A Matter of Honor

Over my career, I’ve lost count on how many sermons I’ve preached on the Ten Commandments. Between several sermon series on all ten of the commandments and scattered sermons on certain ones, not to mention occasionally quoting one of the commandments to support a point in my sermon, I’ve probably taught on the Ten Commandments a few hundred times. For ten sentences, they are amazing in their comprehensive understanding of human behavior.

The most casual reader of the Ten Commandments will notice the first four of the commandments deal with our relationship with God. Have no other gods before God. Don’t make any graven images of God. Don’t use God’s name in vain and keep the Sabbath. The last five commandments are horizontal and deal with our relationships with each other. Don’t murder. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t steal. Don’t lie and don’t covet.

The hinge verse? The commandment that swings us from our vertical focus to a horizontal one? The fifth commandment – honor your parents. What’s more, this is the only commandment that is followed by a promise. When we honor our parents, Exodus tells us, our lives will be long in the land God is giving to us. Believe it or not, whenever I teach the Ten Commandments, this is the one that creates all of the controversy and leads to the longest discussions.

On more than one occasion, I’ve had someone tell me, “I can’t do that.” I will explain that honoring our parents is something God has required in His word. He has written it in His law, but the person will just shrug and say, “God will just have to understand, but I will never be able to honor my parents.”

Even with the best parents, our relationships with them can be complicated. I was blessed to have had a great mom and dad. Even with that, there were difficulties. My father grew up on a worthless dirt farm in south Mississippi. He lived in fear of poverty. For his sons, nothing was more important than getting an education and getting a good job. He never understood my love of books. He was frustrated I spent so much time reading. I should have been up doing something that made money. When I became a minister, all of that was forgotten. For a long time, however, I understood I was a disappointment to my father. We worked through it, but it was still tough.

Too many of us are dealing with deep wounds inflicted by our parents. We’ve been abused, abandoned, neglected and controlled by parents who were carrying life changing wounds themselves. In fact, if we had understood what many of our parents had endured, we may be filled with compassion for them.

Yet, even with that, a lot of people find themselves unable to obey the fifth commandment and because they are stuck on the 5th commandment, they remain stuck in a lot of other places in their lives.

First of all, notice the word that is used. We aren’t told to love our parents, we’re told to “honor” them. Honor means to “hold in high esteem.” In the best circumstances, we would want our parents to live their lives in ways that deserved honor. My dad worked two jobs all of my life and three jobs for most of it. He wasn’t going to ever be broke and his family would never lack anything. I can honor a man who sacrificed for us like that.

But what if your father didn’t do that? What if your mother wasn’t kind or compassionate?

Honor them anyway.

These are the two people who gave us life and for that alone, they deserve some kind of honor.

But more than that, honoring parents is what Christ followers do. Remember the commandment to honor our parents comes after the four commandments about how we are to relate to God. Because we follow Christ, we honor our parents. This commandment opens up the promise of the life we want to live.

Believe it or not, this has nothing to do with our parents. It has everything to do with us. Because the redemptive process of Christ working in us brings healing and wholeness to every aspect of our lives, we are able to act towards those who have wounded us with love, compassion, and yes, honor.

More and more, we’re finding out how our reaction to our parent’s actions in our lives determines who we become as adults. If we can’t make peace with dad, we’re stuck. We won’t be able to deal with authority. We won’t be able to fully stand in our own identity. Fathers make a difference and if they’re not there, their absence makes a difference. Until we’re able to forgive our fathers for their failures (and every father has them!), we won’t be able to fully live out our adult lives.

It’s the same with mothers. Until we can find our peace with them, we’re stuck. Remember the fifth commandment is the hinge commandment. It takes us from our relationship to God and opens up the door for our best life.

And that best life starts when we honor our parents. It starts when we forgive them. Forgiveness is releasing the other person from the expectation they can fix what they did. Our parents, if they did wound us, can’t heal us. Only Christ can do that and part of that healing is forgiving them.

There’s a reason we get stuck on the fifth commandment. Until we obey it, we haven’t fully understood the first four and won’t be able to find full release to live the next five.

Honor our parents. As Christ followers, this is what we’re told to do. As with most of God’s commandments, it’s through obedience that we find the freedom and life we’ve always wanted.

This essay was first posted in Scot McKnight’s newsletter.