Prefer one another
Honor given away
Paul gives a beautifully counterintuitive instruction about how to treat one another: outdo one another in showing honor. We are well practiced at competing for honor — jockeying to be recognized, noticed, and esteemed, quietly keeping score of whether we are getting the credit we deserve. Paul proposes a completely different competition: not to grab honor for ourselves, but to outdo each other in giving it away.
This is the death of self translated into the texture of daily relationships. The self loves to be honored and resents being overlooked; it competes for the spotlight and bristles when others get it instead. To outdo one another in honor is to turn that whole instinct inside out — to take genuine delight in lifting others up, in seeing them recognized, in giving away the honor we are tempted to hoard.
Paul fills out the picture: look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. The dying self stops asking am I being honored enough and starts asking how can I honor the person in front of me. This is one of the most practical and searching tests of humility, because it happens in real time, in ordinary interactions. Where you would normally compete for credit, try instead to give it away. Outdo the people around you, this week, in showing them honor.
“In love of the brothers be tenderly affectionate one to another; in honor preferring one another.”
— Paul, to the church at Rome — Romans 12:10 (WEB)
Compete to give honor away rather than grab it — outdoing the people around you in showing them the honor you are tempted to hoard.
“Each of you not just looking to his own things, but each of you also to the things of others.”
Beneath the polite surface of our relationships runs a quiet scoreboard, tallying whether we are getting the recognition we are owed and flaring when someone else is praised in our place. Paul reverses the whole game: outdo one another in showing honor. The interior work is to turn that competitive reflex inside out — to compete at giving credit away rather than gathering it — until the heart stops asking whether it is honored enough and begins, with genuine gladness, to lift others up.
This week, where you would normally compete for credit or recognition, deliberately give it away: honor someone publicly, celebrate another's success without qualifying it, and look for the interests of the person in front of you above your own.
The flesh turns ordinary rooms into contests for the spotlight, keeping score and bristling whenever the praise lands on someone else. But a soul that races to honor others has converted the very instinct that divided it into a current of love — and finds, in giving the credit away, a freedom that grasping for it never delivered.
We are fluent in competing for honor — angling to be recognized, quietly tallying whether we are getting the credit we deserve, bristling when someone else is praised instead of us. Paul redirects the whole competitive instinct: outdo one another in showing honor. Compete, yes, but to give honor away rather than to grab it.
This is the death of self worked out in the texture of ordinary relationships, and it is searching precisely because it happens in real time. The dying self stops asking whether it is being honored enough and starts looking for ways to honor the person in front of it, delighting to see others lifted up. It is one thing to value humility in the abstract; it is another to give away, in the moment, the credit you wanted for yourself. Where you would normally compete for recognition this week, try the opposite competition: outdo the people around you in showing them honor.
- Do I quietly compete for honor and tally my credit?
- Do I bristle when others are praised instead of me?
- Where could I outdo someone this week in showing them honor?
Lord, I compete for honor and resent being overlooked, keeping score of my credit. Turn the instinct inside out. Teach me to outdo others in showing honor, to delight in lifting them up, and to look to their interests above my own. Amen.