"Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
Exodus 20:12
We come now to the second table of the Law, and to man's duty to his fellows, which flows, and is meant to flow, from his duty to God. It is interesting and significant to see that man's first 'social' duty lies within the context of the family. How children and young people behave towards their parents at home is a fairly reliable indication of how they will conduct themselves outside the home. The command to honour father and mother is taken up by Paul in Colossians 3:20 and Ephesians 6:1 in terms of obedience. So far as Paul is concerned, then, the Old Testament commandments are not abrogated in the new economy of grace, but are made just as binding - a point which is often overlooked in the debate between law and grace. To honour, however, is not the same as to obey. Paul qualifies the idea of obedience with the words 'in the Lord', from which we may learn that when a young person's duty to parents in obeying them conflicts with his duty to God, not only ought he to obey God rather than his parents, but in fact he will ultimately honour his parents more by obeying God and disobeying them, than in obeying them against the will of God, for in so doing he will thereby point the parents back to their original function, which is to lead their children into obedience to God. Not that this should ever give young people the right to ride roughshod over their parents' feelings and affections. Our Christian profession does not entitle us to be unnecessarily offensive, even in decisive disagreement with parents' point of view. It is possible to disagree with them and therefore - when obedience to them conflicts with the will of God - to disobey them honourably; but we must ever see to it that it is honourable, and not dishonourable, obedience that characterises us. More of this in the next Note.