The Ten Commandments
Honour Your Father and Mother
The fifth commandment tells us to honour our father and our mother, and it is the first commandment to carry a promise, that thy days may be long upon the land. Here the law turns from our duty toward God to our duty toward one another, and it begins where every life begins, in the family. To honour those who gave us life is the seedbed of honouring all the God-given authority and community that hold a society together.
“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.”Exodus 20:12
What it meant to Israel
In Israel the family was the heart of the covenant. Faith was passed from parent to child around the table and along the road, and the elders carried the memory and the wisdom of the people. To honour father and mother was therefore not a private courtesy but the thread that held generations together and kept the knowledge of God alive.
The command came with a promise: Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. A people who honoured their parents would be a people who received and passed on the covenant, and so would endure in the land God gave them. It reached beyond young children to grown sons and daughters who were to care for aging parents, and beyond parents to all the God-given structures of authority and care by which human life is sustained. To break this command was so serious that the law named dishonour of parents among its gravest offences.
The honour Israel owed its parents was therefore woven into the survival of the covenant itself. A generation that forgot its fathers and mothers would soon forget the God its fathers and mothers had served, and the memory of the exodus would fade within a lifetime. To honour parents was to keep the chain of faith unbroken, one generation telling the next of the works of the LORD, so that children yet unborn might come to know Him.
What it forbids and what it requires
The commandment forbids contempt, rebellion, and neglect toward those God has set over us in the family, and by extension the dishonouring of rightful authority in general. It names ingratitude toward the ones who gave us life and the abandonment of parents in their weakness as real sins, not small ones.
Positively, it requires honour, a word richer than obedience. To honour is to treat with weight and worth, to respect, to care for, to speak well of and to. For a child it includes glad obedience; for an adult it includes gratitude, respect, and provision for parents grown old. The command assumes that honour is owed even to imperfect parents, for it is grounded not in their merit but in their place. And it opens outward, teaching honour toward elders, leaders, and all whose care upholds the common life, so long as such honour never requires us to dishonour God.
How Jesus deepened it
Jesus fiercely defended this commandment against those who used religion to evade it. Some taught that money declared devoted to God need not be used to support one’s parents, and Jesus rebuked them sharply: ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. He insisted that honouring parents is a genuine duty of love, not to be dodged by pious excuses.
He also lived it. From the cross, in His agony, He thought of His mother and gave her into the beloved disciple’s care, Woman, behold thy son. Yet He also set the command in its right order, teaching that love for God comes even before love for family, and that following Him may cost us the approval of those we love most. Honour toward parents is high, but it is not the highest; it serves, and never rivals, our devotion to God.
How we fall short, and are met by grace
Every one of us has failed here, whether in the sharp rebellions of youth, the cold indifference of later years, or the quiet neglect of parents who need us now. And the command is complicated by pain, for many carry wounds from parents who did not love them well, and honour can feel impossible.
The commandment humbles us all, and it drives us to grace. God does not command us to pretend our parents were perfect, nor to submit to what is evil; He commands honour, which even the wounded can offer as they are able, and He meets our failures with mercy. More than that, He becomes to the fatherless a Father, and gathers into His family those whom no earthly family kept. The grace of God both forgives our dishonour and heals the homes from which we came.
How to live it today
To keep the fifth commandment is, for children, glad obedience and respect, and for adults, a lifelong gratitude and care. It means speaking to and about our parents with honour, forgiving them their failures as we hope to be forgiven ours, and providing for them in age as they once provided for us. Where parents have caused deep harm, honour may mean setting wise limits while refusing bitterness, honouring the place even where we cannot approve the person.
It reaches outward, too, into how we treat elders, teachers, and all rightful authority, with respect rather than reflexive contempt. And it flows downward, for those who become parents are called to be worthy of honour, raising children in love and not provoking them. A society that recovers this honour, up and down the generations, recovers something it cannot live without.
It also asks something of the older generation, that they live in a way worth honouring, dealing with the young in patience and love rather than provoking them to anger. Honour flows most freely where it is nurtured, and homes are strengthened when both directions of the command are kept. Even where they are not, God calls us to honour the place while entrusting the person, and our pain, to Him, so that the cycle of contempt might be broken by grace rather than passed on.
How it points to Christ
Jesus is the perfect Son. He honoured His earthly parents, was subject to them in Nazareth, and cared for His mother to the very end. Above all He honoured His Father in heaven with a perfect obedience, saying, I do always those things that please him, even unto death. He kept the fifth commandment as none of us has.
And by His obedience He earns for us the promise we forfeited. He was cut off from the land of the living, His days shortened, so that we, the dishonouring children, might be adopted as sons and daughters and given an inheritance that does not fade. To come to Christ is to be welcomed into the family of God, given the Father we always needed, and made, by grace, into the honouring children we were meant to be.
There is deep comfort here for anyone whose family failed them. The gospel does not ask us to pretend our earthly homes were whole; it gives us a new home whose Father never fails, and a great family of brothers and sisters across every age and land. Held by that love, we are freed to honour our earthly parents as we can, without bitterness and without pretending, because our deepest belonging is secure. Christ both keeps the commandment for us and heals the wounds that made it hard.
Questions people ask
What is the fifth commandment?
The fifth commandment, Honour Your Father and Mother, the fifth commandment tells us to honour our father and our mother, and it is the first commandment to carry a promise, that thy days may be long upon the land.
Why is honouring parents the commandment with a promise?
Honouring parents is the first commandment given with a promise, that your days may be long in the land. Honour toward parents preserves the passing on of faith and wisdom between generations, the thread that holds a people together before God.
How does the fifth commandment point to Jesus?
Jesus kept the whole law perfectly, in our place, and bore its judgment for our failures. The commandment shows our need, and He meets it with grace, giving a new heart to all who come to Him.