Gold Nugget 302 - A Piece of Bare Justice
… “Honor thy father and thy mother.”... If parents were bad, the best honour the children can render them is to become better than they were. So that we may note, once for all … that the commandment recognizes it as incumbent on parents to see that their lives and rules are such as their children can honour, and that their precepts accord with those of the Father of spirits. …
During the earlier stages of life, while needing the fostering care and sheltering love of the home, implicit obedience is a child’s first duty. … The parent’s precepts may be distasteful, even rigid, but if they are right, it is the child’s part implicitly to obey.
Honouring parents is the form which obedience will take when the child is growing up towards manhood. No wise parent would think of directing a lad of sixteen as closely as he would a child of six years; at the same time, though the father may give him more liberty, it may not be either wise or right on the son’s part to take all the liberty which is given. At that age his own sense of honour and right ought to be sufficiently strong to guide him; and respect and reverence for his parents will create a loyal regard to their wishes when once they are known, and will lead him to deny himself a great deal that might be gratifying to him, rather than cause pain to or cross the wishes of those to whom he owes his life. Rude words to a parent … disputing his rule in the house, will be utterly out of the question where a youth wishes to live in the fear of God.
Supporting them may become a duty. There will come a time, if the parents are spared to see their children grow up in life, when they will lean on the children, rather than the children on them. If the children are worthy, they will let their parents lean on them, and will show them that they can be as faithful to their parents in their weakness, as the parents when in their strength were to them.
Becoming an honour to them is another way of honouring them … by living so that they can feel proud of what their children are, quite apart from what they do. If a father can say, “My son never gave me an uneasy thought about him,” that is such a testimony as a son might well wish him to be able to bear. …
We may honour our parents by honouring that holy marriage tie which made them what they were to us. … We may well desire to honour them by taking on our lips that dear Name which gladdened them in life and sustained them in death.
Obedience to parents is simply a piece of bare justice. For, consider how much we owe them. When we first came into being their care and watchfulness guarded and supplied us long ere we knew aught. They thought us, perhaps, something wonderful, when no one else thought anything of the kind, save in the reverse sense. Ought not all this to be repaid? … It will be no small addition to the joy of retrospect, if, as we afterwards look back on our home life, we can think of it as one of filial loyalty on one side and of parental delight on the other!
The Pulpit Commentary, Deuteronomy p. 95-97, Deuteronomy 5:16, (C. Clemance)
Gold Nugget 302
A Piece of Bare Justice
