Your place in society

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him" (Genesis 2:18). With these words, God took one lone man and made him part of a society.

God had never intended for Adam to be alone. "Aloneness" is an idea that is foreign to our Triune God. From eternity, God has existed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit—one God who is communicated with as three distinct Persons. How God can be one and three at the same time is a mystery our limited minds cannot understand, but what is important for us to remember is that, because God has three Persons, God has never existed in silence with no one to talk to. In Genesis 1:26, we are given ear to the Trinity speaking together: Then God said, "Let us make man in our image." Since God has never existed with no one to talk to, it is not surprising that God gave the first man someone to talk to as well. It is not good to be alone.

The Bible puts much emphasis on fellowship. When Adam and Eve are introduced to each other, the first command that God gives them is be fruitful and increase in number (Genesis 1:22); Adam and Eve were not intended to live alone on the earth. When King David looked for a place to build God’s Temple, the spot approved by God was in the capital city of Jerusalem, a major population center. After Jesus ascended into heaven and the apostles were forming churches for worship, the writer of Hebrews urged his readers, Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another (Hebrews 10:25). Throughout the Bible, we see that the people of God are always part of a society, and that each of them has responsibilities within that society.

The essential building block of any society is the family. It is within the family that a child is given life. It is within the family that a child is first introduced to God, as the parents bring him to the pastor for baptism, bring him to church and Sunday School, and read Bible stories to him at bed time. It is within the family that the child learns how to cooperate with others by learning how to share chores and how to share toys. It is within the family that a child learns how to lead and how to follow, from living under the authority of parents. All the essential skills for adulthood are learned in the family.

This is why God gave us the commandment: Honor your father and your mother (Exodus 20:12). This Commandment means, "honor the family that gave you life and seeks to train you in the things needed to have the best possible life." Martin Luther understood this commandment to extend beyond the family as well. He wrote: "We should fear and love God, and so we should not despise our parents and superiors, nor provoke them to anger, but honor, serve, obey, love, and esteem them." The family structure, with parents given the responsibility to care for the children, and the children having the responsibility to cooperate and mature under the guidance of their elders, is the pattern upon which society is based. All authority in society is an extension of parental authority. Teachers help parents provide education. Firemen and soldiers protect when parents cannot. The government ensures that everyone cooperates together where individual parents cannot enforce such cooperation. Society is an extension of the family, and honoring your parents, by extension, includes honoring the caring authority of your society.

So how do we violate God’s Commandment? Most obviously, we sin when we are disrespectful to our parents. When we are very young, disrespect takes the form of refusing to do our chores and yelling at our parents. As we grow up, we discover that our parents are every bit as much sinners as everyone else; and especially in our teenage years, it is tempting to dismiss what our parents say as too corrupted by sin to be worth listening to. But although our parents are sinners just like us, God still expects us to be obedient to them. Jesus was without sin, yet He submitted Himself to the authority of two sinful people as His mother and stepfather; Luke tells us in chapter 2 that Jesus was obedient to them. Paul writes, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right (Ephesians 6:1).

But just because we’ve reach adulthood ourselves, this does not give us leave to stop honoring our parents. Clearly, parents are not to run our lives as adults; speaking of marriage, Jesus says: for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh (Matthew 19:5). When a person gets married, he or she has committed to being leader in a new family, and takes on the responsibility that goes with it—their primary obligation shifts from following their parents to leading their own children. But that does not mean the grown children are to stop honoring their parents. We show dishonor when we cannot find time to visit our parents, listen to their troubles, or help them with their problems. Some ungrateful children have even gone so far as to take advantage of their elderly parents by stealing from them through trickery or intimidation. Such behavior angers the God who gave us life through that self-same person.

We also sin when we act irresponsibly in society. God expects us to respect those in authority and to cooperate with our peers. We sin when we show disrespect to those who have been given the responsibility of leadership. Peter writes, submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men…Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king (1 Peter 2:13, 17). We are to do this because God has created the power of government to rule people for their good, just as He created the power of parenthood to rule children for their good. Paul writes, Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves (Romans 13:1-2). Now, just like parents, people in authority are all sinners—but that does not remove God’s expectation that we live as law-abiding citizens. Insulting a judge is a sin. Speeding is a sin. Procuring alcohol or cigarettes for someone who is underage is a sin. Refusing to pay your taxes is a sin.

We also sin when we do not do our share as members of society. Just as a child is expected to do his chores, so we as adults are to do ours. If we are called for jury duty, we are to serve. If we are called up for military service, we are to go. When elections are held, we are to study the issues and try to vote in accordance with God’s good and gracious will. English philosopher Edmund Burke said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." God has given us a blessing few Christians in history have had—the opportunity to shape society according to God’s statutes through our ability to vote; we sin when we refrain from voting and let Satan’s followers dictate the final outcome.

Pontius Pilate is an example of someone who did not act as a responsible member of society. Pilate was appointed the job of governor over Roman-controlled Israel. It was his job to see that the people were ruled according to Roman law. When Jesus was brought before him, Pilate could find no evidence that Jesus had done anything illegal. Pilate said to the crowds hungering for Jesus’ death, "I find no basis for a charge against this man" (Luke 23:4). But the people responded, "If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar" (John 19:12). When Pilate saw his political future threatened, Matthew tells us: he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's blood," he said. "It is your responsibility!" (Matthew 27:24) Rather than obey the laws of the empire, Pilate allowed the greatest injustice ever done to take place by claiming that he, personally, was not responsible. Because of people who did not respect authority, Jesus was put to death—Jesus died to forgive those who do not respect authority.

Jesus always respected God and those who exercised authority. Jesus was holy and John the Baptist was not; when Jesus came to John for baptism, John tried to deter him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" Jesus replied, "Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness." Then John consented (Matthew 3:14-15). When Jesus prayed to His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, He said, yet not my will, but yours be done (Luke 22:42). When Peter advised Jesus to resist arrest, Jesus told him, "Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?" (Matthew 26:53-54). When Pilate tried to intimidate Jesus by saying, "Don't you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?" Jesus answered, "You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above" (John 19:10-11). When the religious leaders who had demanded His crucifixion mocked Jesus, saying Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe (Mark 15:32), Jesus could have used His divine power to come down from the cross, but He did not. At no time in His life did Jesus refuse to submit to those who were in positions of authority, because by submitting to them, He was submitting to His Father’s plan to save us from our sins by becoming the punished criminal in our place. Paul writes, he humbled himself and became obedient to death--even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:8)

And Jesus honored His mother. As He hung upon the cross, blood dripping from the wounds in His hands and His feet, every breath a struggle as He hung in a most unnatural position, suffering God’s anger for our every sin, Jesus still thought of His mother, now widowed and soon to lose her firstborn. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, "Dear woman, here is your son," and to the disciple, "Here is your mother." From that time on, this disciple took her into his home (John 19:26-27).

Jesus died to forgive you for every time you yelled at your mother or father. Jesus died to forgive you for every time that you brushed them off because you were too busy with other things. Jesus died to forgive you for every time that you broke a law, were rude to a policeman, or were too preoccupied with other things to vote on a referendum. Jesus was perfectly obedient and perfectly responsible because He knew that you could not be, and He was willing to forgive you in spite of that. May our Lord’s Holy Spirit move you to repent of living as if no one else mattered, because it is not good for a man to live as if he were alone.