Obedience To Parents

“Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long on the land which Jehovah your God [is] giving to you” (Exodus 20:12).

“Children, obey your parents in [the] Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is [the] first commandment with a promise, that it may be well with you, and you may be long-lived on the earth” (Ephesians 6:1-3).

I am not promoting or endorsing Heinrich Bullinger as a true Christian when I quote these three excerpts from him.  I especially like the parts from Bullinger that I have underlined.

“Very well and rightly doth the Lord begin the second table with the honouring of our parents. For after our duty to God, the next is the reverent love that we owe to our parents, of whom, next after God, we have our life, and by whom we are from our infancy brought up with incredible care and exceeding great labour.”

“Greater are the good turns that parents do for their children, greater is the cost and labour that they bestow on them, and greater is the care, grief, and trouble which they take for them, than any man, however eloquent soever he be, is able to express. And here is not the name of the father only, but also the name of the mother in express words set down in the law, lest she peradventure should seem and be contemptible without any offence [sic] to God, because of the weakness of her frail sex. The godly and virtuous mothers do feel and abide more pain and grief in the bearing, bringing up, and nourishing of their children, than the fathers do. For no small cause therefore have we the name of the mother precisely expressed in this commandment.”

“For they are monsters and no men, that are unnatural toward their parents; and especially they which do not only neglect and despise them, but also beat and uncourteously handle them. Such fellows doth the Lord command to be slain, as because they forget and will not acknowledge, that by the means of their parents they came into the world. ‘He that curseth father or mother,’ saith the Lord, ‘let him die the death.’ And again: ‘He that striketh his father or mother, let him die the death’ Exodus 21:15, 17″ (Heinrich Bullinger, Decades; underlining mine–CD).