Overview
This husband-and-wife teaching asks how imperfect people with different backgrounds can live together with mutual respect. Using Acts 2:42 and the completed work of Jesus Christ as the foundation, it shows that Christian value is determined by God—not preferences, accomplishments, or social standards—and is strengthened through teaching, fellowship, shared grace, gathering, and prayer.
Transcript
Can Different People Live in Harmony?
What does it look like to live grace and share grace with the people that God puts in our lives, people that we see every single day? How do people with very different backgrounds, different likes and dislikes, different ways of seeing things and expressing things, how can they, even though they're imperfect, be compatible enough to live in harmony, let alone have mutual respect? Acts 242 says, and they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine, and in fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. And fear came upon every soul, and wonders and signs were done by the apostles. What were they doing together? A couple of things.
Teaching, sharing grace, gathering, and prayers. When it says fear came upon every soul, that should be mutual respect. A definition is, in a positive sense, respect, reverence, awe, or a wholesome fear.
This mutual respect, it's not what we like or we don't like. It's not having a hobby in common. It's hearts connecting, in touch, one.
Something that we connect with and something that we share. The foundation of all of this is based on the completed, finished, finalized, settled works of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. That's the gold standard.
Not a worldly standard, not based on what you think you've accomplished in this life, but it's based on what another man did, who is Jesus Christ. We don't judge value. At times, maybe behavior.
Our value is determined by God, because He sent Jesus Christ for every one of us. And notice this comes after these actions in verse 42. The actions were habits, a lifestyle, where they were teaching, sharing grace, gathering in prayers, and it was done daily.
And what happened? What is the natural result of that for each one of us? Is that it produced many signs and wonders, or fruit. What is it that we can learn from the early Christians? Well, their attention was focused on something, an idea that was greater than themselves, greater than their own personal interests or preferences. In the context, God's referring to heart, thoughts, intents, motives.
How can we experience mutual respect with one another? Turn to Philippians chapter 2, and verse 1, it says, If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, fulfill ye my joy, that ye be like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord of one mind. I want you to hear this out of the Amplified. Make my joy complete by being of the same mind, having the same love toward one another.
Listen to this. Knit together in spirit, intent on one purpose, and living a life that reflects your faith and spreads the gospel, the good news regarding salvation through faith in Christ. It's like we learned on Friday that grace is an outward expression.
It's not meant to be kept inside. That's our faith. Our salvation, wholeness, is something that we live out.
It reflects in our everyday. It reflects to the people we talk to. But it starts in our thinking.
How do I think of Do you think that you're guilt-free, condemnation-free, that you're one that's valued, that you're loved, that you've been bought with the highest price, that you're strong to overcome? That's what our Lord accomplished for us. That's how we think about ourselves, and that's what will be reflected. If you need to understand what this looks like in your everyday life when you're with people and in situations, ask God to show you, God, how can I live out my faith in this moment with this person that I'm with? And verse 3 actually shows you what could work against this.
It's interesting. It says, let nothing be done through strife or faction, factions or vainglory, but in loneliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. The Amplified Classic reads, do nothing from factional motives through contentiousness, strife, selfishness, or for unworthy ends, or prompted by conceit and empty arrogance.
A faction is like a group within a group. It's a group that is often contentious or self-seeking. Sounds like a clique.
And I love the kids' definition of a clique. It's a small group of people who spend time together and are not friendly to other people. And yeah, I mean, it sticks with me, but a child starts experiencing this as soon as they go to school.
They experience peer pressures, cliques, and it certainly doesn't go away when you're an adult. It's just more subtle. It might come across as people showing favoritism or acting differently towards others, maybe because of their position or how they look or even who they feel more around, while avoiding others who could benefit by being around them and vice versa.
We want to recognize that when it starts to creep in and nip it in the bud, because that's how we share grace. Verse 4 says, look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. The Amplified Classic of this says, let each of you esteem and look upon and be concerned, not merely his own interests, but also for the interest of others.
It makes me think of the golden rule. We all know the principle of treating others as one would like to be treated by them. It's also sometimes called the ethics of, I've got this all phonetically spelled and I practice it over and over, but it's the ethics of reciprocity.
I had to practice a million dollar word here. Meaning that you should reciprocate to others how you would like them to treat you. Jesus Christ taught us to love your neighbor like yourself and we've learned that our neighbor is the one sitting right next to you.
Acts 2:42 and a Shared Lifestyle
James chapter 2 verse 8 in the Passion Translation says, your calling is to fulfill the royal law of love as given to us in the scripture. You must love and value your neighbor as you love and value yourself. So I got to fill Todd in on something.
I went to the store the other day and I ran into someone we mutually know and they gave me some great news. That's great. What is it? They told me that Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy are getting married.
Finally those two got together. That's great. And they require you, both of us to come, but they want you to wear pink leotards and a baseball cap that's backwards and an Ohio State jersey.
Okay, Ohio State jersey. Wait, what? If you don't know him, he's from Michigan. It's so important when we're together to stay in the moment.
I know it's hard. We're all imperfect. Believe me, I've been on the other side of that.
I mean, what in the world did we do without cell phones? But in our hearts, we really want to try our best to give our undivided attention to one another. You know what it's like when you've been with somebody who's made you feel valued and loved just the way you are. They pull out your best.
They make you feel like you're heard. They make you look like and feel like you've been seen and that you're not irrelevant or put on a shelf. And if you've not known what that feels like, you can be that way for someone else because you have the same compassion, the same love, the same courage, the same boldness that our Lord Jesus Christ has.
You have his full measure in you. We can be that way for each other by looking for the gold in one another and not the dirt. You'll find what you're looking for.
So how else does God illustrate this mutual respect? Please take your Bibles and turn to Ephesians chapter five. Great stuff here on this topic of mutual respect. Ephesians 520 says, Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. And that fear of God literally can be understood as in the respect of Christ. That's what all this is based on.
Verse 22. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of the body.
Therefore, as Christ, I'm sorry, therefore, as the church is subject under Christ, so let their wives, so let the wives be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. And I've heard this shared by people over the years, emphasizing how the wife is to submit.
But the husbands, their responsibility is to love their wives as Christ gave the church or loved the church and gave himself for it. They sacrificed everything for it. How did Christ love the church? He sacrificed himself for it.
In this marriage relationship, which is a really good parallel illustration of who we are in the body of Christ and how we function together. There's no hierarchy, no tiers. The roles are different, no chain of command, but instead, mutual respect, care, concern for each other.
And we value each other the way our father does, who paid the price, the ultimate price for his son, who is perfect, and that is Jesus Christ. And we focus not in these mutual respect relationships on what's in it for me, um, I think about people who are selfless. And if you guys haven't met Jerome, uh, he, he works here and you can't miss him.
You're going to see him on the way out. He's the guy on the grill cooking ribs and chicken for dinner for us. And he's got a colorful bandana.
I went up and asked him, I said, Hey, what are you making? And he just had the smile on his face and he lit up. I knew instantly he was a brother in Christ that cared. He explained to me what he was doing.
I said, well, thank you for doing that. He goes, I'm doing this for you. And by the way, I saw his boss in the hallway.
Christ’s Completed Work Is the Standard
I told him he needs to give him a raise. So I'm on record for that. So anyway, um, mutual respect.
I think about, I read something about it two weeks ago about the actor, Gregory Peck, who had a long career in Hollywood in the 20th century. And many of you know him, he had a 50 year relationship with his wife, Veronica and towards, and they were, they were, um, adored in Hollywood as a couple. They love them.
They, people were jealous of them. They were just, these guys are just a great example of a couple. And towards the end of his life, they asked him, they said, you know, what is it? What are some of the things that really helped you have such a great relationship? And he said, a couple of the keys are, and I'm quoting mutual respect and shared values.
Doesn't that sound relevant to what we're talking about here today? I think so. I was having a conversation with my son the other day, um, a week ago. And, uh, there's an individual in his circle of friends that they've had some incidents.
Uh, there's a lingering kind of negativity in this relationship. And, uh, he didn't really bring it up, but he was talking about his friends and I asked him, I said, how does this affect you? How do you, how do you feel about this? And his response was beyond his years as far as maturity and how he said that. And he responded, he said, he told me, he goes, I don't let it, I don't let it affect how I see myself or I see this person.
He doesn't look at this after the sin or the shortcomings. He looks for the value in this person, a very key component of mutual respect. I was pretty impressed with my son.
I got to brag on him a little bit. James four, seven says, submits yourselves. Therefore to God in, in this submitting, there is a voluntary submission, a compulsion in a positive sense to submit.
Also in mutual respect, there's an element of freedom from judgment. Look around the room. We should have that in our, in our environment here as an element of mutual respect would be freedom from judgment.
If there's too much world in us, too much worldly thinking, how we measure people, it can, it can crowd out and make it cloudy, how we view another person. And we wouldn't, we won't be able to view them the way God does. So in our house, we have a bunch of animals, you know, we have two cats and I'm sorry, four cats and two dogs.
So we have these two cats, Frieda and Mango. They're about a year old. We adopted them recently.
And they walk around the house like they own it. They come out and want their food. And, and then we have a big dog too.
He's a German, he's a shepherd, Collie mix. He comes up to them and they just stand there. And if he gets too close, they'll swat him.
The other, and then the other dog, they just chase him out of the room. They chase the other cats when they want to be fed. They let you know when they're done being pet, they let you know, they're kind of the bosses.
They belong. If you look at who you are in the body of Christ, you know what? You belong just like that. You have every right to be here in the body of Christ.
And that's why I was so blessed to meet my friend Jerome out there. I was like, this guy is a brother in Christ. Nobody's better than anybody else.
So sometimes people have, sometimes people can have a tiered way of looking at people, um, how they want to spend time with people. Um, but you know who doesn't God, we pay attention to one another. Unlike when you're on the phone like that, you know, we pay attention to them.
We were perceived and we perceive the value the same way that God does. We don't allow worldly thinkings or carnal thinking to crowd how we view somebody else or preference or an attitude. Get rid of that.
Rico shared last night about how we were spared from a death sentence by the price of Jesus Christ. If that really hits you, it can really weigh on your heart because that is an incredible truth and it should make you feel worthy of what God did for you in Christ. It is finished.
He is risen. Those two words or those two phrases are incredibly important. Finished means man's sins are fully paid for.
God Determines Human Value
Risen means you have the authority and privilege to represent him and have access to him directly. God thought you worthy to send his son and sacrifice his son for you. And when you look around the room and you meet brothers and sisters in Christ, God saw them worthy too.
That is the great foundation of mutual respect that we have for one another. So what should you look for when you're interacting with a brother or sister in Christ? Well, how does God look at them? How does God see them? How does the creator of the universe, the one who sent his only son to sacrifice his life and die for the sins of all humanity, how does he see us? When I spend time on my patio in the morning, early in the morning before the sun starts coming up, I am amazed at God's creativity and what he can teach us in nature. And there's an amazing reflection on the tree line of our pond in the early morning and the water is still and it's almost like a silhouette.
But as the sun starts rising and shining on that tree line, it's so vibrant. It's so clear that you almost can't even tell the difference between the tree line and the image in the water. And then of course the ducks and the geese come and ruin the whole thing.
But the lesson in nature, what it taught me in that moment is that first of all, the reflection is most evident when the water is calm and undisturbed. And we are calm and undisturbed when we know who we are in Christ and we live that. And to consider that God made us in his image to reflect who he is into all creation.
Christ is the image of God and we have the faith of Christ to bring God's image into his created order. We mirror what God is, his love, his compassion, his care, his understanding. We look at one another as a reflection of him.
So what is it that we have in common? We've been hearing a lot about that and what else do we share? What do we have in common? That's a great question. First, we have all accepted Christ. We have accepted the works of another man.
What do we share? We share in the salvation that he did with us for each one of us individually, personally, and each one of us collectively. We all have the measure of Christ. Nobody has any more than anybody else.
Nobody's better than nobody had more sins to be paid for than anybody else. It's all the same. And God leveled the playing field and God gave us all the same thing.
And he gave us everything. God gave us everything in Christ. Mutual respect, like the illustration in the marriage relationship.
No one is superior. We function together while the roles are different. Nobody does the same thing.
Nobody acts the same. We're not a bunch of robots doing the same thing. We all are different.
And that adds to the body of Christ. And it leads to aligning, submitting to God's will together, and also his design and his arrangement. And I love what Chris and Courtney Brown shared earlier about the shared space.
So think about shared space in college football. Some people are going, you're not going to go there, are you? Anyway, so let's just say we did a group of college football fans, Michigan fans in the corner. Then right next to it, let's have a group of Ohio State fans.
And then thirdly, no, no, no, not India. No. So you got Michigan fans, Ohio State fans, and then everybody who doesn't like Michigan is probably the same group as next to Michigan guys anyway.
So, and then they start talking back and forth and, you know, you guys aren't that good. And I'm like, well, we're national champions. Well, that was last year.
This is this year. Does God care about any of that? No. What he cares about is who we are in Christ.
And I joke about it a little bit. Honestly, I don't take it too seriously. And I would never let that silly little thing crowd or color or discolor how I see my brother and sister in Christ, because that's overall, that's going into eternity.
These things that we focus on today just are going to go by the wayside and really, honestly, don't make a difference. So while I joke about it, the truth is it's really vastly insignificant. Romans 8.7 says the carnal mind is enmity against God.
Grace Makes Cooperation Possible
Romans 10.3 says that people went about to establish their own righteousness. Mine's based on who I am in Christ. When I look in the mirror, that's who I see.
And when I don't, I get back to that. And I see my brothers and sisters that way. See, all of this goes back to how you see each other in Christ, in an environment of mutual respect.
Carnal thinking or worldly thinking can trump this and can overpower it, whether it's political or what you look like or where you live. None of that matters. We should never also have expectations for someone else based on how we think or how we value someone or how we believe that they should behave.
Jesus Christ died for our sins and our shortcomings, and He died for yours, too, all of us equally and individually. Why should we bring them back up? Have you ever seen a couple wearing matching shirts and walking hand in hand? I think it's adorable, but you wouldn't catch me and Todd wearing the same thing. Somebody's coming back into the house and changing.
It's not a matter of what you're wearing on the outside. It's not a matter of if you row perfectly in a canoe. You definitely don't want to see me and Todd in the same canoe.
It's not pretty. But put us on the pickleball court together, and we make a great team. Our relationships are not perfect.
They get bumpy at times. It's just not a show of what we look like or pretending to be on the outside. It's what's on the outside that we value.
And like we said earlier, with that light, draw that out of one another. In Hebrews 10, verse 24 is probably my favorite verse on mutual respect and sharing grace. And in the Amplified Classic, it says, We are to consider and give attentive, continuous care to watching over one another.
I can just read this out of the Amplified Classic. To give continuous care to watching over one another, studying how we may stir up, stimulate, and incite to love and helpful deeds and noble activities. We don't want to study to find the wrong or what doesn't agree with our interest or our way of seeing and doing things.
We study how we can stir that gift up in one another. We look at each other and we say, how is God working in your life? And that's how we can strengthen each other and contribute to each other's growth, is by looking for those things and drawing them out. Do you have a filter? I love you, but? I like everything about you except this? You know, we don't necessarily like everything about everybody else.
That doesn't mean we walk hate or anything or disdain or anything like that. But we may not appreciate, maybe appreciate a better word, everything about somebody else. Like Tom Knupp is an incredible aviarist, which means a study of birds.
But I don't know if that's the right word or not. But anyway, I may or may not understand that about him. I know he's good at that.
But we may not, we may not appreciate that. But we certainly appreciate the goodness that God placed in each one of us with the gift of Holy Spirit that he gave us. That's the environment of mutual respect.
And I think about it like that, that Lego movie where they had that song where everything is awesome, like everything about everything in life is awesome. That's not always that way. But we see our brothers and sisters through the perfection that God made them in Christ.
And it is perfection, because at times they will walk like Jesus Christ walked. And wherever we go, we represent Christ. So we should see that in one another as we see our brothers and sisters in Christ, whether they're in this room, whether they're on the grill, or whether we see them as we're traveling, or we see them at work.
We see them the way God made them, and we help draw the goodness in them. What makes a sports team great isn't necessarily having all the best players. I've seen teams where they break payroll to get the best players, and they don't achieve their goal of whatever it is.
They fall short. So it's not just having the best players. It's more how you work together.
You enhance each other's abilities. You help each other become stronger and better. Focus on the team, and not on themselves or their own padding, their own stats.
The aim of the goal is bigger than themselves. There's mutual respect on a successful team, and that's how we unite in Christ. So even with our different backgrounds, our different way of seeing and doing things, our different way of expressing the Christ in us, we can live and share God's grace by having this mutual respect for one another.
Practicing Mutual Respect
And in closing, I'd like to read Romans chapter 14, verse 19 out of the Amplified Classic. Let us then definitely aim for and eagerly pursue what makes for harmony and for mutual upbuilding, edification, and development of one another. God bless you.
Key Takeaways
- Mutual respect is deeper than shared hobbies, preferences, backgrounds, or personalities.
- The completed work of Jesus Christ is the common standard that establishes each believer’s value.
- God determines value; believers are not authorized to reduce one another to behavior, achievement, or worldly status.
- Teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, prayer, and daily shared habits create an environment where respect can grow.
- Grace allows different and imperfect people to cooperate, contribute, and live together in harmony.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the foundation of mutual respect?
The teaching identifies the completed work of Jesus Christ as the foundation. Every believer receives value and standing from God rather than earning it through performance.
Is mutual respect the same as agreeing about everything?
No. People can have different backgrounds, preferences, personalities, and viewpoints while still honoring the God-given value they share in Christ.
How is mutual respect developed in practice?
It grows through habits of teaching, fellowship, shared grace, gathering, prayer, listening, and refusing to judge another person’s value by worldly standards.
Scripture References
Acts 2:42–47; Ephesians 5:21–33; James 2:8; Acts 242; Ephesians 520; Romans 8; Romans 10; Hebrews 10
Verification Note
Prepared from a recovered machine transcript. The transcript identifies Todd but does not state the speakers’ complete names. Verify speaker attribution, quotations, verse references, and unclear phrases against the original video before publication.
