I. Obedience. Keep their commands (Col_3:20; Eph_6:1-3).
II. Respect, reverence.
III. Regard their opinions. Do not despise them or ridicule them.
IV. Respect their habits. May be different from ours, antiquated, etc.
V. Provide for them. Deny ourselves to promote their welfare. (A. Barnes, D. D.)
The duties of children
I. You are required to view and treat your parents with respect. Nothing is more unbecoming in you, nothing will render you more unpleasant in the eyes of others, than forward or contemptuous conduct towards your parents.
II. You should be grateful to your parents. Consider how much you owe them-every comfort, etc.
III. You must make it your study to obey your parents, to do what they command, and to do it cheerfully.
IV. Do all in your power to assist and oblige your parents. You can very soon make some return for the kindness you receive.
V. Place your unreserved confidence in them. Be honest, sincere, and open-hearted.
VI. Attend seriously to their instructions and admonitions, and improve the advantages they afford you for becoming wise, useful, good, and happy for ever. (W. E. Channing, D. D.)
And thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.-
Loving our neighbour
I. Who is our neighbour?
II. The duty of loving our neighbour.
1. This commandment evidently means-that we should not injure our neighbour in his person, property, or character; that we should seek to do him good; that in case of debt, difference, or debate, we should do what is right, regarding his interest as much as our own, that in order to benefit him we should practise self-denial, or do as we would wish him to do to us (Mat_7:12).
2. It does not mean-that the love of ourselves, according to what we are, or according to truth, is improper; that I am to neglect my own business to take care of my neighbour’s (1Ti_5:8; Tit_2:5). (A. Barnes, D. D.)
Love thy neighbour
I. The command.
1. Whom am I to love? Thy neighbour
(1) albeit that he be of a different religion;
(2) although he oppose thee in trade;
(3) though he offend thee with his sin.
2. What am I to do to my neighbour? It prohibits all rash temper. Then do not neglect him.
3. How we are to love our neighbour.
II. Reasons why we should obey this command.
1. God commands it.
2. Selfishness itself would bid you love your neighbour. It is the short way to make yourself happy.
3. Because that will be the way to do good in the world.
4. The quiet of us all. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Our neighbours
A gentleman once said to Dr. Skinner, who was asking aid for foreign missions, “I don’t believe in foreign missions. I won’t give anything except for home missions. I want what I give to benefit my neighbours.” “Well,” the doctor made reply, “whom do you regard as your neighbours? Why, those around me.” “Do you mean those whose land joins yours? Yes.” “Well,” said Dr. Skinner, “how much land do you own? … About five hundred acres,” was the reply. “How far down do you own it?” inquired Dr. Skinner. “Why, I never thought of it before, but I suppose I am half way through? Exactly,” said the doctor, “I suppose you do, and I want this money for the Chinese-the men whose land joins yours at the bottom.” Every Christian should say in a higher sense than the heathen poet, “I am a man, and nothing human is foreign to me.” To a believer in Christ all men are neighbours.
Selfness versus selfishness
1. Christ made change from selfishness to benevolence the very marrow of religion. Selfness is to become a mother and ministrant of true benevolence-“as thy self.” He did not put His hand upon slavery, but if this principle could be secured all these evils would die away.
2. Religion, both in the individual and in the sects, as well as in theology, is to be tested by its power to develop benevolence.
3. All great schemes of reformation will fail which do not begin with releasing men from animal selfishness. (H. W. Beecher.)
Social evils not removed by outward means
Goout in early June, and with your scythe cut the May-weed that grows dense and malodorous along the sides of the road: and then let it come up again, not destroying root nor seed, simply cutting it off. That is Nihilism. It proposes to cut to the surface of the ground everything that has been developed out of human life and experience, but not to touch the root out of which they have selfishly and wrongfully developed. It leaves men just as they were, to destroy simply these accretions of oppression and wrong. Some good will be done, doubtless, in destroying multitudes of manners and customs, even by revolutionary evolutions-some good came from the red-hot ploughshare of the French Revolution; but, after all, as a philosophical method of correcting the evils of mankind and of the world, a child could have conceived something better than that. To destroy the outward forms of human society and to leave the inward causes of them, is to attempt to dry up a river, and let alone the springs from which it is fed. Nihilism is contemptible, except as a piteous exposition of men’s suffering, and of their ignorance of how to remedy that suffering. It is not the king, it is not the prince, it is not the inexorable law; it is the vital selfishness of the individual and the collective heart, that makes the trouble in this world. It is the fact men treat each other as animals treat each other, and only to a limited degree have transformed self-seeking into form of benevolence toward others. Just in the proportion in which it is transformed men grow happier and happier in society, and the average condition is better. (H. W. Beecher.)
Social suffering arising from selfishness
The same is true of all the schemes of Fourier and Comte, and of all the social reconstructionists that are writing and planning to-day. They vitiate the result that they seek, by leaving out of consideration the prime factor of the mischiefs that they would exterminate. If a man takes a book that is being printed, and attempts to erase in each proof-sheet a misprinted or a blotted word, but does not correct the wrong types in the form, the errors will reproduce themselves just as fast as they are erased. All the forms of suffering in human society have causes that lie in the animal selfishness of the human race; and if you will correct them-except for a moment, as it were, making a temporary correction, others developing in the same way-you must teach men, being born again, how to make themselves the instruments, not of selfishness, but simply of benevolence and selfness. All the efforts which are, in our day, being made to do this by law-as if machinery would ever correct human nature-are ineffectual. (H. W. Beecher.)
The effective operation of the law of love in social life
Faithful and uniform obedience to this royal law throughout the churches of Christ would be of itself an evangelistic power, an aggressive spiritual energy far transcending all the revival meetings ever held. Just as the regular action of the tides does more to purify the ocean than the occasional storms that sweep over its surface, so would the constant operation of this law of love do for humanity more than the occasional excitements that sweep over the surface of society. (D. Jackson.)
The ideal the true object of love
Ifmy neighbour be an evil-living man, who is not subject to the law of Christ; or if he be a proud, overbearing man, caring only to further his own selfish interests, regardless how he may wound the feelings of others, and cause them to suffer wrong-if, I say, my neighbour be such a man, I cannot, and I ought not, it would be against the royal law, to love these things in him, just as it would be wrong to love them in myself. (D. Jackson.)
The law of self-love
It is very dangerous for a man to care for himself, and not for anybody else; and it is even more dangerous for a man to expend himself on other persons, and neglect or care nothing for himself. The danger is as great, and, if possible, greater, when the law of self is paralyzed, than when the law of benevolence itself is paralyzed. These two laws must work under mutual restraint. They are antithetical. They are counterparts. They are complements the one of the other. To care for yourself is an indispensable pre-requisite of caring for anybody else. If this be so, then, first, to rear up children to be cared for, and not to learn to care for themselves, is to make them self-indulgent, soft, worthless. Secondly. Any method of charity which weakens or destroys self-reliance is not charitable, but is cruel. Thirdly. It is therefore dangerous to interfere with the law of suffering. Suffering is as beneficent as enjoying. Indeed suffering is better than enjoying under certain circumstances. If a man have a diseased brain, and the whole world to him sparkles with fantastic visions of pleasure, and if, in order to restore him to a healthful and normal condition, it is necessary to put a blister on the nape of his neck, then in his case surgery, with all its attendant suffering, is better than the pleasing sights and sounds that he sees and hears. Charity should be so directed as that it shall inspire men to avoid the reasons of suffering, and as that it shall make suffering, when it cannot be avoided, educate men to bear it till they can get out of it. An easy relief of suffering not only is unwise as it relates to humanity, but it is contrary to the fundamental principles on which the globe has been organized. This leads me to say, fourthly, that the social tendencies and theories which are beginning to be preached are demoralizing and dangerous, and to no other part of the community so much as to those who are seeking to better their condition by promulgating them. (H. W. Beecher.)
