How Can I Honor My Parents If I Don’t Respect Them?
Chapters
0:05:31 Honor That Comes with God-Ordained Authority
6:24 Honor that People Should Get because of the Worth of Their Work
7:31 There Is an Honor That Should Be Drawn Out toward Weakness
10:39 Summary
00:00:00.000 | I love and respect my own parents a lot, but not everyone is blessed with parents like
00:00:08.120 | mine.
00:00:09.120 | And so we have several related questions in the inbox from adults who are trying to figure
00:00:12.520 | out how to honor their parents.
00:00:14.720 | For many, this becomes more and more perplexing.
00:00:17.380 | As we grow into adulthood, we see our parents' faults more clearly.
00:00:20.720 | And in the late teen transition to adulthood, parental authority changes.
00:00:25.040 | It lessens, and the relationship changes.
00:00:28.280 | It all leads to various questions like this one.
00:00:32.160 | Can we honor our parents if we don't respect them?
00:00:35.880 | The question was put in particularly clear and brief terms by one listener to the podcast,
00:00:40.520 | an anonymous 20-something listener who says this, Pastor John, "My question is rather
00:00:44.720 | simple.
00:00:45.880 | How can I honor my parents when I don't respect them, or does honoring them assume that you
00:00:51.980 | do respect them?"
00:00:53.560 | Pastor John, what would you say?
00:00:55.080 | Yes.
00:00:56.080 | I don't think there is a great difference between the terms honor and respect.
00:01:01.840 | Respect I think refers most often to our inner assessment of someone's character or achievement,
00:01:09.880 | while honor more often refers to our various demonstrations toward them in words or behaviors
00:01:18.620 | that express our respect.
00:01:21.080 | So I think the real question is, how do we honor or respect parents who without any repentance
00:01:31.200 | act in dishonorable and blameworthy ways?
00:01:35.960 | That's the question.
00:01:38.020 | This is a very crucial question, not only because every Christian has to come to terms
00:01:42.880 | with the biblical command of Jesus in Matthew 19, 19, "Honor your father and mother,"
00:01:49.240 | even though thousands of people have had parents who consistently acted in dishonorable and
00:01:55.400 | blameworthy ways.
00:01:57.680 | But it's also a crucial question because the same issue faces all of us in regard to all
00:02:05.000 | people because 1 Peter 2.17 says, "Honor all people."
00:02:11.520 | Not just honor your parents, honor all people.
00:02:14.620 | Love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the King.
00:02:17.920 | And there are horrible people in the world who have done despicable things all their
00:02:22.840 | lives and have died viciously hating people and rejecting God and seemingly having nothing
00:02:29.380 | honorable about them.
00:02:31.400 | Now what I have found to be most helpful in thinking through this question about how to
00:02:39.840 | honor the dishonorable is to discover in the New Testament that there are at least seven
00:02:47.960 | overlapping warrants or reasons or grounds for honoring someone.
00:02:55.400 | And these different reasons or grounds for honoring people regularly call for different
00:03:03.800 | ways of honoring people.
00:03:07.120 | If we take all these into account, some of them will apply to honoring parents who have
00:03:15.480 | acted in disreputable or criminal ways.
00:03:20.360 | And we're not going to twist any language to make that work.
00:03:23.160 | So here they are.
00:03:24.400 | Here are the seven overlapping warrants for honoring someone in the New Testament.
00:03:32.040 | First, there is honor that is owing to human beings simply because they are created in
00:03:38.160 | the image of God and should be treated differently from the animals.
00:03:42.800 | For example, James 3.9, "With our tongues we bless our Lord and Father, and with it
00:03:49.880 | we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.
00:03:55.920 | From the same mouth come blessing and cursing my brothers.
00:03:59.080 | These things ought not to be so."
00:04:02.200 | In other words, the sheer existence of a human being in the image of God, the likeness of
00:04:09.680 | God should call forth from us a kind of honor.
00:04:15.320 | So when my students used to ask me, "How do you honor a child molester, a rapist, a
00:04:22.120 | murderer, a leader of a genocide?"
00:04:27.480 | One answer was that I gave, "You don't shoot them like a stray ox that gored your
00:04:34.840 | neighbor.
00:04:36.080 | You give them a trial by jury just because they are human and not animals.
00:04:42.960 | That's a form of honor, even if the trial is followed by execution."
00:04:47.360 | Second, there is honor that is simply owing to natural relations as God has established
00:04:55.960 | them.
00:04:57.040 | And here I'm thinking about honor your father and mother, because it is a natural
00:05:02.280 | relation that God has established and gains its honorableness from his ordering of things,
00:05:08.760 | not just from the quality of the parents.
00:05:12.600 | Or you could add to that the honor that is due to age.
00:05:16.800 | Leviticus 19.32, "You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old
00:05:23.960 | man, and you shall fear your God.
00:05:27.240 | I am the Lord."
00:05:30.320 | Third, there is the honor that comes with God-ordained authority.
00:05:35.960 | Now, that overlaps with the second point, but this one is not rooted in nature the way
00:05:43.880 | that was.
00:05:45.300 | In the secular sphere, Peter says, "Honor the king," 1 Peter 2.17.
00:05:51.720 | In church, Paul says, 1 Thessalonians 5.12, "Respect those who labor among you and are
00:06:00.880 | over you in the Lord."
00:06:03.040 | In other words, there is a God-appointed authority in the world and a God-appointed authority
00:06:09.200 | in the church, and there is a kind of honor that we should show just by virtue of the
00:06:18.040 | roles of authority that God himself has appointed.
00:06:22.600 | Fourth, there is the honor that people should get because of the worth of their work.
00:06:31.000 | In 1 Thessalonians 5.13, Paul goes on to say that in the church we should "esteem our
00:06:39.640 | leaders very highly in love because of their work."
00:06:46.840 | In other words, the work itself is valuable and worthy of our respect.
00:06:53.320 | Fifth, it's interesting that Paul mingles love with honor there in 1 Thessalonians toward
00:07:02.400 | the church leaders who do their work well.
00:07:05.520 | Here's verse 13 again.
00:07:07.920 | "Esteem your leaders very highly in love because of their work."
00:07:14.040 | In other words, there is a kind of respect or an esteem or an honor which is drawn out
00:07:21.440 | of us by our love for those who serve us, not just from the quality of their work.
00:07:31.080 | Sixth, there is an honor that should be drawn out toward weakness.
00:07:39.080 | Peter mentions this in relationship between husbands and wives in 1 Peter 3.7.
00:07:44.800 | "Husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker
00:07:54.320 | vessel."
00:07:55.320 | In other words, in Christ, the response toward weakness is not exploitation or mockery or
00:08:05.200 | abuse, but honor.
00:08:08.160 | Seventh, and this may be the most important with regard to what is distinctly Christian,
00:08:15.760 | there's a kind of honor that is freely bestowed without reference to any quality or position
00:08:24.680 | or reputation or virtue or rank or demerit in the person honored.
00:08:31.520 | In other words, there is a way of honoring which, as it were, doesn't respond to honorableness
00:08:40.600 | but bestows it.
00:08:42.640 | It treats a person as though honorable, as though worthy of our service because we give
00:08:49.640 | it to them.
00:08:51.000 | Paul roots this way of honoring people in the very mind of Christ and in his sacrificial
00:08:59.960 | incarnation and sacrifice on the cross.
00:09:05.120 | Philippians 2.3 starts like this, "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility
00:09:13.840 | count others more significant than yourselves.
00:09:20.040 | Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was
00:09:24.360 | in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied
00:09:29.780 | himself taking the form of a servant."
00:09:34.760 | So there is a kind of honoring that we freely and graciously bestow on the undeserving.
00:09:42.680 | We treat them better than they deserve.
00:09:46.840 | We assume the position toward them of servants and thus, in a way, exalt them as though they
00:09:55.720 | were worthy to be served when in fact they're not worthy to be served.
00:10:00.300 | And thus we bestow a kind of free honor upon them, which is called grace, the way Christ
00:10:08.080 | did to us, the way his sacrifice pours out on us.
00:10:13.280 | Honor as though we were honorable when we're not.
00:10:17.240 | None of those seven reasons for honoring people and none of those ways of honoring people
00:10:23.800 | commit us to the hypocrisy of thinking someone is honorable when they are dishonorable or
00:10:32.280 | praiseworthy when they are blameworthy.
00:10:35.160 | The Bible does not ask us to live a lie.
00:10:38.880 | So in summary, some acts of honoring others are owing to the image of God, some to natural
00:10:47.900 | human relations that God has appointed, some to authority structures that God has put in
00:10:53.640 | place, some to the worth of their work that others do, some to a person's weakness, some
00:11:00.200 | to the relationship of love that we have, and some is absolutely free in order to display
00:11:08.640 | the freedom of the grace of God to others.
00:11:12.920 | And among those seven, I would say at least four and possibly as many as six apply to
00:11:23.040 | parents who at one level have lived in dishonorable ways, and I'll let you think through which
00:11:32.800 | of those apply to your situation.
00:11:34.600 | That's a great gospel connection here, Pastor John.
00:11:37.000 | Thank you.
00:11:38.000 | And thank you for joining us today.
00:11:39.080 | You can ask a question of your own, even keep it anonymous if you want to, like this one,
00:11:43.400 | or search our growing podcast archive, or subscribe to the podcast.
00:11:46.920 | You can do all of that at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:11:48.920 | Next time we're going to look at three ways that we can ensure that our daily Bible reading
00:11:56.320 | is authentic.
00:11:58.400 | Three ways to ensure our daily Bible reading is authentic.
00:12:02.060 | Don't miss this.
00:12:03.060 | It's up next time.
00:12:04.060 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:12:05.060 | We'll see you back here on Wednesday.
00:12:05.420 | [End of audio]
00:12:07.420 | 1. What is the purpose of the Bible?
00:12:09.420 | 2. What is the purpose of the Bible?
00:12:11.420 | [BLANK_AUDIO]