Monday, August 31, 2020
720 - Honorable Mention, Part 2
Spirituality Column #720
September 1, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Honorable Mention, Part 2
By Bob Walters
“Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be
wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” – Apostle Peter,
Acts 3:19
Our topic is honor: honor in the Lord, honor in our lives, and
honor in our thoughts and actions. And
the sneaky truth is, hardly anything is as eternally uplifting and truly
refreshing as honor.
No, not the honor we get.
What’s uplifting and refreshing is the honor we give.
It’s crazy … the hardest and most rewarding things we do in
this life require the acknowledgement and expenditure of our own honor; not the
acquisition of it. I’m thinking of
things like doing a job, keeping a promise, sacrificing for others, repenting
of our sins, swallowing our pride so that we can take pride in honoring
something else, remaining faithful amid fears and trials, and trusting God no
matter what.
It kind of sounds like humility, too, which is OK. Humility isn’t the opposite of honor; it is a
requirement for honor. Honor vs. humility
is a dynamic the world mostly has backwards; Jesus Christ teaches us about
getting it forwards. How honor actually
works is one of Jesus’s – and the Bible’s – most surprising lessons. It’s not about me.
If we look at all that Jesus Christ came into the world to
do, in sum total Jesus is showing us how to honor God. Wholly inadequate modern Christian doctrine
and frequent teaching predominantly has the work of Jesus focused on “us”:
forgiving our sin and getting us into heaven.
That’s fine, but what good is that unless there is some ultimately
honorable, final, and glorious truth, reality, and purpose? Such as: God’s love.
Jesus came to show us how all that works. Worldly honor and Christ’s honor are two very
different things. Everything about the
Old Testament points to Jesus; everything about the New Testament – with Jesus
leading the way – points to God.
Why did Jesus come into the world? To initiate God’s Kingdom on earth: not to
take us to heaven, but to bring heaven to us, ibid, “thy Kingdom come, they
will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10) How did Jesus honor God? With obedience, even unto death. What did Jesus say He was? “The way, and the truth, and the life”
(John 14:6) to find God’s kingdom. God’s
glory was Jesus’s sole purpose.
Are you glad to be forgiven and have a relationship with God
through Christ? Sure, why not? But knowing the truth of God, the purpose of
Christ, the presence of the Holy Spirit, and what is supposed to be the loving
fellowship of all believers … that is the final teaching of Jesus to his
disciples on the way to the cross. Jesus
talked not of forgiveness and heaven, but of perseverance, truth, trust, love,
and obedience.
Jesus is the most honored human being of all time because He
is the truth, and also the most reviled because Satan so hates the truth. What the Bible truly teaches about honor is
nearly the same as it teaches about love: that both reside in God and that to
express them deeply to God’s glory, they must be given away to others.
That is the refreshment of repentance: sins gone, Jesus with
us, God glorified.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com)
notes the scene in the movie mini-series The Chosen where the healed
leper says to Jesus, “You do not seek your own honor?” No, He doesn’t.
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