She was a very sweet girl. She had always thought well of her parents. On their birthdays they were ever remembered by her with a special token of kindness and affection. And when they died, she placed the most beautiful and expensive flowers on their coffins, and spoke endearingly of her lovely parents. She missed them much after they died and rested in their graves; awaiting the great day of the LORD.

Fact is she did everything for them except one thing! Pray, what could that be? Wasn’t she a model daughter, an example to all good and morally clean girls? She lacked the one thing: she did not ever “honor” her parents as enjoined by the Lord in the Fifth Commandment: ‘‘Honor thy father and thy mother. …”

Each Sunday morning we hear this exhortation of the Covenant words read to us, do we not young people. We are singled out, given so to speak “special mention” too in the Decalogue. And we are told by the great apostle Paul that this is “a first commandment with promise”.

Perhaps this commandment has not really sunk deep into your heart, nor have you truly reflected in a spiritual way on its implication for you, your brothers and sisters.

Let us take a hard look at this exhortation “honor thy father and thy mother”.  One young man started giving this a little thought once, and he did this because he could not always be obedient to his parents very well. What they sometimes did, as weak and imperfect parents, was a little sand between his teeth. So he would go to find solace with the neighbors. But then he heard this Fifth Commandment read on Sunday. It startled his conscience, and he did not have peace.

This young man, like many others, went to his minister and asked him, ‘‘Reverend, must I love my parents more than I love the neighbors?” This young man was not far from the kingdom of God. He knew that he must love his neighbor as himself, and that this was the Second Commandment like unto the First Commandment: Love God with all your heart and mind and strength. But then the law did not say: Love thy father and thy mother, but spoke of honoring them.

Hence, this question. And a good question it is indeed. It calls for a clear-cut answer, does it not?

What is really “honor” according to the Bible?

We might begin by pointing out that the Hebrew verb used in the Fifth Commandment for honor means: that which is weighty, important. Applied to the parents it means that the parents are set in authority by God Himself, in God’s authority. This sets a “father” and a “mother” in a class apart from the children, whom God does not place in this position of the right to rule. In “love” we often meet as equals. Love must be very mutual and is the bond of perfectness, ethical goodness. But not so in “honor”. Those who we honor are not our equals. God has placed them in a different legal status. He has placed them in a regal status.

Did you know that we are told to “fear God” and honor the king”? (I Peter 2:17; Romans 13:1-7) Those are good and true words of God. And the Lord stands back of these words. He is not mocked. Now He that says “honor the king” also says “honor thy father and thy mother” honor them in the authority wherewith God Himself has clothed them!

This is the “honor” which we owe to all whom God has set over us; even this is true of a Christian servant toward a hard and cruel master, knowing that such a master also has a LORD in heaven to which he shall give account of his, that is, of God’s authority.

In passing, it may be noted that this means that fathers and mothers must not attempt to be some mere equals, peers with their children. They must stand in the authority toward their children, with the Word of God in their hearts and with the written Word in their minds. What they say must breathe: thus says the LORD, Jehovah your God. Then they are not merely some “difficult” parents, but they are parents standing in loving authority, the love of God Himself in Christ. Thus they “command” respect, and not “demand” it. They are not demanding, difficult, misunderstanding parents who are not “with it”, a bit daffy, some idiotic blockheads, so to speak. They are different from unbelieving parents, who refuse to stand in God’s authority and execute it according to His will, and who create the problems of unrest and chaos in their families and

in the world, never really training them, but letting them grow up “full of the debble” like Topsy in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

In all of the social advice and the attempts to solve the problems of “youth’’, even among men who would like to restore “order in society’’ and “decency in the schools”, the one ingredient is missing. It is the lack of “honor” that is exercised and that is shown between parents and children, teachers and pupils. For only in this exercise of authority, which commands respect, is the man of God thoroughly furnished unto every good work, to which God has created us in Christ Jesus as His elect children.

God is not mocked!

He refuses to come down from His throne! He executes His will! His will is to clothe the parents with His authority over His covenant children, and this His will He will have read and dinned into our hearts; words which shall charm the obedient children unto all eternity in heaven, and will terrify the disobedient in hell, when seems to thunder into his soul and conscience: Son remember: “Honor thy father and thy mother. …”.   It is easier for heaven and for earth to pass away, than for this commandment to fall to the earth.

Yes, then shall the disobedient “children” who never “honored” their father and mother begin to say: Lord, Lord, did we not do all kinds of nice things for our “dear old parents”: bought them nice things, proclaimed special “mother’s day” and even added a “father’s day,” and we finally tucked them away in a very professional nursing home, and planted a endearing parting kiss on mother’s cheek when we left! We were good children, were we not? But the Lord will say: ye are really children of disobedience, like all the children of the world upon whom the wrath of God remains forever. Then shall they say: what lacked we?

What will the answer be?

You did not honor my representatives to you in God’s covenant. You did not honor your teachers, the minister, the elders, the policemen, the judges of the courts — and my great majesty back of it. You did not fear God, love the brotherhood and honor the king!

You did not give God that which was God’s!

Therefore, you did not give to your father and mother the honor due to them.

You did not crucify your old man of sin, and put on the new man as new born creatures. You did not really believe my covenant Word: I am the Lord thy God, who has brought you forth from Egypt, from the land of spiritual bondage and disobedience to honor your father and your mother. You ever walked as those who are “under law” and not as those who are “under grace”. You did not say: I am crucified with Christ, and what I now live I live by the Son of God, who loved me and died for me, and who, as a child, perfectly honored Joseph and Mary.

Thus did the eternal Son of God in the flesh.

When we honor father and mother we do it in the Lord. Walk in the Lord and honor your father and your mother!