Exodus 20: 12: “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.”
This commandment reminds us that God has created an ordered world and everyone has a place in that ordered world. The most helpless creature on earth is a child born to one of Eve’s descendants. This means that any person has to be cared for by their parents, or someone else, for about fifteen to twenty years before that person is truly independent. God, in His wisdom as Creator, understood this and set down a principle to make it easier for parents to complete this vital task. When Paul wrote about people who choose not to glorify God as God, he said that one of the consequences of this was being disobedient to parents (Rom 1: , 30, “Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,”). The Lord also told Israel to establish certain ceremonies and monuments so that parents would have an opportunity to tell their children what the Lord had done for Israel. (See , for example, Exodus 12: 26, 27, “And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the LORD’S passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses. And the people bowed the head and worshipped.” and Deut 6: 20-25, “And when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments, which the LORD our God hath commanded you? Then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh’s bondmen in Egypt; and the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand: And the LORD shewed signs and wonders, great and sore, upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household, before our eyes: And he brought us out from thence, that he might bring us in, to give us the land which he sware unto our fathers. And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as it is at this day. And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before the LORD our God, as he hath commanded us.”) Children are not the only ones who have responsibilities, parents are also told not to provoke their children to anger and to bring them up to know and fear the Lord (Eph 6: 4, “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”).
(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)
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