“Show proper respect to everyone; love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.”
Peter was always a no-nonsense kind of guy. His writing is no different – there are no fewer than 825 commands in this little book. Okay, I made that number up – but the point is there are many pieces of practical instruction in 1 Peter, and this verse has four of them.
As one of my commentaries said, this verse can be seen as a four-point summary of Christian citizenship. I like that idea because it reminds us that, as Christians, we are responsible to God for the way we live.
- Show proper respect to everyone. Everyone you meet, good, bad, or indifferent, was created in the image of God. For that reason alone, we should respect everyone we meet – the humblest beggar on the street was created in the image of God, the person that annoys you to death was created in the image of God, and the worst criminal you can imagine was created in the image of God. EVERYONE you see today has eternal value and deserves to be treated with respect .
- Love the brotherhood of believers. While we are commanded to respect everyone, we are called to love our fellow believers. We are God’s family and we should love our brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s not always easy, but if we cannot love those who share the Spirit of God with us, how can we love the unbelievers around us?
- Fear God. This does not mean, “Here comes God – run for your lives!” The word for “fear” means, “awe or reverence that leads to obedience”. How is your attitude toward God? Do you fear Him? Or do you treat Him like a vending machine – drop in a few a prayers and expect Him to give you what you want? Is He the Mighty, Holy God who created the universe with a word? Or is he a benevolent old man handing out candy to anyone who asks? Our God is Magnificent, Glorious, and Almighty – we should treat him as such.
- Honor the king. While we are to fear God as our ultimate authority, we are also called to honor the king, or the other authority figures in our lives. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago so I won’t go into it again. But I find it interesting that he included “honor and respect” authority in this four-point summary of how Christians should live. Using my reasoning abilities, that tells me that how we treat our authority figures is very important to God. Perhaps because our attitude toward our earthly authority is indicative of our attitude toward our heavenly authority…just a thought.
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