“As the Christmas Season approaches I am so grateful and humbled by the many hundreds of people who regularly read these commentary devotionals. I am thankful to the many of you who have let me know that they are helpful and edifying to you. This post brings the book of Romans to a close and means that we have gone through more than half of the New Testament now.
I am going to take a little break for the Christmas season to work on some other projects. We will begin going through the book of Luke on January 18th, 2010. In the meantime, any of the previous books that we have gone through are available at www.foxvalleychurch.net on the resource page.
I wish you all a blessed Christmas and a new year of growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Michael Burns,
December 18th 2010
25 Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, 26 but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles might come to faith and obedience— 27 to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.
Dig Deeper
Recently I was watching the news and they were covering another sad story of serious allegations of doping being made against a superstar athlete. It seems like another one of these stories comes out every month or so. I think most people have gotten past the idea of being shocked that someone would try to cheat to the point that they are willing to put dangerous substances into their body especially when the long-term effects are still largely unknown. I think the thing that still really bothers people about steroid use is the loss of trust. They feel that they can no longer trust an athlete’s word and so they don’t want to cheer for them. The few who have immediately admitted their use and apologized have been forgiven and people barely even remember the drug use. Those who deny it, though, are never forgiven. It really is an issue of trust. The particular event that I was watching featured this newest target of steroid allegations denying that he had used drugs. He wouldn’t talk about it right now, he said, but when he finally revealed his side of it and laid all the evidence on the table, everyone would see that he was innocent and in the right. They would see that any allegations made against him were false and unfounded. That sounds good, but the sad reality is that I’ve heard that line of talk before when it comes to this issue and in every single case as more details are revealed, the more it makes it obvious that the person was not true to their word and was, in fact, guilty.
Paul began this letter by answering the faithfulness of God. The question was does the gospel reveal that God has been faithful to his covenant promises or by creating a Messiah-shaped people has God let Israel down and broken his promises? Throughout the letter Paul has made his case clear. God has indeed been faithful to his promises that he made to Abraham so long ago. God promised Abraham that his descendants would consist of many nations but would still be one family. It had always somewhat of a mystery as to how God could possibly fulfill such a promise. All of the evidence hadn’t come out but the Old Testament prophets had declared confidently that when all was said and done, God would show himself to be trustworthy and faithful. Now in the Messiah all of the evidence had been laid on the table. All had been made clear but this wasn’t like so many humans who show themselves to be untrustworthy when the evidence really does come out. No, in the Messiah all had been revealed and God has done exactly what he said he would do. He has dealt with sin and evil once-and-for-all.
Paul’s gospel was the declaration that the Messiah, descended from David, had defeated death and in so doing been revealed to the world as the Son of God (Rom. 1:3-4). This meant that the world had a new king who needed to be declared as such to people of all nations. Those who respond in faith and submit to his life will be brought into the one true family of God. Those who were justified or declared to be part of this family were established as the people who had found the forgiveness for sin and the final defeat of death and evil that God had promised for so long.
The promise of the one family whose sin had been dealt with once-for-all was previously been hidden. By saying that it was hidden Paul wasn’t communicating that there was no knowledge of this plan but rather that it could not be previously fully understood or experienced. What could only be promised and hoped for was now available to all. If people would go back to the prophets and read carefully, they would see that they had pointed all along to exactly what was revealed in the Messiah. God’s covenant family was not an exclusive club just for Jews. The final revelation of God’s family would include all people, Jew and Gentile alike. Those who responded in faith and obedience would forever be numbered among God’s covenant children in the Messiah.
The gospel is the answer to the question of what is God up to in the world. It answers not just his faithfulness to his covenant but it also answers questions of God’s justice in general when it comes to evil in the world. The Greek philosopher Epicurus once allegedly wrote a direct challenge to the idea of God: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but unable? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both willing, and able? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither willing, nor able? Then why call him God?”
This is a common complaint against God. If God is powerful and good then why would he allow evil? Why, asks a skeptical world, doesn’t God just destroy evil? That question is often asked as though it puts believers in their place and once-and-for-all ends any silly talk about God being real. Yet, that question is often asked of God without really thinking it through very well. The question purports the idea that if God doesn’t rid the world of evil then he can’t be God, and since evil does exist then there is no God. But let’s presume for a moment that God does exist. If he were to follow along with this line of thinking and get rid of evil, where should he stop? Should he get rid of those who murder, rape, oppress, and abuse others? Most would say “yes.” But where does that stop? Should God eliminate liars, the unfaithful, and the hateful? Should God eliminate evil to the point of destroying those with hateful, lustful, or evil thoughts? If he were to truly destroy all evil, he would have to destroy all humanity. That he hasn’t done so doesn’t prove that there is no God or that he is powerless but that he is merciful and patient.
The gospel is God’s answer to the questions of his justice and ability to deal with evil. When is God going to deal with sin and death and all of the evil in the world? When Jesus Christ walked out of the tomb, dealing death itself its own death blow, God dealt with sin, death, and evil forever. Those who respond to the Messiah in faith and obedience will forever have their sin dealt with and enter into the life of God’s age to come where there is no sin, death, or evil. We become members of God’s family committed to showing the world small glimpses of what that world will look like and calling those who desire to be part of that age to join the family. The resurrection, says the gospel, shows that God has defeated evil and will eventually complete that victory when God restores his creation and resurrects his people to live with them forever. In the resurrection, God has shown that he is both willing and able to deal with evil, but perhaps even more importantly, he is patient and merciful in doing so.
So, why hasn’t God completely wiped evil off the face of the earth? He has already shown that he has defeated evil and will destroy it for good one day, but in the meantime, God has patiently made the gospel available to those who receive the free gift of his Son. When we step back and look down at God’s incredible plan and his incredible mercy it is obvious why Paul calls him the only wise God who is forever worthy of glory. That is absolutely true but Paul adds one more important thought. All of God’s goodness and wisdom are available through Jesus Christ. It is in the life of Christ that God has shown himself to be faithful and just. Finally, all of the evidence has been laid out on the table and God has been shown to be worthy of all praise, glory, and honor. In the Messiah, God has answered all questions about his faithfulness. Now the question is, have you responded to his answer?
Devotional Thought
Throughout the letter of Romans, Paul has made it clear that the proper way to respond to the gospel is with humble faith. Have you done that yet? If you have, then have you been active in sharing the gospel so that those who haven’t yet heard the presentation of the true gospel might have a chance to hear it and believe for themselves?
Friday, December 18, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Romans 16:17-24
17 I urge you, brothers and sisters, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. 18 For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people. 19 Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I rejoice because of you; but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.
20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.
21 Timothy, my co-worker, sends his greetings to you, as do Lucius, Jason and Sosipater, my fellow Jews.
22 I, Tertius, who wrote down this letter, greet you in the Lord.
23-24 Gaius, whose hospitality I and the whole church here enjoy, sends you his greetings.
Erastus, who is the city's director of public works, and our brother Quartus send you their greetings. [c]
Dig Deeper
Back when I was teaching at an inner city high school it was an alternative school that was comprised of students who had gotten into serious trouble with the law or who had fallen behind terribly in their studies. The faculty and administration put in a great deal of time and effort teaching the kids how to be the kind of students and citizens that we wanted them to be. We knew that to really help these kids turn their lives around in a way that had any lasting impact that we would have to spend a great deal of time teaching them not only how to behave at school but we would also have to teach them how to make life choices, how to make wise decisions in every aspect of their lives, and how to choose who to listen to and who to reject as a bad influence. It is because we put in so much effort and had, in many cases, so much success that we began to dread long breaks from school. Longer breaks like Christmas could be bad enough but the three-month summer break was the most dreaded by the staff. During these breaks, many of the kids, with whom we had worked so hard to help change their behavior, would go back full-time into their neighborhood environments without the influence of the school on a daily basis, and it would seem like all the good we had done was just washed away. They would lose all of the progress that they had made and go right back to the poor choices and dangerous behaviors that had gotten them in trouble in the first place. That didn’t happen to all of the students by any means, but it happened often enough that it was a legitimate concern that we would try to warn the students about before every break.
Some people, reading Romans to this point, might almost think that Paul’s warnings about false teachers seem almost oddly out of place. He hasn’t had anything specifically to say to this point about false teachers and this seems to pop up at the end of a section where he has been sending greetings to the brothers and sisters that he has just urged to work out with great fervor and intent what it means to live as the resurrection people of the Messiah. So, why would he insert a section like this? For the same reason that we warned our students before every break from school to watch out what influenced them. Paul well knows the negatives and destructive effects that false teachers and a loss of focus can have on God’s people. He’s seen it before and he is extremely eager to ensure that it does not happen in Rome. He cares too much about the progress that they have mad in Christ and about the opportunity that the Holy Spirit has put on his heart to use Rome as a base for the future spread of the gospel. As Paul brings his letter to a close, he really wants to make sure that they not only embrace all of the edifying things that he has said about their life in Christ but that they live constantly with one eye on situations that could come and steal that life away from them.
Although they were having issues working out the Christian call of loving one another as a true family, it does not appear that the Roman church was yet dealing with any specific false teachers as a major problem. Yet, Paul knows well the trouble that was caused in the other churches that he has been ministering to, the very work that had, up to this point, kept him from coming to Rome. He knew that false teachers of many different kinds could come into a church and cause major problems. He wishes to see Rome avoid that for their own sake but also for his desire to see them used as a key church that would support future mission efforts into the region of Spain.
Many modern Christians seem to take false teachers lightly and tend to save their harshest criticism for those who attempt to defend against or even to simply point out the wrongs of false teachers. In fact, in our current Christian culture, many Christians find those who would speak out against false teachers to be more distasteful than the false teachers themselves. This attitude of taking false teachings and the false teachers who perpetrate them lightly, however, is not only dangerous, it does not find any firm footing in the scriptures. We have bought into the lie that to discern false teachings and false teachers is to judge those individuals hypocritically or to be arrogant. It is nothing of the kind and God calls his people to be on their guard against such things.
The seriousness of such false teachers is seen in the negative effects that Paul says that they can have on a body of Christ. Causing divisions in a family that is called to demonstrate reconciliation and unity with God to the larger world is no small thing. It is the worst sort of cancer on the body of Christ and cannot be taken too seriously. Putting obstacles in the way of a people who have been taught that they have free and unfettered access to our Father God as his sons and daughters that have been brought into the covenant family is also of no insignificance. The only remedy is to keep away from these people. Some might charge that this seems unloving, but the Bible is extremely clear that we should silence such people in the body of Christ and have nothing to do with them (Titus 1:10; 1 Timothy 4:1-6). Yet, this must all be balanced with all that Paul has said in chapters 14 and 15. Simple disagreements over certain beliefs does not mean that we should label everyone who disagrees with our spiritual opinions or beliefs should be labeled a false teacher. This is a distinction that is reserved for someone whose teaching directly attacks one or more of the fundamental core elements of the gospel. Discernment must be shown to distinguish someone who holds a different legitimate opinion in a disputable matter with a false teacher.
The hallmark of these teachers is that it did not fall in line with the teaching that they had initially learned. Because that is so contingent on whether the initial teaching one heard was the true gospel, this has become perhaps a more complicated situation today where probably as many, if not more people, hear false versions of the gospel before they ever hear the true gospel. One thing that all false teachers have in common is that they do not serve the Lord. They, at one level or another and in one way or another, serve their own appetites and desires. They operate within existing church bodies through secrecy and private conversations and appeal quite often to the felt needs of people through flattery of the immature and the naive, and even the overly-kind who allow them to share their ideas. Yet, it would be quite a mistake to think that false teachings are simplistic and only fool baby Christians. False versions of the gospel are often quite appealing because they seem so clever and seem to “explain” areas where the true gospel has not been thoroughly explained to people.
No, the Roman church had apparently not been deceived by any such teachings at the time of the writing of this letter. They had remained obedient to the gospel, something which had been spread throughout the churches, and no doubt, left Paul feeling that the Roman church was capable of serving as a base of operations for future missionary endeavors. Paul rejoiced over their adherence to the gospel but he knows that even “if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall,” (1 Cor. 10:12) because no individual and no church is ever beyond being fooled. What he wants them to do is to follow the words of Jesus when he called for his disciples to “be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16). Because the Roman church had such a reputation for being obedient, Paul realizes that this could open them up to false teaching. Being obedient in that sense was a great quality but it could also lead to their downfall if they did not combine that innocence with being wise about what is good. They should not be so simple that they swallow whatever is served up to them. It takes a great deal of prayer and effort to find the right balance in being wise and discerning about good teaching and yet not become a skeptical doctrinal sniper that sits back and just looks for something to disagree with.
If they show wisdom and hold to the truth, rejecting false teachings that will invariably come their way, then they can be assured that God will “soon crush Satan under your feet,” a probable allusion to Genesis 3:15. This was likely a general promise for those in Christ but one that had immediate relevance to the situation of rejecting false teachers. There was a spiritual battle that was raging and they could be assured of victory as well as the promise that the grace of our Lord Jesus would be with them every step of the way.
As he brings the letter closer to the end, Paul sends greetings from the church in Cenchreae where he was probably writing this letter, as well as allowing his scribe, Tertius to pen in his own personal greeting. This gives another peek into the fervor of the early Christian movement. They were a small band of zealous believers who were intimately connected with one another. They were part of God’s family and were facing large odds, but they were exhilarated by the opportunity and the knowledge that Christ had already defeated their enemy. The new creation had broken into the present age and the world was now a different place and they were a different people. They were now part of a new family that must stay united in love and firmly build on the foundation of faith in the life of Christ if they were going to stay together and change the world with the message of the gospel.
Devotional Thought
How seriously do you take false teaching and false teachers when you encounter them? Do you take a biblical view of the dangers of these teachers or do you take a stance that is comfortable for you? Spend some time considering why the Bible warns so adamantly about the need to deal with false teachers so swiftly and decisively. What danger is the church put in when they are not dealt with in this manner?
20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.
21 Timothy, my co-worker, sends his greetings to you, as do Lucius, Jason and Sosipater, my fellow Jews.
22 I, Tertius, who wrote down this letter, greet you in the Lord.
23-24 Gaius, whose hospitality I and the whole church here enjoy, sends you his greetings.
Erastus, who is the city's director of public works, and our brother Quartus send you their greetings. [c]
Dig Deeper
Back when I was teaching at an inner city high school it was an alternative school that was comprised of students who had gotten into serious trouble with the law or who had fallen behind terribly in their studies. The faculty and administration put in a great deal of time and effort teaching the kids how to be the kind of students and citizens that we wanted them to be. We knew that to really help these kids turn their lives around in a way that had any lasting impact that we would have to spend a great deal of time teaching them not only how to behave at school but we would also have to teach them how to make life choices, how to make wise decisions in every aspect of their lives, and how to choose who to listen to and who to reject as a bad influence. It is because we put in so much effort and had, in many cases, so much success that we began to dread long breaks from school. Longer breaks like Christmas could be bad enough but the three-month summer break was the most dreaded by the staff. During these breaks, many of the kids, with whom we had worked so hard to help change their behavior, would go back full-time into their neighborhood environments without the influence of the school on a daily basis, and it would seem like all the good we had done was just washed away. They would lose all of the progress that they had made and go right back to the poor choices and dangerous behaviors that had gotten them in trouble in the first place. That didn’t happen to all of the students by any means, but it happened often enough that it was a legitimate concern that we would try to warn the students about before every break.
Some people, reading Romans to this point, might almost think that Paul’s warnings about false teachers seem almost oddly out of place. He hasn’t had anything specifically to say to this point about false teachers and this seems to pop up at the end of a section where he has been sending greetings to the brothers and sisters that he has just urged to work out with great fervor and intent what it means to live as the resurrection people of the Messiah. So, why would he insert a section like this? For the same reason that we warned our students before every break from school to watch out what influenced them. Paul well knows the negatives and destructive effects that false teachers and a loss of focus can have on God’s people. He’s seen it before and he is extremely eager to ensure that it does not happen in Rome. He cares too much about the progress that they have mad in Christ and about the opportunity that the Holy Spirit has put on his heart to use Rome as a base for the future spread of the gospel. As Paul brings his letter to a close, he really wants to make sure that they not only embrace all of the edifying things that he has said about their life in Christ but that they live constantly with one eye on situations that could come and steal that life away from them.
Although they were having issues working out the Christian call of loving one another as a true family, it does not appear that the Roman church was yet dealing with any specific false teachers as a major problem. Yet, Paul knows well the trouble that was caused in the other churches that he has been ministering to, the very work that had, up to this point, kept him from coming to Rome. He knew that false teachers of many different kinds could come into a church and cause major problems. He wishes to see Rome avoid that for their own sake but also for his desire to see them used as a key church that would support future mission efforts into the region of Spain.
Many modern Christians seem to take false teachers lightly and tend to save their harshest criticism for those who attempt to defend against or even to simply point out the wrongs of false teachers. In fact, in our current Christian culture, many Christians find those who would speak out against false teachers to be more distasteful than the false teachers themselves. This attitude of taking false teachings and the false teachers who perpetrate them lightly, however, is not only dangerous, it does not find any firm footing in the scriptures. We have bought into the lie that to discern false teachings and false teachers is to judge those individuals hypocritically or to be arrogant. It is nothing of the kind and God calls his people to be on their guard against such things.
The seriousness of such false teachers is seen in the negative effects that Paul says that they can have on a body of Christ. Causing divisions in a family that is called to demonstrate reconciliation and unity with God to the larger world is no small thing. It is the worst sort of cancer on the body of Christ and cannot be taken too seriously. Putting obstacles in the way of a people who have been taught that they have free and unfettered access to our Father God as his sons and daughters that have been brought into the covenant family is also of no insignificance. The only remedy is to keep away from these people. Some might charge that this seems unloving, but the Bible is extremely clear that we should silence such people in the body of Christ and have nothing to do with them (Titus 1:10; 1 Timothy 4:1-6). Yet, this must all be balanced with all that Paul has said in chapters 14 and 15. Simple disagreements over certain beliefs does not mean that we should label everyone who disagrees with our spiritual opinions or beliefs should be labeled a false teacher. This is a distinction that is reserved for someone whose teaching directly attacks one or more of the fundamental core elements of the gospel. Discernment must be shown to distinguish someone who holds a different legitimate opinion in a disputable matter with a false teacher.
The hallmark of these teachers is that it did not fall in line with the teaching that they had initially learned. Because that is so contingent on whether the initial teaching one heard was the true gospel, this has become perhaps a more complicated situation today where probably as many, if not more people, hear false versions of the gospel before they ever hear the true gospel. One thing that all false teachers have in common is that they do not serve the Lord. They, at one level or another and in one way or another, serve their own appetites and desires. They operate within existing church bodies through secrecy and private conversations and appeal quite often to the felt needs of people through flattery of the immature and the naive, and even the overly-kind who allow them to share their ideas. Yet, it would be quite a mistake to think that false teachings are simplistic and only fool baby Christians. False versions of the gospel are often quite appealing because they seem so clever and seem to “explain” areas where the true gospel has not been thoroughly explained to people.
No, the Roman church had apparently not been deceived by any such teachings at the time of the writing of this letter. They had remained obedient to the gospel, something which had been spread throughout the churches, and no doubt, left Paul feeling that the Roman church was capable of serving as a base of operations for future missionary endeavors. Paul rejoiced over their adherence to the gospel but he knows that even “if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall,” (1 Cor. 10:12) because no individual and no church is ever beyond being fooled. What he wants them to do is to follow the words of Jesus when he called for his disciples to “be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16). Because the Roman church had such a reputation for being obedient, Paul realizes that this could open them up to false teaching. Being obedient in that sense was a great quality but it could also lead to their downfall if they did not combine that innocence with being wise about what is good. They should not be so simple that they swallow whatever is served up to them. It takes a great deal of prayer and effort to find the right balance in being wise and discerning about good teaching and yet not become a skeptical doctrinal sniper that sits back and just looks for something to disagree with.
If they show wisdom and hold to the truth, rejecting false teachings that will invariably come their way, then they can be assured that God will “soon crush Satan under your feet,” a probable allusion to Genesis 3:15. This was likely a general promise for those in Christ but one that had immediate relevance to the situation of rejecting false teachers. There was a spiritual battle that was raging and they could be assured of victory as well as the promise that the grace of our Lord Jesus would be with them every step of the way.
As he brings the letter closer to the end, Paul sends greetings from the church in Cenchreae where he was probably writing this letter, as well as allowing his scribe, Tertius to pen in his own personal greeting. This gives another peek into the fervor of the early Christian movement. They were a small band of zealous believers who were intimately connected with one another. They were part of God’s family and were facing large odds, but they were exhilarated by the opportunity and the knowledge that Christ had already defeated their enemy. The new creation had broken into the present age and the world was now a different place and they were a different people. They were now part of a new family that must stay united in love and firmly build on the foundation of faith in the life of Christ if they were going to stay together and change the world with the message of the gospel.
Devotional Thought
How seriously do you take false teaching and false teachers when you encounter them? Do you take a biblical view of the dangers of these teachers or do you take a stance that is comfortable for you? Spend some time considering why the Bible warns so adamantly about the need to deal with false teachers so swiftly and decisively. What danger is the church put in when they are not dealt with in this manner?
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Romans 16:1-16
Personal Greetings
1 I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon [a] of the church in Cenchreae. 2 I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me.
3 Greet Priscilla [b] and Aquila, my co-workers in Christ Jesus. 4 They risked their lives for me. Not only I but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them.
5 Greet also the church that meets at their house.
Greet my dear friend Epenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in the province of Asia.
6 Greet Mary, who worked very hard for you.
7 Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.
8 Greet Ampliatus, my dear friend in the Lord.
9 Greet Urbanus, our co-worker in Christ, and my dear friend Stachys.
10 Greet Apelles, whose fidelity to Christ has stood the test.
Greet those who belong to the household of Aristobulus.
11 Greet Herodion, my fellow Jew.
Greet those in the household of Narcissus who are in the Lord.
12 Greet Tryphena and Tryphosa, those women who work hard in the Lord.
Greet my dear friend Persis, another woman who has worked very hard in the Lord.
13 Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother, who has been a mother to me, too.
14 Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas and the other brothers and sisters with them.
15 Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas and all the Lord's people who are with them.
16 Greet one another with a holy kiss.
All the churches of Christ send greetings.
Dig Deeper
A few years back, my maternal grandmother passed away. She was a wonderfully unique person that I have missed more than I would have imagined before her passing. She loved to read and she especially loved theological and religious books. When she died she left many of her religious books to me. Some of them were great books that I was happy to have but there were a few that just didn’t seem that interesting. One of those was a rather old and plain looking book on Luke’s role as a theologian. When I got her books, I looked through them all but I remember thinking that this one looked boring and not worth reading and so, without ever really opening it, I just set it on a side shelf and there it sat. About a year ago, however, for some reason I picked up the book and began to page through it. I was amazed when I realized that this book seemed pretty good so I started to read it. I found it that it was an incredibly valuable book by someone who has turned out to be one of my favorite theologians (since reading that book I have attempted to purchase and read several of his other books and have enjoyed them all). Oh, if only I had paid attention to this nondescript little book earlier.
Christians often like to say things like every verse of the Bible is inspired and that we love every single word in it. Those noble sentiments become strained for many when considering passages like this one or some of the genealogy passages in the Old Testament or the gospels, or some of the other lists of people, tribes, or items included in the Temple in the Old Testament. If we’re honest, many of us tend to skip over these types of passages when we arrive at them in our reading. It’s a shame because passages like these, although they usually don’t contain anything overt or obvious, often do have little hidden gems of information that are worth taking the time to discover. Oh, if only we had paid attention earlier.
Paul was eager to reconnect with those in Rome that he knew well and to establish bonds with those Christians in Rome that he didn’t know that well or only knew by reputation. Sending out greetings like this accomplished both of those things. But as we look through this list of names and greetings, several important little details and things about the early church begin to pop up; things that we would do well to pay attention to.
One thing that we note in this list is the fact that Paul’s old friends Priscila and Aquila are part of the church in Rome. Paul first met the husband and wife team of Priscila and Aquila in Corinth on his second missionary journey. They had originally left Italy when Claudius had kicked the Jews out (Acts 18:2). They had apparently become close friends and valued partners in the faith with Paul that not only shared their common commitment to Christ but they were also tent-makers as was Paul. They had been instrumental in bringing the influential Apollos to the life of Christ (Acts 18:26) and they had been with Paul in Ephesus for a fair amount of time working together in the ministry of the gospel (1 Cor. 16:19). Now it appears that they have returned to Rome and whether it was simply because Jews like themselves were being allowed back or because Paul had specifically sent them to prepare the way for him to come to Rome is unclear, but Paul clearly valued them and their work in Christ. They were co-workers that had risked their lives for Paul and the sake of the gospel. It is also quite possible that Epenetus, mentioned in verse 5, was converted as part of their ministry in Asia, the cultural center of which was Ephesus, and that he had accompanied Priscila and Aquila back to Rome.
Another element in this section that is worth noting is the make-up of the church in Rome. Very few, if any, churches in the first century would have had the means or the opportunity to purchase and maintain their own meeting place for worship so they were quite creative in meeting in different locations and set-ups. It wouldn’t be until the 2nd century that church buildings began to appear. Perhaps the most common form of Christian gathering in the first century was in house churches. It was rare that an entire collection of believers in a city or town could all meet together in one place at one time, so they met in groups in the home of someone who had a house big enough for such a thing. Paul mentions as many as five of these house church groups in his greetings. This gives us the picture of devout believers gathering together in small groups, probably not much larger than 20 or 30 people in each group. It’s possible, then, that the Roman church, at the time of Paul’s writing, was around one hundred Christians who meet together in house churches and only occasionally would come all together. In a city of about a million, that gave this tiny little group much to do. To pattern modern churches after such an ancient model, however, is certainly wise and many larger churches do break up their church as a whole into smaller house churches as a way to maintain family unity within the confines of a larger church. The idea of a house church is a good one, but we should remember that it is not one that is ever mandated in the New Testament or even encouraged, it is simply described as the means through which a new family of believers met the difficult circumstances and limited resources that were available to them. Some in their zeal and appreciation for the house church style have claimed that it is the only legitimate way for Christians to meet. It may be effective, it might even be preferable for some, but there is no biblical ground on which to stand and claim that it should be mandated.
As we continue to look at Paul’s personal greetings we note that of the twenty-six Christians that are listed specifically by name that no less than nine of them are women. He mentions dear friends, important laborers in the church, and those who were worthy of imitation (Paul also specifically mentions Rufus, whom many experts believe may well be the same Rufus that was listed as one of the sons of Simon of Cyrene who carried the Cross of Christ in Mark 15:21), so it is no minor details that more than a third of those mentioned are women. Women shared in an important part of the labor and ministry of the first century church and enjoyed equality and respect (although this does not conflict at all with the fact that they were equal and respected and yet their were some boundaries for the roles that women played in leadership in the early church as described in passages such as 1 Timothy 2:11-15). Two important women in particular in this passage were Phoebe and Junia, who was likely the wife of Andronicus. Phoebe served as a deacon, which meant that she most likely had a specific organizational role in some aspect of church service. It appears to be fact that Paul entrusted Phoebe with bringing this letter to Rome, which meant that he trusted her and respected her greatly. She was clearly an important figure in Paul’s ministry and was a benefactor in the church, meaning that she was a woman of some financial significance who made her private resources available for public use by the believers. Junia’s name is more properly understood as a woman’s name but can be understood to be a man’s name. It is worth noting that the early church fathers were nearly unanimous in their assumption that Junia was a woman and this seems far more likely. Some have hesitated to do this because Paul refers to her and her husband as apostles. In using the term apostle, however, Paul often doesn’t refer to the specific role of authority and leadership that he fulfilled. That was certainly one meaning of the word, but the more common use was applied simply to those who had seen the risen Christ and who had a vocation to share the gospel as eyewitnesses of Christ’s resurrection. Thus, Junia played an important role in the early church as did Phoebe, and it is probably that her and her husband spent some time in prison (possibly with Paul but the original language is not as clear as the TNIV makes it seem) for the sake of the gospel. It is certainly important to not go beyond the proper biblical roles that God has ordained for women in the church but surely we need to take a look at their labor, importance, and role in the early church and learn a few things in our day about the importance of women in the church.
It is also important to stress that Paul constantly refers to co-workers throughout his writings but certainly here several times (vv. 3, 7, and 9). This reminds us that Paul was not running around the world working by himself. He had a specific mission and vocation but Paul knew well that the concept of being a lone ranger Christian simply didn’t add up. Paul constantly depended on co-workers and supporters. Let us never think that we do not need the constant help and support of others in whatever role we have been cast in the body of Christ.
Finally, we note that Paul ends his greetings with an exhortation to greet one another with a holy kiss. This kiss of peace became a standard part of Christian worship from the earliest days. The purpose of the holy kiss was, no doubt, to demonstrate that Christians who engaged in this warm greeting were members of the same family. Those who had entered into the Christ shaped family would show that fact to the world when they greeted one another with a holy kiss. Thus, the kiss was not just a warm way of showing affection and gratitude to one another, it was yet another very practical way to work out the doctrine of justification by faith in the life of Christ in the real world. They were members of one family and should act like it at every opportunity. This serves as a constant challenge to us to constantly look for new and exciting ways to make the same statement in our culture.
Devotional Thought
Paul not only wrote this letter to teach some important and timeless doctrines but he took time at the end to encourage others. When is the last time that you wrote a little note or card to someone simply to encourage them? Take some time this week and think of how you can encourage someone by writing them or in some other creative way.
1 I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon [a] of the church in Cenchreae. 2 I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me.
3 Greet Priscilla [b] and Aquila, my co-workers in Christ Jesus. 4 They risked their lives for me. Not only I but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them.
5 Greet also the church that meets at their house.
Greet my dear friend Epenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in the province of Asia.
6 Greet Mary, who worked very hard for you.
7 Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.
8 Greet Ampliatus, my dear friend in the Lord.
9 Greet Urbanus, our co-worker in Christ, and my dear friend Stachys.
10 Greet Apelles, whose fidelity to Christ has stood the test.
Greet those who belong to the household of Aristobulus.
11 Greet Herodion, my fellow Jew.
Greet those in the household of Narcissus who are in the Lord.
12 Greet Tryphena and Tryphosa, those women who work hard in the Lord.
Greet my dear friend Persis, another woman who has worked very hard in the Lord.
13 Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother, who has been a mother to me, too.
14 Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas and the other brothers and sisters with them.
15 Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas and all the Lord's people who are with them.
16 Greet one another with a holy kiss.
All the churches of Christ send greetings.
Dig Deeper
A few years back, my maternal grandmother passed away. She was a wonderfully unique person that I have missed more than I would have imagined before her passing. She loved to read and she especially loved theological and religious books. When she died she left many of her religious books to me. Some of them were great books that I was happy to have but there were a few that just didn’t seem that interesting. One of those was a rather old and plain looking book on Luke’s role as a theologian. When I got her books, I looked through them all but I remember thinking that this one looked boring and not worth reading and so, without ever really opening it, I just set it on a side shelf and there it sat. About a year ago, however, for some reason I picked up the book and began to page through it. I was amazed when I realized that this book seemed pretty good so I started to read it. I found it that it was an incredibly valuable book by someone who has turned out to be one of my favorite theologians (since reading that book I have attempted to purchase and read several of his other books and have enjoyed them all). Oh, if only I had paid attention to this nondescript little book earlier.
Christians often like to say things like every verse of the Bible is inspired and that we love every single word in it. Those noble sentiments become strained for many when considering passages like this one or some of the genealogy passages in the Old Testament or the gospels, or some of the other lists of people, tribes, or items included in the Temple in the Old Testament. If we’re honest, many of us tend to skip over these types of passages when we arrive at them in our reading. It’s a shame because passages like these, although they usually don’t contain anything overt or obvious, often do have little hidden gems of information that are worth taking the time to discover. Oh, if only we had paid attention earlier.
Paul was eager to reconnect with those in Rome that he knew well and to establish bonds with those Christians in Rome that he didn’t know that well or only knew by reputation. Sending out greetings like this accomplished both of those things. But as we look through this list of names and greetings, several important little details and things about the early church begin to pop up; things that we would do well to pay attention to.
One thing that we note in this list is the fact that Paul’s old friends Priscila and Aquila are part of the church in Rome. Paul first met the husband and wife team of Priscila and Aquila in Corinth on his second missionary journey. They had originally left Italy when Claudius had kicked the Jews out (Acts 18:2). They had apparently become close friends and valued partners in the faith with Paul that not only shared their common commitment to Christ but they were also tent-makers as was Paul. They had been instrumental in bringing the influential Apollos to the life of Christ (Acts 18:26) and they had been with Paul in Ephesus for a fair amount of time working together in the ministry of the gospel (1 Cor. 16:19). Now it appears that they have returned to Rome and whether it was simply because Jews like themselves were being allowed back or because Paul had specifically sent them to prepare the way for him to come to Rome is unclear, but Paul clearly valued them and their work in Christ. They were co-workers that had risked their lives for Paul and the sake of the gospel. It is also quite possible that Epenetus, mentioned in verse 5, was converted as part of their ministry in Asia, the cultural center of which was Ephesus, and that he had accompanied Priscila and Aquila back to Rome.
Another element in this section that is worth noting is the make-up of the church in Rome. Very few, if any, churches in the first century would have had the means or the opportunity to purchase and maintain their own meeting place for worship so they were quite creative in meeting in different locations and set-ups. It wouldn’t be until the 2nd century that church buildings began to appear. Perhaps the most common form of Christian gathering in the first century was in house churches. It was rare that an entire collection of believers in a city or town could all meet together in one place at one time, so they met in groups in the home of someone who had a house big enough for such a thing. Paul mentions as many as five of these house church groups in his greetings. This gives us the picture of devout believers gathering together in small groups, probably not much larger than 20 or 30 people in each group. It’s possible, then, that the Roman church, at the time of Paul’s writing, was around one hundred Christians who meet together in house churches and only occasionally would come all together. In a city of about a million, that gave this tiny little group much to do. To pattern modern churches after such an ancient model, however, is certainly wise and many larger churches do break up their church as a whole into smaller house churches as a way to maintain family unity within the confines of a larger church. The idea of a house church is a good one, but we should remember that it is not one that is ever mandated in the New Testament or even encouraged, it is simply described as the means through which a new family of believers met the difficult circumstances and limited resources that were available to them. Some in their zeal and appreciation for the house church style have claimed that it is the only legitimate way for Christians to meet. It may be effective, it might even be preferable for some, but there is no biblical ground on which to stand and claim that it should be mandated.
As we continue to look at Paul’s personal greetings we note that of the twenty-six Christians that are listed specifically by name that no less than nine of them are women. He mentions dear friends, important laborers in the church, and those who were worthy of imitation (Paul also specifically mentions Rufus, whom many experts believe may well be the same Rufus that was listed as one of the sons of Simon of Cyrene who carried the Cross of Christ in Mark 15:21), so it is no minor details that more than a third of those mentioned are women. Women shared in an important part of the labor and ministry of the first century church and enjoyed equality and respect (although this does not conflict at all with the fact that they were equal and respected and yet their were some boundaries for the roles that women played in leadership in the early church as described in passages such as 1 Timothy 2:11-15). Two important women in particular in this passage were Phoebe and Junia, who was likely the wife of Andronicus. Phoebe served as a deacon, which meant that she most likely had a specific organizational role in some aspect of church service. It appears to be fact that Paul entrusted Phoebe with bringing this letter to Rome, which meant that he trusted her and respected her greatly. She was clearly an important figure in Paul’s ministry and was a benefactor in the church, meaning that she was a woman of some financial significance who made her private resources available for public use by the believers. Junia’s name is more properly understood as a woman’s name but can be understood to be a man’s name. It is worth noting that the early church fathers were nearly unanimous in their assumption that Junia was a woman and this seems far more likely. Some have hesitated to do this because Paul refers to her and her husband as apostles. In using the term apostle, however, Paul often doesn’t refer to the specific role of authority and leadership that he fulfilled. That was certainly one meaning of the word, but the more common use was applied simply to those who had seen the risen Christ and who had a vocation to share the gospel as eyewitnesses of Christ’s resurrection. Thus, Junia played an important role in the early church as did Phoebe, and it is probably that her and her husband spent some time in prison (possibly with Paul but the original language is not as clear as the TNIV makes it seem) for the sake of the gospel. It is certainly important to not go beyond the proper biblical roles that God has ordained for women in the church but surely we need to take a look at their labor, importance, and role in the early church and learn a few things in our day about the importance of women in the church.
It is also important to stress that Paul constantly refers to co-workers throughout his writings but certainly here several times (vv. 3, 7, and 9). This reminds us that Paul was not running around the world working by himself. He had a specific mission and vocation but Paul knew well that the concept of being a lone ranger Christian simply didn’t add up. Paul constantly depended on co-workers and supporters. Let us never think that we do not need the constant help and support of others in whatever role we have been cast in the body of Christ.
Finally, we note that Paul ends his greetings with an exhortation to greet one another with a holy kiss. This kiss of peace became a standard part of Christian worship from the earliest days. The purpose of the holy kiss was, no doubt, to demonstrate that Christians who engaged in this warm greeting were members of the same family. Those who had entered into the Christ shaped family would show that fact to the world when they greeted one another with a holy kiss. Thus, the kiss was not just a warm way of showing affection and gratitude to one another, it was yet another very practical way to work out the doctrine of justification by faith in the life of Christ in the real world. They were members of one family and should act like it at every opportunity. This serves as a constant challenge to us to constantly look for new and exciting ways to make the same statement in our culture.
Devotional Thought
Paul not only wrote this letter to teach some important and timeless doctrines but he took time at the end to encourage others. When is the last time that you wrote a little note or card to someone simply to encourage them? Take some time this week and think of how you can encourage someone by writing them or in some other creative way.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Romans 15:30-33
30 I urge you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. 31 Pray that I may be kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea and that the contribution I take to Jerusalem may be favorably received by the Lord's people there, 32 so that by God's will I may come to you with joy and together with you be refreshed. 33 The God of peace be with you all. Amen.
Dig Deeper
Have you ever found yourself in a state of humble brokenness before God? You know those mornings when you realize just how imperfect you are and and how much you are still in need of the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. So you turn to God in earnest prayer and ask for him to change you. I have had days like that. “Please Lord, help me to grow in my humility today.” Or “Please Lord, allow me to become more patient today.” Then you realize the moment that prayer leaves your lips what you might have just done. In fact perhaps you’ve done that a time or two already so that now you might even hesitate to say a prayer like that because you know the minute you utter such a prayer, that chances are pretty good that God is going to answer. And you also realize that the way to become more humble is generally to be humbled. The way to become more patient is to have to endure and persevere through trying times. In short, the way to growth is often not a pleasant prospect. We would like the growth without the accompanying pain. In fact, I have found myself at times praying and asking God to help me deal with my pride, and then sort of thinking in the back of my mind, “but not in a way that will be painful or difficult.” Anyone who has been a Christian for very long knows the incredible power of prayer and how incredibly God can work, but you also know that God often answers prayers in ways that we would never imagine. Sometimes God answers our prayers in very encouraging and comforting ways but then there are those times when we would like him to do that but he instead knows that we need something quite different. We need a struggle and a trial to go through to shape and sharpen us. It’s good to remember the old saying, “be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.”
As Paul brings this chapter to a close he offers up a prayer that he wishes for the Roman church to join him in as he petitions God. In fact, Paul offers up three prayers in this short section. On the surface, none of these prayers seem particularly noteworthy or unique, but a closer look at how God answered those prayers in Paul’s life offers up some fascinating food for thought. Paul may or may not have already had certain expectations in his mind when he wrote these prayers down, but there is little doubt that he had no clue what God was about to do in his life and what he was going to teach him as these prayers were answered one by one.
Paul certainly had some specific prayers in his heart but he knows that part of the meaning of being members of God’s one, true covenant family is that we should not have to face things alone. Paul asked his brothers and sisters in Christ, even though he likely had never personally met most of them, to share his burden in prayer with him. He urges them as a result of their status in the life of Christ and the transforming love of the Spirit that is at work in them to join him in his struggle by praying for him. The word that Paul uses for “struggle” was actually a word used for fighting or wrestling and may indicate that level to which Paul was fervently wrestling in prayer in these areas. Paul doesn’t just ask them to pray for him, though, he asks them to struggle with him in prayer so that as they pray, they will pray as mightily as if they were the ones facing the same difficulties that Paul was. This is the type of intercessory prayer that we are called to as God’s people. It is so easy to flippantly offer up a quick prayer for someone else, but Paul desires the type of prayer where they were struggling in prayer for him with the same gusto and intensity as if they were praying for themselves.
Paul’s second prayer was that when he did arrive in Jerusalem, the collection that he had taken up from the Gentile believers would be well received by the disciples in Jerusalem. We’ll consider this one first because it was answered first. Perhaps Paul was worried that the Jewish Christians would not want to accept the contribution for fear that it would make them look bad in the eyes of their fellow Jews or that for some other reason they would reject the collection. Yet, Paul’s reception showed that God had answered this prayer soundly. His reception from the believers was a warm one and the implication is that they also accepted the collection with great gratitude (Acts 21:17). One prayer down, one prayer answered; so far so good.
Paul’s first prayer was that he would be kept safe from unbelieving Jews in Judea as he returned to Jerusalem. It seems that the zealous Jews in and around Jerusalem were violently opposed to one of their own who had converted and was preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and declaring that Jew and Gentile alike could be part of God’s family without following the law. So, do we have any idea how that answer to prayer turned out? We actually do. As Paul arrived in Jerusalem his fears of potential problems were proven to be reasonable. A large number of people stirred up even larger crowds against Paul. They seized him and began to beat him. The only thing that stopped the crowd was an outfit of Roman soldiers who came and arrested Paul, put him in chains and took him into custody (Acts 21:27-36). While in their charge, it came to light that at least forty Jews had taken a vow to kill Paul. The Romans centurion received a tip of this plot from Paul’s nephew and he immediately took action to protect his prisoner. The centurion arranged for a compliment of 470 soldiers in all to protect Paul on his was to Caesarea where he would be brought before Governor Felix (Acts 23:12-35). Paul’s prayer that he be kept safe from the unbelievers was truly answered in spectacular fashion. Imagine being Paul as you were riding on a horse surrounded by nearly five hundred Roman soldiers. It was not the ideal situation to be under arrest and imprisoned for two years but what an awe-inspiring way to see God answer one of the prayers that Paul and his fellow Christians had been struggling over.
Paul’s final prayer seems to be most innocuous of the bunch. His desire is that once he has completed his trek to Jerusalem, God’s will would work itself out so that Paul could come to Rome with joy and be refreshed as he came together with them. Paul was perhaps hoping and praying that his trip to Jerusalem would be quick, safe, and enjoyable. He prayed that he would be well-received and kept safe so that he could quickly come to see the Christians in Rome. But Paul also prayed that he would come to them in joy. God would answer that prayer in a way that Paul could never have foreseen. As we have seen, God kept Paul safe but only after riots, a beating, being arrested by the Romans, several trials, two years of imprisonment, a dangerous sea voyage of storms and near starvation that eventually saw a violent shipwreck and Paul almost being killed with the other prisoners to make sure that they didn’t escape. Paul made it with the others on the ship to the Island of Malta, where just when things seemed to be looking up. Paul was bit by a poisonous snake. Could it get any more challenging? Yet, through it all, God kept Paul safe and alive.
After three months on the Island, Paul finally made his way to Rome where we find that “The believers there had heard that we were coming, and they traveled as far as the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns to meet us. At the sight of these people Paul thanked God and was encouraged” (Acts 28:15). And there you have it. Paul prayed that he would be well received in Jerusalem, be kept safe from the unbelievers and arrive in Rome with joy. Paul must have been greatly encouraged at seeing his prayer to be well received answered. After a harrowing riot and arrest, he must have been equally encouraged by the way that God used the might of the Roman army to answer his prayer to be kept safe from the unbelievers. But what was with the two years of trials, struggles, and hardships just to get to Rome? We must understand that this is how God often works. He works for our benefit not our comfort or general enjoyment. Over two years of hardship and struggle. What could possibly be the purpose of that? But take a minute to think about it. How full of joy do you think Paul was when he finally set foot in Rome and saw the believers that had traveled from all around the area of Rome to greet him? How thankful and encouraged was Paul? This was, I’m sure no ordinary thankfulness, encouragement, and joy. This was a hard fought joy that at had come through trusting God despite incredible hardships and a journey that must have tested his faith time and again. Paul had likely never felt such joy and refreshment in arriving in a city in his life. He arrived with joy alright and had learned even more perseverance and faith along the way.
Surely Paul was a living, breathing example of James 1:2-5: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” Paul had asked God to experience joy when he arrived in Rome and God had give him a generous amount of trials along the way so that he could experience just that. Paul had experienced trials that tested his faith, no doubt, but that had produced perseverance which had made Paul even more spiritually mature and complete in the life of Christ. Trials and struggles are not pointless in the Christian life. God uses everyone of them to mature us and transform us, knowing that what we are going through will be for our good in the long run. Our job is to have faith during those tough times that God is working things for our benefit and developing in us for the kind of tried and tested faith that we will need to complete our journey in Christ.
Devotional Thought
Perhaps when Paul uttered the prayer to not just come to Rome but to come with joy it was one of those moments when his stomach dropped a little because he knew he might be humbled as God answered that prayer. What “scary” prayer do you need to pray today? Is it to have more humility, to learn patience, to come somewhere in joy,? What prayer do you need to say today?
Dig Deeper
Have you ever found yourself in a state of humble brokenness before God? You know those mornings when you realize just how imperfect you are and and how much you are still in need of the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. So you turn to God in earnest prayer and ask for him to change you. I have had days like that. “Please Lord, help me to grow in my humility today.” Or “Please Lord, allow me to become more patient today.” Then you realize the moment that prayer leaves your lips what you might have just done. In fact perhaps you’ve done that a time or two already so that now you might even hesitate to say a prayer like that because you know the minute you utter such a prayer, that chances are pretty good that God is going to answer. And you also realize that the way to become more humble is generally to be humbled. The way to become more patient is to have to endure and persevere through trying times. In short, the way to growth is often not a pleasant prospect. We would like the growth without the accompanying pain. In fact, I have found myself at times praying and asking God to help me deal with my pride, and then sort of thinking in the back of my mind, “but not in a way that will be painful or difficult.” Anyone who has been a Christian for very long knows the incredible power of prayer and how incredibly God can work, but you also know that God often answers prayers in ways that we would never imagine. Sometimes God answers our prayers in very encouraging and comforting ways but then there are those times when we would like him to do that but he instead knows that we need something quite different. We need a struggle and a trial to go through to shape and sharpen us. It’s good to remember the old saying, “be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.”
As Paul brings this chapter to a close he offers up a prayer that he wishes for the Roman church to join him in as he petitions God. In fact, Paul offers up three prayers in this short section. On the surface, none of these prayers seem particularly noteworthy or unique, but a closer look at how God answered those prayers in Paul’s life offers up some fascinating food for thought. Paul may or may not have already had certain expectations in his mind when he wrote these prayers down, but there is little doubt that he had no clue what God was about to do in his life and what he was going to teach him as these prayers were answered one by one.
Paul certainly had some specific prayers in his heart but he knows that part of the meaning of being members of God’s one, true covenant family is that we should not have to face things alone. Paul asked his brothers and sisters in Christ, even though he likely had never personally met most of them, to share his burden in prayer with him. He urges them as a result of their status in the life of Christ and the transforming love of the Spirit that is at work in them to join him in his struggle by praying for him. The word that Paul uses for “struggle” was actually a word used for fighting or wrestling and may indicate that level to which Paul was fervently wrestling in prayer in these areas. Paul doesn’t just ask them to pray for him, though, he asks them to struggle with him in prayer so that as they pray, they will pray as mightily as if they were the ones facing the same difficulties that Paul was. This is the type of intercessory prayer that we are called to as God’s people. It is so easy to flippantly offer up a quick prayer for someone else, but Paul desires the type of prayer where they were struggling in prayer for him with the same gusto and intensity as if they were praying for themselves.
Paul’s second prayer was that when he did arrive in Jerusalem, the collection that he had taken up from the Gentile believers would be well received by the disciples in Jerusalem. We’ll consider this one first because it was answered first. Perhaps Paul was worried that the Jewish Christians would not want to accept the contribution for fear that it would make them look bad in the eyes of their fellow Jews or that for some other reason they would reject the collection. Yet, Paul’s reception showed that God had answered this prayer soundly. His reception from the believers was a warm one and the implication is that they also accepted the collection with great gratitude (Acts 21:17). One prayer down, one prayer answered; so far so good.
Paul’s first prayer was that he would be kept safe from unbelieving Jews in Judea as he returned to Jerusalem. It seems that the zealous Jews in and around Jerusalem were violently opposed to one of their own who had converted and was preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and declaring that Jew and Gentile alike could be part of God’s family without following the law. So, do we have any idea how that answer to prayer turned out? We actually do. As Paul arrived in Jerusalem his fears of potential problems were proven to be reasonable. A large number of people stirred up even larger crowds against Paul. They seized him and began to beat him. The only thing that stopped the crowd was an outfit of Roman soldiers who came and arrested Paul, put him in chains and took him into custody (Acts 21:27-36). While in their charge, it came to light that at least forty Jews had taken a vow to kill Paul. The Romans centurion received a tip of this plot from Paul’s nephew and he immediately took action to protect his prisoner. The centurion arranged for a compliment of 470 soldiers in all to protect Paul on his was to Caesarea where he would be brought before Governor Felix (Acts 23:12-35). Paul’s prayer that he be kept safe from the unbelievers was truly answered in spectacular fashion. Imagine being Paul as you were riding on a horse surrounded by nearly five hundred Roman soldiers. It was not the ideal situation to be under arrest and imprisoned for two years but what an awe-inspiring way to see God answer one of the prayers that Paul and his fellow Christians had been struggling over.
Paul’s final prayer seems to be most innocuous of the bunch. His desire is that once he has completed his trek to Jerusalem, God’s will would work itself out so that Paul could come to Rome with joy and be refreshed as he came together with them. Paul was perhaps hoping and praying that his trip to Jerusalem would be quick, safe, and enjoyable. He prayed that he would be well-received and kept safe so that he could quickly come to see the Christians in Rome. But Paul also prayed that he would come to them in joy. God would answer that prayer in a way that Paul could never have foreseen. As we have seen, God kept Paul safe but only after riots, a beating, being arrested by the Romans, several trials, two years of imprisonment, a dangerous sea voyage of storms and near starvation that eventually saw a violent shipwreck and Paul almost being killed with the other prisoners to make sure that they didn’t escape. Paul made it with the others on the ship to the Island of Malta, where just when things seemed to be looking up. Paul was bit by a poisonous snake. Could it get any more challenging? Yet, through it all, God kept Paul safe and alive.
After three months on the Island, Paul finally made his way to Rome where we find that “The believers there had heard that we were coming, and they traveled as far as the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns to meet us. At the sight of these people Paul thanked God and was encouraged” (Acts 28:15). And there you have it. Paul prayed that he would be well received in Jerusalem, be kept safe from the unbelievers and arrive in Rome with joy. Paul must have been greatly encouraged at seeing his prayer to be well received answered. After a harrowing riot and arrest, he must have been equally encouraged by the way that God used the might of the Roman army to answer his prayer to be kept safe from the unbelievers. But what was with the two years of trials, struggles, and hardships just to get to Rome? We must understand that this is how God often works. He works for our benefit not our comfort or general enjoyment. Over two years of hardship and struggle. What could possibly be the purpose of that? But take a minute to think about it. How full of joy do you think Paul was when he finally set foot in Rome and saw the believers that had traveled from all around the area of Rome to greet him? How thankful and encouraged was Paul? This was, I’m sure no ordinary thankfulness, encouragement, and joy. This was a hard fought joy that at had come through trusting God despite incredible hardships and a journey that must have tested his faith time and again. Paul had likely never felt such joy and refreshment in arriving in a city in his life. He arrived with joy alright and had learned even more perseverance and faith along the way.
Surely Paul was a living, breathing example of James 1:2-5: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” Paul had asked God to experience joy when he arrived in Rome and God had give him a generous amount of trials along the way so that he could experience just that. Paul had experienced trials that tested his faith, no doubt, but that had produced perseverance which had made Paul even more spiritually mature and complete in the life of Christ. Trials and struggles are not pointless in the Christian life. God uses everyone of them to mature us and transform us, knowing that what we are going through will be for our good in the long run. Our job is to have faith during those tough times that God is working things for our benefit and developing in us for the kind of tried and tested faith that we will need to complete our journey in Christ.
Devotional Thought
Perhaps when Paul uttered the prayer to not just come to Rome but to come with joy it was one of those moments when his stomach dropped a little because he knew he might be humbled as God answered that prayer. What “scary” prayer do you need to pray today? Is it to have more humility, to learn patience, to come somewhere in joy,? What prayer do you need to say today?
Monday, December 14, 2009
Romans 15:22-29
22 This is why I have often been hindered from coming to you.
Paul's Plan to Visit Rome
23 But now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions, and since I have been longing for many years to visit you, 24 I plan to do so when I go to Spain. I hope to see you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there, after I have enjoyed your company for a while. 25 Now, however, I am on my way to Jerusalem in the service of the Lord's people there. 26 For Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the Lord's people in Jerusalem. 27 They were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them. For if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews' spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings. 28 So after I have completed this task and have made sure that they have received this fruit, I will go to Spain and visit you on the way. 29 I know that when I come to you, I will come in the full measure of the blessing of Christ.
Dig Deeper
As I have had the opportunities to travel outside of the United States and meet many people that are not American, I have discovered just how little most non-Americans around the world actually care about American football. They don’t watch the game, they don’t understand the game, and they just don’t care. It’s sad and shocking, I know, but sadly it’s true. Yet, they have sports that are similar to football that are extremely popular such as soccer and rugby. Most of the world is just as passionate about soccer, and to a lesser degree rugby, as Americans are about college and professional football. The games are similar, true. But there are some major differences between American football and the games like soccer that the rest of the world loves. I was surprised recently to learn that the differences in these games are due to more than just that they happen to be different spots. In fact, there was an intentional effort to make American football an ideologically different sport from existing games like soccer and rugby. Football was actually created to reflect American values at the time that it was invented. Games like soccer and rugby have a decidedly back-and-forth flow to them with no real hard and fast line of scrimmage.
Football is different. There is a very distinct line of scrimmage that cannot be crossed before a play. Once the play has started, football is all about conquering territory, moving your line of scrimmage further into your opponents territory and then holding that ground. Football is really, more than anything else, a territory war. That certainly reflected an ideology that was well accepted in the world at the time that the game of football was invented, and certainly characterized the American concept of manifest destiny. But the intentional differences go beyond that. The man considered to be the father of American football, Walter Camp, also wanted a position that reflected the unique American affinity for having a leader that distinguished themselves from everyone else. Thus, the position of quarterback was developed. He is the captain of the offense that leads this conquest for territory. Each play is an attempt to create a new base of operations in enemy territory to serve as your attacking point for the next play.
So what does all this history of sports have to do with the book of Romans? Paul certainly had genuine love for the Christians in Rome and he wanted to strengthen them in their own right for the glory of God. But Paul had his eye on the future as well. Early in his ministry career, it appears that Paul had used the church in Antioch as his base of operations, so to speak, for his apostolic ministry, as he spread the gospel to new territories. Whenever making a move into enemy territory, it is vital to have a base of operations from which to work. Paul had his heart set on moving the gospel into more and more areas and, as he will make clear in this passage, he wanted to move into Spain. To do so, though, he needed to establish Rome as a base of operations for such an opportunity. Paul was eager to avoid the same sorts of problems, tensions, and misunderstandings between Jews and Gentiles, between the weak and the strong, that had plagued the church in Antioch. The church in Antioch had worked though many of their problems but Paul likely knew how difficult it could be to plant new churches with that constant problem looming in the home church. Paul wanted to gain new territory for the kingdom of God and use it to serve as a base of operations for future inroads into enemy territory. He wanted to lead the ministry of reconciliation throughout the world like a quarterback marching his team down the field.
Up to this point, because he has been busy fulfilling his vocation of spreading the gospel from Jerusalem to Illyricum, Paul had been hindered in his desire to come to them. This is a sometimes frustrating truth that those who sincerely want to work towards the spreading of the gospel must face. You just cannot do it all at once. We must never be so zealous to be about the mission that we stop listening to God and follow his timing. But now, finally, Paul hopes that he will be able to come to them. Yet, he is still careful to not give the wrong impression. The occasion for his visit is not so that he can overhaul the Roman church or simply build on someone else’s foundation. That is not what he has been sent by God to do. Paul makes it clear that his hope is to come to them and build relationships with them and to prepare for his journey into Spain.
Historians still argue to what degree Rome had colonized Spain by Paul’s day, but it is clear that Paul’s desire was to spread the gospel into that area. To do so, he knew that he needed to have Rome behind him as a supporting church and a base of operation from which to launch his mission into Spain. Paul’s mission was to preach the gospel in areas that had never heard it before, but he knew that he needed a base, a pillar church so to speak, to support that. But before he could do that, he needed a church that truly understood what it meant to live out the fact that all people, Jew and Gentile, had been justified, or declared to be in the right as members of God’s covenant family, based on faith in the life of Christ alone. Rome needed to begin to realize the kind of unity that was truly available to a mature Messiah-shaped family.
Interestingly, it does not appear that Paul ever made it to Spain. He did come to Rome but there is nothing in history to indicate that Paul lived to realize his dream of spreading the gospel into the region of Spain. This raises a question that we need to consider. Why would God apparently give Paul such a dream (surely Paul felt called by God to go to Spain and to set up many aspects of his ministry during his last years in order to get there) that he never realized? The answer to this question is important. I think we need to realize that God does call us to do things and dream of things and even put a great deal of work towards those things, knowing full well that we will not be the one to fully realize that dream. It might just be that all God wants us to do is to take those initial steps. It will be someone else’s job to take the next steps. This keeps us from thinking too highly of ourselves; It keeps others from relying too much on one person; and it causes us to humbly work together and remember that these are ultimately God’s dreams not ours. Paul apparently did not make it to Spain to declare the gospel but someone else did quite soon thereafter and it’s highly probable that this was a result of the early steps that Paul took to open the door to Spain. Perhaps Paul didn’t see the realization of his dream but God did and that’s what really matters.
Before he can get to that, however, Paul wants to finish up the massive collection that he had been working at taking up around the Gentile churches to help the brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. It may have been a combination of famine, persecution, and even their initial zeal to pool their resources, but the Jerusalem church was facing some severe economic problems. Paul deeply desired for the Gentile churches to step up, even though many of them struggled with poverty to lesser degrees themselves, and to share their resources with the disciples in Jerusalem. This was more demanding than we might realize at first blush. It was from Jerusalem that most of the early opposition to the Gentile churches came. It was not the entire church that was to blame, but certainly Christians that were part of the Jerusalem church were the ones that had attempted to convince the Gentile Christians that they were justified by following the law of Moses rather than being full covenant family members solely based on being in Christ. How easy would it have been for Paul to focus on his mission to spread the gospel into new Gentile areas, to tolerate the Jews that were part of those churches, and to simply write off the church in Jerusalem?
If he were conforming to the pattern of the world, that might have absolutely been the easier action. Think of how much simpler it would have made things to have a Jewish Christian church and a Gentile Christian church. That way they could each follow their own customs, cultural practices and preferences, and live out the reality of the gospel in their own way. It would have been easier, but it would have ceased to be communities built around the genuine gospel. As Paul has worked out throughout the balance of this letter, the true effect of the gospel is that it creates the one, true family in Christ. There should be no such divisions in God’s covenant family. Thus, Paul’s collection for the brothers and sisters in Jerusalem are a gritty and real-life example of working out the theology of being part of God’s family in Christ. It was absolutely vital that Jews and Gentiles that had entered into Christ realize that they were really part of the same family based only on their commonality of being in Christ. That meant that they live like family even if the very people they were now being called on to help had not quite treated them according to the same reality. Paul was calling the Gentile churches to truly live out their belief that they had been justified by faith. They were to act like God’s family even when, and perhaps especially when, the very people they were helping had not acted like family. This is what self-sacrificial love looks like in the real world. Isn’t it high time that we all as individual Christians and, more importantly, as Christian communities, truly begin to wrestle with these truths and firmly embrace living them out in our own lives and churches?
Devotional Thought
Are you as deeply committed to being a part of God’s family as we are called to be? Are you committed to God’s covenant family and his church because of Christ or, in reality, does your commitment really rely more on what the people in your church do or don’t do? If other people could ever do something to make you walk away from God’s covenant family, then is your faith in them or in God? This is a serious question that demands that we take some time to seriously consider it.
Paul's Plan to Visit Rome
23 But now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions, and since I have been longing for many years to visit you, 24 I plan to do so when I go to Spain. I hope to see you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there, after I have enjoyed your company for a while. 25 Now, however, I am on my way to Jerusalem in the service of the Lord's people there. 26 For Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the Lord's people in Jerusalem. 27 They were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them. For if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews' spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings. 28 So after I have completed this task and have made sure that they have received this fruit, I will go to Spain and visit you on the way. 29 I know that when I come to you, I will come in the full measure of the blessing of Christ.
Dig Deeper
As I have had the opportunities to travel outside of the United States and meet many people that are not American, I have discovered just how little most non-Americans around the world actually care about American football. They don’t watch the game, they don’t understand the game, and they just don’t care. It’s sad and shocking, I know, but sadly it’s true. Yet, they have sports that are similar to football that are extremely popular such as soccer and rugby. Most of the world is just as passionate about soccer, and to a lesser degree rugby, as Americans are about college and professional football. The games are similar, true. But there are some major differences between American football and the games like soccer that the rest of the world loves. I was surprised recently to learn that the differences in these games are due to more than just that they happen to be different spots. In fact, there was an intentional effort to make American football an ideologically different sport from existing games like soccer and rugby. Football was actually created to reflect American values at the time that it was invented. Games like soccer and rugby have a decidedly back-and-forth flow to them with no real hard and fast line of scrimmage.
Football is different. There is a very distinct line of scrimmage that cannot be crossed before a play. Once the play has started, football is all about conquering territory, moving your line of scrimmage further into your opponents territory and then holding that ground. Football is really, more than anything else, a territory war. That certainly reflected an ideology that was well accepted in the world at the time that the game of football was invented, and certainly characterized the American concept of manifest destiny. But the intentional differences go beyond that. The man considered to be the father of American football, Walter Camp, also wanted a position that reflected the unique American affinity for having a leader that distinguished themselves from everyone else. Thus, the position of quarterback was developed. He is the captain of the offense that leads this conquest for territory. Each play is an attempt to create a new base of operations in enemy territory to serve as your attacking point for the next play.
So what does all this history of sports have to do with the book of Romans? Paul certainly had genuine love for the Christians in Rome and he wanted to strengthen them in their own right for the glory of God. But Paul had his eye on the future as well. Early in his ministry career, it appears that Paul had used the church in Antioch as his base of operations, so to speak, for his apostolic ministry, as he spread the gospel to new territories. Whenever making a move into enemy territory, it is vital to have a base of operations from which to work. Paul had his heart set on moving the gospel into more and more areas and, as he will make clear in this passage, he wanted to move into Spain. To do so, though, he needed to establish Rome as a base of operations for such an opportunity. Paul was eager to avoid the same sorts of problems, tensions, and misunderstandings between Jews and Gentiles, between the weak and the strong, that had plagued the church in Antioch. The church in Antioch had worked though many of their problems but Paul likely knew how difficult it could be to plant new churches with that constant problem looming in the home church. Paul wanted to gain new territory for the kingdom of God and use it to serve as a base of operations for future inroads into enemy territory. He wanted to lead the ministry of reconciliation throughout the world like a quarterback marching his team down the field.
Up to this point, because he has been busy fulfilling his vocation of spreading the gospel from Jerusalem to Illyricum, Paul had been hindered in his desire to come to them. This is a sometimes frustrating truth that those who sincerely want to work towards the spreading of the gospel must face. You just cannot do it all at once. We must never be so zealous to be about the mission that we stop listening to God and follow his timing. But now, finally, Paul hopes that he will be able to come to them. Yet, he is still careful to not give the wrong impression. The occasion for his visit is not so that he can overhaul the Roman church or simply build on someone else’s foundation. That is not what he has been sent by God to do. Paul makes it clear that his hope is to come to them and build relationships with them and to prepare for his journey into Spain.
Historians still argue to what degree Rome had colonized Spain by Paul’s day, but it is clear that Paul’s desire was to spread the gospel into that area. To do so, he knew that he needed to have Rome behind him as a supporting church and a base of operation from which to launch his mission into Spain. Paul’s mission was to preach the gospel in areas that had never heard it before, but he knew that he needed a base, a pillar church so to speak, to support that. But before he could do that, he needed a church that truly understood what it meant to live out the fact that all people, Jew and Gentile, had been justified, or declared to be in the right as members of God’s covenant family, based on faith in the life of Christ alone. Rome needed to begin to realize the kind of unity that was truly available to a mature Messiah-shaped family.
Interestingly, it does not appear that Paul ever made it to Spain. He did come to Rome but there is nothing in history to indicate that Paul lived to realize his dream of spreading the gospel into the region of Spain. This raises a question that we need to consider. Why would God apparently give Paul such a dream (surely Paul felt called by God to go to Spain and to set up many aspects of his ministry during his last years in order to get there) that he never realized? The answer to this question is important. I think we need to realize that God does call us to do things and dream of things and even put a great deal of work towards those things, knowing full well that we will not be the one to fully realize that dream. It might just be that all God wants us to do is to take those initial steps. It will be someone else’s job to take the next steps. This keeps us from thinking too highly of ourselves; It keeps others from relying too much on one person; and it causes us to humbly work together and remember that these are ultimately God’s dreams not ours. Paul apparently did not make it to Spain to declare the gospel but someone else did quite soon thereafter and it’s highly probable that this was a result of the early steps that Paul took to open the door to Spain. Perhaps Paul didn’t see the realization of his dream but God did and that’s what really matters.
Before he can get to that, however, Paul wants to finish up the massive collection that he had been working at taking up around the Gentile churches to help the brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. It may have been a combination of famine, persecution, and even their initial zeal to pool their resources, but the Jerusalem church was facing some severe economic problems. Paul deeply desired for the Gentile churches to step up, even though many of them struggled with poverty to lesser degrees themselves, and to share their resources with the disciples in Jerusalem. This was more demanding than we might realize at first blush. It was from Jerusalem that most of the early opposition to the Gentile churches came. It was not the entire church that was to blame, but certainly Christians that were part of the Jerusalem church were the ones that had attempted to convince the Gentile Christians that they were justified by following the law of Moses rather than being full covenant family members solely based on being in Christ. How easy would it have been for Paul to focus on his mission to spread the gospel into new Gentile areas, to tolerate the Jews that were part of those churches, and to simply write off the church in Jerusalem?
If he were conforming to the pattern of the world, that might have absolutely been the easier action. Think of how much simpler it would have made things to have a Jewish Christian church and a Gentile Christian church. That way they could each follow their own customs, cultural practices and preferences, and live out the reality of the gospel in their own way. It would have been easier, but it would have ceased to be communities built around the genuine gospel. As Paul has worked out throughout the balance of this letter, the true effect of the gospel is that it creates the one, true family in Christ. There should be no such divisions in God’s covenant family. Thus, Paul’s collection for the brothers and sisters in Jerusalem are a gritty and real-life example of working out the theology of being part of God’s family in Christ. It was absolutely vital that Jews and Gentiles that had entered into Christ realize that they were really part of the same family based only on their commonality of being in Christ. That meant that they live like family even if the very people they were now being called on to help had not quite treated them according to the same reality. Paul was calling the Gentile churches to truly live out their belief that they had been justified by faith. They were to act like God’s family even when, and perhaps especially when, the very people they were helping had not acted like family. This is what self-sacrificial love looks like in the real world. Isn’t it high time that we all as individual Christians and, more importantly, as Christian communities, truly begin to wrestle with these truths and firmly embrace living them out in our own lives and churches?
Devotional Thought
Are you as deeply committed to being a part of God’s family as we are called to be? Are you committed to God’s covenant family and his church because of Christ or, in reality, does your commitment really rely more on what the people in your church do or don’t do? If other people could ever do something to make you walk away from God’s covenant family, then is your faith in them or in God? This is a serious question that demands that we take some time to seriously consider it.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Romans 15:14-21
Paul the Minister to the Gentiles
14 I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another. 15 Yet I have written you quite boldly on some points to remind you of them again, because of the grace God gave me 16 to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles. He gave me the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
17 Therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God. 18 I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done— 19 by the power of signs and wonders, through the power of the Spirit of God. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ. 20 It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else's foundation. 21 Rather, as it is written:
"Those who were not told about him will see,
and those who have not heard will understand." [g]
Dig Deeper
Almost every season while I was coaching high school basketball, we would have someone on the team that very few people expected would ever play basketball at that level. The reason was that I would annually go watch the football team at our school play. I wasn’t particularly interested in watching the football games but I was scouting. I wanted to find someone that was fast, aggressive, athletic, and just a little bit crazy. The reason for that was that our team played a unique style of defense and we needed someone each year that matched those qualities. We didn’t necessarily need that guy to be a basketball player just as long as he could play the game fairly well. But almost every year I would manage to find a football player like that who could play a little basketball but would not have considered themselves a basketball player by any stretch of the imagination. Believe it or not, that’s exactly the kind of guy I wanted. Each year we would take that guy and teach him to be what we called our “bulldog” defender. He didn’t have to do much on offense, we didn’t need him to. He had a very specific role and purpose and that’s all he needed to know and to do. The basic job of this individual was to take the other team’s best player out of their offense each game. The system worked so well in fact that in my eight years of coaching, we had six conference defensive players of the year. I’m convinced that it worked so well, because these guys were so singularly focused on what their role was. They didn’t get distracted by trying to be something they weren’t. Sure, they would contribute in other areas when they could, but for the most part they stayed focused like a laser on playing defense on one player.
It really is a wonderful thing when you know exactly what you’re supposed to do in a given situation. Whether it be a sports team, a business, or even a church, I believe the most successful organizations are the ones where everyone knows their role and has a pretty good understanding of what they are supposed to be doing. In biblical terms, that concept is often referred to as one’s sending. I believe that each Christian has a particular sending that they need to seek, find, and do with passion and zeal. No one exemplifies that truth more than the apostle Paul. Paul knew exactly what he had been sent by God to do. He wrote, “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God. . . Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to faith and obedience for his name's sake” (Rom. 1:1, 5). Paul knew that he had received the unique vocation of being a pioneering apostle to the Gentile world. He knew with a singular focus that his primary purpose as an apostle was to establish churches around the Gentile world that could serve to further the future advance of the gospel. It was not Paul’s role to stay very long at a church or to dig in and focus on the long-term project of shepherding a specific congregation. That was important work that others would be sent to do. Paul knew very well that he was sent to spread the gospel in a very particular way among the Gentiles and that’s precisely what he would do.
As Paul begins his closing remarks, in which he uses similar elements that we find in a majority of Paul’s letters, he takes a very careful tone with what he is saying. Paul knows well that the Roman church was in a unique situation for him in that he did not, evidently, play a role in establishing the church. We don’t actually know for certain who did plant the small church in Rome but we do know that later church tradition purported it to be Peter. If we take that to be a correct assertion then we can understand all the more why Paul is careful not to offend. So, just as he opened up the letter with an almost apologetic tone (Rom. 1:11-12), he now returns to that.
He wanted to make it clear that he didn’t think any less of them than any other group of Christians. Paul firmly believed that they were full of goodness, and were quite intelligent Christians that were knowledgeable and quite capable of instructing one another. He doesn’t want to imply that they were inept or didn’t know any of the things that he has laid out in this letter, although unless they were among the most brilliant group of theologians that has ever lived, we can be certain that they had learned quite a few things from Paul’s letter. But Paul wanted to be clear that he is not assuming anything about them. He will give them the benefit of the doubt and assert that he was simply reminding them of the truth that they already. Sure, he may have taken it to a much deeper level than they had ever thought through before, but the general concepts were probably not anything radically new.
But if Paul did not plant this church, why would he feel that he had the authority or that their was even a need for him to write and remind them of anything? It was because Paul knew what he was sent to do. He was more than willing to walk into a potentially uncomfortable situation, albeit very carefully, because he knew that even though he had not planted this church, it was full of Gentiles and that was definitely part of his mission. He does not hesitate to write boldly to this church that is largely Gentile because he was called to be a “minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles.” In fact he pictures himself as being a priest whose job it is to lay an acceptable sacrifice on the altar. In this case, it is the living sacrifice of the Gentiles themselves (Rom. 12:1). Paul doesn’t fancy himself to be an actual priest of some sort, rather he knows that the Old Testament priesthood and sacrificial system have been replaced by obedient Christians who have willingly died to themselves. Nor does Paul only care about the salvation of the Gentiles with no concern for the Jews. A quick reading of chapters 9-11 will quickly dispel that notion. It’s not that Paul has no concern for the salvation or spiritual well-being of the Jewish people, it is that he knows very well what his specific service to God is and it is to that that he will stick.
Paul’s desire was to focus on the specific task that God had given him to lead “the Gentiles to obey God.” That is where he would spend his energy and that is why he has written this letter. Rome was a church that consisted of both Jews and Gentiles but the church was firmly in a Gentile area and so Paul felt that it was well within the realm of his ministry to take an interest in this church. Not only that, but as we will see in the remainder of this chapter, Paul had specific plans for this church that were an important part of his ongoing mission to the Gentiles.
Yet Paul knew well that it was not by his power or prowess that his mission was being accomplished. It was by the power of the signs and wonders (typical biblical language for miracles) that the Spirit had made manifest through the first-century church. But what did Paul mean when he said that “from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ”? Paul’s point in mentioning Jerusalem and Illyricum likely have to do with him demonstrating the the limits of his ministry. It had started, however briefly, in Jerusalem and had stretched all the way to Illyricum, a region to the northwest of Macedonia (modern-day Albania, Yugoslavia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina). By declaring to have proclaimed the gospel of Christ fully, Paul was not trying to claim that the gospel had been preached to every single person in that area, but probably more likely is that he meant that the regions in which he had been so far were complete, in that pillar churches had been planted so that they could serve as staging points for the further infiltration of the gospel throughout those regions. To paraphrase in our vernacular today then, Paul was saying something like, “I have planted the foundational churches all the way from here to Timbuktu.”
It was Paul’s specific task to proclaim the gospel to the places where Christ “was not known,” or quite literally “where Christ has not been named.” In other words, it was not his calling to go around and strengthen churches that had already taken root; it was his task to proclaim the gospel in places where there was no church and to establish one there. It was his mission to go into the Gentile world and establish churches strategically in new territories so that future generations would be in position to continue to carry the gospel to every creature under heaven. As we have already seen, Paul was not against “building on someone else’s foundation,” that was a much-needed task. That simply was not what he was doing. He was not writing Rome in order to play the role of shepherd or to try to take authority over the church. Paul had other things in mind; things that were in keeping with his mission and he was writing to Rome to build them up because he is already looking past Rome to other places in the world that desperately needed to hear the gospel.
As he usually does, Paul finishes his point with a quotation from the Old Testament. This time it is from Isaiah 52:15. This quote is appropriate because it speaks to his desire to not build on another’s foundation but to proclaim the gospel to those had not yet been told and had not yet heard about the Servant of the Lord. It is of no coincidence that Paul takes this quotation from a passage of Scripture that describes the faithful Servant of the Lord who will cleanse the nations that had not previously heard of him. This was Paul’s mission, then. He knew what it was. He stayed focused on it. And everything he did played an important part of what he was sent to do. This stands as a stark reminder for churches and for individual Christians to seek out and be as clear about what God has called us to do as Paul was. Whether it’s to be a teacher or an incredibly hospitable servant, find out what you were sent to do and do it with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Devotional Thought
Do you know what you were sent to do within the realm of your Christian calling? If you do, then do it with all your might. If you don’t spend focused time praying that God will reveal it to you.
14 I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another. 15 Yet I have written you quite boldly on some points to remind you of them again, because of the grace God gave me 16 to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles. He gave me the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
17 Therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God. 18 I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done— 19 by the power of signs and wonders, through the power of the Spirit of God. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ. 20 It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else's foundation. 21 Rather, as it is written:
"Those who were not told about him will see,
and those who have not heard will understand." [g]
Dig Deeper
Almost every season while I was coaching high school basketball, we would have someone on the team that very few people expected would ever play basketball at that level. The reason was that I would annually go watch the football team at our school play. I wasn’t particularly interested in watching the football games but I was scouting. I wanted to find someone that was fast, aggressive, athletic, and just a little bit crazy. The reason for that was that our team played a unique style of defense and we needed someone each year that matched those qualities. We didn’t necessarily need that guy to be a basketball player just as long as he could play the game fairly well. But almost every year I would manage to find a football player like that who could play a little basketball but would not have considered themselves a basketball player by any stretch of the imagination. Believe it or not, that’s exactly the kind of guy I wanted. Each year we would take that guy and teach him to be what we called our “bulldog” defender. He didn’t have to do much on offense, we didn’t need him to. He had a very specific role and purpose and that’s all he needed to know and to do. The basic job of this individual was to take the other team’s best player out of their offense each game. The system worked so well in fact that in my eight years of coaching, we had six conference defensive players of the year. I’m convinced that it worked so well, because these guys were so singularly focused on what their role was. They didn’t get distracted by trying to be something they weren’t. Sure, they would contribute in other areas when they could, but for the most part they stayed focused like a laser on playing defense on one player.
It really is a wonderful thing when you know exactly what you’re supposed to do in a given situation. Whether it be a sports team, a business, or even a church, I believe the most successful organizations are the ones where everyone knows their role and has a pretty good understanding of what they are supposed to be doing. In biblical terms, that concept is often referred to as one’s sending. I believe that each Christian has a particular sending that they need to seek, find, and do with passion and zeal. No one exemplifies that truth more than the apostle Paul. Paul knew exactly what he had been sent by God to do. He wrote, “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God. . . Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to faith and obedience for his name's sake” (Rom. 1:1, 5). Paul knew that he had received the unique vocation of being a pioneering apostle to the Gentile world. He knew with a singular focus that his primary purpose as an apostle was to establish churches around the Gentile world that could serve to further the future advance of the gospel. It was not Paul’s role to stay very long at a church or to dig in and focus on the long-term project of shepherding a specific congregation. That was important work that others would be sent to do. Paul knew very well that he was sent to spread the gospel in a very particular way among the Gentiles and that’s precisely what he would do.
As Paul begins his closing remarks, in which he uses similar elements that we find in a majority of Paul’s letters, he takes a very careful tone with what he is saying. Paul knows well that the Roman church was in a unique situation for him in that he did not, evidently, play a role in establishing the church. We don’t actually know for certain who did plant the small church in Rome but we do know that later church tradition purported it to be Peter. If we take that to be a correct assertion then we can understand all the more why Paul is careful not to offend. So, just as he opened up the letter with an almost apologetic tone (Rom. 1:11-12), he now returns to that.
He wanted to make it clear that he didn’t think any less of them than any other group of Christians. Paul firmly believed that they were full of goodness, and were quite intelligent Christians that were knowledgeable and quite capable of instructing one another. He doesn’t want to imply that they were inept or didn’t know any of the things that he has laid out in this letter, although unless they were among the most brilliant group of theologians that has ever lived, we can be certain that they had learned quite a few things from Paul’s letter. But Paul wanted to be clear that he is not assuming anything about them. He will give them the benefit of the doubt and assert that he was simply reminding them of the truth that they already. Sure, he may have taken it to a much deeper level than they had ever thought through before, but the general concepts were probably not anything radically new.
But if Paul did not plant this church, why would he feel that he had the authority or that their was even a need for him to write and remind them of anything? It was because Paul knew what he was sent to do. He was more than willing to walk into a potentially uncomfortable situation, albeit very carefully, because he knew that even though he had not planted this church, it was full of Gentiles and that was definitely part of his mission. He does not hesitate to write boldly to this church that is largely Gentile because he was called to be a “minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles.” In fact he pictures himself as being a priest whose job it is to lay an acceptable sacrifice on the altar. In this case, it is the living sacrifice of the Gentiles themselves (Rom. 12:1). Paul doesn’t fancy himself to be an actual priest of some sort, rather he knows that the Old Testament priesthood and sacrificial system have been replaced by obedient Christians who have willingly died to themselves. Nor does Paul only care about the salvation of the Gentiles with no concern for the Jews. A quick reading of chapters 9-11 will quickly dispel that notion. It’s not that Paul has no concern for the salvation or spiritual well-being of the Jewish people, it is that he knows very well what his specific service to God is and it is to that that he will stick.
Paul’s desire was to focus on the specific task that God had given him to lead “the Gentiles to obey God.” That is where he would spend his energy and that is why he has written this letter. Rome was a church that consisted of both Jews and Gentiles but the church was firmly in a Gentile area and so Paul felt that it was well within the realm of his ministry to take an interest in this church. Not only that, but as we will see in the remainder of this chapter, Paul had specific plans for this church that were an important part of his ongoing mission to the Gentiles.
Yet Paul knew well that it was not by his power or prowess that his mission was being accomplished. It was by the power of the signs and wonders (typical biblical language for miracles) that the Spirit had made manifest through the first-century church. But what did Paul mean when he said that “from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ”? Paul’s point in mentioning Jerusalem and Illyricum likely have to do with him demonstrating the the limits of his ministry. It had started, however briefly, in Jerusalem and had stretched all the way to Illyricum, a region to the northwest of Macedonia (modern-day Albania, Yugoslavia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina). By declaring to have proclaimed the gospel of Christ fully, Paul was not trying to claim that the gospel had been preached to every single person in that area, but probably more likely is that he meant that the regions in which he had been so far were complete, in that pillar churches had been planted so that they could serve as staging points for the further infiltration of the gospel throughout those regions. To paraphrase in our vernacular today then, Paul was saying something like, “I have planted the foundational churches all the way from here to Timbuktu.”
It was Paul’s specific task to proclaim the gospel to the places where Christ “was not known,” or quite literally “where Christ has not been named.” In other words, it was not his calling to go around and strengthen churches that had already taken root; it was his task to proclaim the gospel in places where there was no church and to establish one there. It was his mission to go into the Gentile world and establish churches strategically in new territories so that future generations would be in position to continue to carry the gospel to every creature under heaven. As we have already seen, Paul was not against “building on someone else’s foundation,” that was a much-needed task. That simply was not what he was doing. He was not writing Rome in order to play the role of shepherd or to try to take authority over the church. Paul had other things in mind; things that were in keeping with his mission and he was writing to Rome to build them up because he is already looking past Rome to other places in the world that desperately needed to hear the gospel.
As he usually does, Paul finishes his point with a quotation from the Old Testament. This time it is from Isaiah 52:15. This quote is appropriate because it speaks to his desire to not build on another’s foundation but to proclaim the gospel to those had not yet been told and had not yet heard about the Servant of the Lord. It is of no coincidence that Paul takes this quotation from a passage of Scripture that describes the faithful Servant of the Lord who will cleanse the nations that had not previously heard of him. This was Paul’s mission, then. He knew what it was. He stayed focused on it. And everything he did played an important part of what he was sent to do. This stands as a stark reminder for churches and for individual Christians to seek out and be as clear about what God has called us to do as Paul was. Whether it’s to be a teacher or an incredibly hospitable servant, find out what you were sent to do and do it with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Devotional Thought
Do you know what you were sent to do within the realm of your Christian calling? If you do, then do it with all your might. If you don’t spend focused time praying that God will reveal it to you.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Romans 15:7-13
7 Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. 8 For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews [b] on behalf of God's truth, so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed 9 and, moreover, that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written:
"Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles;
I will sing the praises of your name." [c]
10 Again, it says,
"Rejoice, you Gentiles, with his people." [d]
11 And again,
"Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles;
let all the peoples extol him." [e]
12 And again, Isaiah says,
"The Root of Jesse will spring up,
one who will arise to rule over the nations;
in him the Gentiles will hope." [f]
13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Dig Deeper
I recently watched a movie that quite frankly confused me. It was confusing, fascinating, and entertaining all at the same time. It was one of those movies that had all of these different threads that alternately seemed quite independent from one another but then would be woven back together again at times. Perhaps you’ve seen a movie like that. You think you have things all figured out and then something else pops up. It seems like it’s completely out of left field but as things move along, you realize that there must be a reason for all of these little details and teasers. Then comes some final climatic scene and you realize that all of those little streams and details did in fact flow together. In fact as I was watching this particular movie, I realized that some seemingly basic introductory events at the very beginning of the movie were monumentally important to the plot. I had, by that time, all but forgotten that the movie had opened with a night time scene of someone jumping out of a window of a burning building while two police officers raced up to the scene and jumped out of the car. The movie had so quickly switched to a sunny scene of a young woman driving and singing to the radio in her car, that those opening flashes seemed a distant memory. In fact, I had to stop the movie and go back to watch the opening scene to realize just how pivotal it was. It had set the stage for everything that was happening, if I had only followed the clues more carefully and put everything together. Only in the end, when everything came back to that fire and that window did I realize just how connected every single detail in that movie had been. It was really incredibly clever.
The writers of that movie no doubt wanted to confuse and befuddle their watchers a bit only to bring everything to a “oh, now I get it” moment. Paul certainly did not set out to write his letter to the Romans in the same mysterious way but there are still many helpful comparisons to the previous analogy. Paul began his letter with a declaration of his gospel. He boldly stated that his gospel was the declaration that Jesus was “a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 1:3-4). This was his gospel of which he was not ashamed (1:16-17). So much has passed between that opening statement and our current passage that it’s easy to forget this statement, let alone see the significance of it throughout Paul’s letter. He so quickly moved on to different threads of thought and argument including the faithfulness of God, the identity of the one covenant family, God’s plan for the Jews and Gentiles, and how the people of God should live based on the reality of them being God’s true family. He has dealt with so many themes that sometimes seemed to be only loosely related that it can be difficult to see just how they all have been woven together. Surely if any book of the Bible is worth reading many times through (and they are), Romans is chief among them. But as we come to this passage, Paul brings us back to where he started. It’s not quite the end of the letter, but Paul is bringing the bulk of his arguments to an end before he moves on to his closing and personal greetings. As he brings us back to the beginning, we can finally look back upon all that Paul has written and have our own “oh, now I get it” moment. Everything Paul has said really did tie together on a very simple, common thread. It was all right there the whole time if we had simply put everything together (and just like a good mystery movie that demands that we go back and watch for a second time to catch all of the details we missed, so does the greatest of all Paul’s letters).
In a long letter full of twists and turns, Paul has answered all kinds of questions and concerns, not the least of those being has God been faithful to his covenant promises in redefining the people of God in the shape of the Messiah and how, then, those people should live out their new covenant status. But it would be easy by this point to forget in all this discussion of how the resurrection people should live practically in a world still ruled by death, what the motivating factor is. Why should Christians embrace one another, love one another, treat one another’s interests above their own, and in short, become family with one another? It is precisely because they are family, having been accepted into the Messiah’s family when they died to self and were baptized into his life (1 Cor. 12:13). Jesus humbled himself to taking on the flesh of a human being, and more specifically he was the faithful servant that Isaiah pointed in Isaiah 40-55. He was the humble servant who would represent the entire nation of Israel and take all suffering and sin onto himself. He did this “so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed.” Thus, Paul has returned to where he started. The gospel, said Paul in Romans 1, was the declaration that Jesus was a descendant of David, he was the Jewish Messiah in other words, and he was raised from the dead demonstrating him to be the son of God. God has acted to fulfill his promises that were always about all nations having the opportunity to be part of God’s family. This is the point that Paul has been making throughout his letter. Christ fulfilled the role as the Jewish Messiah and died on the cross so that God’s promises of one true covenant family who would have their sins dealt with might finally be fulfilled.
As is his normal style, however, Paul won’t just make statements like that without demonstrating that it’s larger truth had been pointed to in the Scriptures all along. To make his point he, once again, turns to Isaiah, Deuteronomy and the Psalms to demonstrate that God’s plan was always to bring Gentiles with his chosen people into equal fellowship and membership in his one family. The first quote in verse 9 comes from Psalm 18:49, where the Psalmist celebrates the great victory that God has given and declares that God’s name will be praised not only among the Jews but the Gentiles as well. All will know the greatness of God.
The second quote comes in verse 10 and is taken from Deuteronomy 32:43, where Moses after celebrating God’s victory and judgment over both Israel and the pagan nations alike, calls for the nations to rejoice and praise God right alongside God’s people. Moses promises that God will vindicate his people and exalt them over their enemies. The fact that he calls the nations to share in this rejoicing seems to indicate to Paul a hint of these nations joining faithful Jews under the umbrella of the family of God.
In verse 11 Paul returns to the Psalms. This time he quotes from Psalm 117, the shortest of Psalms, which declares “Praise the LORD, all you nations [Gentiles]; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever. Praise the LORD.” It is likely that this Psalm caught Paul’s attention as it urges the Gentiles to praise the Lord because of his love and faithfulness. It is this same love and faithfulness to the covenant, after all, that Paul has shown has opened the door to bring the Gentiles into the family of God. Surely his faithfulness that has been displayed in the death and resurrection of the Messiah are worthy of praise from all the Gentiles.
Paul’s final quote, in verse 12, comes from Isaiah 11:10, a passage which was written about the Messiah and the age to come. Isaiah declared that the root of Jesse will “spring up” to rule over the nations, Gentiles included. It is of no small importance that the word “amad” which is translated in the TNIV as “spring up” was one of the primary words that the early Christians used for resurrection. If this is the way that Paul took this prophecy, then he no doubt chose this passage from Isaiah because it holds precisely the same elements that he introduced in 1:3-4 as the heart of his gospel declaration. There Paul demonstrated that the Messiah, a descendant of David was powerfully declared to be God’s Son and his Messiah through the resurrection. This is exactly what Isaiah expressed. The Messiah has sprung up, or resurrected, in a way that no one expected and has proven himself to be the true ruler of the world. He is the rightful king of the nations who has been given all authority (Matt. 28:18).
Paul rounds off this section with a final prayer and expression of his own hope. Now that the Gentiles have set their hope on the Messiah and have joined God’s family, Paul prays that the God who is faithful to his covenant will fill them “with all joy and peace” as they learn to trust in him. Paul likely has in mind both the weak and the strong that he has just concluded addressing. His point being that the very different conclusions and convictions that they take away from believing in Christ should not detract in any way from the peace and joy that they should be experiencing as equal and joint members in the covenant family of God’s kingdom. As they are filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, only then will they overflow with hope and become the community of hope that they have been formed in the Messiah to be. It is through the power of the Spirit working in their lives that they will be truly able to accept one another and show the unity of the one family of God to which he has called us in the family of the Messiah.
Devotional Thought
Do you truly build your acceptance and commitment to other Christians, especially those in your local church, on the fact that Jesus is the resurrected Messiah and has called us into his family? Or do you tend to base your commitment on how they act and how much they correctly meet your needs? Spend some time thinking about what your commitment to God’s people is really based on.
"Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles;
I will sing the praises of your name." [c]
10 Again, it says,
"Rejoice, you Gentiles, with his people." [d]
11 And again,
"Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles;
let all the peoples extol him." [e]
12 And again, Isaiah says,
"The Root of Jesse will spring up,
one who will arise to rule over the nations;
in him the Gentiles will hope." [f]
13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Dig Deeper
I recently watched a movie that quite frankly confused me. It was confusing, fascinating, and entertaining all at the same time. It was one of those movies that had all of these different threads that alternately seemed quite independent from one another but then would be woven back together again at times. Perhaps you’ve seen a movie like that. You think you have things all figured out and then something else pops up. It seems like it’s completely out of left field but as things move along, you realize that there must be a reason for all of these little details and teasers. Then comes some final climatic scene and you realize that all of those little streams and details did in fact flow together. In fact as I was watching this particular movie, I realized that some seemingly basic introductory events at the very beginning of the movie were monumentally important to the plot. I had, by that time, all but forgotten that the movie had opened with a night time scene of someone jumping out of a window of a burning building while two police officers raced up to the scene and jumped out of the car. The movie had so quickly switched to a sunny scene of a young woman driving and singing to the radio in her car, that those opening flashes seemed a distant memory. In fact, I had to stop the movie and go back to watch the opening scene to realize just how pivotal it was. It had set the stage for everything that was happening, if I had only followed the clues more carefully and put everything together. Only in the end, when everything came back to that fire and that window did I realize just how connected every single detail in that movie had been. It was really incredibly clever.
The writers of that movie no doubt wanted to confuse and befuddle their watchers a bit only to bring everything to a “oh, now I get it” moment. Paul certainly did not set out to write his letter to the Romans in the same mysterious way but there are still many helpful comparisons to the previous analogy. Paul began his letter with a declaration of his gospel. He boldly stated that his gospel was the declaration that Jesus was “a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 1:3-4). This was his gospel of which he was not ashamed (1:16-17). So much has passed between that opening statement and our current passage that it’s easy to forget this statement, let alone see the significance of it throughout Paul’s letter. He so quickly moved on to different threads of thought and argument including the faithfulness of God, the identity of the one covenant family, God’s plan for the Jews and Gentiles, and how the people of God should live based on the reality of them being God’s true family. He has dealt with so many themes that sometimes seemed to be only loosely related that it can be difficult to see just how they all have been woven together. Surely if any book of the Bible is worth reading many times through (and they are), Romans is chief among them. But as we come to this passage, Paul brings us back to where he started. It’s not quite the end of the letter, but Paul is bringing the bulk of his arguments to an end before he moves on to his closing and personal greetings. As he brings us back to the beginning, we can finally look back upon all that Paul has written and have our own “oh, now I get it” moment. Everything Paul has said really did tie together on a very simple, common thread. It was all right there the whole time if we had simply put everything together (and just like a good mystery movie that demands that we go back and watch for a second time to catch all of the details we missed, so does the greatest of all Paul’s letters).
In a long letter full of twists and turns, Paul has answered all kinds of questions and concerns, not the least of those being has God been faithful to his covenant promises in redefining the people of God in the shape of the Messiah and how, then, those people should live out their new covenant status. But it would be easy by this point to forget in all this discussion of how the resurrection people should live practically in a world still ruled by death, what the motivating factor is. Why should Christians embrace one another, love one another, treat one another’s interests above their own, and in short, become family with one another? It is precisely because they are family, having been accepted into the Messiah’s family when they died to self and were baptized into his life (1 Cor. 12:13). Jesus humbled himself to taking on the flesh of a human being, and more specifically he was the faithful servant that Isaiah pointed in Isaiah 40-55. He was the humble servant who would represent the entire nation of Israel and take all suffering and sin onto himself. He did this “so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed.” Thus, Paul has returned to where he started. The gospel, said Paul in Romans 1, was the declaration that Jesus was a descendant of David, he was the Jewish Messiah in other words, and he was raised from the dead demonstrating him to be the son of God. God has acted to fulfill his promises that were always about all nations having the opportunity to be part of God’s family. This is the point that Paul has been making throughout his letter. Christ fulfilled the role as the Jewish Messiah and died on the cross so that God’s promises of one true covenant family who would have their sins dealt with might finally be fulfilled.
As is his normal style, however, Paul won’t just make statements like that without demonstrating that it’s larger truth had been pointed to in the Scriptures all along. To make his point he, once again, turns to Isaiah, Deuteronomy and the Psalms to demonstrate that God’s plan was always to bring Gentiles with his chosen people into equal fellowship and membership in his one family. The first quote in verse 9 comes from Psalm 18:49, where the Psalmist celebrates the great victory that God has given and declares that God’s name will be praised not only among the Jews but the Gentiles as well. All will know the greatness of God.
The second quote comes in verse 10 and is taken from Deuteronomy 32:43, where Moses after celebrating God’s victory and judgment over both Israel and the pagan nations alike, calls for the nations to rejoice and praise God right alongside God’s people. Moses promises that God will vindicate his people and exalt them over their enemies. The fact that he calls the nations to share in this rejoicing seems to indicate to Paul a hint of these nations joining faithful Jews under the umbrella of the family of God.
In verse 11 Paul returns to the Psalms. This time he quotes from Psalm 117, the shortest of Psalms, which declares “Praise the LORD, all you nations [Gentiles]; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever. Praise the LORD.” It is likely that this Psalm caught Paul’s attention as it urges the Gentiles to praise the Lord because of his love and faithfulness. It is this same love and faithfulness to the covenant, after all, that Paul has shown has opened the door to bring the Gentiles into the family of God. Surely his faithfulness that has been displayed in the death and resurrection of the Messiah are worthy of praise from all the Gentiles.
Paul’s final quote, in verse 12, comes from Isaiah 11:10, a passage which was written about the Messiah and the age to come. Isaiah declared that the root of Jesse will “spring up” to rule over the nations, Gentiles included. It is of no small importance that the word “amad” which is translated in the TNIV as “spring up” was one of the primary words that the early Christians used for resurrection. If this is the way that Paul took this prophecy, then he no doubt chose this passage from Isaiah because it holds precisely the same elements that he introduced in 1:3-4 as the heart of his gospel declaration. There Paul demonstrated that the Messiah, a descendant of David was powerfully declared to be God’s Son and his Messiah through the resurrection. This is exactly what Isaiah expressed. The Messiah has sprung up, or resurrected, in a way that no one expected and has proven himself to be the true ruler of the world. He is the rightful king of the nations who has been given all authority (Matt. 28:18).
Paul rounds off this section with a final prayer and expression of his own hope. Now that the Gentiles have set their hope on the Messiah and have joined God’s family, Paul prays that the God who is faithful to his covenant will fill them “with all joy and peace” as they learn to trust in him. Paul likely has in mind both the weak and the strong that he has just concluded addressing. His point being that the very different conclusions and convictions that they take away from believing in Christ should not detract in any way from the peace and joy that they should be experiencing as equal and joint members in the covenant family of God’s kingdom. As they are filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, only then will they overflow with hope and become the community of hope that they have been formed in the Messiah to be. It is through the power of the Spirit working in their lives that they will be truly able to accept one another and show the unity of the one family of God to which he has called us in the family of the Messiah.
Devotional Thought
Do you truly build your acceptance and commitment to other Christians, especially those in your local church, on the fact that Jesus is the resurrected Messiah and has called us into his family? Or do you tend to base your commitment on how they act and how much they correctly meet your needs? Spend some time thinking about what your commitment to God’s people is really based on.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Romans 15:1-6
1 We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. 2 We should all please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. 3 For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: "The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me." [a] 4 For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.
5 May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, 6 so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Dig Deeper
Marriage is one of the most wonderful things that God has given to human beings. Yet it can be easy for a marriage that began in love to spiral into in-fighting, disagreements, and disunity. The simple reason for that is because you have two people who usually think quite differently about things trying to work together as a union of one. That can sound simple but the actual reality of it can be quite difficult. A husband and wife can see differently on everything from how to discipline their children to how neatly the walk-in closet should be kept. When a young couple gets married, you suddenly have two people who have usually learned pretty well what they like, how they like things done, and how they want to do things, that are called to work together and be in close proximity constantly. I have seen many young couples who quickly fall into a routine of disagreeing with one another about virtually every issue which causes them to get into a rut of arguing and conflict that they just cannot seem to work their way out of. They see the issues that they are having in their marriage so passionately and so differently and it quickly becomes close to impossible for them to take a step back and view things from the other’s point of view. The question becomes, “how can people who think so differently actually come together and live as one flesh”? How can two people that find themselves thinking very differently on so many issues work past that and realistically work towards a common goal?
Paul is not dealing directly with the issue of marriage here, but there are some similarities. He is helping the church in Rome, and all subsequent churches that read this letter, figure out how to work together. There are, in fact, so many similarities that what Paul says to the church in Rome here can be quite helpful to a married couple who finds themselves in a position similar to the one described above. When individuals choose to respond to the gospel in belief and lay down their life in order to enter into the life of the Messiah and his body, which is the church, we find that we no longer belong to ourselves but to one another (Rom. 12:5). This, as Paul is well aware, can create some real difficulties when you have groups of people who are called to live in unity and harmony with one another but when they can have such different convictions and viewpoints in areas that seem and feel vitally important to one side or the other. How can they actually live and worship and carry on the gospel together? Is the only realistic solution for them to divide and worship apart from one another? For Paul that is absolutely not an option. In fact that sort of thinking would stand diametrically opposed to the one family that has been created by the gospel. Denominationalism may seem like a simple solution to difficult problems but it is not a solution that is in keeping with the heart of the gospel.
No, the answer is not to divide. Nor is it to just suck it up and pretend like there are not very real differences between Christians. In the previous chapter Paul has called for unity and self-sacrificing love for one another in the very midst of incredible and challenging diversity. True unity can only be had through diversity. If everyone thinks alike, then you have uniformity, which is convenient, but doesn’t really demonstrate the incredible power of the gospel to bring together groups of people who, if they were to conform to the patterns of the world, would simply not live together in unity. To have true unity, you must have a diverse group of people that have agreed to work through their differences and still come to be unified around the one thing that they do have in common. For believers, our faith in Jesus Christ is that commonality that we share. But simply saying that we all share faith n the life of Christ does not bring us unity. It is not just the faith in that life, as Paul is about to show us, but what we find when we turn to that life. When we look at the life that Jesus lived, we will find the answer to what can truly bring unity through immense diversity.
To really get where he is leading, though, we have to keep in mind that Paul has demanded that we no longer conform to the patterns of the world but that we are to be transformed by renewing our mind and the way we think about the world. Our world constantly talks about the importance of diversity and how it strengthens society. They are on the right track but the reality demonstrates that true unity through diversity has eluded the world like a greased pig. The more the United States speaks of strength through diversity, the more separated the country has become. I believe the reason for this is because, as we proclaim diversity, we encourage one another to assert their rights, their backgrounds, their customs, their identify, and their beliefs and to demand that all of those things be respected and never infringed upon. Thus, we create a hyper-diversity but one that actually tears down the society slowly because while we are encouraging more and more diversity, we are quickly eroding the very thing that might bring unity (not to mention the fact that true unity will never come outside of Christ, but we don’t even need to bring that into it to make the point). You simply cannot gain unity through diversity by encouraging everyone to assert their rights. So what is the thing that brings true unity? We’ll get to that in a moment.
The strong, those who have more deeply explored the depths of the life of Christ and have quite arguably come to a more fuller understanding of how that life works out in the real world, should use their strength not to look down on those who are weak. To do so would be to act in a self-pleasing way that might display more diversity but actually harm others. The controlling ethic for the Christian community is to put the interests of others ahead of our own and work for their good. Building up the faith of others is far more important than exercising your freedom and diversity.
But why do this? Because this is the example that Jesus set. It is, after all, his life to which we are all trying to attain and grasp and live as our own. Paul writes, “The insults of those who insult you have fallen me,” a quotation that comes from Psalm 69:9. Psalm 69 is a poem that describes the suffering of Israel’s representative, the Messiah. The role of the Messiah was not to please himself but to take the insults on to himself that people were hurling at the God of Israel. He endures “scorn for your sake, and shame covers my face” (Ps. 69:7). This is the Jesus we see pictured in Philippians 2:6-7 who though “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” Jesus did not go after his own kingly rights, but submitted himself to God’s saving plan. This is the Christ to which Christians look for their example.
But before we can consider the full implications of that, we have to consider that verse 5 says something shocking that seems to contradict everything Paul has said in chapter 14 about being diverse, bearing with one another, and allowing room for others who think differently. After all that, how can he now say that they should “have one mind and once voice.” Isn’t this exactly what Paul has not called them to do in chapter 14? This is where the example of Christ comes in. It is not realistic or even desirable that all Christians (or two married people for that matter) think alike on everything, so what does Paul mean? He means that they should be of one mind and one voice when it comes to the attitude of submission and self-sacrifice that Jesus had. Paul is urging them to have the same mutual submission that the Messiah demonstrated throughout his life. It is only through this kind of submission that true unity can be had. When a group of people that are truly diverse respect that diversity but recognize that this diversity does not demand that I assert my own rights and diversity but that I submit to the other person so that they have room to express their diversity, only then can true unity come about. It is only this sort of self-sacrifice amidst diversity that will bring true unity.
Paul’s complete point, then, is that the path that Jesus laid out for those who would enter into his life was submission and the willingness to renounce our rights for the benefit of others. This is the path that we are called to walk (cf. 1 Jn. 2:6). The fact is that in a Christian community we will live alongside people who think differently and are quite diverse from us but the Christian life is characterized by by the mutual submission that the Messiah demonstrated for us. When a genuinely diverse group of believers from different ethnic groups, different backgrounds, different socio-economic statuses, and so on, come together and live in true unity, that is when God is truly glorified. God is glorified when people who have no good reason for living together as a family, do so in humble submission to one another because of their loyalty to the Messiah. It is only then that true unity through diversity can be achieved.
Devotional Thought
When it comes to living within your Christian family are you more concerned with your rights or with sacrificing your rights in order to live the self-sacrificial life that Christ has called us to in order to be part of his family? Do you spend more time thinking of how you can love or serve others or do you spend more time thinking of and complaining about what they haven’t done for you?
5 May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, 6 so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Dig Deeper
Marriage is one of the most wonderful things that God has given to human beings. Yet it can be easy for a marriage that began in love to spiral into in-fighting, disagreements, and disunity. The simple reason for that is because you have two people who usually think quite differently about things trying to work together as a union of one. That can sound simple but the actual reality of it can be quite difficult. A husband and wife can see differently on everything from how to discipline their children to how neatly the walk-in closet should be kept. When a young couple gets married, you suddenly have two people who have usually learned pretty well what they like, how they like things done, and how they want to do things, that are called to work together and be in close proximity constantly. I have seen many young couples who quickly fall into a routine of disagreeing with one another about virtually every issue which causes them to get into a rut of arguing and conflict that they just cannot seem to work their way out of. They see the issues that they are having in their marriage so passionately and so differently and it quickly becomes close to impossible for them to take a step back and view things from the other’s point of view. The question becomes, “how can people who think so differently actually come together and live as one flesh”? How can two people that find themselves thinking very differently on so many issues work past that and realistically work towards a common goal?
Paul is not dealing directly with the issue of marriage here, but there are some similarities. He is helping the church in Rome, and all subsequent churches that read this letter, figure out how to work together. There are, in fact, so many similarities that what Paul says to the church in Rome here can be quite helpful to a married couple who finds themselves in a position similar to the one described above. When individuals choose to respond to the gospel in belief and lay down their life in order to enter into the life of the Messiah and his body, which is the church, we find that we no longer belong to ourselves but to one another (Rom. 12:5). This, as Paul is well aware, can create some real difficulties when you have groups of people who are called to live in unity and harmony with one another but when they can have such different convictions and viewpoints in areas that seem and feel vitally important to one side or the other. How can they actually live and worship and carry on the gospel together? Is the only realistic solution for them to divide and worship apart from one another? For Paul that is absolutely not an option. In fact that sort of thinking would stand diametrically opposed to the one family that has been created by the gospel. Denominationalism may seem like a simple solution to difficult problems but it is not a solution that is in keeping with the heart of the gospel.
No, the answer is not to divide. Nor is it to just suck it up and pretend like there are not very real differences between Christians. In the previous chapter Paul has called for unity and self-sacrificing love for one another in the very midst of incredible and challenging diversity. True unity can only be had through diversity. If everyone thinks alike, then you have uniformity, which is convenient, but doesn’t really demonstrate the incredible power of the gospel to bring together groups of people who, if they were to conform to the patterns of the world, would simply not live together in unity. To have true unity, you must have a diverse group of people that have agreed to work through their differences and still come to be unified around the one thing that they do have in common. For believers, our faith in Jesus Christ is that commonality that we share. But simply saying that we all share faith n the life of Christ does not bring us unity. It is not just the faith in that life, as Paul is about to show us, but what we find when we turn to that life. When we look at the life that Jesus lived, we will find the answer to what can truly bring unity through immense diversity.
To really get where he is leading, though, we have to keep in mind that Paul has demanded that we no longer conform to the patterns of the world but that we are to be transformed by renewing our mind and the way we think about the world. Our world constantly talks about the importance of diversity and how it strengthens society. They are on the right track but the reality demonstrates that true unity through diversity has eluded the world like a greased pig. The more the United States speaks of strength through diversity, the more separated the country has become. I believe the reason for this is because, as we proclaim diversity, we encourage one another to assert their rights, their backgrounds, their customs, their identify, and their beliefs and to demand that all of those things be respected and never infringed upon. Thus, we create a hyper-diversity but one that actually tears down the society slowly because while we are encouraging more and more diversity, we are quickly eroding the very thing that might bring unity (not to mention the fact that true unity will never come outside of Christ, but we don’t even need to bring that into it to make the point). You simply cannot gain unity through diversity by encouraging everyone to assert their rights. So what is the thing that brings true unity? We’ll get to that in a moment.
The strong, those who have more deeply explored the depths of the life of Christ and have quite arguably come to a more fuller understanding of how that life works out in the real world, should use their strength not to look down on those who are weak. To do so would be to act in a self-pleasing way that might display more diversity but actually harm others. The controlling ethic for the Christian community is to put the interests of others ahead of our own and work for their good. Building up the faith of others is far more important than exercising your freedom and diversity.
But why do this? Because this is the example that Jesus set. It is, after all, his life to which we are all trying to attain and grasp and live as our own. Paul writes, “The insults of those who insult you have fallen me,” a quotation that comes from Psalm 69:9. Psalm 69 is a poem that describes the suffering of Israel’s representative, the Messiah. The role of the Messiah was not to please himself but to take the insults on to himself that people were hurling at the God of Israel. He endures “scorn for your sake, and shame covers my face” (Ps. 69:7). This is the Jesus we see pictured in Philippians 2:6-7 who though “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” Jesus did not go after his own kingly rights, but submitted himself to God’s saving plan. This is the Christ to which Christians look for their example.
But before we can consider the full implications of that, we have to consider that verse 5 says something shocking that seems to contradict everything Paul has said in chapter 14 about being diverse, bearing with one another, and allowing room for others who think differently. After all that, how can he now say that they should “have one mind and once voice.” Isn’t this exactly what Paul has not called them to do in chapter 14? This is where the example of Christ comes in. It is not realistic or even desirable that all Christians (or two married people for that matter) think alike on everything, so what does Paul mean? He means that they should be of one mind and one voice when it comes to the attitude of submission and self-sacrifice that Jesus had. Paul is urging them to have the same mutual submission that the Messiah demonstrated throughout his life. It is only through this kind of submission that true unity can be had. When a group of people that are truly diverse respect that diversity but recognize that this diversity does not demand that I assert my own rights and diversity but that I submit to the other person so that they have room to express their diversity, only then can true unity come about. It is only this sort of self-sacrifice amidst diversity that will bring true unity.
Paul’s complete point, then, is that the path that Jesus laid out for those who would enter into his life was submission and the willingness to renounce our rights for the benefit of others. This is the path that we are called to walk (cf. 1 Jn. 2:6). The fact is that in a Christian community we will live alongside people who think differently and are quite diverse from us but the Christian life is characterized by by the mutual submission that the Messiah demonstrated for us. When a genuinely diverse group of believers from different ethnic groups, different backgrounds, different socio-economic statuses, and so on, come together and live in true unity, that is when God is truly glorified. God is glorified when people who have no good reason for living together as a family, do so in humble submission to one another because of their loyalty to the Messiah. It is only then that true unity through diversity can be achieved.
Devotional Thought
When it comes to living within your Christian family are you more concerned with your rights or with sacrificing your rights in order to live the self-sacrificial life that Christ has called us to in order to be part of his family? Do you spend more time thinking of how you can love or serve others or do you spend more time thinking of and complaining about what they haven’t done for you?
Monday, December 07, 2009
Romans 14:13-23
13 Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. 14 I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean. 15 If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother or sister for whom Christ died. 16 Therefore do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil. 17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, 18 because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval.
19 Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. 20 Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. 21 It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall.
22 So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed are those who do not condemn themselves by what they approve. 23 But those who have doubts are condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.
Dig Deeper
Constantly digging into the Bible and learning more of the depth and nuances of the Scriptures is a good thing. It can be invigorating and is constantly challenging in our spiritual lives. In fact, Jesus encouraged just such behavior among his followers when he declared, “’Consider carefully what you hear’, he continued. ‘With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more. Those who have will be given more; as for those who do not have, even what they have will be taken from them.’” Jesus wants his followers to dig into his word at ever increasing deeper levels, promising that we will receive back an incredible crop in our lives for doing so. Many Christians thrive on this constant influx of new and exciting biblical truths and they get energy from constantly challenging themselves and even correcting their own previously held, but somewhat incorrect views on certain aspects of Scriptures. They can learn new things, get excited about them, and want to constantly share these things with others so that they can get just as excited.
This all sounds good, and it is, when done in love but often times in zeal, those who are learning new and deeper truths of the faith can actually wind up harming their brothers and sisters in Christ. It is easy to get so excited that one forgets that they may enjoy challenging their faith and long-held assumptions in favor of a constantly growing and ever-deepening knowledge and understanding of the Scriptures, but that same process is not nearly as exciting for others. For other people, these new and deeper things can rock them, confuse them, and even frighten them that things they’ve held to so dearly for so long are suddenly no longer correct. If not done with a great deal of discernment, love, and consideration of all aspects of the Christian community, those who feed off the deeper aspects of biblical knowledge can do a great deal of damage to those who are not so inclined. What then is a good thing, when not accompanied by an equal measure of grace, can actually wind up throwing up a significant stumbling block to other believers.
This is, in essence, the problem that Paul was dealing with in Rome and that he is addressing here as he continues to work out what the resurrection life looks like within the real world context of the Christian church. The Gentile Christians in Rome, and presumably some Jewish Christians as well, had so worked out the deeper truths and meaning of being set free in Christ and their calling to reconcile everything to God in Christ that they began to look down upon those whose consciences were less well-developed. The very freedoms that they so cherished were looked at with suspicion and disdain by other Christians, a majority of whom were likely Jewish Christians that were newly returning to Rome. The problem became that the two factions were not dealing with one another in love, the very thing to which Jesus had laid out as the foundation of his new family (Jn. 13:34-35). In exercising their freedoms so exuberantly and so thoughtlessly, they were actually harming the faith of their dear brothers and sisters in Christ. They had lost perspective on what is most important in the covenant family and Paul needs to remind them quite clearly what their perspective should be before they do irrevocable harm to others.
To put the situation that Paul dealt with in living color might help us see more clearly what he is saying. Many Christians in Rome were working out the freedoms that they had and embracing the gospel of Jesus Christ which freed them from such things as Jesus declaring all foods clean (Mk. 7:19), observing special festivals and Sabbath days, and following other works of the law such as circumcision. They had wrestled with the deeper implications of being in Christ and knew that they had been freed from such restrictions. Yet there was a danger that some of them had given into, in that they were looking down on those who were still committed in their consciences to following these things as part of their sincere obedience to God. What is more, when the Jewish Christians returned to the church in Rome they very well could have been horrified by what they saw. They would have seen these new Christians running around eating any kind of meat and doing other things that they would have associated with paganism. This could have left them confused and deeply disturbed, believing that perhaps they had made a mistake in embracing Christianity after all. It would have destroyed their faith seeing other Christians engage in freedoms that they were just not ready to understand and embrace.
Paul makes clear that he tends to fall on the side of the strong, and yet he refuses to step in and declare a list of what should be done in each situation. Christianity is not a list of rules, it is a family of fallen sinners being gradually transformed into the image of Christ. Because it is a delicate and time-consuming process, each family will find itself with people in very different places in their transformation and they will also find that each person must go through very different processes in order to become like Christ. The way through all this is to put love for each other above all else. You cannot become so focused on raking the leaves out of your own yard that you carelessly throw them on your neighbors lawn.
The principle that Paul lays down requires an incredible amount of thought, discernment, and patience. What is the line between constantly learning and going deeper in God’s word while not rocking the faith of the less-secure? Where is the divide between exercising freedom in Christ and limiting freedom for the sake of others? How do we decide between acting comfortably in faith and seeking to grow in our understanding and tolerance? Where do our freedoms stop and concern for others begin? Where does showing concern for our convictions begin to become abuse and an unwillingness to grow on ourr part? What actions fall into the category of disputable matters and which ones are important doctrines of the faith that must be contended for and defended unrelentingly? These are all important and difficult questions that take wisdom, discernment, and most of all, a careful attentiveness to the unifying fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
Paul does not want Christians to stress their rights or freedoms over love. That is not what the life of Christ is about at all. In exercising the freedom to do things which are perfectly fine in themselves, Christians actually open it up, due to their callousness, for things that are “good” to be “spoken of as evil” by those who can only interpret those things through their undeveloped conscience or understanding. They not only risk damaging the faith of some but actually cut them off from ever seeing the goodness of that action for themselves. Being in Christ did open up a new possibility of freedom from the law and certain restrictions but those things are benefits of the kingdom of God not the core of it. The core aspect of the kingdom of God is being part of God’s new family. It does little good to enter into the new covenant family of God that is defined by love and then immediately stress the little individual freedoms of that family over love for the members of that family. That makes little sense and will soon destroy the very family that has given us these supposed freedoms.
The overriding ethic is to make every effort that what you are doing leads to peace and the mutual building-up of the body of Christ. Freedoms can be expressed, new things that have been learned can be shared but they must be done in ways that build up and not tear down. They must be done so that the interests of others are put ahead of your own interests. And we must remember that we are all at different points of the journey and must give each other room to work that out. We must avoid the human tendency and desire to make everyone else live by where we are at on our journey with God. We must trust the work of the Spirit and maturely discern between the times when someone needs to be challenged and moved from their current position and when we need to just show them patience and respect.
A real world example of this for us might be something as simple as Halloween. I know many Christians who have no problem enjoying certain aspects of the Halloween celebration, not the least of those being the free candy. They stay away from the evil aspects of Halloween but have no problems in their conscience with going trick-or-treating or enjoying a horror walk. Others, however, are deeply bothered by the evil roots of the holiday and are sincerely pricked in their consciences by taking part in Halloween events. This is clearly a disputable matter. Those who are stronger in their faith need to be considerate of others and not look down on them or try to force them into taking part in Halloween activities. But those who are weaker, as Paul would call it, should not call those who are stronger pagans and compromisers for exercising their freedom and taking part in such things. Love and humility are the common threads here and are much more important than whether you go to a Halloween party or go trick-or-treating or not. People on both sides of the issue should love one another and do their best not to control or dictate the behavior of the other.
In the end, we must all answer to God. If we, in all good conscience before God, can do something in faith, then it is okay. I might truly believe that trick-or-treating is fine, and for me it is. Someone else might truly believe that it is not, and for them it is not. If I try to force my freedom on them, I can damage their faith, and in so doing, I sin. In the same token, they should not try to bind their faith in disputable matters on me. Everything, says Paul, that does not come from sincere faith in God is sin. When it comes down to it we need to remember the saying, “In the essentials, unity; In the non-essentials, liberty; In all things, charity.”
Devotional Thought
Have you been guilty of judging other Christians and holding grudges against them over disputable matters? Have you ever done things that might have caused other Christians to struggle in their faith because of your freedom? What would Paul have you to do to remedy either of those situations?
19 Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. 20 Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. 21 It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall.
22 So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed are those who do not condemn themselves by what they approve. 23 But those who have doubts are condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.
Dig Deeper
Constantly digging into the Bible and learning more of the depth and nuances of the Scriptures is a good thing. It can be invigorating and is constantly challenging in our spiritual lives. In fact, Jesus encouraged just such behavior among his followers when he declared, “’Consider carefully what you hear’, he continued. ‘With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more. Those who have will be given more; as for those who do not have, even what they have will be taken from them.’” Jesus wants his followers to dig into his word at ever increasing deeper levels, promising that we will receive back an incredible crop in our lives for doing so. Many Christians thrive on this constant influx of new and exciting biblical truths and they get energy from constantly challenging themselves and even correcting their own previously held, but somewhat incorrect views on certain aspects of Scriptures. They can learn new things, get excited about them, and want to constantly share these things with others so that they can get just as excited.
This all sounds good, and it is, when done in love but often times in zeal, those who are learning new and deeper truths of the faith can actually wind up harming their brothers and sisters in Christ. It is easy to get so excited that one forgets that they may enjoy challenging their faith and long-held assumptions in favor of a constantly growing and ever-deepening knowledge and understanding of the Scriptures, but that same process is not nearly as exciting for others. For other people, these new and deeper things can rock them, confuse them, and even frighten them that things they’ve held to so dearly for so long are suddenly no longer correct. If not done with a great deal of discernment, love, and consideration of all aspects of the Christian community, those who feed off the deeper aspects of biblical knowledge can do a great deal of damage to those who are not so inclined. What then is a good thing, when not accompanied by an equal measure of grace, can actually wind up throwing up a significant stumbling block to other believers.
This is, in essence, the problem that Paul was dealing with in Rome and that he is addressing here as he continues to work out what the resurrection life looks like within the real world context of the Christian church. The Gentile Christians in Rome, and presumably some Jewish Christians as well, had so worked out the deeper truths and meaning of being set free in Christ and their calling to reconcile everything to God in Christ that they began to look down upon those whose consciences were less well-developed. The very freedoms that they so cherished were looked at with suspicion and disdain by other Christians, a majority of whom were likely Jewish Christians that were newly returning to Rome. The problem became that the two factions were not dealing with one another in love, the very thing to which Jesus had laid out as the foundation of his new family (Jn. 13:34-35). In exercising their freedoms so exuberantly and so thoughtlessly, they were actually harming the faith of their dear brothers and sisters in Christ. They had lost perspective on what is most important in the covenant family and Paul needs to remind them quite clearly what their perspective should be before they do irrevocable harm to others.
To put the situation that Paul dealt with in living color might help us see more clearly what he is saying. Many Christians in Rome were working out the freedoms that they had and embracing the gospel of Jesus Christ which freed them from such things as Jesus declaring all foods clean (Mk. 7:19), observing special festivals and Sabbath days, and following other works of the law such as circumcision. They had wrestled with the deeper implications of being in Christ and knew that they had been freed from such restrictions. Yet there was a danger that some of them had given into, in that they were looking down on those who were still committed in their consciences to following these things as part of their sincere obedience to God. What is more, when the Jewish Christians returned to the church in Rome they very well could have been horrified by what they saw. They would have seen these new Christians running around eating any kind of meat and doing other things that they would have associated with paganism. This could have left them confused and deeply disturbed, believing that perhaps they had made a mistake in embracing Christianity after all. It would have destroyed their faith seeing other Christians engage in freedoms that they were just not ready to understand and embrace.
Paul makes clear that he tends to fall on the side of the strong, and yet he refuses to step in and declare a list of what should be done in each situation. Christianity is not a list of rules, it is a family of fallen sinners being gradually transformed into the image of Christ. Because it is a delicate and time-consuming process, each family will find itself with people in very different places in their transformation and they will also find that each person must go through very different processes in order to become like Christ. The way through all this is to put love for each other above all else. You cannot become so focused on raking the leaves out of your own yard that you carelessly throw them on your neighbors lawn.
The principle that Paul lays down requires an incredible amount of thought, discernment, and patience. What is the line between constantly learning and going deeper in God’s word while not rocking the faith of the less-secure? Where is the divide between exercising freedom in Christ and limiting freedom for the sake of others? How do we decide between acting comfortably in faith and seeking to grow in our understanding and tolerance? Where do our freedoms stop and concern for others begin? Where does showing concern for our convictions begin to become abuse and an unwillingness to grow on ourr part? What actions fall into the category of disputable matters and which ones are important doctrines of the faith that must be contended for and defended unrelentingly? These are all important and difficult questions that take wisdom, discernment, and most of all, a careful attentiveness to the unifying fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
Paul does not want Christians to stress their rights or freedoms over love. That is not what the life of Christ is about at all. In exercising the freedom to do things which are perfectly fine in themselves, Christians actually open it up, due to their callousness, for things that are “good” to be “spoken of as evil” by those who can only interpret those things through their undeveloped conscience or understanding. They not only risk damaging the faith of some but actually cut them off from ever seeing the goodness of that action for themselves. Being in Christ did open up a new possibility of freedom from the law and certain restrictions but those things are benefits of the kingdom of God not the core of it. The core aspect of the kingdom of God is being part of God’s new family. It does little good to enter into the new covenant family of God that is defined by love and then immediately stress the little individual freedoms of that family over love for the members of that family. That makes little sense and will soon destroy the very family that has given us these supposed freedoms.
The overriding ethic is to make every effort that what you are doing leads to peace and the mutual building-up of the body of Christ. Freedoms can be expressed, new things that have been learned can be shared but they must be done in ways that build up and not tear down. They must be done so that the interests of others are put ahead of your own interests. And we must remember that we are all at different points of the journey and must give each other room to work that out. We must avoid the human tendency and desire to make everyone else live by where we are at on our journey with God. We must trust the work of the Spirit and maturely discern between the times when someone needs to be challenged and moved from their current position and when we need to just show them patience and respect.
A real world example of this for us might be something as simple as Halloween. I know many Christians who have no problem enjoying certain aspects of the Halloween celebration, not the least of those being the free candy. They stay away from the evil aspects of Halloween but have no problems in their conscience with going trick-or-treating or enjoying a horror walk. Others, however, are deeply bothered by the evil roots of the holiday and are sincerely pricked in their consciences by taking part in Halloween events. This is clearly a disputable matter. Those who are stronger in their faith need to be considerate of others and not look down on them or try to force them into taking part in Halloween activities. But those who are weaker, as Paul would call it, should not call those who are stronger pagans and compromisers for exercising their freedom and taking part in such things. Love and humility are the common threads here and are much more important than whether you go to a Halloween party or go trick-or-treating or not. People on both sides of the issue should love one another and do their best not to control or dictate the behavior of the other.
In the end, we must all answer to God. If we, in all good conscience before God, can do something in faith, then it is okay. I might truly believe that trick-or-treating is fine, and for me it is. Someone else might truly believe that it is not, and for them it is not. If I try to force my freedom on them, I can damage their faith, and in so doing, I sin. In the same token, they should not try to bind their faith in disputable matters on me. Everything, says Paul, that does not come from sincere faith in God is sin. When it comes down to it we need to remember the saying, “In the essentials, unity; In the non-essentials, liberty; In all things, charity.”
Devotional Thought
Have you been guilty of judging other Christians and holding grudges against them over disputable matters? Have you ever done things that might have caused other Christians to struggle in their faith because of your freedom? What would Paul have you to do to remedy either of those situations?
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