Catechesis on the Fourth Commandment
June 22, 2023
Peace Lutheran Church, Sussex, Wisconsin
Rev. Rolf D. Preus
Honor thy father and thy mother, that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. What does this mean? We should fear and love God that we may not despise our parents and masters, nor provoke them to anger, but give them honor, serve and obey them, and hold them in love and esteem. (Luther’s Small Catechism)
The First Commandment is the foundation for both tables of God’s law, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37) The Fourth Commandment is the foundation for the second table of the law, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:39) God created each one of us individually, but he also created us to live with others. Those with whom we live are our neighbors. It is at home, where we learn to honor our father and mother, that we learn how to love our neighbor. When St. Paul sums up for us the second table of God’s law in Romans 13:8-10, he doesn’t mention the Fourth Commandment. That’s a given. The home is where we learn what we owe to one another. The apostle writes:
Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (Romans 13:8-10)
To love is to obey God’s law. To honor is even greater than to love. But isn’t love itself the fulfillment of God’s law? How can honor be greater than love? Luther explains:
For it is a far higher thing to honor than to love one, inasmuch as it comprehends not only love, but also modesty, humility, and deference as to a majesty there hidden . . . We must, therefore, impress it upon the young that they should regard their parents as in God’s stead, and remember that however lowly, poor, frail, and queer they may be, nevertheless they are father and mother given them by God. They are not to be deprived of their honor because of their conduct or their failings. (Large Catechism, Ten Commandments, paragraphs 106 & 108)
As God’s representatives, fathers and mothers are for their children their connection between heaven and earth. The majesty hidden in fathers and mothers is the majesty of God himself. We do not discern this majesty by looking at our parents who may, as Luther says, appear as poor, frail, or strange. We judge by God’s word. God has invested his own majesty in father and mother, and we honor God by honoring our father and mother.
As God governs us in both the kingdom of his right hand, the holy Christian Church, and the kingdom of his left hand, the civil authorities, God’s government here on earth, both spiritual and legal, churchly and civil, is, in the first instance, the authority of father and mother in the home. Both Moses and Paul teach us this. Moses writes, “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children.” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7a) Paul writes, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother,’ which is the first commandment with promise: ‘that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.’” (Ephesians 6:1-3) When God spoke the First Commandment to Israel, he reminded his people that he had set them free from the land of bondage. When God spoke the Fourth Commandment, he promised his people a good life in the land of freedom. From slavery to freedom. Our heavenly Father frees us from bondage here on earth. He gives us freedom here on earth. It is as children of the heavenly Father set free from the bondage of sin to live out our Christian freedom in our homeland and home that we look to the home to find our identity.
The Fourth Commandment is the establishment of the home as the primary religious, political, and social unit in this world. From the office of father and mother all human authority is derived. Luther writes,
In this commandment belongs a further statement regarding all kinds of obedience to persons in authority who have to command and to govern. For all authority flows and is propagated from the authority of parents. (Large Catechism, paragraph 141)
Sometimes this parental authority is delegated directly. Usually, this delegation is indirect. School teachers, police officers, governors, judges, kings, and presidents all derive their authority from the domestic estate. Leaders in the civil and ecclesiastical governments are fathers by derivation. Concerning civil authority, Luther writes:
Hence also they are all called fathers in the Scriptures, as those who in their government perform the functions of a father, and should have a paternal heart toward their subordinates. As also from antiquity the Romans and other nations called the masters and mistresses of the household patres- et matres- familiae, that is, housefathers and housemothers. So also they called their national rulers and overlords patres patriae, that is, fathers of the entire country, for a great shame to us who would be Christians that we do not likewise call them so, or, at least, do not esteem and honor them as such. (Large Catechism paragraph 142)
Luther includes pastors as fathers as well. He writes,
Besides these there are yet spiritual fathers; not like those in the Papacy, who have indeed had themselves called thus, but have performed no function of the paternal office. For those only are called spiritual fathers who govern and guide us by the Word of God; as St. Paul boasts his fatherhood 1 Cor. 4:15, where he says: In Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel. Now, since they are fathers they are entitled to their honor, even above all others. (Large Catechism, paragraphs 158-160a)
Children learn what spiritual authority is and what civil authority is from their fathers and mothers. Children learn how to love their neighbor in his body, his marriage, his property, and his reputation. They learn to protect their neighbor’s interests, money, and livelihood. They learn this at home.
While we can speak of home in the abstract, it is home in the concrete that we actually know. So, while I am loathe to talk about my experiences lest someone accuse me of methodism or pietism, let me speak of the concrete home as I know it. My wife and I live on Gunflint Lake, a border lake between northeastern Minnesota and northwestern Ontario, about one hundred and fifty miles northeast of Duluth. Winter lasts about six months. During Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, we visit our children in Wyoming. From Holy Week through Misericordias Domini, we visit our children in Iowa and Missouri. My wife and I cherish the visits we have with our children. Participating in their home devotions after dinner reminds me of how they were raised and how I was raised. Recite the Ten Commandments and the Creed, read from the Bible, ask the children questions about what was read, pray, or sing the Lord’s Prayer, sing hymns, and thank God for the food.
Home devotions were the primary source of my spiritual nurture as a child. I grew up in Clayton, Missouri, attending Bethel Lutheran Church in University City. We went to church every Sunday and followed page 5 and page 15 from The Lutheran Hymnal. I liked church. Though our congregation later decided during the Battle for the Bible to leave the Missouri Synod, join the AELC and then the ELCA, we sang fine Lutheran hymns, and the service was conducted reverently without any frivolity or foolishness. Our pastor had silver hair, spoke with a beautiful voice, and preached eloquent sermons. But I couldn’t understand them. I told Dad one day, “I can’t understand Pastor Mundinger’s sermons.” Dad looked at me and replied, “I can’t understand them, either.” What a relief that was! As a boy, I didn’t learn God’s word from the preaching in the pulpit, except when my dad preached at vacant congregations in Missouri and Illinois. I learned God’s word from devotions at home. Every Christian father is the pastor of his family. In Ephesians 6:4 we read, “And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.”
With all the talk these days about vocation, it is good for us to remember and emphasize the one common vocation of all Christians, that is, the call of God in our baptism where God’s name was joined to our name, we were born from above, and made heirs of the kingdom of God. It is as born-again heirs of salvation that we teach our children, bringing them up in God’s word. The discipline of the law is subordinate to the proclamation of the gospel. They learn who God is by looking at us. When we stand in constant judgment, we teach them that God stands in constant judgment against them. When we forgive them their sins, we teach them that God is good and gracious, full of mercy and forgiveness. While none of us can claim to be worthy to this task, we nevertheless cherish it as a gift from God. That he would choose us to reveal himself to these little ones! Such divine, gracious, condescension is too wonderful for us to fully grasp. And as we muddle through, failing in this and that and the other thing, we live in repentance and faith, clothed in the righteousness of Jesus, with all our failures washed away by his blood.
Parental authority is divine authority. It cannot be separated from it. When it is, we remember what our Christian fathers said: “We must obey God rather than men.” The authority of the father of the home is always contingent. Not on whether he is wise or just, but on whether he represents God or the devil. The same is true with the civil authorities. We need to make distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate authority. The early Lutherans taught that it was permissible for Christians to suffer slavery under Muslims, but it was not permissible to serve in their armed forces because Daniel 7:25 taught that Mohammedanism would “persecute the saints of the Most High,” and that is what they were doing. It is one thing to submit to tyrannical authority. It is another matter to fight for a government devoted to the persecution of the church. The totalitarian governments of the Communists and Nazis persecuted the church, but they also enforced laws against prostitution, theft, and murder. Except by the state, of course! The Fourth Commandment teaches us to submit to the government when the government is God’s servant. It does not teach us to submit to the government when the government is persecuting the church. We read in Romans 13:1-4,
Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.
It is evil to persecute the church. St. Paul makes it abundantly clear that we submit to the civil authorities because they are appointed by God to punish the evil and promote the good. When the government punishes the good, it is not acting as God’s servant and must not be obeyed.
For example, when the governor of Montana back in 2020 ordered all churches in the state to be closed for four Sundays in a row to, as they said, “flatten the curve,” and we acquiesced to his command, we did wrong. We should have defied him. We didn’t. We submitted to his authority to do what God did not give him the authority to do and in so doing we undermined the teaching of the Bible and the integrity of the church. We were wrong. We should confess this. We should not double down on our sin and cover up our cowardice by appealing to Romans 13 when Romans 13 does not give to the governor of Montana or to any other government official the authority to prevent us Christians from gathering together as Christ’s church. The Bible says in Hebrews 10:25, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” We acquiesced. We were foolish. We repent. God forgives. Never again will we permit the civil authorities to close our churches. The Fourth Commandment is given by the God who said that we should be worshipping him, not virtually at home in front of a screen, but bodily, gathered together with other live bodies, hearing God’s Word, singing his praises, receiving Christ’s body and blood, and encouraging one another.
When you talk to Christian soldiers, they will tell you that most of their fellow soldiers reject the imposition of the LGBTQ agenda on the military. That’s well and good. But the powers that be are imposing it both here and abroad. Is it time that we must ask ourselves whether Christians should join the armed forces of the United States when the official policy of the United States is to attack the fatherhood of God, the fourth and sixth commandments, the Christian Church, and Jesus Christ who is her head? Consider the arguments Luther raised in defense of serving in the military. Do these arguments support serving in a military dedicated to the propagation of anti-Christian perversion all around the world?
Speaking of the military, consider our country’s involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war. The United States provoked Putin’s invasion of Ukraine by pushing NATO further and further east, even suggesting that Ukraine should join. This provocation did not give Putin the right to invade. The Ukrainian nation has the right to be the Ukrainian nation. Russia has no right to deny Ukraine that right. This does not justify the United States spending billions of dollars we do not have to perpetuate this war that Ukraine cannot win. One would think that someday our nation will be cured of its messianic delusions that it can win unwinnable wars. But there is an underlying issue that has been largely ignored. It is this: Zelensky supports the LGBTQ agenda and Putin opposes it. In the name of “democracy” the United States imposes this godless agenda all over the world. Indeed, the word “democracy” if defined by its popular usage by our government, entails supporting LGBTQ rights. The LGBTQ doctrine denies the fatherhood of God. It attacks the fatherhood of all Christian fathers. This politicized ideology has taken over the federal government. The government imposes it on America as well as countries around the world. This is an assault on the fourth commandment, “Honor your father and your mother.” Homosexuality can yield neither fathers nor mothers. Fathers of congregations and fathers of families must preach and teach against the policy of our government that advances the godless LGBTQ agenda.
The title “Father” for our pastors is apt. That any Lutheran would object to this use in light of what Luther wrote in the Large Catechism that I cited earlier is unfortunate, but human nature being what it is, the unfamiliar is usually distrusted, and this innate prejudice is, on the whole, a good thing, as it prevents people from running headlong into strange and diverse errors. Stick in the mud conservatism is, after all, an expression of respect for the fourth commandment. I honor my father by refusing to adopt the various liturgical niceties that have become fashionable in the forty-four years since I was ordained. Indeed, the spirit of conservatism as opposed to the spirit of innovation flows from a devotion to the fourth commandment in the concrete. My dad didn’t do it, so I’m not going to do it.
It is obvious that certain recent innovations in nomenclature, often attempts to regain an idealized past, are not particularly helpful. For example, it is misleading to call a District President a bishop when he presides over no altar or pulpit. If you have no altar or pulpit, you are not a bishop. He’s not a bishop. Calling a pastor father is different. A pastor is most certainly a spiritual father, as Luther said. We need to distinguish between the paternal authority of the father of the family and the paternal authority of the pastor of the congregation. The vocation of the former is much broader than the vocation of the latter. Following Luther’s distinction between the kingdom of God’s right hand and the kingdom of God’s left hand, the father of the home exercises the authority of both. The father of the congregation exercises the authority solely of the kingdom of God’s right hand.
This two kingdoms distinction has been used among us as a paradigm by which we may rightly distinguish between law and gospel. I’m not sure that it has worked very well. We Lutherans in America are subject to confusion about the kingdom of God’s left hand from the get-go because our political creed makes assertions that our Christian creed does not. Which creed is binding on us? The first amendment of the Constitution of the United States begins with these words: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” While the words “separation of church and state” do not appear, and it is debatable whether such a separation is what the words mean, most Americans understand the first amendment as requiring a separation of church and state. In our day this teaching has resulted in expelling God from the public square. Lutherans are affected by this. They begin to define the kingdom of God’s left hand in such a way that God is excluded from it. If we ground the two kingdoms in the home, with the father and mother exercising the authority of both, we will keep them from being artificially separate.
Dad is Moses and Jesus. Moses gives the law to Israel. Dad gives the law to his family. Jesus fulfills the law and proclaims his gospel. Dad gives Jesus to his family and preaches the gospel to them. The same father exercises the authority of both kingdoms. Thus, while the two authorities are distinct, they are not separated. Even if the first amendment of the Constitution of the United States does teach a separation of church and state, this has no normative authority over us. We are not the Congress of the United States. We do not legislate anything. We confess in the temporal left hand kingdom as citizens of the eternal kingdom which, as we confess every Sunday, “shall have no end.” We confess what God’s word teaches. There is nothing in the Bible that would forbid the establishment of a state church. Whether or not the Bible supports the free exercise of religion depends on what you mean by the free exercise of religion. God’s Word condemns idolatry. Muhammad’s god is a false god. Islam is idolatrous. Thus, we must conclude that in the kingdom of God’s left hand Muslims do not have the freedom to exercise their false and blasphemous religion. I doubt you would find a legal scholar of the Constitution who would say that the free exercise clause does not apply to Muslims. We can, as Americans, acknowledge the religious freedom of Muslims, Jews, Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons, Hindus, Buddhists, and others who deny the Holy Trinity. We acknowledge this as a matter of civil law. We cannot acknowledge this freedom as a matter of divine law, for it is not freedom at all, but slavery.
Still, underneath various errors codified in civil law, we honor and submit to the civil authorities. We do so contingently. We do not adopt standards or doctrines that contradict the Holy Scriptures. When Saints Paul and Peter teach submission to the authorities, they don’t mention their laws. They mention the men who establish and enforce the laws. We submit to our rulers. We respect their authority as God-given. This does not mean that God approves of everything they do. That they rule has God’s imprimatur. The way they rule does not. The implication of Romans 13:1-7 is that bad government is better than no government. St. Peter addresses this matter in 1 Peter 2:13-17,
Therefore submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to governors, as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men— as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God. Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.
Submitting to rulers serves a couple of purposes. First, we are supporting the punishment of the bad guys and the praise of the good guys. We submit to civil authority for the sake of law and order. But that the civil law is not our master is made clear when Peter says, “As free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice.” When we submit to the civil authority we do so as children of God who are free from the coercion of the law. We submit, not only for the sake of law and order, but so that the gospel not be despised, and the church slandered by our bad behavior. This is one reason why St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 6, warns the Christians in Corinth not to sue one another in civil court, but to resolve their differences in a Christian manner. We may make use of the civil authorities, as we confess in article sixteen of the Augsburg Confession, but we may not abandon the law of Christian love to adopt the law of sticking it to the fellow who stuck it to you. We confess in the Apology,
Therefore private redress is prohibited not by advice, but by a command, Matt. 5:39; Rom. 12:19. Public redress, which is made through the office of the magistrate, is not advised against, but is commanded, and is a work of God, according to Paul, Rom. 13:1 sqq. (Ap XVI 59)
We submit to and make use of the civil authorities in love for God and our neighbor. The law of Christian love does not define civil law, nor is it perfectly codified by it. Indeed, it cannot be, since Christian love is the fruit of the love of God that the Holy Spirit pours out into our hearts and this love cannot begin until God justifies us by imputing to us the obedience and suffering of Christ as our righteousness. Having thus received love, we can love. And we do love. This love is not confined to the kingdom of God’s right hand. It is expressed as well in the kingdom of God’s left hand.
The kingdom of God’s left hand is God’s kingdom. It is not the eternal kingdom of God’s grace that will be translated into the kingdom of glory on the last day. We take great care in avoiding the identification of the kingdom of God with any civil authority. “My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus said to Pilate. The church shall never perish, but the United States of America will perish. This does not mean that God does not rule through the civil authorities and that we don’t live under this rule. He does and we do. But, while it is temporal and not the eternal kingdom Jesus established, it is the kingdom of God’s left hand. It is God’s rule, and God rules according to his eternal moral law. We must endure the corruption of divine moral law as we participate in civil affairs. We pay our taxes, and our taxes subsidize countless sins against God. The civil authorities are corrupt. They are getting more and more corrupt. Not only does our government at national and state levels promote the most disgusting sexual perversions as something for which perverts should be proud, it persecutes those who refuse to celebrate this sin. Underneath all this filth and corruption is God’s fatherly, providential rule over his creation by his law. We engage in civil affairs while holding onto God’s law as the protector of the home, our bodily lives, marriage, property, honor, and every material blessing we receive from the open hand of him who satisfies the desire of every living thing. This means that living in the kingdom of God’s left hand, we never forget that God is ruling, the corruption, perversion, mendacity, and evil of civil rulers notwithstanding.
It is disheartening and disturbing to hear Lutheran voices defend sin in the name of the distinction between the two kingdoms. Total war is sin. Period. Do not accept the “war is hell” excuse for bombing civilians and burning villages. Using the civil authorities to exact revenge against your adversaries is sin, even if it works. The callously amoral legalisms by which Christians rob one another are quite legal within the parameters of civil law. But the kingdom of God’s left hand is subject to the moral law. When the positive law and its application are severed from the moral law, all hell breaks loose. Consider Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Red China, North Korea, and the list goes on. We are not immune, just because we are Americans. It can happen here.
Pastors: do not flatter yourselves by claiming a higher devotion to the personal salvation of your parishioners than to carrying on the culture wars from the pulpit, as if the former is spiritual and the latter is political, and we shouldn’t descend into political rhetoric in our preaching. We must not ignore the moral rot that has infected our country. It pollutes the souls of Christians. John the Baptist is the model of a great preacher, and he preached against the sin of Herod and his wife. Preach against the perversions of justice perpetrated by servants of God in the kingdom of his left hand. Point out that they are not serving God when they promote evil. When President Biden celebrates “Pride” month at the White House, call him out on in from the pulpit so that your people will know that God’s law doesn’t change with the moral fashions of our political leaders.
In the home, governed by the fourth commandment, the father is both pastor and prince. The two kingdoms are kept distinct, but they are not separated. When disciplining his children according to the law, he exercises that epieikeia, that equity, that judgment tempered by mercy, that he has learned from his heavenly Father. While the pagan philosophers tried to understand and articulate this, it is only from a man who has found in Christ the forgiveness of all his sins and a mercy deeper than the deepest sea that genuine equity can be administered. This is in the kingdom of God’s left hand! This is in the world in which we live! This isn’t isolated in a corner of the kingdom of grace where we feel it running through our spiritual veins for an hour or so on Sunday morning. This is the life of the Christian in the world.
Patriarchy is good because our Father in heaven is good. Patriarchy is required by the fourth commandment. That we live at a time when patriarchy is a growl word used by liberals to attack conservatives is evidence that we Christians, we Bible-believing, Catechism-reciting, liturgy-singing, church-going Lutherans have our work cut out for us. St. John writes, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” (1 John 4:10-11) There is no true love apart from the propitiatory sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. Parents who teach the gospel to their children, read them Bible stories, teach them good Lutheran hymns, bring them to church, and love them, are engaged in the highest and holiest activity any man or woman can do in this world. God blesses us with children because he loves us. We teach them God’s word because we love them. What do we want for our children and grandchildren? We want them to know Jesus their Savior, trusting in him for eternal life, knowing and believing that for his sake their sins are forgiven. We want them to learn how to love as they have been loved. We want them to live as Christians in this world, honoring men for the dignity of their office in the fear of God and living according to the law of Christian love as summarized in the Ten Commandments.
Fathers and mothers: do not seek respectability from a culture devoted to selfishness and the acquisition of things that perish. Find your true joy in giving the treasures you have received from God to your children. They will bless you for it. When you are getting old and reach that time of life when your strength begins to fade and you become weak, God will bless you through your children and you will know that when God gave Moses the fourth commandment, he gave him something good.