Honor Your Father

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

The prior four commandments were all concerned with the necessity of honoring God as a basic means of keeping His covenant. This commandment follows logically because it is concerned with honoring parents—who have the awesome role in the family of representing God to their children.

The term honor means to treat with significance. Care of one’s elderly parents was a basic part of social responsibility and godly piety in Israel. It was tied directly to how a person would fare in the land. People who were faithless to God in disregarding their parents would not last long in the new Promised Land.

In the requisition of honor to parents it lays the foundation for the sanctification of all social life, in that it teaches us to recognize a divine authority in it. Here, the government of an absolute majority would be an absolute absurdity.

Deuteronomy 5:16 Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you; that your days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with you in the land which the LORD your God gives you.

This commandment commences with a positive injunction but this time with the simple imperative of honor. Honor is not something that can be commanded, if it remains only an attitude or disposition. Very much in line with the underlying root meaning of the verb, to honor demands action that comes from an inward spirit.

This is an unmistakable reference to the initial disclosure of the covenant at Sinai, and no doubt the warning was added because of some infraction of the commanded having taken place in the interim.

Honor Your Father

Half of our very existence depends on him. With such a cultural emphasis on the individual, we some times forget that we didn’t just spring fully-formed out of somewhere.

Parents were the first ones to nurture and care for us. We need to pause and think about all of those years that we don’t even remember—the days and nights they cared for us when we were not able to care for ourselves. This should remind us that the whole universe does not begin and end with us.

Absent parents insure that a culture will come undone, and the entire society will unravel.

Honor your father applies to all fathers, good and bad. This does not mean you agree with your father in all he does. In a respectful manner, sometimes as one gets older, you might even have to speak up concerning his actions. If you are blessed, this may not be necessary.

Honoring our fathers does not presuppose that at every stage of your existence you should obey them.

Once a person is out of the house and on their own, paying their own way, they must make their own decisions. We still listen to our parents’ instruction, advice, and admonition, but we are no longer children simply obeying.

Proverbs 1:8. Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction.

The practical implications of honoring our fathers is we treat them with respect, regardless of our age.

Honoring Our Fathers Guarantees A Promise

Deuteronomy 5:16b …that your days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with you, in the land which the LORD your God gives you.

The key to societal stability is reverence and respect for parents and their authority. Within the borders
of their territory, God expects parents to not tolerate juvenile delinquency, which at heart is overt disrespect for parents and authority.

In the Old Testament, severe consequences such as capital punishment, could apply. (Deuteronomy 21:18–21) One of the reasons for the Babylonian exile for God’s people was failure to honor parents. (Ezekiel 22:7,15)

Jesus Deals With Parent Honor

Matthew 15:4b …Honor your father and mother: and, He that curses father or mother, let him die the death.

The Jewish people’s Corban practice was that of pledging money or other material resources to the temple
to be paid upon one’s death. These funds could therefore not be transferred to anyone else, but could still be used for one’s own benefit while one was still alive.

God is against social injustice, especially against parents. God is against perversion and greed at the horizontal level. But what He hates worst is when it is done for ‘religious’ sake. For example, when we attempt to overthrow Him, or to become God by deciding what is right or wrong, regarding ourselves to be the center of the universe. This is so easily done by not respecting our parents.

Honor Your Father & Mother!