Honor your father and your mother

Ten Commandments | The fifth commandment | Ian Goodman
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” (Ex 20:12).
This command brings us to the second table of the Law. Traditionally the two tables of the law have been split between commands related to your relationship to God (being the first four) and commands related to your relationship with others (the last six). This is rightly patterned after the Bible’s own summary of the law, most especially the words of Jesus Christ in Matt 22:37-40 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
This fifth commandment forms something of a bridge between those two great commandments in the summary. It is a command related to human relationship, but it also has a great deal to do with our relationship to God since it relates to all authority structures and our submission under them.
We should not overlook what’s being assumed by this command. It assumes that a family is made up of a Father and Mother, and children, and that the members of this family unit have covenant obligations one to another. Parents will give instruction to children, and children will obey that instruction and honour their parents through lifelong loyalty.
Perhaps the best place to go for a fleshed out version of this commandment is Eph 6:1-4 “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”
Parents are here commanded (especially Fathers) not to frustrate (provoke) their children on their path to adulthood, but instead are to raise their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Children, under this care and instruction, are commanded to honour their parents. This includes obedience while young, and honour and care toward parents when they are older. Proverbs 23:22 “Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old.”
While the covenant com-munity of family is vitally impor-tant, we must remember that it is but a shadow of the truest and most lasting covenant community, that of the family of God under His perfect Fatherly care. It is only in God the Father that we find the Fatherly love that our hearts truly crave!