Theological term
Vice Lists
2 sermons · All terms
The Fifth Commandment
The fifth commandment — 'Honor your father and your mother' — reaches far beyond childhood obedience in the home; it establishes the foundational posture of submission to divinely-ordained authority in family, church, civil society, and workplace. This exposition of Deuteronomy 5:16 traces the command through the Mosaic law, the prophets, and into the New Testament, where Paul applies it unchanged to Gentile believers in Ephesus, demonstrating the trans-covenantal abiding force of the Decalogue. The sermon examines the severity of the sanctions attached to its violation — including the theocratic death penalty and Israel's exile — as evidence that God regards the fifth commandment not as a domestic nicety but as load-bearing structure for any ordered society. Parents are called to enforce the command through discipline and instruction, and all hearers are reminded that the only remedy for its violation is the gospel of Christ, who was born under the law to redeem lawbreakers.
Conduct Unbecoming a New Man
Colossians 3:5–11 calls believers to put to death sins of the flesh and put off sins of the tongue as conduct unbecoming of the new man in Christ. The sermon works through two parallel sections: the cluster of sexual sins (fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, covetousness) rooted in idolatry, and the sins of speech (anger, wrath, malice, slander, filthy language, lying) rooted in corrupt internal dispositions. Throughout, the preacher insists that the motive for mortification is not moralism but gospel indicative — the old man is dead, the new man is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of his Creator. The closing application presses both the unconverted and the baptized: acting like a Christian does not make one a Christian; salvation rests entirely on the finished work of Christ, and only from that ground does holy conduct flow.