Let the instruction of your father and the wisdom of your mother be as a crown, a sword, a scepter unto you. They bestow you with the royalty of being children of the covenant, and so receive that lofty calling and fulfill it in honor of both God your Father and your parents. The true spirit of the Reformation is a glorious retrieval of the fifth commandment to Honor thy father and thy mother.

As we celebrate the spark that lit the Protestant Reformation, we should consider the character of such revivals. One of the prominent features of the Reformers was the refrain ad fontes or “to the sources”. This was nothing other than the promised spirit of Elijah, which always accompanies such a renewal of God’s church.

Where the Spirit goes, father’s hearts turn tenderly toward their children, and children’s faces are upturned in a hearty respect for their fathers. But a movement that reviles its fathers of the faith does not bear the tang of the Spirit’s presence. A movement that treads upon children isn’t born from above, but from below.

As we labor for cultural revival it must begin in this relationship between fathers and their children. If you are a father, regardless of how old your children are, you are summoned by the Spirit of God to turn your heart with tenderness to your children. You are not to despair over your children’s failures, nor should you presume that their bad character or habits are permanently fossilized. Rather, you must, by God’s grace, find another gear to pursue your children with scandalously generous love.

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