So, God says very clearly in His word – There is blessing attached to honouring, and particularly honouring your parents. So, what does it mean to honour? And what would that look like? And what would be the reasons or consequence of me not honouring? The word honour in the Bible, in the Old Testament, is the word ‘weight’, ‘to place weight upon’. It’s the same word as the word for glory. When we say God has great glory, He has great weight. Or He is substantial – there’s something to Him.
So the word ‘honour’ in the Old Testament means to place value or weight upon your parents. To place value upon them. In the New Testament it’s a different word, and it means to fix a price on someone. It means to choose to put a value on them. So when we put it together, we understand from the Bible perspective what honour might look like. It means to consider your parents as being of great value and to put importance on your relationship with them and your communication with them. To put value on them.
Now, how do we honour or value people? We value people for a number of different reasons. Everywhere in our culture we see honour. So, people are honoured number 1 because of their achievements. Someone does something great, we honour them. Someone has a great achievement, we honour them. We place a high value on them because they’ve had an achievement. In other words, they did something we think was very important. So we honour people because something they did was very valuable.
The second reason we honour people is because of their character. It’s who they are. They’ve demonstrated courage or integrity. So we honour them because that’s a great person, showed great courage, great bravery, great endurance. They’ve earned it. So we honour them because they deserve it.
The third reason we honour people is because of the role they play. The president – we give honour to his office. Because the office is the highest government rank in the nation, we give honour to that office. The Bible says to honour those in authority. In fact, the Bible has got a lot about honouring.
So you notice then, three primary reasons why people give honour. One, because of the achievement – what they did. Two, their character. Three, their position. But God honours people for a different reason. Quite different to all of those reasons. It’s an important reason. God honours people because they are made in His image and likeness. Every person you meet is a value to God. Every person you meet, God places a high value upon them and He demonstrated it.
You see, I have a watch here. Is it valuable or is it not valuable? It really depends what someone will pay for it. They may look and say: “Ooh. $1000”. Put a value on it. Or they may look and say: “Oh. Market. $10”. So they put a value on it depending on what it means. So we place a value on people according to how we see them.
But God sees us as great value. So the price He paid, is He sent His only Son Jesus Christ into the world to give His life for us. Even though we’re in sin, we have all these wrong things going on in our life, even though there’s many bad things going on, God says: “You’re a value to me. I can look past the things that are wrong and I see in the core you are made in my image, and I value you.” So, honour is what God gives to us. It’s a value He placed on us by Jesus coming into the world, walking among people, laying His life down, showing us what real love is like. So, God values people just because they’re people made in His image.