Do I Have to Obey My Parents?

The short answer: Yes, while you’re young and living at home, God asks you to obey your parents and always to honour them, even when you don’t agree. But obeying parents never means doing something God says is wrong, and it never means keeping abuse secret. God’s command is for your good, and He also gives parents responsibilities of their own.

Maybe you’ve just been told you can’t go somewhere everyone else is going. Or your parents’ rules feel stricter than your friends’. Or you honestly think they’re wrong. So you wonder: do I really have to do what they say? Isn’t there a limit?

The Bible’s answer is yes, and yes.

What God asks

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (Ephesians 6:1). Then Paul quotes the fifth commandment, calling it “the first commandment with a promise”: “that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life on the earth” (Ephesians 6:2–3). Paul says the same elsewhere: “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord” (Colossians 3:20).

Notice two words: obey and honour. Obeying is doing what you’re told. Honouring is bigger. It’s an attitude of respect: speaking well of your parents, listening to them, being grateful, and, when they’re old, caring for them. You’ll stop needing to obey your parents in the same way when you’re grown up and living independently. You never stop honouring them.

Even Jesus

The most surprising example is Jesus Himself. At twelve, after amazing the teachers in the temple, He went home with Mary and Joseph “and was obedient to them” (Luke 2:51). The Son of God, who knew far more than His parents, obeyed them. If He could, so can we.

Why it’s good for you

God doesn’t give this command to make your life smaller. Your parents, imperfect as they are, usually see dangers you can’t see yet. “Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction, and do not forsake the teaching of your mother” (Proverbs 1:8). Many rules that feel unfair at fifteen make sense at twenty-five.

You can disagree respectfully. Obeying doesn’t mean you can never ask “why” or make your case. Choose a calm moment, listen to their reasons and explain yours. Sometimes they’ll change their mind. Sometimes they won’t, and then, unless it’s a matter of right and wrong, you obey anyway.

Parents have duties too

The Bible doesn’t give parents unlimited power. Straight after telling children to obey, Paul writes: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath; instead, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). Parents answer to God for how they treat you. Their authority is real, but it’s borrowed from Him.

The limits

Because parents’ authority comes from God, it has limits. Notice that phrase: “obey your parents in the Lord.” When the apostles were ordered by the authorities to stop preaching about Jesus, they said, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

• Never obey a command to sin. If a parent tells you to lie, steal, hurt someone, or do something God clearly forbids, you shouldn’t. Say no respectfully, and talk to a trusted adult.
• Never keep abuse secret. If a parent, step-parent or anyone at home hurts you, touches you in a wrong way, or makes you feel unsafe, it is not your fault. Tell another trusted adult right away: a teacher, a school counsellor, a relative or a church leader you trust. Obeying God never means keeping abuse secret, even if you’ve been told to. Telling is not dishonouring your parents. It’s doing what’s right.

These limits are about real wrongdoing, not about rules you don’t like. “I don’t want to” isn’t the same as “God says no.”

When it’s hard

If your family is difficult, if parents fight, are unkind, or have let you down, honouring them can feel impossible. Honour doesn’t mean pretending they’re perfect. It can mean speaking respectfully, refusing to mock them to your friends, and praying for them. Ask God for help. He is the perfect Father, and He knows exactly what your home is like.

Think about it: Is there a rule at home you’ve been fighting? What might honouring your parents look like there this week?

Go deeper: The Ten Commandments by Thomas Watson — in this chapter Watson explains that honouring parents means respect, obedience and care for them in old age, but that children obey “so far as the commands of parents agree with God’s commands”: when parents command against God, they lose their right to be obeyed. Start with chapter 9, “The Fifth Commandment”.