Proverbs 1:8-9
8 My son, hear the instruction of your father,
And do not forsake the law of your mother;
9 For they will be a graceful ornament on your head,
And chains about your neck.
Throughout the Bible, obedience to parents is coupled with subjection to God. Those expositors who see in the 10 commandments 4 precepts Godward, and six menward, would seem therefore to have missed the mind of the Spirit.
The view would appear unquestionably correct, which gives 5 ordinances to each table.
“Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee” is the last of the first series.
It is the recognition of Divine authority, and the subject place belonging to the creature.
Nor does respond responsibility as to this becomes less in the case of such as “are not under the law but under grace.” In Eph. 6:1 we read, “Children obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.” and immediately attention is drawn to the preeminent character of this precept in the law. It is “the first commandment with promise.”
Col. 3:20 is similar: “Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.”
Believing children should be patterns of filial obedience, that thus they may adorn the doctrine of Christ.
Young people professing allegiance to the Lord, who are impudent and insubject to those over them in the home are a sad reproach to the name of Him whom they are supposed to serve.
To hear a father’s instruction, and to cleave to a mother’s law; these are the choice ornaments that beautify the young saint.
Disobedience to parents the apostle classes are among the evidences of the last-day of apostasy (2 Tim. 3:1-5). It is the crying scene of the present lawless times, and presages the awful hour of doom soon to strike.
The Scriptural “Children obey your parents” has almost universally been superseded by “Parents obey your children.”
It is a sewing of the wind. The whirlwind will yet have to be reaped.
The human will disdains being brooked in any way. Terrible will be the outcome when having cast off all parental authority, men will throw aside every vestige of allegiance to Divine authority likewise, and will rush upon the thick bosses of the Almighty, as portrayed in the solemn chapters of the closing book of the Bible.
(Commentary by H.A. Ironside)