The Seedbed of Anarchy Text: Exodus 21:15
Introduction: The Architecture of a Godly Society
We live in an age that has declared war on all authority. It is an age of perpetual adolescence, where every man does what is right in his own eyes, and every authority structure, from the family to the state, is seen as an intolerable oppression. Our culture celebrates rebellion as the highest virtue. The rebellious son, the insolent daughter, the student who "speaks truth to power" against his teacher, these are our cultural heroes. We have torn down all the fences, and now we wonder why the wolves are in the yard.
But God is a God of order, and the order He has established for human flourishing begins in the home. The family is the first government, the first church, and the first school. It is the foundational building block of all civilization. If the family crumbles, the entire edifice of society will inevitably follow. And this is why, when God lays out the case laws for His covenant people in the book of Exodus, He addresses the issue of familial rebellion with a shocking and profound severity. We are not accustomed to thinking in these terms. We have been catechized by a soft, sentimental, and ultimately impotent form of Christianity that flinches at the hard edges of God's law. But these hard edges are what give the law its shape and its power to protect and preserve life.
The laws given at Sinai were not arbitrary regulations for a primitive tribe. They are the application of God's eternal character to the life of a nation. They reveal what righteousness looks like in the public square, in the marketplace, and most fundamentally, in the home. And what we find in our text today is a law that strikes at the very root of our modern rebellion. It is a law that our generation would deem barbaric, precisely because our generation is so deeply barbaric in its rebellion against God's created order.
We must therefore come to this text not with our modern sensibilities as the judge, but with the Word of God as our judge. We must ask what principle God is establishing here, why He considers this sin to be so grievous, and how this ancient law speaks to us today, under the grace of the New Covenant.
The Text
"And he who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death."
(Exodus 21:15 LSB)
The Fifth Commandment with Teeth
This verse is a direct application of the Fifth Commandment: "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you" (Exodus 20:12). The Ten Commandments are the summary of God's moral law. The case laws that follow in Exodus 21 through 23 show us what that moral law looks like when it is applied to specific situations in the life of the nation. This is what we call case law, and it is the foundation of our own common law tradition. God gives a specific case, and from that case, wise judges are to derive the general principle, the general equity, and apply it to new situations.
"And he who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death." (Exodus 21:15)
Now, the first thing that strikes our modern minds is the severity of the penalty. The death penalty. For striking a parent. We must resist the urge to immediately dismiss this as something culturally conditioned and irrelevant. The severity of the punishment reveals the gravity of the crime in the eyes of the Lawgiver. God is telling us that the physical striking of a parent is not a simple matter of a child's tantrum or a teenager's disrespect. It is a capital crime. Why?
Because it is a fundamental assault on the entire structure of God-ordained authority. Parents stand as God's delegated representatives to their children. They are God's first government. To strike a parent is to strike at the image of God's own authority. It is an act of high treason against the King of Heaven, carried out against His appointed ambassadors. This is not just about a physical blow; it is about a spirit of violent rebellion against the order that God Himself has established for the good of the world.
This act represents the complete breakdown of honor. It is the physical manifestation of a heart that has utterly rejected the Fifth Commandment. It is anarchy in its seed form. A society that tolerates this kind of rebellion in the home will soon find that it cannot contain that rebellion in the streets. The son who will strike his father today will have no qualms about striking a police officer tomorrow, or a judge, or any other figure of authority. The home is the training ground for citizenship in the kingdom of God, and if treason is tolerated there, it will metastasize everywhere.
Notice the verb, "strikes." This is not about accidental contact. The Hebrew word implies a deliberate, forceful blow. This is an act of violence. It is the son or daughter rising up in violent insurrection against the ones who gave them life. This law, along with the parallel law about cursing parents (Exodus 21:17), forms a protective wall around the institution of the family. God is saying that the authority and dignity of parents are to be held as sacred. To violate that sacred trust in such a flagrant and violent way is to forfeit one's place in the covenant community.
General Equity and New Covenant Application
Now, the question immediately arises: should we apply this law today? Am I advocating that our civil magistrates should execute rebellious teenagers who strike their parents? No, and this is where we must understand how the law of God functions under the New Covenant. The Westminster Confession rightly distinguishes between the moral, ceremonial, and judicial aspects of the law. The judicial laws, with their specific civil penalties, were given to the nation of Israel for that specific time in redemptive history. With the coming of Christ and the dissolution of Israel as a geopolitical nation-state, those specific penalties are no longer binding on civil governments today.
However, this does not mean the law is irrelevant. The Westminster Confession also says that the "general equity" of these judicial laws remains. The general equity is the underlying moral principle. While the specific penalty has been fulfilled and transformed in Christ, the principle that this law reveals is timeless and unchanging. What is that principle?
The principle is this: rebellion against God-given authority, beginning in the home, is a sin of the highest magnitude and is utterly destructive to a healthy society. A culture that makes light of filial piety is a culture that is committing suicide. We no longer have a civil government that recognizes its duty to uphold God's law in this way. But the church must recognize it. Christian families must recognize it.
We see the application of this principle throughout Scripture. The Apostle Paul, in listing the characteristics of those given over to a debased mind, includes "disobedient to parents" right alongside sins like murder and hating God (Romans 1:30). In his description of the terrible times of the last days, he again lists "disobedient to parents" as a key indicator of societal collapse (2 Timothy 3:2). This is not a small thing. It is a canary in the coal mine of civilizational decay.
So how do we apply this general equity? First, Christian parents must understand the gravity of what they are called to do. You are not raising children; you are raising future adults. You are not merely trying to keep them out of trouble; you are teaching them to honor authority, beginning with your own. This means you must discipline them. A failure to discipline is not kindness; it is abdication. It is allowing the seed of anarchy to grow unchecked in the soil of your child's heart. You must teach them, from the earliest age, that striking a parent is an unthinkable act, a violation of the created order.
Second, the church must uphold the sanctity of the family. The church must teach, preach, and discipline in a way that reinforces parental authority. We must be a community where honor is cultivated and rebellion is confronted. When a church ceases to be a place where the Fifth Commandment is taken seriously, it becomes a contributor to the chaos, not a bulwark against it.
The Ultimate Rebellion and the Ultimate Penalty
Like all of God's law, this statute ultimately points us to Christ. The law reveals our sin. And what is the root of all sin but rebellion against our ultimate Father, God Himself? Every sin we commit is a striking out at our Heavenly Father. We have all raised a defiant fist against the one who gave us life and breath and all things.
The law says that he who strikes his father must be put to death. And this is why we all deserve death. We are all guilty of this capital crime in the ultimate sense. "For the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). The law shows us our guilt and pronounces our sentence. It is a ministry of death, written on stones, showing us just how far we have fallen and how desperate our condition is (2 Corinthians 3:7).
But the story does not end there. The good news of the gospel is that the Son of God, the only one who ever perfectly honored His Father, came and stood in the place of rebellious sons and daughters. On the cross, Jesus Christ absorbed the full penalty for our cosmic treason. He was struck, so that we who struck out at God could be forgiven. He was put to death, the death that we deserved for our rebellion, so that we could be adopted as sons and cry out "Abba, Father."
Therefore, our obedience to the principle of this law is not a means of earning our salvation. We cannot. It is rather the fruit of our salvation. Because we have been reconciled to our Heavenly Father through the blood of His Son, we now desire to live in a way that honors Him. And that honor begins in the most basic and foundational of all human relationships: the family. A Christian home, where children honor their parents and parents rule with loving authority, is a small outpost of the kingdom of God. It is a picture of the gospel, a testimony to a watching world that has forgotten what it means to be a father, a mother, or a child.
This law in Exodus is a stark reminder of what is at stake. It reminds us that God is not a sentimental grandfather in the sky. He is the holy King of the universe, and He has established an order for our good. To rebel against that order is to choose death. But to submit to that order, through faith in the Son who paid the penalty for our rebellion, is to choose life, that our days may be long in the land the Lord our God is giving us.