Honoring Dishonorable People
The spear struck the wall with a violent thud, the wooden shaft quivering in place, a few jagged splinters catching the lamplight. Only a moment earlier, David’s fingers had been moving across the strings of the harp, coaxing a melody into the air that might soothe the troubled mind of a king. But the song was severed mid-phrase, replaced by the pounding of his pulse and the awareness that the man he served had just tried to kill him. He fled the chamber, not in cowardice, but in the raw recognition that Saul’s madness was real, and the danger was not imagined.
That moment, as jarring as the sound of the spear, is the living scandal of the Fifth Commandment.
"Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you" - Exodus 20:12
We read it too narrowly when we confine it to children in a home, as though it speaks only to bedtime obedience and table manners. The Westminster Larger Catechism, in Question 124, makes its scope plain: “By father and mother… are meant not only natural parents, but all superiors in age and gifts; and especially such as, by God’s ordinance, are over us in place of authority, whether in family, church, or commonwealth.” Here, in the center of God’s moral law, the principle of honor extends like a great arch over every realm of human society—parents and pastors, elders and magistrates, masters and employers—any lawful authority appointed by His providence. This is not an occasional courtesy but a covenantal obligation, a summons to reverence those whom God has placed over us, whether their crown sits straight or hangs askew.
David carried that burden under the most excruciating circumstances. Though Samuel had anointed him as king and God Himself had chosen him to reign, the path to the throne wound through long years in Saul’s court, serving a man whose mind was unraveling and whose heart was turning to stone. Saul’s jealousy boiled into violence; he hurled spears in fits of rage, sent soldiers to hunt David like prey, and schemed to cut him off from the land of the living. Yet David returned to the palace when summoned. He soothed Saul’s spirit with music, fought his battles against the Philistines, and in the cave at En-gedi, when Saul’s life hung by a thread, he stayed his hand. Even severing the corner of Saul’s robe—a harmless act in itself—pierced David’s conscience, for it was a gesture of humiliation toward the one God had set above him.
This restraint was not born of naivety about Saul’s sin, nor from political calculation. It sprang from a deeper reality: David feared the Lord more than he feared Saul. He believed the kingdom would not be secured by the hand of rebellion but by the hand of God. Honor, in David’s heart, was not mere compliance—it was a form of warfare, striking at the pride that clamors for vengeance. And God saw it. In the appointed time, the Lord raised the shepherd from the shadowed cave to the throne of Israel, not by a coup or the swiftness of the sword, but through the long crucible of humility.
Our age, however, drinks deeply from the cup of autonomy. We baptize rebellion as liberty and call dishonor authenticity. We dress the eye-roll in the language of self-protection, and clothe biting words in the rhetoric of “speaking truth to power.” Retaliation becomes instinct, deference an oddity. Yet the voice of Christ still breaks through the noise: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:10). The blessing is not for those who demand recognition or return insult for insult, but for those who endure injustice with a humility anchored in the sovereignty of God.
Humility is the hidden engine of honor, and without it, no man can bear the weight of this command. The arrogant will chafe under authority, the embittered will polish their rebellion with plausible reasoning, and the insecure will grasp for control. Only the man shaped by the Spirit of Christ can honor even when it draws blood, because his gaze is fixed not on the failings of men but on the faithfulness of God. This is why the apostles, far from softening the Fifth Commandment, intensified its claim. Peter, writing under the tyranny of Nero—the emperor who would set Christians ablaze to light his gardens—commanded, “Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king” (1 Peter 2:17). Paul repeated the commandment in Ephesians 6:1–3 and anchored it in the promise of generational blessing. The author of Hebrews urged the saints to obey and submit to their leaders as those who will give account for their souls, knowing that honor breathes life into leadership while dishonor poisons the whole body.
Even in civil government, the principle holds unshaken. Paul reminds us that no authority exists except from God, and those that do exist have been established by Him (Romans 13:1). Jesus Himself, standing before Pilate, declared, “You would have no authority over Me unless it had been given you from above” (John 19:11). All authority is borrowed. To honor the one who wields it is, ultimately, to honor the One who gave it.
And in Christ, we see the perfect fulfillment of this command. The Lord of glory honored corrupt priests, submitted to an unjust trial, bore false accusations without retaliation, and entrusted Himself entirely to the Father who judges justly. He took upon Himself the curse of rebellious sons so that we might be counted as obedient children. Now, exalted at the right hand of the Father, He sends His Spirit to make possible in us what the flesh cannot accomplish—the grace to honor the dishonorable for the sake of the Honorable One.
Therefore, we must repent—of the quiet mutinies harbored in our hearts, the sarcasm that cuts, the defiance that chills, and the subtle undermining of those God has placed over us. The Fifth Commandment is no prison, but a pathway into blessing. For the Lord opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, and in due season, He will lift the lowly, just as He lifted David. And when the spears fly—and they will—we may remember the shepherd in the court of a mad king, the Savior before Pilate, and the God who rules over every throne. Then, by His grace, we will choose not the sword of rebellion, but the cross of honor, and in doing so declare with our lives that our King is worthy of both our submission and our trust.
