as to brotherly love, kindly affectioned towards one another as to honour, each taking the lead in paying it to the other
Paul has moved from teaching to daily life. He has just told believers that love must be genuine, and now he turns to the circle of God's own family. The verse asks two things that cut against our instincts. It asks for an affection built on relationship, not on how appealing someone is. And it asks us to compete at giving honour instead of receiving it.
The narrowing from all people to the family
The command does not stand alone. It follows a call to sincere love. One writer sees a narrowing here, with the standard set by the closest family ties:
The love spoken of in the previous verse is most likely love to all people. Here brotherly love is singled out. The teaching of the Spirit in this verse appears to be that Christians should have a love for each other, as brothers in Christ, that is as sincere and tender as if they were their closest relatives.
Commentators differ on what that earlier love means. William Kelly reads it as deeper than kindness between believers or kindness to everyone:
Love is the activity of the divine nature in goodness. So it cannot be separated from that nature when it is reproduced in the children of God.
What the affection rests on
If affection depended on how appealing a person is, it would collapse as soon as someone became difficult. The verse rests it on something else:
Our affection for one another should flow from our relationship as brothers, not from some quality in them that we find attractive or useful. Brotherly love makes us ready to let others have honour instead of grabbing it for ourselves.
That same ground holds even when a believer is weak:
We are not asked to love the sinful nature in our brothers. We are to love them because they are brothers, despite all their weaknesses.
Moving first in honour
One writer presses the point that honour here means going first:
The point here is not just to repay the courtesy of others. It is to take the lead in treating them with honour, and so by example to lead them into the same lovely ways.
The failure to move first is rarely dramatic. It hides behind ordinary awkwardness. Then it gets blamed on everyone else:
Some have a false modesty, and others a secret pride. Either one makes them slip out of a meeting fast, so that people who would gladly have spoken to them never get the chance. When this goes on for a while, people complain that the believers are cold and show no love to strangers. But who is at fault?
Honour given in practice
Paul did not leave the instruction as theory. Later in the same letter he greets two believers, Andronicus and Junias, and hands them the credit:
The claims of kindred are not forgotten; but the higher claim to remembrance, in the case of Andronicus and Junias, is that they had suffered with the Apostle as "fellow-prisoners". The Apostle carries out his own exhortation, "In honour preferring one another" (12:10), for he says they "are of note among the Apostles", and "were in Christ" before himself.
The everyday form is simple enough to start today:
Let us delight in paying honour to other believers. Draw attention to their good qualities and their work instead of our own.
Love that stays when kindness must change
Sometimes warm treatment cannot continue. One writer draws a line between the affection itself and how we show it:
Through the power of Satan, a brother may be living in a disorderly way, or he may fall into error, and so become a proper case for discipline. We must change how we treat him, though our love stays the same, or even grows stronger.
Summary
- Relationship first. Love your fellow believer because he is your brother. Not because he is attractive or useful to you.
- Family warmth. The affection asked for is as sincere and tender as what you would give your closest relatives. It grows out of shared birth into God's family.
- Take the lead. Honour here is not repaying a courtesy. It is going first, and setting an example that draws others after you.
- Give the credit away. Paul did it by saying that others were well known, and were in Christ before he was. You do it by pointing at someone else's work instead of your own.
- Love outlasts kindness. When a believer's life calls for discipline, the treatment changes. The love stays the same, or grows stronger.