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Weekly Devotional
Exodus 20:12...Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
Ex. 21:17…Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death.
Rom. 1:28-32...28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
It is interesting to note how seriously Scripture treats the fifth commandment (honor your father and mother). In the OT, those who cursed or disobeyed their parents were put to death (Ex. 21:17; Lev. 20:9; Deut. 21:18-21). In the NT, the Apostle Paul includes parental disobedience in his list of vices (Rom. 1:28-32; 2 Tim. 3:1-5). All this begs the question: Why? For instance, carefully look at the Romans 1 passage quoted above; the list includes vices such as evil, malice, murder, deceit, haters of God, inventors of evil, foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless. And in the middle of all those heinous offenses, Paul includes the words "disobedient to parents." How? Why?
One reason is based on the understanding that families are the building blocks of a society. This is true of a civil society and is also true of a spiritual community. Therefore, embedded within the fifth commandment is the assumption that parents are raising up their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. In other words, parents are called by God to act as stand-ins for his authority over their children. This not only means teaching children how to be upstanding civil citizens, but more importantly, teaching them how to be upstanding citizens of heaven.
That's why the punishment for violating the fifth commandment is so grave. Rejection of and disobedience to one's own parents is viewed by God in the same way as rejection of and disobedience to God himself. Let us remember that in our relationships with our parents and also in our relationships with our children.