Love, honor, zeal...sounds like Camelot.

Romans 12:10-11
10 Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. 11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.

V10
We have spent a great deal of time lately speaking of unity and family and love, so I don’t think we need to dwell here long, other than to make a few short notes.
-The frequency with which this topic comes up in the NT is staggering. What does that say about it’s importance?
-Last week we mentioned that Paul said agape must not be hypocritical and that agape is the only word for love not directly tied to emotion. Now immediately after that Paul says te philadelphia, in brotherly love, in warm affection for each other. So Paul isn’t anti emotional love in v.9.

-What does it mean to honor one another above ourselves? A more literal translation of the phrase from Gk is “Lead the way in bestowing honor on each other.” One aspect of this is being more aware of gifts, good works, graces and abilities in others than ourselves. Are you more concerned with people noticing what you have done well or what your brothers and sisters have done well? Human nature is to want accolades and praise. The nature of Christ is to want that for another. Some people are naturally better at encouragement than others, but to put this into practice means all of us need to lead the way in giving honor to each other. (Jesus exemplifies this for us. Jesus was primarily focused on the Father receiving glory for His greatness. In John 17 He’s praying and says in essence, “The time has come for me to die. Father glorify me so that I can bring you glory.”)

Another aspect of this is eliminating the sense of competition we have with each other. Matthew Henry describes this verse as not contending with each other for superiority.

V11
Never be lacking in zeal. What is zeal? A passion or extreme enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause of objective. The objective here is clearly fervent passionate service to and relationship with God. This relationship is supposed to be alive and passionate. Some traditional and liturgical approaches to Christianity strip it of the zeal and passion it is supposed to have. Other, super charismatic approaches focus on the passion and emotion at the expense of the intellect and beauty of tradition.
BALANCE! Faith is supposed be this passionate, zealous, fiery, burning, all consuming pursuit of Jesus that involves embracing the mind and truth and philosophy and intellect. Most people make the mistake of choosing one or the other when the design is to embrace both.

What is the danger of loosing zeal? Complacency in faith is so dangerous because it leads to the very subtle distancing between Jesus and us. It can lead to a severed and destroyed relationship but is so sneaky we don’t realize its happening.
This is the purpose of human existence. We were created for God to be the center of our world and to be in awe of His beauty and infinite worth. To shift our passion away from our created purpose to anything else is cheating God, and us, out of what is supposed to be.