The Fifth Commandment:
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12).
This might be the most “natural” of all the 10 Commandments. Yet, as I once heard someone say, “If it were easy, it wouldn’t have to be a Commandment.”
The Christian tradition has always seen the 10 Commandments as offering both positive and negative commands. For example: when we are told explicitly not to murder (a negative command), we are told implicitly to love our enemies (a positive command).
I want to tease out both parts for the 5th Commandment for us.
On the positive side, the command to honor our fathers and mothers is obviously applicable to us as a school. We are to teach our children to respect and obey us, not “sparing the rod,” but disciplining our children in love.
Simultaneously, we are to model that honor to our children by honoring our own parents. This is binding on us–Jesus commands us explicitly to do it (Matthew 15:4, 19:19). It means showing love and respect, even if they make it difficult (or are difficult themselves at times!). It also means showing respect and honor to others at the school (who are, after all, our children’s friends’ parents).
On the negative side, this is a command not to be fathers and mothers who are difficult to honor. Fathers are explicitly told in Scripture not to provoke or exasperate their children (Ephesians 6:4, Colossians 3:21). We need the Holy Spirit to give us humility, grace, and patience in our parenting.
Simultaneously, we are to avoid modeling dishonor to our own (and other!) parents. This means being careful not to speak to our children negatively or disparagingly about our own parents and others at the school. By our example, we can build up other families, not just our own.
This is hard to do! But Paul tells us through his prayer in Ephesians 3:14-19 that it is worth doing:
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Don’t miss it: family comes from the Father. He builds our families; He sustains us as we try to raise them well. Let’s lean in together to His grace and model honor for our children.
— Anderson Underwood
