Gospel Parenting

This message confronts us with one of Scripture's most challenging commands: honor your father and mother. Drawing from Ephesians 6 and the Ten Commandments, we're reminded that this isn't a conditional directive with age limits or performance requirements—it's a lifelong calling that applies regardless of whether our parents were honorable. The text doesn't say 'honor your parents if they deserved it' or 'until you turn 18.' It simply commands us to honor them, period. What makes this particularly difficult is that honoring our parents is independent of their performance. Some of us had loving, godly parents who made this easy. Others experienced neglect, abuse, or abandonment that makes this command feel impossible. Yet we discover that honor doesn't mean blind obedience or tolerating abuse—it means treating parents with respect for their God-given position while holding them accountable to moral law. The subway story illustrates how quick we are to judge without understanding the full picture. For parents, the message is equally convicting: make it easy for your children to honor you by being honorable, by listening actively, and by setting healthy boundaries. For adult children, we honor through speaking well of our parents when possible, refusing to speak evil of them when we can't, and most challengingly, choosing daily to forgive even when memories remain painful.