Read these verses and ask if they match your experience of the love of God.

But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. (Psalm 86:15 )

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17b-19)

Your love, LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. (Psalm 36:5)

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him. (Psalm 103:11)

You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. (Psalm 23:5b)

Notice the plentitude. Abounding. Overflowing. Fullness. Heavens. These are not words meant to convey scarcity, an occasional drip. Rooted. A tree does not grow unless it has ample soil to draw from. Fullness. How many of us can tell of feeling full of God?

Does this capture how you experience God’s love on a daily basis? A weekly basis?

My experience of God’s love used to be little more than an occasional whisper. Every few months or so, I’d get a glimpse. As if from a distant country, a well-phrased word from God came to me about how he sees my efforts, or how carefully he is handling my life. I rejoice. But it fades soon, replaced by the noise and dust of life. And the next one doesn’t come for a while.

We seem to have accepted this as normal. We expect only the infrequent dose of God’s near, full love. We call them “mountaintop experiences” and feel better because at least it sounds realistic and adult. After all, we see only through a mirror dimly.

But when I examine the Bible and its characters still inhabiting our side of the mirror, I see a much different expectation laid out for us. When the Bible speaks of God’s love, it portrays a much fuller, stronger, and steadier phenomenon than we typically experience.

Are we missing something? Have we settled for much less love than God is willing to give us? Why? And how?

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Respect.

Oddly enough, that exact word isn’t plentiful in our modern English translations of the Bible, and when it does appear (Rom. 13:7, Eph. 5:33, 1 Pet. 2:17 and 3:15 as examples), it’s usually pointed towards others. “Respect for God”, oddly, is a phrase I’ve rarely heard.

You do hear a lot of the phobeisthe, meaning “fear, dread, and respect”, but not a lot of the timēsate, meaning “honor or value”. My first thought was that perhaps “respect” just isn’t a high enough word for God. We prefer phobeisthe, or perhaps “reverence”, for the attitude with which we should approach God.

But for me – and I chalk this up to quirks of language and personality rather than any insufficiency in the Bible (for such a thing is not possible)…

But for me, I’ve found that “respect” really gives me a foothold on sin.

I recently voted in Montana’s special election. I voted because it’s important and affects the future, but also because it’s colored the past. Many men over the centuries have died to secure my right to vote. We have Memorial Day to honor them. I respect their sacrifice by voting. I do wish that our political candidates themselves would respect those sacrifices by becoming better people with better ideas, but that’s another post.

(Quick aside to the booth official for my precinct: I appreciate your enthusiasm for the democratic process, but please, be careful where you jab me with that “I Voted” sticker.)

Anyway…

It hit me the other day: it seems that I show more respect for American veterans than I do for Jesus.

Jesus chose to shed his glory and become a veteran of the human experience. Most American soldiers led more privileged lives back home than Jesus did; few have died as torturous a death as our Lord; even fewer (read: zero) deserved better; and certainly none died for a greater prize offered to more souls.

I respect the heroism of American veterans by participating in our democracy, paying taxes, and contributing to law and order in every way prescribed. I even had my own stint in the military (though, in all humility, both the time and the danger I experienced fell far short of what our WWII veterans saw).

But…do I respect Christ’s sacrifice by…I dunno, not sinning?

When a sin presents itself before me as a possibility, do I choose to respect all that Jesus went through on the cross to secure eternal life for me? Do I give it the proper due and appreciation?

Or do I give the nails another thwack with my hammer?

It’s not like I do nothing to honor Christ. I blog about him. I’m active in my church. I’ve gone on mission. But Christ commands purity in every area of our lives, and there are too many battlegrounds I’m tempted daily to concede without a fight.

Well, I found out that the earthy, grown-up tang of the phrase “respect for what Jesus has done” makes a nice tool for keeping myself clean of sin. I think of the cross, and it slows my roll towards sin. It’s not like “thinking of the cross” was never available to me until the word respect linked up. But for some reason, the word resonates. In the haze and hot tumult of the battle against sin, I’ll use whatever weapon works, and this works.

We gladly honor the dead. Let us honor the One who didn’t stay dead.