Lessons from Matthew 19: Honor

What does the word honor mean to you? What images does the word honor conjure up in your mind?

The word honor means to esteem one above yourself. To honor someone is to treat them and what they stand for with respect. To hold them near and dear with the highest regard.

Christians are to hold God, His Word, and His people in the highest regard. Christians are to treat God, His Word, and His people with respect and love.

In fact, Jesus taught in Matthew 22:37-40 that the greatest commandment of all is that people should love the Lord with all their heart with all their soul and with all their minds. He said the second greatest commandment is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.

He said all the Law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. The law of love. Christian love. The love of Christ.

This is what it means to honor and respect and love others above ourselves and this is the kind of lives we as Christians should be living. We can live this way if we confess our need of Christ’s help to do so! Because this kind of love, Christ’s love, we cannot conjure up on our own.

Christ’s love can only come from a living relationship with Him and then He enables us love others as He loves us! God’s Word promises us that His love never fails and we are to not grow weary in loving as He does.

Why all this talk about love?

Because if more people loved like Christ loves us there would be no broken relationships, no hurt, no pain. But because we fail, and because others fail, we are confronted with the need for change. The need for a fresh vision of God’s love and fresh view of His commandments. We need a greater understanding of His covenant relationships and enabling power to keep them.

Christians are to honor God and others by keeping His commands and our commitments.

Honoring God through our marital status: Matthew 19:1-12

Jesus had just finished teaching the disciples about what it means to be humble in heart, what is needed to be restored to another believer and what it means to forgive someone who has wronged you.

Then He was presented by the religious leaders, the Pharisees, with a question about marriage and divorce.

Their motive was to test Jesus or least strike up a debate. You see, there were 2 schools of thought held at that time in the Jewish community. The first school was started by a rabbi by the name of Shammai. Apparently he was a great rabbi and he was very orthodox in his way to teaching. This meant he basically held the law in high regard and followed it strictly. Those rabbis who followed him insisted that the only grounds for divorce was a wife’s unfaithfulness.

The men were not included in this, and even a woman “as mischievous as Jezebel” could not be forced to divorce if she did not commit sexual indecency.

However, there was another school–that of Hillel. Hillel was an opponent of Shammai’s because his school allowed men to divorce their wives freely. No matter what happened. If for any reason the wife did not please or satisfy her husband, she could be put out.

So a wife was always at the mercy of her husband. She could never divorce him. Even if the husband took another wife (which was almost always the way it was), she was not free to leave.

It was because of this that God had given Moses the concession for divorce. This was for the protection of the woman and her children, due to the hardness of man’s heart.

And so the question was raised: Who is right? Which side, Jesus, are you on?

Basically, no matter what Jesus answered, He would be ridiculed and face opposition. But Jesus, knowing the intent of the law, the heart of man, but also the purpose for which God intended marriage, took them back to the beginning. Back to creation and God’s holy and perfect plan for the marriage relationship.

In fact, He even chided them a bit by reminding them that the Word of God in Genesis says God made one man and one woman, male and female, that they might come together.

Not that one might lord it over the other, but that the two might become one and share in the blessings of God. Two bodies becoming one in mind, body, and spirit!

And Jesus said, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate!”

We must ask ourselves: How many marriages would be saved today if meddling mothers and fathers got out of the way and let the two, husband and wife, work out their differences together?

You don’t know how many times I have had to hold my tongue and keep from interfering or projecting my thoughts and opinions on my daughters and their husbands!

And the times I haven’t, I more often than not wish I would have. They need to learn to come to each other, and hopefully to God, and seek Him and His ways for their needs. Anything less is to fall into human error and give into man’s ways and not God’s.

I am not saying that we can’t or shouldn’t pray with and for them regarding life’s situations! And there are times they may need our help in some way. But only with God’s clear instruction and not our own selfish desires.

Terri Hamman

Faith & Fitness Coach