Honor and respect are two important words and concepts and yet many times seem sadly lacking in our society. How many times in life have we felt disrespected? How many times has it seemed as though someone has disregarded our thoughts, opinions or feelings?
It seems as if this life is full of instances where people run roughshod over others, pushing them out of the way and instead pursuing personal gain at any cost. So what do we do when we are on the receiving end of disrespect? What should we do when someone dishonors, disregards and disenfranchises us?
Let’s take a few minutes and consider what the Bible has to say about this important topic…
First, the Bible reminds us to love our neighbor and our enemy. These words are difficult to hear and consider. They are even more difficult to obey.
Love my neighbor? — “Don’t you know how they treated me?”
Love my enemy? — “Don’t you know what they did to me?”
And yet Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor (even the stranger, alien, etc) and to love our enemy. He must’ve had good reason to tell us this. He also must’ve believed that with His help (by the gift of His Holy Spirit) that it would be possible, or else why would He have commanded such? Why command something that is not desirable or possible? Jesus invites us into His perfect way of relating to God and to others and He commands us to live in love and live out His love because “love does no wrong to a neighbor, and “love covers a multitude of sins” and “love never fails” and “love builds up” and finally “whoever lives in love lives in God and God in (them)”.
Second, the Bible tells us not to repay evil with evil, but rather with good. This seems counterintuitive. It seems like we should hit back with the same force as others hit us with. As the old saying goes: “An eye for an eye”. But Jesus corrected this type of bad theology and stinkin’ thinkin’ even in His day when He told His disciples to “love your enemies…pray for those who persecute you” and to “do good to those who hate you”. We also know that Scripture tells us to give food and drink to our enemy which will “heap burning coals upon them”. I hope we understand that this doesn’t mean that somehow we “win the battle” when we do good to those who are against us. Rather let us consider that the “burning coals” might just symbolize conviction and when we do good to those who mistreat us perhaps they may come under conviction, repent of their ways and turn to Christ and God.
Third, the Bible tells us that God’s grace is sufficient for our salvation and deliverance but also to empower us to face the troubles of this world. Scripture reminds us that we each have received “grace upon grace” indicating that we deserved something far different than what we received. We committed sin and offense and then did it again, and yet God offered grace once and then offered it again!
God’s kingdom is full of truth but it is also full of grace. The truth is that others have and will disrespect and dishonor us. The truth also is that we have disrespected and dishonored God and others. And yet God has offered us grace. The kind of amazing grace that forgives and restores us to a right relationship with Him. God invites us to receive His undeserved and unearned grace but also commands that we share that same grace with others. We cannot ask God to give us mercy while not offering that same mercy to others. And remember God offers us grace and mercy even before we asked for forgiveness, even before we acknowledge that we have done wrong. He even offers grace to us for things we have repetitively done against Him and others. Let us forgive just as Christ has forgiven us and let us respect others just as Jesus Christ showed respect in His behavior toward people.
I want to close this blog post with a personal example from my life.
I once worked for an employer whom the employees called “the devil”. This employer had a nasty temper and didn’t mind taking it out on any of his employees. He regularly would demean and tear down his employees insulting their intelligence, the quality of their work as well as their character. I watched as employees would react to his dishonoring and disrespecting them with harsh words, vitriolic attitudes and hate-filled body language. On one occasion I spoke to a number of my co-workers and mentioned that they could choose to show him respect even when they were disrespected by him and that they could honor his position of authority even when he dishonored them. On the next occasion that he began to admonish and even verbally abuse one of my co-workers, the co-worker stood there, in silence, and accepted the unnecessary and uncalled for rebuke and did not react in a disrespectful way. The boss almost immediately calmed down, lost all of his rage-filled bravado and left. The employee looked at me and exclaimed: “did you see what I did? I didn’t respond and he stopped yelling!”. That day served as a turning point and I rarely saw the boss lose his temper in our building anymore. I know it doesn’t always work out that way or that quickly but that doesn’t negate God’s call for us to respect and honor others.
I share these scriptures and this story so as to encourage you to live in a Christ honoring way that demonstrates respect even to those who are disrespectful and honors those who even are dishonoring, in order that God himself may be glorified by your behavior and others may be drawn in to this countercultural kingdom of love, mercy and grace! May it be that when people observe our respectful behavior they may be won to Christ.
Pastor Michael Johnson 