What Does It Mean to Honor One Another Biblically?

From the sermon preached on May 24, 2026

Honoring one another, according to the Apostle Paul in Romans 12, is not a reward you hand out when someone earns it. It is the posture you carry toward every person because of what God says they are worth. That distinction changes everything about how you treat the people who are difficult, the people who are distant, and the people who have let you down.

In Romans 12, the Apostle Paul does not introduce honor as its own category. He drops it in the middle of a passage that opens with a single command: let love be genuine. By verse 10, he writes, "Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor." The two ideas arrive together, and that is not accidental. “Love and honor are inseparable” is not a slogan. It is the architecture of the whole passage.

Lead Pastor Ryan Mustered illustrated this during the May 24 message using a Möbius strip, a loop of paper given a half-twist and joined at the ends to create a single continuous surface. Write "love" on one side and "honor" on the other and they appear to be opposites. But join them with that half-twist and you cannot find where one ends and the other begins. Cut the strip down the center and instead of two separate pieces you get one long, inseparably connected loop. That is the point Paul is making. You cannot practice genuine honor without love underneath it, and you cannot sustain genuine love without the outward posture of honor giving it shape.

The Greek word Paul uses for honor in this passage (timé) refers to the intrinsic value of a person, the price attached to a life. It is not a feeling. It is a recognition. When you look at someone and treat them as worthy of honor, you are not saying they have performed well enough to deserve your respect. You are saying that the God who created them has already assigned their value, and it is not yours to revise. That settles something that a lot of relationships leave perpetually unsettled.

One honest step for today: the next time you are in a conversation with someone you find difficult, pause before you respond and ask yourself whether you are treating their time and their voice as worth something. Not because they have earned it. Because they were made by someone who has.

If Romans 12 only required you to honor people who made it easy, it would not need to be in the Bible. The passage moves quickly past the comfortable cases. Paul writes in Romans 13:7, "Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed." He is writing to early Christians living under Roman rule. Caesar was not a man most of them admired. And Paul's instruction was not to wait until Caesar improved. It was to render what is owed.

Honoring difficult people biblically is not the same as agreeing with them, deferring to every decision they make, or pretending the harm they have caused did not happen. It means you do not get to revoke their personhood because they have frustrated yours. Mark Twain once said it is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them. Paul pushes further. He says honoring difficult people says more about the kind of person you are than the kind of person they are.

This is a tall order in a town where everyone knows everyone. When the person who wronged you shops at the same grocery store, sits in the same bleachers on Friday night, or pulls into the same co-op lot on Saturday morning, the temptation to calculate whether they have earned your respect is constant. But Paul is not offering a calculation. He is describing a posture grounded in something outside the relationship itself. Honor flows from a source the other person cannot add to or take away from.

One honest step for today: identify one person in your life you have quietly written off, and do one small thing this week that treats them as worth something. Not a conversation. Not a resolution. Just one concrete act.

Jesus does not let the family piece stay theoretical. In Mark 7:9-10, he confronts the religious leaders of his day who had found a creative way around the commandment to honor father and mother. They were declaring their assets "corban" (devoted to God) while their elderly parents lived in poverty. They kept the religious optics and abandoned the actual obligation. Jesus calls it what it is: hypocrisy wrapped in devotion language.

Honoring aging parents biblically, as Jesus and Paul both make clear, does not expire when you become an adult. It shifts in form. If you have left and cleaved to your spouse, that bond takes priority. But the responsibility to see to your parents' needs, to treat them with dignity, to make sure they are not forgotten while you build your own life, that does not get filed away with childhood. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 5:17 that elders who lead well are worthy of double honor. The principle extends outward: those who have poured themselves out in faithfulness are owed something in return.

This is the part that costs something in practice. Honoring aging parents when you are also raising kids, holding down work at the plant or on the farm, managing your own marriage, and carrying your own fatigue means doing something sacrificial with a limited supply. It is not a sentiment. It is a series of decisions made when you are already tired. Lead Pastor Ryan Mustered noted directly that he sees people in the congregation caring for aging parents in dignified, loving, compassionate, and sacrificial ways, and that it is honoring to God. It may not feel like it some weeks. It still counts.

One honest step for today: if you have been putting off a phone call, a visit, or a practical act of care for an aging parent, do it this week. Not because you feel ready. Because it is the right thing.

Romans 12:9-17 lays out a complete picture of what honoring one another looks like in practice. The passage moves from the personal to the communal without pausing:

The Greco-Roman world treated honor as a scarce commodity fought over in public competition. Scripture reorients this completely. Honor is not a trophy. It is received from God and shared in self-sacrificing love. In the body of Christ, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:22-24 that the parts of the body that seem weaker are indispensable, and those we think less honorable receive greater honor. Cleaning the floors with care is as spiritual as preaching. Every role, every person, every unglamorous act of faithfulness carries weight in God's economy.

This is not an abstract conversation in communities where people carry hard things quietly. Across Iroquois County in Illinois and Newton County in Indiana, from Watseka and Ashkum to Milford, Cissna Park, Gilman, and Goodland, people are navigating worn-out marriages, difficult bosses, aging parents who need more than there is time or energy to give, and relationships that have frayed over years of accumulated hurt. The question of whether to keep showing up with honor when you are running low is not a theological exercise. It is a weekly decision for a lot of people in these towns.

Trinity Church exists across these communities not to offer easy answers to any of that, but to offer something more durable: a place where the hard things are named honestly, where the biblical call to outdo one another in showing honor gets taken seriously, and where the work of living it out does not have to happen alone.

The final thread in Romans 12 is the one that ties everything together. Paul writes, "Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all." Honor is not just the posture you take toward others. It is the person you are becoming when no one is watching. Do you handle your thoughts with honor? Your body? Your words about someone who is not in the room? The biblical call to honor is not a public performance. It is a private pattern that eventually becomes visible.

What Ryan Mustered closed with is worth sitting with: if you cannot figure out how to honor someone, start with love. Love someone who is unlovely. Esteem them. Treat them as worthy and valuable. If you start with love, honor will follow, because love and honor are inseparable. That is not a feeling you wait for. It is a direction you choose.

If you are ready to take a next step, we would love to welcome you  at our Ashkum, Goodland, or Watseka Campus. Wherever you choose to visit, you are welcome. Plan your visit below. And if you are not quite ready for that, you can still fill out a connection card and let us know how we can pray for you; that is the whole ask. Connect here.