For some people, the fifth commandment is a challenge. We know we should honor our father and our mother, but we don’t really want to. Maybe our parents aren’t that great—maybe they abused us, abandoned us, or manipulated us to the point that any interaction is a trial by fire. What do we do then?
I can’t speak to that, and I won’t try. But I do know that the command from God—repeated in Ephesians 6:2—is firm: Honor your father and mother. Even if that involves honoring them from a distance.
Curiously, Paul calls this commandment “the first commandment with a promise.” That’s not an accident; in Deuteronomy 5:16, Moses says that doing so will “prolong our days” and that it “will go well with us on the land with the Lord our God gives us.”
This commandment and the one to honor the Sabbath are the only two positive commandments in the Decalogue. All the others tell the reader not to do something, so when God pauses and tells Israel to do something, then attaches a promise to it, they should take notice.
It seems weird for God to connect respect for parents with longevity in Canaan, but it makes sense when you stop to think about it. The first people with authority in anyone’s life are their parents. If someone can’t show them respect, what are the chances they’ll respect anyone else? What are the chances they’ll respect God?
(That might be why the Sabbath is also listed as a positive command. Honor your father and mother, and then honor God through the Sabbath. Either way, respect is a deliberate act.)
A lot of people like to harp on the younger generations for not being respectful to their elders, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve seen that to be the case as well. But this is not a modern-day problem; Moses teaches it here because his people struggled with it, too.
And a nation that won’t honor their parents is a nation that won’t honor God. It’ll become self-serving, and eventually disobedient. That’s why Moses attached the promise to it.
It might do us some good to realize that this commandment doesn’t have an expiration date on it. It doesn’t matter if you’re seven or seventy, if you’re fortunate to have your parents around, show them honor. And if they’ve passed on, honor their memory.
It’ll bleed over into how you honor God.