The Love Principle - Study 9: Your Neighbour and Your Parents

Exodus 20:12 NIVUK 

[12] Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. 

(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/113/exo.20.12.NIVUK)

We live in a relatively affluent neighbourhood where people like to change their houses. In fact, there is even a building company that has our neighbourhood as their name. It’s not at all unusual to walk through the streets and see that someone is adding a porch or am extension or converting their loft or garage.  

But there is one part of their homes that can cause immense damage if it is adversely affected by just about anything: 

The foundations. 

Even apparently innocent and pretty-looking plants like trees or bamboo (not just invasive species like Japanese knotweed) can do astonishing and expensive damage to the platform on which every building is built. 

We have seen how love for God, our neighbours and ourselves is the sum total of all obedience and the very bedrock of all relationships. That makes it also utterly foundational to our community and society as a whole. 

So it isn’t hard to guess where satan and the world will seek to attack and undermine. 

The most fundamental relationships to pretty much everything, and those that do the most damage, are those in our families. Your family ought to be the place where you feel safe and accepted, loved and secure, nurtured and encouraged. If you don’t, if anything breaks in this relationship, the results are absolutely catastrophic: both for the people involved in the family and you personally. 

As Bible-believing, Christ-obedient Christians, the best model for family we believe is one man and one woman, in a committed, loving and exclusive relationship, with children. There have always been other models for families – some more out of necessity than deliberate design – but we believe this is the optimum. 

Is it perfect? When you have two imperfect people coming together, no it is not. And it will never be.  

But it is the best. 

However, the big question on everyone's lips is: what happens when it goes wrong? Which it will. Because it must. Because imperfect people are involved. 

I am a fan of sitcoms. I was raised on them. I like them because of how they work. The best ones are ones we can relate to, so that we're not just laughing at the jokes, we’re actually laughing at ourselves and our own situations and seeing things differently. 

Even the classic sitcoms that featured aliens – ‘Mork and Mindy’, ‘Alf’, ‘Third Rock from the Sun’ – allowed us to laugh at the patent absurdity of modern life here on earth. 

But there is a trend running through very many sitcoms nowadays: dysfunctional relationships with parents.  

If you look at the globally huge comedies of ‘Friends’ and ‘Big Bang Theory’  you will see it running across multiple episodes. In ‘Big Bang Theory’ in particular, every single one of the main characters has a broken and dysfunctional relationship with their parents. 

We laugh hard because it reflects our lives. That is the sad thing. 

As I said, relationships in the family are fundamental to our society and to our psychology as human beings. When they are broken, we break. 

So how do we fix them? 

The starting point is love. It is always love. If there is no love, the relationship will be very hard to fix. Love – agape love, 1 Corinthians 13 love – gives us both the means and the desire to put things right. 

But the Bible also includes very practical steps to fix this. 

As I write this, I feel it’s only fair to let you know that I am both a parent and a child. I’m not saying I am perfect in both – far from it. I know I will be convicted of my sins and failings as we go through this study. However, the important thing is to let God speak through the Bible. 

Let’s start then with Our Role as Children. 

Our Role as Children 

Exodus 20:12 NIVUK 

[12] Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. 

(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/113/exo.20.12.NIVUK)

Many times in my life I have struggled with my attitude towards the government of my country.

I grew up in a poor neighbourhood in an area where thousands of jobs disappeared pretty much overnight when a steel plant closed, and where regeneration didn’t happen for decades. I lived through scandal after scandal: through unjust wars and corruption, sexual misdemeanours and corporate misbehaviour, leaked state secrets and feelings of deep betrayal. 

In those testing times, I realised that the Bible gives us a template to cope when those above us are less than perfect. 

Our responsibility to them is to respect them, pay due honour and carry out our obligations towards them under God (Romans 13:1-7; 1 Peter 2:13-17). 

Their responsibility to us is to rule wisely and justly.  

God holds both accountable for how they exercise their responsibility: 

Luke 12:47-48 NIVUK 

[47]  ‘The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. [48] But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. 

(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/113/luk.12.47-48.NIVUK)

This released me from any ill-feelings, anger and bitterness when the government took a decision I did not like. If I had remained a captive to these emotions, what would have changed? Would the government have changed direction just because I wasn’t happy? 

No, of course not. 

I could live in peace knowing that God would bring them to account for their wrong decisions. 

And I would still have the freedom to express my opinions at the ballot box. 

A similar template works with our issue. 

Let me explain. 

When we are very young, our parents can do no wrong. They feed us, clothe us, play with us, take care of us. 

They are the best. 

Then we learn to talk. And we go to kindergarten. And then school. We start to compare our parents with those of other kids. Suddenly our parents don’t seem so great anymore. 

Then we hit our teenage years. This is when we try to separate ourselves from them, to be our own person. Only, we’re not yet a hundred percent sure of who we really are. This is when rebellion takes place. We become insolent and sharp-tongued. We are eager to take charge of our own lives long before we are able and we believe our parents are standing in our way. 

Then come our twenties and thirties, when the arrogance of youth tells us that we know much better than our behind-the-curve, out-of-date parents and that we will not make the same mistakes they did. 

Before we hit our forties and fifties, when we realise that we've done most of them ourselves. 

That, you see, is how our attitudes to our parents work as we grow older. We convince ourselves that they got it wrong, we got it right and that learning from them means learning from their mistakes.  

Way too late, we realise that in many ways they were right all along. 

When it comes to our parents, our attitude to them has to be corrected just as my attitude to the government was. We must recognise that being a parent is an immense responsibility – something we don’t ever realise to the full until we have a child of our own. Our parents are accountable before God for what they do with that responsibility. 

Our responsibility is to respect them. Elsewhere in the Bible we get an idea of what this really means: 

Ephesians 6:1 NIVUK 

[1] Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.  

(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/113/eph.6.1.NIVUK)

We as children must obey our parents. That is, we must submit to them and do what they tell us. We must understand that, while we don’t have the experience or the perspective they have, they may well see threats and problems ahead that we do not. And so we should not argue, not debate and simply obey, even if we don’t like it or agree with it. 

Every parent should fundamentally have our best interests at heart. If we believe that this is true of our parents, then submission and obedience must follow. 

But we don’t just do this to please them: 

Colossians 3:20 NIVUK 

[20] Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. 

(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/113/col.3.20.NIVUK)

No, we do it fundamentally to please the Lord. 

And this is where there are exceptions. If your parents order you to do something that would not please the Lord, but instead would disobey Him, that is where you draw the line and say ‘No’. 

But even then, you must respect them. You must give them their place as their parents. You should not be insolent or cheeky or treat them with disrespect or contempt. 

Now – and this has to be said – I want you to look back at the commands to obey your parents and to respect them. Look at them very carefully. 

Are there exceptions there? Does it say that you should honour them only if they agree with you? Does it say you should honour them only if they deserve it? Does it say you should honour them only if they even like you? 

No. 

There are no exceptions. 

There we no get-out clauses. 

We are called to honour our parents, and we show them this honour by respecting and obeying them in the Lord. 

I’m not sure if you are aware, but decades after Moses was given the Ten Commandments, a punishment was codified for children who did not respect their parents, and it was pretty drastic: 

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 NIVUK 

[18] If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, [19] his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. [20] They shall say to the elders, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ [21] Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid. 

(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/113/deu.21.18-21.NIVUK)

Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I am in no way advocating for this law to be codified into the laws of our nations. 

But what this law does show is that God takes a lack of honour, respect and obedience when it comes to our parents very, very seriously. It’s part of what it takes to love God and ourselves as they too are our neighbours. And so we have to get this right. Our society is broken in so many ways because one of the foundational relationships of a healthy society is rotting. 

That is no laughing matter. 

But the onus of stopping the rot does not just lie with the children. As parents it’s our responsibility to encourage our children and help them to obey this command. The New Testament tells us how. So let’s look at Our Role as Parents. 

Our Role as Parents 

Ephesians 5:21 NIVUK 

[21] Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 

(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/113/eph.5.21.NIVUK)

Ephesians 6:4 NIVUK 

[4] Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. 

(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/113/eph.6.4.NIVUK)

Colossians 3:21 NIVUK 

[21] Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged. 

(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/113/col.3.21.NIVUK)

I want you to imagine that you want to pass on to your child some essential life skill: cooking or cleaning or computing or something like that. 

Now, you could make it difficult for them and yell at them when they don’t get it. But that would be counterproductive. You know that if you do that, they will lose all enthusiasm for the skill you are trying to teach them and could be put off it for life. 

So you encourage them. You get down to their level. You are patient with them. You allow them to get things wrong before they get them right. 

You keep your eyes on the endgame of passing on proficiency and ability to them, overcome any setbacks along the way, congratulate them when they make progress and help them to become who you want them to be. 

Fathers (in particular, but all parents in general) should seek to bring their children up in the knowledge and instruction of the Lord. Yes, that means Sunday schools and Bible clubs and youth camps and the likes. 

But it also means a good example. 

Our children are commanded to respect us, to honour us, to obey us. 

That means we should do our best to be worthy of their respect, their honour, their obedience.  

We should not be impatient, ill-tempered perfectionists who lose our patience when they step of line. 

We should both teach how we want them to behave and model it ourselves. 

And yes, this is not easy. There is nothing any child dislikes more than an inconsistent or self-centred parent who cares little for their child and only for their own convenience. 

And yes, I also know how irritating it can be when your child realises that if they ask you, ‘What’s that?’ you will answer, and then learns to push that particular button until your patience is well and truly tested. 

And yes, I also know how it feels when you tidy a child’s room and they dirty it quicker than it takes you to close the door, until you start to wonder if entropy lives underneath your child’s bed. 

And yes, I know how trying it can be if you have something really important that needs doing and your child demands your attention over something trivial. 

I have been the father of a small child. 

But these verses spell out our responsibility. That responsibility is to bring our children up in the knowledge and instruction of the Lord, do not exasperate them, to not make them bitter, and to be worthy of their honour and respect. 

And I know precisely how challenging that is. I have faced that challenge. It’s not at all easy.

Especially if you are struggling with your own issues. I definitely am not an authority on this. I was far from a perfect dad. 

But my parents were not perfect either, and they still managed to bring me up in the knowledge and instruction of the Lord. 

I can’t say they didn’t exasperate me. I was a teenager. I think I was exasperated for the best part of a decade. But they did impart to me their love of the Lord and I have tried to pass it onto my daughter. 

That is the best thing we can do for our children, above all others. 

But having seen our roles as children and as parents, there is one last thing of which we must be aware, and that is Our Role as Christians. 

Our Role as Christians 

Isaiah 8:18 NIVUK 

[18] Here am I, and the children the Lord has given me. We are signs and symbols in Israel from the Lord Almighty, who dwells on Mount Zion. 

(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/113/isa.8.18.NIVUK)

My family was far from perfect as I was growing up. I think my mother would freely admit that. We had problems – perhaps more than most other families. Some may have been self-inflicted. Many, almost too many to account, were inflicted by others. We had struggles and we experienced a lot of pain. 

But something happened in our family that made us stand out from every family in our neighbourhood: 

All of us remained on the straight and narrow. None of us were ever arrested. None of us went to trial or prison. None of us resorted to crime at all. We all finished school. All of us continued in further education.  All of us have degrees. Two of us are doctors and experts in their fields. All of us are married. Three of us have children. None of those children were born out of wedlock.

My mother can sleep at night not having to worry about the business we're mixed up in or if we're in any danger. Neither does she have to worry about any of us getting drunk or doing drugs, because none of us do that, or would do it.

And that really stood out where we grew up. Time after time, my parents were asked, ‘Your four kids are completely not in any trouble and are making a life for themselves. How did you do that?’ 

For all my parents were imperfect – and every parent is – we turned out alright. That was due to their commitment to bringing us up to follow Jesus Christ, and also the work of God in each of our lives. 

Every parent and every family in Christ has a purpose. That purpose is to point others to Jesus Christ. It is to live for the glory of God. That is why we are here. 

It is, like Isaiah’s family, to be signposts for the people around us to point them to the Saviour. 

But that’s not something that can be manufactured or forced. Neither is it something that you need money to do – my parents certainly did not have that. 

It starts with an unrelenting commitment to live for God’s glory first and foremost: above all careers and ministries and work and dreams and desires.  

In short, if you have a family then that family must always, always come second only to God Himself. 

We took that decision as a family. We decided that we would not delegate the care of my daughter in her formative years to a carer. So I got a job that would be closer to home, taking a temporary pay cut, so I would be home sooner, and my wife stopped work during the week, only working on Saturdays as a freelancer, so she could be with my daughter while I worked. 

Yes, we had less money. Yes, we had to start off in a tiny, draughty flat two storeys above a bar with the worst caterwauling karaoke nights on Mondays, Thursdays and Sundays. 

But do you know what happened?  

We got a better house eventually, and quickly emerged debt free. And the investment in our daughter worked as she is now a fine Christian young woman, making progress towards a career as a music teacher, and has a fine Christian lad as her long term boyfriend. 

All this is a blessing from God. No doubt about that. 

But it also happened because we sacrificed for the sake of our family. We put the family in second place after God. 

At the centre of all this is love. We cannot reflect Christ to a watching world without it. 

Love makes all the difference. Love is the fundamental driver behind everything you do for your family. 

It is love that will make you want to step back from things or give up things entirely so that your children can develop to be the people God made them to be for His glory. 

Now, I am not saying that we are the perfect model parents. We got just as many things wrong as we did right. Because – and you don’t see this until you are a parent yourself – all of us are just simply trying to do the best we can. We’re all making it up as we go along. All the books and YouTube videos and seminars in the world cannot prepare you for the responsibilities and realities of being a parent. 

But love will get you through all the late nights and endless crying and fever and headaches and pain. 

Love bonds a family together. And when love is directed towards glorifying God first, and family second, then that’s when the world sees something in us that is truly appealing. 

Conclusion 

Proverbs 22:6 NIVUK 

[6] Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it. 

(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/113/pro.22.6.NIVUK)

Psalms 127:3-5 NIVUK 

[3] Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. [4] Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. [5] Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court. 

(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/113/psa.127.3-5.NIVUK)

Malachi 4:5-6 NIVUK 

[5] ‘See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. [6] He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.’ 

(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/113/mal.4.5-6.NIVUK)

My mother loved jigsaw puzzles. She used to love receiving them, spreading the pieces out on her table and then putting them together one piece at a time. 

Now, because of her health and advancing years, she can’t do them any more. But while she was still healthy, many family gatherings ended with her in a corner, examining a picture on the box, looking to see where a piece should go. 

Sometimes we would go round to her house and she would show the completed puzzles off like a child would show a drawing they’d completed in school. She just loved it. 

Family life is a puzzle. We have all the pieces. Sometimes they don’t seem to fit. Often we just can’t see where they should go. More often than not, we lose patience because things just don’t seem to be falling into place. 

Unfortunately, sometimes we overturn the table in a frustrated rage and storm away. 

Pictures help us to solve jigsaw puzzles. They help us to see where things should go.  

The Bible contains that picture. It tells us how to arrange our families so that the pieces all fit together. If we try any other pattern, it won’t work. The pieces will break if we force them any other way. The picture will not form like it should. There will be frustration and pain and we will feel like walking away because we have had too much. 

This is what is happening nowadays. The picture of how a family should work has been thrown aside by a society that tries to forget its Creator, Redeemer, Lord and Saviour because it does not want to live under His authority. 

But what do we see? An epidemic of self-worth issues. Identity confusion. Alienation. Anger. Pain. Frustration.  

Where does all this come from? 

Because our families are fundamentally broken. 

How can we fix them? 

We dust down the picture of that God says they should be and we build our families His way, for His purposes, for His glory. 

That is how we make our families work. 

And what is His picture of a working family? 

Children who respect and obey their parents in the Lord. In short, they give them their place. 

Parents who do not antagonise, bully, embitter or frustrate their children, but bring them up in the knowledge and instruction of the Lord. Parents who take their place: who face up to their prime responsibility in the family. 

I find that verse from Malachi interesting. 

Those were God’s last words before He fell silent for four hundred years. 

He said that the sign of repentance He was seeking from His people is that the hearts of children would be turned to their parents and parents to their children. That is: they would truly love each other. If they did not, He would strike the land with a curse. 

Tell me: is that not what we see? In the broken families and broken children, and psychological issues, and lack of identity and sense of self, and compete lack of awareness of right and wrong, is that not what you see? 

Do you know how far this has gone? In some places in the UK children are so neglected that they arriving in primary school without even basic toilet training, still wearing diapers. They don’t know how to read. They don’t know how to write. They can’t count. Some of them can’t even hold a pencil.  

Why? 

Because their parents didn't love them enough to raise them properly. They delegated that role to the state and continued with their lives almost as if they didn't have a small child.

That is the problem. 

But it can also go the other way. Elderly relatives can be abandoned into old folks’ homes without ever seeing their family members. Or worse, they can die of criminal neglect in their own homes. All because their children no longer care for them. 

This parent-child relationship dynamic is so absolutely critical. It is the foundation of any society. If we disrupt it, if we break it, we do so at our peril, and the curse of neglect and pain that comes upon us is our fault. 

So how can we fix it? How can we turn it around? 

With love. Love is the solution. Love is the only solution. 

This love manifests itself when each side does not try to take the role of the other; when they do not try to make themselves fit in a place where they do not. It is manifested when children give their parents their proper place, in respect and obedience, and parents give children their proper place, in doing everything they can to bring up in the knowledge and instruction of the Lord. 

My parents were not perfect. My wife’s parents were not perfect. Neither of us are perfect parents. We get as much wrong as we do right. 

But I give thanks to God Almighty that we got this one right, and He has blessed it. 

Prayer 

Lord Jesus, as a parent and/or as a child I confess that I have made a lot of mistakes. I have lived for myself and not You. I want to put that right now. Help me to live put the role You have given me for Your glory in love. Amen. 

Questions for Contemplation 

• Why is the parent-child relationship so important? 

• Where have you gone wrong in this relationship? How can you put it right? 

• What does the Bible say is the solution to these problems? How can you apply this solution to improve your relationship with your parent or child?