Relationships That Honor

How Jesus models a disposition of dignity and respect

Recently, a close friend of mine underwent the deeply painful experience of ending a relationship with someone significant to them. After years of heartache and struggle, it became clear that the person my friend was in a relationship with was making choices that revealed they did not see the relationship as meaningful, valuable, or a priority. And so, after years of discernment, it was decided that they needed to let the relationship go. As they described their decision—as painful as it was—they shared that their rationale was based on the concept of ‘honor.’ They were making the intentional choice to honor the person by letting them go their way.

Honor lets someone go?

Years earlier, I had done a deep dive into the writings of the theologian Stanley Hauerwas. As I read his vast tome of work, he made a claim (in a footnote I have been unable to track down) that in the end, hell, that place of despair and separation from God, is actually a place where God shows his most radical expression of hospitality. Hell isn’t being cast out. Hell, he argued, is God's decision to honor human choice. In the end, God will choose to honor the desires of our hearts. He can’t force us into a loving relationship. This very idea is summed up best in Dallas Willard’s words that “hell is the best that God can do for some people.”¹

This is painful, indeed, to consider—but it is also crucial for understanding reality. God is an honoring God. He does not force, coerce, or manipulate. God allows people to do as they choose. He honors their God-given humanity. God is unwilling to override the steadfast, hardheartedness that humans often choose.

My wife Quinn recently shared a revelation she’d had while teaching in one of my New Testament courses on Hebrews. We are told in the book of Hebrews that:

For the Word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to the dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Heb. 4:12-13)

The Word of God is powerful. In creation, we find that whenever God speaks (something he does ten times in the creation narrative of Genesis 1-2), physical realities and domains are created and then divided. Unlike the deities of ancient antiquity, the God of the Bible does not create with sword, violence, or war, the God of Scripture simply speaks. God speaks, and creation happens. God creates. And then God separates.

Quinn shared an epiphany with me. While God creates unilaterally in creation by making and separating, God willingly chooses not to do that with humans. God makes humans. But then partners with them as they choose to partner with him. With humans, God’s Word must be matched by our faith, trust, and response. Indeed, while God could create anything unilaterally in creation, God’s Word in our life only matters if we respond through loving covenant and faithful obedience to what he has spoken.

God works in our life. But that work is one in which he honors our responsiveness to what he is saying. What a mind-blowing concept, to be sure.

Scripture is full of clear commandments to honor. We are told to honor God with the whole of our lives. In Malachi, God rhetorically asks Israel, “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I, then, am a Father, then where is my honor?” (Mal. 1:6) John would later record that Jesus says everyone should honor the Son (himself) just as they honor the Father (Jn. 5:23). Scripture equally commands those who love God to honor their parents—as clearly stated in the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:12) and re-articulated in Paul’s household codes (Eph. 6:2). Even the early Christians were told to “honor their emperor” even if that emperor embodied ways that were contrary to the way of Jesus (1 Pet. 2:17). Even the elders of the church were worthy of honor. And in some cases, double honor (1 Tim. 5:17). The ultimate ethic, to borrow Paul, is that Christians should be people who “honor one another above yourselves” (Rom. 12:10).

Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash

Honor, one might say, is the disposition, inner attitude, and intentional action that reflects the intrinsic value and dignity of another as set in motion by God. Honor isn’t merely that inner disposition. Honor is also the action that flows from it—the proper embodiment of kindness, respect, care, and submission in that relationship. To honor is to refuse to violate the will, intent, and purpose of another in the name of dignity.

It is this very ethic around honoring that we see commanded in the final chapter of the book of Revelation to the church living in the Roman empire. As John writes to the churches throughout the known world, he commands that the followers of Jesus honor the choices and ways of life of those in the pagan world around them:

Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong; let the vile person continue to be vile; let the one who does right continue to do right; and let the holy person continue to be holy. (Rev 22.10-11)

In this text, honoring is missional. It means allowing someone to make their own God-given choices—based on their dignity—for either good or evil. What is most remarkable is that the God who commands us to honor is also a God who models that in his relationships. Humans are to honor God. Why? Because God honors humans.

We see this, I’m convinced, in the way in which John describes the interchange between Jesus and his mom, Mary. In John 2, Jesus and his mother are ushered into a wedding. In the normal course of things, people had a good time at this wedding. And from time to time, wine would run out. In our culture, the wine never really runs out. With cellars and refrigerators, it’s not common in our consumer society to experience what they experienced in Cana. But in ancient Jewish culture, this was the faux pas above all faux pas. Discovering this social crisis at hand, Mary tells her son Jesus about the presenting crisis.

Mary simply tells Jesus: “they have no more wine.” (v. 3) It is interesting that never Mary is recorded as telling Jesus what to do. She never commands him to do anything. Rather, she simply informs him of the situation at hand. She tells God what is true. This is, of course, the essence of all prayer. His response is telling: “My hour has not yet come” (v. 4). Seemingly overlooking his response, Mary, aware of her son’s true identity, instructs the wedding attendants to “do whatever he tells you.” (v. 5) As has been pointed out by numerous students of the New Testament, these are the final words of Mary in any of the Gospels. She never speaks again. This is Mary’s mic-drop. Her final words? Do whatever he says. Be obedient. As if to say there’s nothing more to add.

What follows is fascinating. Jesus tells the attendants to get some water, put it into religious vats, and it would become wine. They do. The party is saved. And nobody is the wiser—other than the servants who saw the miracle take place.

Certainly, on one level, this is a powerful lesson about faith. Mary had faith in her son. And Jesus was moved by it. “Jesus,” once wrote New Testament scholar Raymond Brown, “can never refuse or resist faith.”² Still, I submit that something deeper is going on than just a lesson about faith. Why would Jesus say his time was not yet. And then, in the same seeming breath, do the miracle? I may offer a minority opinion here. But, I’m convinced what we have on full display here is Jesus Christ—the incarnate God in human flesh—revealing the tension he faced as a son of Mary and as a Son of God.³ Jesus, in this moment, is put in an awkward position of simultaneously honoring God and honoring his mom. And in the end, the pathway to honoring both was by doing the miracle.

This does not mean that we honor God at the same level that we honor people. There is always a hierarchy of honor. As Peter writes: “Show proper respect for everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.” (1 Pet. 2:17) The Christian is to love everyone. This looks different in our love for God than it does in our love for people. We fear God. But we love people. Both are forms of honor. Just to different degrees.

The point is this: Jesus modeled honor. There is a reason Jesus often couched his invitations to discipleship with the word “if.” “If you want to follow me...” “If you want the Kingdom...” God invited people to follow. But, in so doing, honored their choices and their dignity.

As I think about my friend who recently needed to end a relationship, I am reminded that honor in its truest form is one of the most emotionally healthy concepts in the Bible. It is an honor to partner with someone to do good, mercy, and justice in a city. But it is honor that willingly ends a relationship because it is clear that the two people are going in diametrically opposed places. Honor, more than just about anything, is the way we show love toward another. And it also the way that we willingly let people go the direction their hearts long to go.

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Thanks for reading. You can always find me wasting time on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Or check out my podcast with Dr. Nijay Gupta at Slow Theology. If you found this content helpful to your journey, yay! Consider enjoying my most recent book The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for our Wants, which was released with Zondervan in February of 2024. Within, I explore the topic of human desire from the perspective of Scripture, theology, and experience—with particular interest to how we can be formed into the image of Christ through our desires. In short, it’s about why our cultural mandate to “you do you” is so profoundly unhelpful to the follower of Jesus. You can support my work by reading it! And sharing about your experience. Click on the image below to get yourself a copy.

1. Dallas Willard, The Allure of Gentleness: Defending the Faith in the Manner of Jesus (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2015), 70.

2. Raymond Brown, The Gospel and Epistles of John: A Concise Commentary (New York, NY: The Liturgical Press, 1988), 29.

3. A theory I discuss in my book Swoboda, A.J., After Doubt: How to Question Your Faith without Losing It (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2020).