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Pastor Jay's Blog

Respect is the First Step of Love

 

 

Do you want to improve your marriage?  How about your relationship with parents, children, co-workers and neighbors?  Communication is not the key.  I repeat; communication is not the key. You know this.  You are probably communicating all the time with anger, complaints and a host of icy body language.  The issue most certainly isn’t communication alone, it is the kind of communicating that matters.  Content and delivery is what counts.  Saying communication is the key is like saying the key to a good meal is a hamburger.  No it isn’t.  That hamburger could taste like dirt.  The key is the ingredients in the hamburger and how it is cooked up. 

So how do you communicate in a way that promotes intimacy and oneness in a marriage and friendship with genuine sharing in all other relationships? 

Some would say with love, and I would say…yes…but…more needs to be said.  Let’s go deeper.  What is this love based upon?  From where does this love spring? 

Our love springs forth for things and persons because of our perception of their inherent worth.  What we see and understand as beautiful and true, we love and praise.  What we see and understand as distorted and wrong, we disdain and reject. 

So let’s get this straight fellow Christians.  We are to love God and people.  This is the first and second greatest commandments.  But why?  Why should we love God?  As we said above, love springs forth from the inherent worth of the object of that love.  And with God, inherent worth is easy to see.  He is glorious beyond description.  His power and knowledge and wisdom are limitless.  His Tri-unity and eternality and self-sufficiency are beyond comprehension.  His love and compassion and patience and goodness and justice are infinite.  There is no blemish or flaw in his character.  He is perfect in beauty.  Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty.  This is why we are to love God.  Loving him is easy when we know him for who he is. 

But what about people.  People are a different story.  We perceive both beauty and ugliness, good and evil, power and weakness.  Does this mean we are to both love and hate?  We will get to that below.  For now, we must ask the most important question.  What is the most central reality about a person?  What is the most basic and dominating reality about their nature?  The Bible is abundantly clear about this.  The most fundamental truth about the nature of people is that they are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27).  They are unlike anything else in creation.  God made them special so that they would be able to both enjoy and reflect the glory of God.  Humans were the crowning creation for one simple reason; they were a unique reflection of God himself. 

And this image, stamped into the very nature of man, is still there.  Every strand of human DNA has this image bound to it.  And this is why there is inherent worth in humans. It is a worth that can be harnessed into the greatest praise to God, or a worth that powerfully warps all righteousness and must be justly punished in hell. This is the reason humans are to be regarded differently than all other things. 

What is the implication of this?  The implication is RESPECT.  This is no animal that you are changing the diaper of, it is an image-bearer with capacities for moral impact that your cat or any other animal can’t comprehend.  That person in the car in front of you, sitting at the green light picking his nose, is an image-bearer with capacities to create that your dog can’t fathom.  That husband who forgot the anniversary is an image-bearer with capacities to exist forever that the largest mountain can’t compete with.  These are but the fringes of what an image-bearer is.  Each person will possess countless unique features that God graciously gave them to display. 

Therefore, you must respect each person.  They are fearfully and wonderfully made.  The God of the universe is watching them with the utmost attention.  The precious blood of the Lamb was spilt for them.  You must respect this massively important, utterly unique, never duplicated, image-bearer who is in your midst. 

And this respect is the foundation for the very love we are commanded to have.  We are commanded to love people because they are inherently worthy as image-bearers of the infinitely worthy God.  We are to give our lives to serve and help and teach and bring the gospel to these image-bearers. 

And many times we begin this way with people.  We allow people to go before us.  We wait our turn to speak.  We clarify what they meant before rushing to a judgement.  We show them respect.  That is, until we spend a bit more time with them; like when we marry them, or raise them, or work with them.  And then we begin to interrupt, criticize, ignore, yell and hurt them.  There is a reason we do this.  We see their sin.  We see unworthy, perverted, selfish, wicked, despicable, shameful, contemptable features about them.  They are sinners, and we see a thousand ways they are not worthy or respect.

But they are image-bearing sinners.  Though the image has been distorted and warped, they still are ones made in the image of God.  And this must be the dominant reality in our mind because it is the dominant  reality about them, even in the midst of all their sin.  It is the reality behind the command to love them. 

I believe this is how your communication will change with your spouse.  When you let the awesome reality of the image of God dominate your perception of your spouse, you will speak to them (both husband and wife) with the kindness you would show the president.  You will defer to them the way you defer to your boss.  You will consider them more important than yourself the way you do with a VIP.   You will speak with them with the interest and focus you would give your favorite author or actor.  All of these are practical outworking’s of the biblical call of respect as found in Ephesians 5:33 “the wife must… respect her husband”, and 1 Pet 3:7, “You husbands… show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life.”

When you have a respect for them that is rooted in the reality that they are image-bears of the living God, love will come much easier.  You will want to lay down your life for them.  You will give them the time, the attention, the service, and the openness that true biblical love calls for.  You will also want to see that their sin is addressed and dealt with.    Yes, you will hate their sin.  And if they are unregenerate, you will hate that their whole identity is a rebel against God.  Godly love and godly hate correspond in this way.  Godly hate (Psalm 5:5) will want to see the “old self” die with Christ, and godly love will want to see them raised a new creature in Christ (Rom. 6:4-6). 

So if you want to see radical change spread across all your relationships, let the dominating truth about each person dominate your perception of them.  Respect them as the image-bearer they are and let the commanded to love spring forth and serve them to the uttermost. 

 

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