Honor All People

1 Peter 2:17 “Honor all people…”

Wait…what? I have to honor ALL people?? 

What does that word all mean in the Greek or Hebrew?????

You don’t mean everyone? 

Yup, He meant ALL people. 

As believers in Jesus Christ we should interact with people based on who we are in Christ. His command is to love. 

Isaiah 16:5 says, “A new government of love will be established…”

So what does it look like to honor all men? 

Honor: to glory in or make known (in the context of relationships). When we honor someone we communicate to the world that we know them, see them, value them, etc.  

To say I value people doesn’t mean I have to agree with them. 

Here is the reality of honor: you don’t know if you have honor in your character until you have a problem with someone—that is when it is exposed. 

Anyone can honor someone they agree with. The danger of this is we tend to only honor those who remind us of ourselves. 

Honor: to elevate the status of another person, to give prestige. 

God modeled this in John 15:15, “No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.

Notice that He doesn’t say son, which is still under him, He says friend (next to, same as). Amazing!

You have unlimited resources on the inside of you and you get to elevate peoples' status with those resources. 

I have a friend who models this so well. She is incredibly gifted in business and I have watched as she shares her knowledge with her friends and elevates their status. It is contagious and it starts with the spirit of generosity and honor. 

That is part of our earthly assignment, to honor all people!

Honor: great respect or admiration. (The awe of God planted within them.)

We are to look for what is wonderful about people. Too often we look at people according to their past and we hold them hostage to what they have done; we predict their future based on their history!

I am so thankful this is not the way of the Kingdom. 

 Jesus loved and honored us when we were still enemies with Him! 

I love to ask my closest friends for the significant prophetic words spoken over their lives. I read them and study them so that I can treat them according to heaven’s destiny over them. 

That is what honor does. It creates an attention to your unfolding destiny and releases you from the mistakes of your history. 

Honor ushers in a new government of love! 

When we do this, we allow people to be free around us. We can be powerful people working together to meet the needs of each other and the situations around us. 

How different would things be if we learned to honor all people? 

How can you begin to cultivate honor in your close relationships? 

Where are some areas you can improve in the honor department?

I will leave you with this last thought: punishment is not present in a culture of honor.