Where Honor Begins – The Fifth Commandment

Where Honor Begins

The fifth commandment

Exodus 20.12; Deuteronomy 5.16

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.”

Ephesians 6.4

“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

We must teach our children to honor us.

The fifth commandment is directed to children, in the first instance. But, like everything else about being a child, children must learn how to fulfill their obligations and take their proper place in life. The job of teaching them falls to parents. Children who honor their parents will learn to honor other kinds of authority as well, so the better we teach them to honor us, the more success they can expect to have in life – especially when honoring God is the focal point for all their honoring everyone else. While children are responsible to honor their parents, parents are responsible to teach them how to do this. In this sense the fifth commandment’s obligation to honor others according to their place in life and society applies to parents, as they honor their children as such and teach them the discipline and instruction of the Lord – which includes what it means to keep the fifth commandment. We can even extend this mandate to all adult members of a church community. In a sense we are all responsible to teach the children of the church how to honor proper authorities. Their success in living for the Lord depends in no small part on how consistent and effective we are in doing this. So what we examine this week will apply to all parents and all adult members of the church. It does, in fact, take a congregation to raise a child.

In what ways are you presently helping the children of your church learn to honor their parents and other authorities?

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“In the Gates” is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.