Honour Everyone
1 Peter 2:17 Show respect for all people. Love all the brothers and sisters of God's family. Respect God, and honour the king.
Something special happens in your heart, when someone respects you and honours you. It speaks to your innate sense of human dignity, as someone who’s been made in the very image of God.
I’ve thought about this a lot and I’ve come to the conclusion that respect and honour are two sides of the one coin. Respect is something we feel for someone in our hearts. It’s how we think of them. When you respect someone, you ascribe dignity and worth to them in your heart.
And honour is a consequence, an outflowing of that. It’s when we live out that respect. It’s when we treat them as someone who is worthy of our respect.
I remember bumping into a former Prime Minister of Australia on a plane once and what struck me in this briefest of encounters, was that he was so incredibly courteous to me – a complete stranger; a nobody. I’d reached up to help him take his briefcase out of the overhead luggage compartment and he responded with such a genuine warmth. I’ll never forget it.
He was renowned for treating the chauffeurs and door openers with as much honour, as a visiting head of state. Everyone knew that about him, and irrespective of one’s politics, we just felt that there was a human heart beating in the Prime Minister’s office.
He respected the nobodies like you and me, and so honouring people in the way he treated them, just flowed out of him naturally. You know something – we love being around people like that.
Show respect for all people. Love all the brothers and sisters of God’s family. Respect God, and honour the king. (1 Peter 2:17)
That is so direct, it’s so practical and it’s so true. When we see the human dignity in everyone, the innate quality of them having been created in the very image of God, when we finally get it, that they deserve our respect, irrespective of status or ability, something powerful happens.
When you choose to respect people, all people, you can’t help it – honour just flows out of your heart in the way you speak to them, the way you behave towards them, and in the way you choose to humble yourself before them. Be they a chauffeur, a door opener, a king or queen.
Show respect for all people.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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