Blessing of Honoring Parents
By Dr. Gwee Jin Hwa
Honor your father and your mother that your days may be prolonged in the land which the LORD your God gives you." (Exodus 20:12)
When God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, He chose to put the commandment to honor our parents in fifth place. Since the first four commandments deal with man's relationship with God Himself, this means that the commandment to honor our parents is the first of all the commandments that govern our relationships with other people.
To emphasize how vital it is to honor our parents, God promised a reward to those who obey this important commandment. In fact, this is the only one of the Ten Commandments which comes with a promise attached. What is this promise? God promises that "it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth".1 In other words, He promises a good and long life to those who honor their parents.
What does it mean to honor our parents?
The word "honor" in the original Hebrew is used of honoring God.2 It is also used of honoring kings3 and other important men. So to "honor" our father and mother is to treat them with great respect and obey them, both in public and in private. We can also honor our parents with our possessions.
How long must we honor our parents?
Do we respect and obey our parents only when we are young? Certainly not! God does not set a time limit for honoring our parents. So we must continue to honor our fathers and mothers as long as we live.
What do we do if our parents ask us to do something that dishonors God?
We must not do anything to dishonor God. So in this specific situation we cannot obey our parents. But we must still obey them in every other situation. Remember, when we obey our parents, we please God because we keep His fifth commandment.
If we know more than our parents must we still honor them?
Let us look at the example of the Lord Jesus. As a boy of twelve, Jesus knew more than His parents. His understanding of the Law amazed even the best teachers of the Law in Jerusalem. However, the Bible says, Jesus obeyed His parents and "continued in subjection to them".4 Jesus stayed with His mother until the age of thirty when He left home to tell people God's good news. On the cross, in His agony, He still remembered to entrust His mother to the care of His beloved disciple. John took her into his own household and treated her as his own mother as long as she lived.
Do you want your children to honor you as long as they live? Then you need to ask yourself, "Am I setting a good example for my children to follow?" Do you honor your own father and mother? How about your Father in heaven? Do you honor Him? Or do you ignore Him and pretend that He does not exist?
You ask, "Who is my Father in heaven?"
The Bible tells us that when God made the first man, Adam, in His own image, He breathed His own life into him.5 Every human being is descended from Adam, so God's life is in every human being. Since His life is in every human being, God is, rightfully, the Father of us all. But all of us, like ungrateful children, have left Him to go our own way. We continue to enjoy God's gifts daily, the rain and sunshine that He sends without fail, but we refuse to acknowledge Him and will not honor Him.
Jesus says we are like that young man who wanted to see the world. He persuaded his father to give him his share of the inheritance in advance. He then went far away and wasted all the money on drinking and partying every day. When he was broke, his friends deserted him and he had to feed pigs. Finally, he came to his senses and he decided to return to his father, and beg his forgiveness.
While the young man was still a long way off, his father, who had been looking out for him daily, saw him. Instead of scolding him, his father ran to him and hugged him. The father was very glad that his lost son had finally returned home. He prepared a big feast to celebrate the return of his lost son.
Jesus says that God, like that father, is overjoyed every time one of His lost children returns to him. However far we have wandered, no matter what we have done, our Father in heaven still loves each one of us, and looks out for our return every day. He never stops sending His messengers to ask His rebellious and lost children to return to Him. When even one of His missing children decides to return to Him, all of heaven rejoices and celebrates.6
Will you return to your heavenly Father today? He sent His beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die a humiliating death on the cross, to take the punishment for every wrong thing you and I have done. He knows every one of His missing children by name, and He yearns for every one of them to return to Him.
Your heavenly Father is anxiously seeking you, asking you to return to Him. Do not disappoint Him again!