Honor and Respect

1 Peter 2:17

Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.

 

Honor and Respect

 

One of the areas our society that has greatly deteriorated is this value of honor and respect.  When we lose that value and principle of honor and respect then the structure and foundation of godliness and righteousness deteriorates.   It starts first in our honor and respect of God our Creator, Lord and King.  When we fail to bestow upon our God the honor that is due then all honor and respect beneath Him begins to fall away.  Where honor and respect fail to be present, abuse, slander, oppression and discrimination are quick to fill the void.

A Pharisee questioned Jesus about the greatest commandment in Mark 12:28-32.  “One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

29“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

32“Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.””

How does this scripture pertain to honor and respect?

One of the primary attributes of true agape’ type love is that it greatly honors and respects the object of its love.  Why did Jesus have honor?

Jesus tells the Pharisees in John 8:54, ” Jesus answered, If I honor myself, my honor is nothing: it is my Father that honors me; of whom ye say, that he is your God.”  Men have honor because they were made a little lower than the angels and they were made in the likeness and image of God.  Because each person was created in the likeness of God and has an eternal spirit, they also have a purpose and destiny bestowed upon them from creation.  God told Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:5, ““Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.””  So we see that God knows each of us before we were formed in the womb what our destiny is.  Because we are His creation and meant for His expression and relationship, honor and respect should be given to all men, even as our opening scripture 1 Peter 2:17 says.

Our first commandment is to love and honor God.   Then God gives us the commandment in Exodus 20:12,” “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”  For God to make this one of His top ten commandments means that He considers the honor and respect of parents to be of utmost importance.  These are the people that birthed you, raised you and laid down their lives for you.  They are worthy of the greatest honor and respect.  It is never a pretty sight to see a child who dishonors and disrespects their parents.

When Jesus gives the greatest commandments of love for God, He tells us to first love God, but then the second is ‘to love your neighbor as yourself’.  In order to love your neighbor properly you first must love and have a proper paradigm of yourself.  Now there are many people that have no idea how to love others because they don’t first love and respect themselves.  We must realize that we are God’s creation and though we have fallen from our estate with God and are sinful creatures God has honored us in His love by giving Jesus, His only begotten Son, to die and bear the judgement of sin on our behalf.  If we simply appropriate what He has already done for us by repentance, faith and acceptance then we can experience restoration back to who God created us to be.  Now our life has been refurbished by the love of God and He loves and accepts us no matter what our past has been.  We are a new creation in Him.  God has created us to be His temple and habitation.  Because God has loved, honored and respected us, we must have that same love, honor and respect for others; seeing in them what God saw in us, which is that we are worth His love and honor.  If God loves, honors and respects us, should we do any less in the way we treat and view others.  He loved us even when we were still His enemies and in that state Jesus came and gave His life for us.

God wants us to recognize and embrace the value of our worth to Him and in so doing extend that same honor and respect to others.  It is not dependent upon their viewpoints, philosophies, politics, race or religion.  God’s love through us should supercede all those things.

We, as the body of Christ must by our own practice and obedience, become the expression of true honor and respect for others, not matter what their relationship is to us.  It doesn’t mean that we necessarily embrace or agree with their values or behavior, but we see them through the filter of the love and blood of Christ and in that place we count them of honor and worth to God.  Our respect starts with our honoring the Father, then our parents, ourselves, our spouse and children, our brethren and our neighbors.  The Word says our spiritual leaders are worth double honor.   God is love and one of the greatest expressions of that love is the honor and respect with which we treat others and one another.

Blessings,

#kent

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