Psalm 68:6 announces that God Himself is the one who settles the solitary in a home. The act of forming a household is not primarily a social arrangement; it is a divine act. The God who leads prisoners out to prosperity is the same God who places a person in the basic unit of human community and names Himself as that community's source and sustainer. Luther reads the Fourth Commandment in exactly this light: parents do not stand in the home by their own authority. They stand there in God's stead.
Isaiah 54 arrives from the other direction. God speaks as a husband reclaiming a forsaken wife and as a builder laying foundations of sapphire and battlements of rubies. In the midst of this image of divine domesticity comes the promise: "All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children." This verse is the theological ground for everything Luther says about parents as the channels of God's instruction. The Lord is the ultimate Teacher. Parents are appointed by the Supreme Majesty to be the instruments through which that teaching reaches the children in their keeping.
| Term | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Honor vs. love | Luther's key distinction: loving is common to all relationships, but honoring is higher. It includes modesty, humility, and deference to a majesty that is hidden in the parent's person. Children owe their parents not merely affection but reverence. |
| The hidden majesty | God has placed parents next to His own majesty. However lowly, poor, or frail the parent may be, the child must look past the person to the will of God who stands behind that office. Parents are in God's stead. |
| Patres patriae | Fathers of the country. Luther's term for civil rulers, who derive all their authority from the parent's office. All earthly authority, from schoolmaster to magistrate, is a delegation of the Fourth Commandment. |
| Hospital master | Luther's image for the householder. The home is a hospital; the children are patients whose hungry, thirsty, and naked souls require daily feeding with the Word. Every housefather is a priest; every housemother a priestess. |
The Fourth Commandment delivers one of Luther's most devastating critiques of medieval religion. He declares without qualification that a child who honors his parents, or a maid who sweeps the floor in obedience to her mistress, performs a work far better and holier than all the Carthusian monks fasting and praying upon their knees. The reason is not that the child's work is more impressive; it is that the child has the explicit, unchangeable Word and command of God, whereas the monks rely on human inventions.
The monks and nuns, Luther writes, would gladly pay any price to bring before God even a single work done by virtue of His commandment. They will blush with shame when contrasted with a child who simply obeyed. The Fourth Commandment does not make the household holy by filling it with religious ceremonies. It makes ordinary obedience holy by grounding it in the Word of God. Isaiah 54:13's promise that the children shall be taught by the Lord is fulfilled not in a cloister but in a kitchen, not by a superior but by a parent.
The Fourth Commandment is not merely a rule for children. Luther traces every form of earthly authority directly back to the parents' office. When a father cannot educate his child alone, he delegates that work to a schoolmaster. When he needs help managing the household, he employs servants. When an entire community requires governance and protection, civil government is established. All of these are extensions of parental authority, not independent powers.
This is why rulers have historically been called patres patriae, fathers of the country, and why the Large Catechism commands us to honor them as the most precious treasure on earth. The logic runs in both directions: civil rulers derive their legitimacy from the household, and the household is where a citizen's capacity for obedience or rebellion is first formed. A society that has lost the Fourth Commandment has not merely lost family values; it has cut the root from which all other authority grows.
Parents do not have children for their own amusement. The Large Catechism is unsparing: they are strictly commanded by the Supreme Majesty to bring their children up in the fear and knowledge of God. Luther's warning to negligent parents carries no pastoral softening: those who fail to provide this spiritual instruction earn hell by their own children, even if they are otherwise pious in every respect. The stakes of the Fourth Commandment are not confined to the children.
The positive image is just as striking. Luther calls the home a hospital, where the children are patients whose souls are hungry, thirsty, and naked, and the householder is appointed by God as the hospital master to feed them with the Word. Every housefather is a priest and every housemother a priestess, making the home a true church and a paradise where God is the ultimate Teacher. Isaiah 54:13 is not a promise about professional religious education; it is a promise about what happens in a home where the parents take their office seriously.
The Fourth Commandment is the first commandment with a promise: that you may live long on the earth. God attaches a specific temporal reward to this obedience to show how much He delights in it. But Luther pairs the promise with a stark warning: a child who will not hear the loving correction of a father and mother will be handed to the executioner, the hangman, or the devil, who serve as God's avengers for a broken home. God settles the solitary in a house, as Psalm 68:6 says, and He intends the house to stand.