If You Honor Your Parents, Is Long Life Promised?

When I recently asked my Uncle Fred Crain, age 90, to what he attributed his long life, he said, “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.”  

That’s all Uncle Fred said when I asked him how he’d lived so long. He quoted the fifth of the Ten Commandments found in the Bible (Exodus 20:12 KJV).  

I’ve observed that Uncle Fred – who was almost 22 years old when I was born – did a good job of honoring his parents (my paternal grandparents).

The word “honor” in Exodus 20:12 is reportedly the Hebrew word “kabad,” which in that verse means “to give glory, to glorify.”

Here’s something the New Testament says about offspring.  

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother’ – which is the first commandment with a promise – ‘so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth’” (Ephesians 6:1-3).

Children who honor their parents will have better lives and longer lives, the Bible indicates.    

The first four of the Ten Commandments tell us how to honor God. The fifth commandment heads the last six, which tell us how to interact with people.  

As someone said, “They are the Ten Commandments, not the Ten Suggestions.”

As a child, I thought about that fifth commandment. I pictured a defiant son sassing his dad and then revving up his car’s engine, screeching onto a road, and crashing and burning.

D. Gene Sample, Jr., writes (sermoncentral.com), “A lot of people are dead today because they just so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but if they had listened to their parents, they would not have been there in the first place. Listen to the people today in wheel chairs and on canes who say I would not be in this fix, today, if I had just listened to what my parents had told me.”

But what should a child do if he or she is asked to do something wrong?  

Writer David Reagan says, “Children are to obey their parents ‘in the Lord.’ … First, to obey their parents is to obey the Lord. By obeying them ‘in the Lord’ they are also in obedience to the Lord.”

The reverse is also true, he says.  

“To disobey their parents is to disobey the Lord,” Reagan notes. “Second, this passage [Eph. 6:1-3] gives guidance to those dealing with wicked parents or parents that would lead the child into sin. If they [the parents] are to be obeyed in the Lord, then obedience is not absolutely required if they [the children] are asked to do something that is in direct disobedience to God.”

If a child is told by one of his parents to steal something and the child knows stealing is a sin against God, the child may refuse to obey that directive, Reagan says.  

“They are not simply to obey because of fear or necessity,” Reagan notes. “As they grow in the Lord, they should learn to obey because it is the desire of God and it is the right thing to do.”

Honoring one’s father and mother goes beyond obedience, Reagan indicates.

“It means to ‘hold high’; it means to give a special place of respect,” he says. “Obedience will be the result of such honor, but obedience can be performed without honor.”

Obeying parents without honoring them is better than not obeying, but that may lead to bitterness that can breed rebellion, which perhaps eventually can’t be restrained.

Adults should honor their parents, even if they feel their parents don’t deserve respect. Tragically, some parents experience abandonment.  

Writer S. Ann Wildey says (www.abandonedparents.net), “Being abandoned by your adult children is the most painful grief that a parent can experience. And as the world becomes more complicated and global, this experience becomes more prevalent.”

Abandonment by adult children of their parents at all ages is a “growing global and cross-cultural phenomenon,” she notes.

Someone said, “When you deny your parents as if they are not your parents, that’s when you've rejected the very essence of who you are – where you came from.”

St. Paul wrote, “There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, … without love, unforgiving, … “(2 Timothy 3:1-5).

Will all children who honor their parents live to age 90 and beyond?

“Of course not,” Writer David Reagan says. “But they will extend the length of their lives and improve the quality of their lives by their honor and obedience.”