We’ve quickly run through the first three commandments, sometimes referred to as the First Table (or the first tablet) of the Law. Since Moses received the commandments from God on two stone tablets, we speak of the commandments about love for God—the first three, as we have numbered them—as being the First table and the commandments that deal with our interactions with our neighbor, the other people God has placed in our life, as the Second Table, regardless of how the commandments may have been divided on the original stone tablets.
The first three commandments are about loving God above all things by (1) honoring and worshiping Him alone as God, (2) honoring His name and using it correctly, and (3) honoring His Word and the ministry of it. The other seven commandments are about loving God by doing as He says with regard to our neighbor in some general and some specific ways.
The Fourth Commandment: You shall honor your father and your mother. What does this mean? We should fear and love God, that we do not despise or anger our parents and those in authority over us; but honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish them.
Let’s start with the parents, father and mother, the most basic form of authority God has given on this earth. God designed it into His creation that it takes a man and a woman to come together to have children, gifting to every child both a father and a mother, who are supposed to stay together for life, and to work together, as God’s own representatives in the home, to provide for that child and to raise that child in the “fear and admonition of the Lord,” to care for their child, both body and soul.
Our modern society, as you know, has largely shoved aside God’s design, even promoting homes with a mother only, or a father only, or a father and a “father,” or a mother and a “mother,” or with multiple sets of parents after divorce and remarriage or divorce and living together outside of marriage. But that was not God the Creator’s intention. His design was for children to benefit from both a father and a mother, married to each other for life, living together in the same home. Anything else is either the direct result of sin, or the sad consequence of the sin that has ravaged our world.
In turn, God has revealed His will for all children of all time, that they are to honor their parents, both father and mother.
What does that look like, to “honor your father and your mother”? First the catechism explains what children are not to do. We should not “despise” our parents or “anger” our parents. How might you despise them? By getting angry at them; by thinking evil about them in your heart; or by assuming the worst about them. How might you anger them? By outright disobedience, bad behavior, or rebellion; by obedience that is careless, sluggish, or reluctant; by grumbling or complaining to them or about them behind their back; or by speaking ill of them or showing disrespect toward them. That’s what children are commanded not to do.
What are children commanded to do with their parents? To honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish them. Now, each of those words is pretty self-explanatory. To honor is to show them the dignity they deserve as God’s appointed representatives in our homes. That includes our actions (serving them and obeying them), and it includes our attitudes (loving them and cherishing them, respecting them, thinking highly of them). And while the “obedience” part of the commandment only applies to children before they reach adulthood, the “serving” part of honor may become even more necessary as their parents get older, and the “loving” and the “cherishing” parts of honoring their parents apply even after their parents are gone. So even for those of you who no longer have parents around to obey or serve, you can still love and cherish those you had and give thanks to God for them, and rejoice that those who fell asleep in Christ are resting safely with Him in Paradise.
How serious is God about this? This was the civil law in the Old Testament: Everyone who curses his father or mother shall surely be put to death. Or again, If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and who, when they have chastened him, will not heed them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city, to the gate of his city. And they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death with stones; so you shall put away the evil from among you, and all Israel shall hear and fear. Even in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul lists being “disobedient to parents” among the serious sins for which those who practice them deserve death, and, Paul says, the Fourth Commandment came with a promise, “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth,” as God’s extra incentive to get children to obey, because a stable family, with devoted father and mother and with obedient children, is necessary for civilization to remain intact. That’s all too obvious as we see the Biblical concept of family being rejected by the world, which is at the heart of all our culture’s decay.
What if parents don’t deserve your respect or honor? Well, sometimes they don’t. No parent is sinless, and some, sadly, are truly wretched and we don’t have to pretend they aren’t. But their God-given role as parents is still a role that God infuses with honor, and every bit of goodwill and obedience, love and respect that can be given in good conscience should be given. But if your parents tell you to do something that God has forbidden, or command you not to do something that God has required, that’s when “civil disobedience” is called for in the home. As the apostles said to the Jewish authorities when they were commanded not to do what Jesus commanded them to do, namely, to preach the Gospel, “We must obey God rather than men.”
That brings us to the extended application of the Fourth Commandment, where Luther explains that it’s not restricted to honoring your father and your mother, but also those in authority over us. The German uses just one word for all that: “Herren,” lords. We don’t use that word anymore, except for THE Lord, but in German it included everyone in a position of authority over you, from your boss to your king, in the secular realm, and it also included your pastor in the spiritual realm.
The Scriptures back up that extension of the Fourth Commandment. We’re told, especially by St. Paul and St. Peter, to submit to the governing authorities and to honor the king. We’re told by the writer to the Hebrews to Remember those who rule over you, who have spoken the word of God to you, to obey them and to be submissive, for they watch over your souls.
Spiritual authorities have a God-given duty to watch over the souls of those entrusted to their care—not unlimited authority, but the authority to teach God’s Word and administer the Sacraments, to rebuke sin, and to forgive it.
Secular authorities have a God-given duty to watch over, not the souls, but the bodies of their subjects, but only in certain ways; they don’t have God-given authority over every aspect of life. According to Scripture, the secular authorities exist to maintain justice, not allowing one person to mistreat or steal from another. The authorities are to ensure the safety of their citizens, that is, to prevent evildoers from harming their person or property, to protect them from foreign and domestic threats. That duty does not extend, by the way, to preventing the spread of disease at all costs; there is not even a hint in Scripture that the government has the authority from God to punish people or to restrain people on the off chance that they may have some disease, the one possible exception being the quarantining of a person who had been formally examined and diagnosed to have leprosy, which had more to do with ceremonial uncleanness than with the prevention of contamination—nothing like the authority we’ve seen the government grant to itself over the past year.
Still, when acting in their God-given roles, the Fourth Commandment extends to authorities in the church and to authorities in the state, and we are all commanded to honor, to serve and obey, to love and cherish those authorities. That certainly also includes praying for them and trying to work together with them for the good of the Church and for the good of society.
Where have you failed to honor? Where have you failed to obey, to serve, to love, or to cherish, in the home, in the Church, or in society? Where have you despised or angered parents or those in authority over you? Are you always careful to defend their honor? Are you always careful to obey? Always eager to love them? To pray for them? A sin against the Fourth Commandment is a sin against the God who put those authorities in place in your life. And so the Fourth Commandment, like the rest, shows us our sin and condemns us in the courtroom of God’s justice.
Which is another reason why only a fool would plead his case before God on the basis of how well he’s obeyed the Law. Our only plea must be, God, have mercy on me, a sinner, for the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ, who honored both His earthly parents and You, His heavenly Father, in my place, and who suffered and died for my dishonor and disobedience! Then, clothed in Christ’s righteousness and having God’s forgiveness, let the Fourth Commandment guide you each day into the new obedience of God’s beloved children, and may He grant us all the wisdom to know when the authorities are acting as God’s representatives, and when not. Amen.
