Matthew 19:19 Honor your father and your mother: and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Honour thy father and thy mother. It is significant that the old Law did not say, "Obey thy father and mother," or even "Love thy father and mother." Perhaps we are intended to see that obeying and loving have no will necessarily in them. We obey in simple yielding to the force that commands; we love our parents in the animal sort of way that characterizes all young creatures. "Honour thy father" suggests active intelligence, careful estimates, operative will, personal decision. Reverence, and show reverence for, thy father, both because he is thy father, and because of what he is in his fatherliness. I. RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARDS PARENTS IS THE BEGINNING OF MORALS AND RELIGION. Our father and mother represent the power above us that we first know. We know parents before we know God. And we know God through our parents. He begins life with an almost overwhelming disability who has parents whom he cannot "honour." Honouring includes: 1. Cherishing high thoughts concerning. To a child, father and mother ought to be embodiments of all excellence. 2. Loving dependence on. The confidence that the goodness will be adequate to all emergencies. 3. Perfect response to. Involving the patting of the parents' will before the child's own. 4. Tender care of. Expressed in all thoughtful and self-denying attentions. It may be shown how this attitude prepares the child to gain right thoughts of God, who should be to us our glorified, idealized father and mother; not father only, not mother only, but a Being realizing in himself the perfections of both. II. RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARDS PARENTS ENSURES OBEDIENCE INSPIRED BY FEELING. Obedience is not just one thing. It is various, according to the motive inspiring it. We should obey our Master from a sense of duty, whether he be gentle or froward, and whether we like to obey or not. But obedience to parents belongs to a higher type of obedience. It is prompted by feeling: it is inspired by love. And it is through the obedience of our parents that we learn true obedience to God. - R.T. Parallel Verses KJV: Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.WEB: 'Honor your father and mother.' And, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" |
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