by Rich DuBose
“Respect everyone, and love the family of believers. Fear God, and respect the king” (1 Peter 2:17, NLT).
I have a problem with the above passage. We can’t just turn respect on or off for individuals whenever we want? Some people do terrible things, including “kings.” Respect is something that has to be earned. Right?
I get it that we should respect those who profess to follow God, and that we should be kind and respectful to our fellow citizens—and strangers. In other words, we should give everyone the benefit of the doubt and assume they are gentle souls, until they prove otherwise. But what about those who have already demonstrated they are nasty, deceitful, and treacherous? Should we respect them?
Merriam-Webster defines respect as, “A feeling or understanding that someone or something is important, serious, etc., and deserves appropriate treatment or regard.” Cambridge Dictionary describes it as, “Admiration felt or shown for someone or something that you believe has good ideas or qualities.” There are people out there who do not have “good ideas or qualities.”
These dictionary definitions convey two different meanings that may or may not play into what Peter had in mind. According to TheoAtlas, a biblical commentary website, “The word respect [as found in 1 Peter 2:17] is a translation of the Greek word timēsate, meaning ‘honor or value.’ It literally means ‘to place a great value or high price on something.’”
It sounds like Peter is saying we are to value people, even if we don’t agree with their opinions, behaviors, or beliefs. We are to treat everyone with dignity [as having importance].
Yet, there is something to the idea of earning respect. If you are a newly graduated doctor from med school, that alone will earn you a certain amount of respect. But if you have practiced medicine for 30 years, and have repeatedly demonstrated your ability to perform delicate surgeries with very few complications, the level of respect people have for you will be enormous. This kind of respect is tied to one’s competency and performance.
Society values people because of their performance and for what they can do. God wants us to respect them even if they don’t deserve it (from our perspective) —meaning that he wants us to value people simply because he does. They have double value, because number one, God made them, and number two, Jesus died to restore them to friendship with the divine community.
“God showed his great love for us [all of humanity] by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8, NLT).
Each person is made with eternity in mind. We were not meant to be single-use containers—consumed, then forever thrown away. By design we are renewable and capable of inhabiting eternity. By design we are durable. It is only because of faulty thinking on our part that God’s ideal for us has been short circuited. The good news is that it is not too late to recapture God’s original design for humanity. The world is not hopeless. Reclamation is still possible.
What Are We For?
We are the fruit of divine love. Out of love, God created creatures whose soul purpose was to love and be loved. Adam and Eve were designed to love— each other, their offspring, the earth, and everything in it. Every fiber of creation was infused with the love of God’s heart. Every flower and bird spoke of God’s love for beauty and the intricate details that are necessary to produce it.
Today when people fight each other with their hands, bombs, missiles, and cyber technologies, they are defying their reason to exist. Instead of doing what God created them for, they’re on a suicide mission to destroy themselves, each other, the earth, and everything in it. Of course, they don’t see it that way because their ability to reason has been damaged by a fallen angel who has become the angel of death.
God wants us to love our enemies because this is the only way we can counter evil. Hate cannot conquer hate, and violence can never eliminate violence. Only love can.
“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him” (John 3:16-18, The Message).
The Importance of Respect
Yesterday I read about a young Christian pastor who was sentenced to life in prison for killing his wife. I don’t know the backstory on this, but you have to give yourself over to some crazy forces to do sometime like that. His daughters were incredulous. “Why did you kill her? She was the perfect mom.”
Somehow he lost sight of the fact that he was made to love, not to hate and kill. And consequently, he lost respect for God, for himself, and for his wife’s right to live.
There is no future for us, for our neighbors, for strangers, or for the world at large without respect.
Rich DuBose writes from Northern California | Photo by Zeynep Sude Emek with Pexels
On the web at: richdubose.com. All Rights Reserved © 2026. Join me on Blue Sky @spiritrenew.bsky.social.
ESV: Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2025. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
NLT: Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation. Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
MSG: Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.