Honor
Pastor Tim Spirk | November 8, 2026
“Wealth and honor come from you alone, for you rule over everything.” — 1 Chronicles 29:12 NLT
Honor isn’t a cultural value. It isn’t a personality trait some people have and others don’t. According to Scripture, honor originated in God — it is the culture of heaven. If you want to know what honor looks like in practice, look at how God lives His life. The essence of honor is found in His personality and His character.
First Peter 2:17 makes the scope of it plain: “Honor ALL people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.” Not some people. Not the people who have earned it or who make it easy. All people.
What Honor Actually Means
Romans 12:9-10 gives us one of the richest pictures of honor in the New Testament: “Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other.”
The word translated “love” here carries the idea of seeing and appreciating the value of someone — beholding them with awe, wonder, and appreciation to the point that it awakens love in you. “Genuine affection” means loving each other deeply, the way you would love a member of your own family. And “honoring” describes an appreciation so great that you would genuinely prefer to see that person succeed even more than you want to see your own success. You desire the best for them because you love them that deeply.
Honor, at its core, is based on a person’s worth in God’s eyes — not on what they have done or what they deserve.
What Honor Is Not
This is where a lot of us get tangled up, because honor is often confused with things it was never meant to be.
Honor is not turning a blind eye to sin or injustice. It is not staying quiet or cowering when something is wrong. It is not compliance when what’s being asked of you contradicts what God has said. You can love and honor people you deeply disagree with — agreement is not a prerequisite for honor. Honor also doesn’t mean the absence of healthy boundaries. We are not required to be in relationship with people who harm us. Honor is not becoming a doormat or allowing yourself to be minimized, manipulated, or abused.
Honoring Difficult People
This is probably the part of the message most of us needed to hear. Honoring difficult people is not based on their worthiness — and it’s not based on your emotional strength either. You don’t have to agree with them, vote the same way, or share the same beliefs. In God’s family, we should be able to sit together and honor each other even when we don’t see eye to eye.
We may never be close to every difficult person in our lives, but God invites us to love them, bless them, pray for them, and stop speaking negatively about them. That’s not weakness. That’s the culture of heaven lived out on earth.
Honoring Difficult Family
When it comes to family, the Bible doesn’t leave much room for loopholes. “Honor your parents” is a clear command — and it’s also one of the harder ones to live out when the relationship is complicated or painful. Psychologists have called parental estrangement a silent epidemic, and it’s one the church can’t afford to avoid talking about.
What honoring a difficult family member looks like will vary from person to person and situation to situation. But the question worth asking — and asking honestly — is this: What does honor look like here? Not in the abstract, but in this specific relationship, with this specific history. That question takes courage to ask. It takes even more courage to answer it and act on it.
Honor isn’t always easy. But it starts with seeing people the way God created them — and choosing to treat them accordingly.
