There is much pain awaiting those who can’t just be happy for other people. An unwillingness to recognize our own limitations and the superiority of others when it comes to talent, gifting, and opportunity is likely the most damaging thing we can do to our own peace. It is a truism that there is nothing more ugly than jealousy and this doubly goes for life within the kingdom of Christ. If we cannot help but feel anguish at the success of others within our own gathering of God’s people then we need to meditate on why we are moved to such about those whom Jesus has laid down His life. 

Closing out the Fifth Commandment is a series of Q/A’s on the duties and sins of equals, and as with the Fourth, a testimony as to how God has given reminder of why we are to keep this portion of His law perfectly. In some ways how we treat those at our level really says who we are as a person. It’s easy to be magnanimous to someone who works for you, and to treat with honor the King, but it takes a different muscle to support and pray with a man or woman of your own station. We have a fear here that needs mortified as much as any other transgression of the law.
Probably the best Biblical example we could go to on this front would be either the conflict between brothers (Cain/Able, Jacob/Esau) or the individual divisions among the closest disciples of Jesus Christ (Sons of Thunder) among who would be the greatest. So much of the word is given over to these types of struggles, and at the heart of them is what really is at the heart of every sin associated with the first of the second table sins, and that is pride. Part of our inborn depravity is thinking we deserve more than others. Regardless of what we have done, not done, or may do there is a little voice in all of us that wants to be preferred, to gain the first and to never be last.
In today’s questions we are going to hear some reasons why it is antichrist to live in such competition with one another. Let’s read the catechism together:
Q. 131: What are the duties of equals?
A. The duties of equals are, to regard the dignity and worth of each other, in giving honor to go one before another; and to rejoice in each others gifts and advancement, as their own.
Q. 132: What are the sins of equals?
A. The sins of equals are, besides the neglect of the duties required, the undervaluing of the worth, envying the gifts, grieving at the advancement or prosperity one of another; and usurping pre-eminence one over another.
Q. 133: What is the reason annexed to the fifth commandment, the more to enforce it?
A. The reason annexed to the fifth commandment, in these words, That thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, is an express promise of long life and prosperity, as far as it shall serve for God’s glory and their own good, to all such as keep this commandment.
Reading the duties required of equals can be a great lesson in humility. There is nothing worse than admitting that someone might actually be better than you at something you like.
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Truly reforming reading instruction would have to involve reforming teacher training and promoting a completely different pedagogy, one focused on student learning instead of student engagement. Incoming elementary teachers need to recognize just how formative those early years are and make the most of the time they have with their students. It’s not enough to keep them busy and amused, they must actually teach them and hold them accountable on what they’re learning.

In the pages of The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof recently took on the problem of illiteracy among American students. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), two-thirds of fourth graders across the country are not reading at grade level. While not a huge jump from two years ago (2 percent), and with the increase most likely attributable to Covid learning loss, that’s still an enormous number of students struggling despite innumerable campaigns to foster reading.
Those of us teaching English can attest that this issue is not limited to fourth graders, but can be easily seen at all grade levels, even in the Gifted and Talented and Advanced Placement classes. Today’s students read far less than those of previous generations and struggle with completing basic reading tasks. I wasn’t much of a reader myself, nor was the expectation very high at the public school I attended, but I still marvel at how many more novels I read than some of my students in AP Language and Composition, who confess they haven’t read a whole book since elementary school. This definitely hurts them as they try to pass their AP exams and score high on the SAT, and I have to spend much of the year modeling how to read with them.
Like most people on the left, Kristof has always supported public schools and continues to push for ever more funding, but even he is shocked by the failure of educators to follow the data to teach reading properly: “the United States has adopted reading strategies that just don’t work very well and … we haven’t relied enough on a simple starting point — helping kids learn to sound out words with phonics.”
For too long, teachers have relied on using sight-words with younger children, using flash cards and pictures to help students learn to read instead of teaching them the different sounds that letters make. In the first few years, the sight-word method seems more effective than teaching phonics, since these kids seem to be able to identify longer, more advanced vocabulary right away, not the two- and three-letter words featured in phonics beginner books. However, this advantage soon evaporates as students read longer texts with more unfamiliar vocabulary that they haven’t already memorized. By the time they reach middle school and high school, the challenges become so overwhelming that some of them are even diagnosed with dyslexia or other reading disorders.
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Majesty, in particular, is emotive, or affective. It indicates greatness in sight or sound that is also wonderful. Bigness that is beautiful. Imposing size that is viewed with delight, imposing power received as attractive. While having significant overlap with divine dominion or lordship, majesty does more. Dominion and lordship are more technical and prosaic; majesty rings more poetic, with the awe of worship.

In 1977, California pastor Jack Hayford and his wife visited England during the Silver Jubilee (25th anniversary) of Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne (1952). They were struck by the grandeur of the celebration, and the manifest joy of the people in their monarch. While there, they visited Blenheim Palace, birthplace of Winston Churchill, and famous for the magnitude and stateliness many Americans today know through watching Downton Abbey.
Driving away from the palace, overcome with awe, Hayford found himself reaching for words — language that would transpose the weight of the earthly experience into the key of heaven. As he stretched, the word that seemed most fitting, both to describe the stunning magnificence of the palace, and how it pointed to the superiority of the reigning Christ, was majesty. According to a California newspaper’s retelling of the story,
As the Hayfords pulled themselves from that regal palace and drove away, Dr. Hayford asked his wife to take a notebook and write down some thoughts that were coming to him. He then began to dictate the lyrics, the key, and the timing to a song now being sung by Christians worldwide. (“Story Behind the Song: ‘Majesty,’” St. Augustine Record, August 13, 2015)
Hayford’s impulse to reach for the word majesty, however much he knew it at the time, was profoundly biblical. Majesty is indeed a frequent, and carefully chosen, attribute in Scripture of the living God — a trait often overlooked in studies of the divine attributes, but an important witness of both the prophets and apostles, one that sheds brilliant light on other well-rehearsed attributes, and one that is truly, deeply, wonderfully fit for worship, as Hayford at least intuited:
Majesty! Worship his majesty!Unto Jesus be all glory, honor, and praise.Majesty! Kingdom authority,Flow from his throne, unto his own;His anthem raise!
Purple Mountain Majesties
Those, like Hayford, who reach for the word majesty often find themselves standing before, or remembering, some natural or manmade wonder that is both imposing and, at the same time, attractive. In our language, as in biblical terms, the word captures not only greatness but also goodness, both bigness and beauty, awesome power together with pleasant admiration.
Mountains might be the quintessentially majestic natural feature. Psalm 76:4 declares in praise to God, “Glorious are you,” and then adds, “more majestic than the mountains.” Alongside the illustrious plain of Sharon, which had its own peculiar glory, Isaiah’s hope-filled prophecy of future flourishing for God’s people hails “the majesty of [Mount] Carmel” (Isaiah 35:2). Yet alongside mountains, we also might attribute majesty to gold, or some precious material or gem, fit for a king, that dazzles the eye with its beauty, as Job 37:22 links God’s “awesome majesty” with “golden splendor.”
Not only natural phenomena, but also the work of human hands, when on a grand scale, might have us reaching for majestic. Lamentations 1:6 mourns the loss of such civic majesty after the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon, and not long after, Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon’s king, professes to have built his city “by [his] mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of [his] majesty” (Daniel 4:30) — this, just before his great humbling.
How, then, does the common use of majesty for mountains and mansions, gold and cities, relate to attributing majesty to God?
What is Divine Majesty?
In bringing together both greatness and goodness, both strength and beauty (Psalm 96:6), majesty is not only a fitting term for mountain majesties but a particularly appropriate descriptor of God, who is, above all, “the Majestic One” (Isaiah 10:34).
At a critical juncture in the history of God’s first-covenant people, as they assemble under the leadership of Solomon, to dedicate the temple, the king prays, in his great wisdom, “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty.” Consider those first three — greatness, power, and glory — often associated with majesty elsewhere, as revealing angles into the attribute of divine majesty.
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