Number 5
Now that my small group's finished with PDL, we're back to the ten commandments. My notes below were originally used Sunday, but I haven't had time to get to them because of server issues. (Other teaching notes can be found here).
The Fifth Commandment
We now turn to the second table of the law, the exposition of the second great commandment: ?love your neighbor as yourself.? Matthew Henry made an interesting point about the second table. He noted that ?As religion towards God is an essential branch of universal righteousness, so righteousness towards men is an essential branch of true religion.? To put it into modern terms, perhaps we might say that, on the one hand, it is impossible to have morality without faith and, on the other hand, that it is impossible to have faith without morality. It is impossible to have fully consistent ethics without a corresponding belief in and worship of the living God. At the same time, worship of God will work itself out in righteous acts and attitudes towards those around us. Perhaps it is worth reminding us that it will do no good to call others to worship if our own worship does not work itself out in our lives. But, onward.
?Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.? In a way, this is a surprising way to begin a section on human ethics. Think what God does not begin with. He does not begin with any sort of grandiose statement concerning the proper ordering of governments (although that is ultimately implied). He does not begin with a command on how to properly wield authority (although, again, that is implied). He begins with a simple command to children: obey your parents. I do not want to make too much of this, but it could be that an implied point is that our fundamental position is as children and our fundamental posture is of submission. That at least seems to be brought out by Jesus? commands that ?the last shall be first? (Mk 9.35) and statements that one must be as a child to enter the kingdom of heaven (Mt 18.13).
Just to be clear, tonight I am not going to get into a detailed discussion of parenting and the proper behavior of children. For one, I am not yet a parent and don?t have much wisdom on the matter. There are many others who have wisdom in this (and we are currently seeking them out). Also, that is not the situation that most of us are currently in. For now I?ll throw out a couple of brief items on parenting and then move on to some other applications.
First, we should note how seriously God takes this command. Later in the Pentateuch there are several instances where the death penalty is proscribed for severe disobedience (cf. Ex. 21.17, Lev. 20.9, Deut. 27.16). This is not a ?throw-away? command, but something God takes extremely seriously. The penalty may seem to be unduly harsh to our refined, 21st century ears (although, for what its worth, the target seems to be grown children that are attempting to cause serious harm to their parents, not 2-year olds who won?t eat their broccoli), but the severity points to the weight God assigns this commandment. Rebellion against parents ultimately implies rebellion against God.
This demonstrates the importance of and honor due parenting. Luther stated that ?God has exalted this estate of parents above all others; indeed, he has appointed it to be his representative on earth.? Another author (Hauerwas) has noted that ?Parenthood is thus a high vocation, one worthy of our honor, for it is participation by some of the faithful in the responsibility and creativity through which God keeps the world as God?s world and creation continues.? As God created the world and breathed life into man, so we as humans participate in that creative activity via parenting. This is worth remembering when parenting is devalued in favor of careers, whether ?secular? or ?sacred.?
Lastly, the rest of the Bible does make clear that obedience to parents is not without limits. In Ephesians 6.1, Paul commands children to obey their parents ?in the Lord.? The entire point of honoring one?s parents is to honor God. When one?s parents are commanding you to do that which is not honoring to God, then they have abdicated their authority. Calvin even argues that ?if they spur us to transgress the law, we have a perfect right to regard them not as parents, but as strangers who are trying to lead us away from obedience to our true Father.? The Father that we must ultimately honor is God Himself.
But this commandment does not only relate to parenting. Throughout church history, theologians have argued that this commandment provides the basis for understanding all relationships of authority, from parent/child to boss/employee to ruler/ruled. What this teaches is to obey all authority that has been put over us by God.
This seems to be the method of interpretation Scripture itself uses. Going back to Ephesians 6, Paul immediately turns to servant/master relations after dealing with parent/child relations. The two are related because, in both cases, you obey the person in authority because they have been put there by God. Obedience towards that authority is ultimately obedience towards God.
Two last items before we turn to some discussion on application. The first is that our ultimate model for parent/child relations is God the Father?s relationship with God the Son. We are shaped by our relationships with our earthly parents. But none of us had perfect parents, none of us were perfect children, and none of us will be perfect parents. The very best father is still a broken image of the only true Father. Our frame of reference for understanding families must be Jesus? relationship with his Father.
Second, we must always remember that the basis and means of family reconciliation is Jesus. It is because he honored his Father that we are enabled to keep this commandment. In Jn 5.25-30, Jesus speaks of him doing not his own, but his Father?s will and therefore being given the authority to judge. Because Jesus honored his Father we have reconciliation to God as Father.
How does all of this affect our lives as 20-somethings? There is the obvious: submission to bosses, elders, and rulers. I doubt anyone here would at least explicitly disagree with that.
Another lesson might perhaps be gleaned from this, though. The obligation to honor your parents does not end when you turn 18, 21, 25, or any such marker. We are to honor our parents throughout our lives, leading ultimately to our work in situations when our parents are unable to care for themselves.
Even more broadly, this commandment teaches us that our posture as young adults should be that of humility and honor towards all those who are older and wiser than us. It is tempting to think that we are where it?s at and we know what to do and so on. Against that instinct God comes and instructs us to always seek to learn from those wiser than us, to not be overly caught up in our wisdom, but to give the respect due to who are our parents, whether spiritually or physically.
December 9, 2004 09:02 AM