Romans 15:5-13 Called to Be Free!

Romans 15:5-13  May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.  For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed 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.”  Again, it says, “Rejoice, you Gentiles, with his people.”  And again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles; let all the peoples extol him.”  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.”  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.

Free in the Lord Jesus, we praise God for who He is and for what He has done in us.  No longer bound to sin and death, we are alive in Christ evermore.  Without Christ, the human specie is bound to eternal death because of the fall in the Garden.  We took the reigns for our existence from God, thinking we could run our lives better than God could direct them.  Humanity fell into such depravity that during Noah’s time, God elected to destroy all of humanity except for Noah’s family.  God repented of that action and has allowed humankind to exist from that time on, even though God said their wickedness is embedded in their very existence.  “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood.  And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.”  (Genesis 8:21)  Man’s wicked nature remained in him without any control to alter or direct his behavior positively.  Eventually God chose a man to bless, Abram, from the land of the Chaldeans.  Because of Abram’s faith in what God said to him, God gave him a special mission.  Abram’s belief was accounted to him as righteousness, and He alone would be blessed by God in a mighty way.  The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.  I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”  (Genesis 12: 1-3)  God’s covenant with Abram made him Abraham: a father of many nations.  More than 400 years later under the tutelage of Moses in the wilderness, Abraham’s genetic people, the Jews, received the law to control their nature.  Obeying the words of God in the written law and making continuous offerings of sacrifices were to keep God’s judgement of sin away from the people.  As long as the people obediently followed God’s commandments, they were free from the judgment that was meted out in Noah’s time: death and destruction.  Of course this “experiment,” so to say, was in God’s eternal plan for bringing back his image into mankind, to make them new creatures.  Eventually, through the genealogy of the people of the law came the Messiah, the Christ.  The plan of salvation, establishing a new, righteous people for the whole world, would be initiated and implemented through the man, Jesus Christ.  The angels addressed God’s intention to restore all mankind to his image in their presentation to the shepherds on the night of Jesus’ birth.  An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.  But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.  Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.  This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”  (Luke 2:9-12)  Jesus is the culmination of God’s plan to bring all people to himself, completing his promise to Abraham and the patriarchs.  As we read in today’s verses, Christ came to the Jews, fulfilling the promises of God for the Gentiles to glorify God for his mercy.  As the prophet foretold, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles; let all the peoples extol him.”

The blood of Jesus was shed for all people: the whole earth is covered by the blood of Jesus.  This covering is once and for all, given to free people from the sentence of sin and eternal judgment.  People who desire to know God and his righteousness must accept the Lord’s sacrifice for their sins.  Anyone from any country, any tribe, can find God through the name of Jesus Christ.  If anyone accepts Jesus Christ as Savior, a new creature will come alive, free from sin and death, never again bound by the shackles of Satan.  You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free.  (Galatians 5:14)  As new creatures we live for Christ.  His blood has freed us from judgment, made us righteous, and made us acceptable to the Creator of all things.  However, now as living Godly creatures, we should display God’s image here on Earth.  We should be doing God’s will joyfully, not our own.  If we are new creatures, the image of God in us should become clearer to those around us.  Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.  Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.  Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.  (Philippians 2:1-4)  As today’s focus scripture reveals, we should be as God, filled with encouragement and help.  Our lives should be oriented towards his will at all times and not towards our own selfish inclinations.  May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.  As we overlook each other’s faults and weaknesses, we accept wholeheartedly the new creature God has established in our fellow brothers and sisters.  We are not to judge outward appearances, but accept what the Bible says about us: we are born again by the blood of Jesus Christ.  If we set ourselves up as judges of people rather than as healers of people’s hearts, we will once again become as those that God destroyed in Noah’s time.  We will be people of chaos rather than people of unity.  Chaos is the devil’s workshop.  He will exploit Christians, damage them, destroy their faith, especially the weak in the darkness of disruption and judgment.  Christ came to set everyone free from such judgement and hate.  He has come to give all an abundant life full of joy and peace in him.  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.

Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you is the key to living successfully in the community of God.  Without accepting others as brothers and sisters in Christ, we become sowers of discord, dissensions, factions, and jealousies.  These divisive spirits can lead to hatred, selfish ambition, envy, and even impurity in our spirit.  Accepting others because Christ has accepted them is essential to unity.  Without doing so, we stand aloof, believing we have the right to determine the validity of someone’s walk with Christ.  The Bible says for us not to judge someone else’s servant.  We know Christ is the master of each of us.  We are his servants.  Consequently, as God’s servant through Christ, we must be very careful about judging someone else in the body of Christ.  We are free indeed, but we still should feel a strong obligation to other believers.  Our actions and our thoughts should be positive toward others.  Others should feel confident they can come to us with their problems and weaknesses, finding someone who will pray with them for victory in Christ.  If someone’s weakness is detrimental to the body, we should go to our knees in prayer, believing for deliverance for that person. If things are not rectified, we should approach the fellow brother or sister, together with others, with sensitivity and tenderness, always seeking for unity and for love.  Nothing should be done out of selfish ambition or selfish motives.  Evident in every action with the church should be the fruit of the Spirit: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law.  Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.  Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.  Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.  (Galatians 5:22-25)  God’s plan from the beginning of creation was to make humans in his image, not just to walk with them in the Garden, but to be with them as his children, in his likeness.  The body of Christ should reveal God’s nature, his will.  All people have this opportunity to know God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.  God is full of mercy; his plan of restoration has been carried out through the cross.  The world is blind, even dead in their sins, but Jesus is passing by in everyone’s life.  Each of us must cry out to him for mercy.  As Jesus and his disciples were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed him.  Two blind men were sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was going by, they shouted, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!”  The crowd rebuked them and told them to be quiet, but they shouted all the louder, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!” Jesus stopped and called them. “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.  “Lord,” they answered, “we want our sight.”  Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes.  Immediately they received their sight and followed him.  (Matthew 20: 29-34)  When we cry out, his mercy is there for us.  We will receive the plan of God; we will see.  When the plan of God has come to us, when our eyes are restored to sight, we will also have mercy on others, we will treat them with compassion, and then the plan of God will be implemented in all the earth.  Amen!       

Romans 15:1-4 The Strong Bear the Weak!

Romans 15:1-4  We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.  Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up.  For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.”  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.

Our lives IN Christ should be lived for others.  Whether we are strong or weak in our faith, we are servants of the most high God.  In fact we are to be so subservient to others that we are willing to be slaves without any rights to our own lives.  Paul said we should forgo doing something if we know it might detract from or derail someone’s faith in God.  Since we are one body IN CHRIST, we should look out for each other, encouraging others in our collective faith in God.  As Paul wrote to the church, Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.  (1 Thessalonians 5:11)  If people are weak in their faith, we should attempt to strengthen them in every way possible.  Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.  Romans 14:19   As brothers and sisters IN CHRIST our primary purpose on this earth is to manifest God to the world.  We do that best when we are unified in our faith IN CHRIST.  If we falter in this area, we manifest the divine in an imperfect way.  Unity, peace, mercy, and grace should be attributes in the body of Christ.  If any one of those attributes are missing, we miss the perfect will of God.  He sent Jesus to make us new creatures, edifying the world through his body known as the church of the living God.  When we as the body of Christ dissemble because of any weakness in our testimony of Christ, we bring confusion to the world, for we are but sounding brass, making a lot of noise, saying a lot of words, pontificating about a way of living, not dissimilar from any other religion or philosophical thought.  How difficult it is for unity in the body of Christ.  Often churches have split over some minor theological difference, or some minute point, such as how we should run our services, or what music should be played or not played, and the like.  When we split or fray the body over such positions, we hurt the testimony of Christ.  We shatter the truth of love for our neighbor, for carrying for the weak, the hurting, the troubled.  We arrogantly hold on to our positions of strength, while destroying those whose faith might be hurt because of a lack of unity and love.  Many people in the world who were once part of a church are now isolated from any community of believers.  They either believe the church is not for them or that all Christians are hypocrites, talking about love and salvation, but acting just like the world: self-centered, opinionated, my way or the highway in their interactions with people.  When we talk and live like the world, we do become cisterns without water, without the love of God in us, without the possibility of the Spirit flowing out from a reservoir of love within us.  If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.  (1 Corinthians 13:1-4)  Without love, we do become nothing, especially to the weak who are around us and to the secular world that assesses whether we really know God or not.       

Sometimes Christians in their interactions within and outside of the Church take on the nature of the world, a self-serving nature: eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.  They think only in the present tense, get as much out of the world as you can.  This is not the life God called us to.  He asked us to think about our neighbors, even the future generations that we will never see.  If we are strong in the faith, we should pass this strength on to our children and friends, so that they will pass on this enlightenment to their children and their grandchildren.  Loving strongly the people who are presently with you will affect many generations.  The reverse is true also.  A negative person will influence ongoing generations.  The fleshly attitude of the world is to live for self without regard for others.  When God warns his people not to serve other gods, He says, You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.  (Exodus 20:5-6)  The kings of old who were wicked lived for themselves.  They conquered land for themselves, exploiting the natural resources of those lands for themselves.  Everything revolved around their wants.  If we do not watch out, our lives can be constructed in the same way, just for ourselves.  King Hezekiah of Judah was dealing with such a king, Sennacherib of Assyria.  The Assyrian king bragged about exploiting the land of Lebanon, cutting down the tallest cedars and choicest juniper trees.  He was going to invade Judah, exploiting it the same way for his own purposes.  As we were reading this passage from 2 King 19, we thought how this illustrates how some Christians live in this world.  By living the way of fleshly self-interest, Christian people might gain much in this world, but lose in their interactions with people, especially those who are not as talented as they are or weaker in their faith.  Rather than help the weak, the fleshly Christian will demand his own way.  This is not a valid perspective of the way a Christian should live.  We all should know that we will eventually meet our God face-to-face.  He will ask us what we have done with our short existence in this world.  He will evaluate our lives correctly.  We will not be able to say anything in our defense, for he will know if we looked out for the weak, the deprived, the injured.  He will know whether our decisions were exploitive: “me first” others last.  We will not be able to defend our selfish, self-willed lives, for we know the Lord is compassionate and merciful to the weak.  He came to minister to them: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  (Luke 4:18)  We know that He loved the world so much that He gave his life even when we were his enemies.  We will have no defense for our selfishness or our self-willed lives, for not helping the weak in faith, or those who are hurting in any way.  

Are we focused on others or are we focused on ourselves?  Many Christians today struggle with depression and anxiety.  Sometimes this battle revolves around our willingness to live our Christian lives in an alien way, contrary to God’s way.  We are hoping a fleshly lifestyle will bring peace to our lives.  We are living with the absence of a song in our hearts, for we are desperately filling our lives with the things of the world.  We hope that something new, something different in our lives will excite us, give us satisfaction, even the peace we desire.  But this land of the senses will never give a Christian peace, satisfaction, or comfort.   God has another land for us to live in and that is the land of faith.  In the land of faith, the will of the Father is the generator of our lives.  Our prayers, our desires, our activities are hooked into his will.  The Lord’s Prayer indicates what our lives should be like.  Let the Father’s will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.  This of course is not the land of the flesh, but the land of faith.  How many of us lose this land in our daily lives?  How many of us when we wake up in the morning ask, what is your will this day for me?  What song do you want me to sing today?  What words do you want me to say today?  What body language do you want me to display this day?  Are we that focused in our lives?  We ought to be because the Holy Spirit has come to take residence in us.  He has come to teach us to image God.  His voice, his words, his language, his anointing, should be ours for the strong, for the weak.  If we are so focused, the people of the world will notice.  They will notice when we walk in their midst with a different tenor in our voice, a different expression on our tongues, a different touch, a different spirit.  If we are strong in the faith, we must know the weak in spirit, the weak in faith, the weak in body will find strength in our demeanor, our attitude, our language.  As Paul told believers, Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.  (Ephesians 6:10)  We Christians are all children of God, adopted into the family of God by the shed blood of Jesus Christ.  Are we examples of this brotherhood and sisterhood in Christ by our walk, not just our tongue, but by our walk?  Are we new creatures, or just the old creature, remodeled?  Hopefully, we are all new creatures, weak or strong.  Blessed is the name of the Lord that is the umbrella over our lives.  Let us be creatures of a new life, expressing to all (the weak in spirit, the weak in the flesh, the rejected, the neglected) that there is a kingdom of God that has come down to earth, and each of us abides in it through Christ and the indwelling Holy Spirit.  The world will see this kingdom by the way we live.  Walk as a kingdom dweller by faith today.  Praise the name of the Lord forever.  Amen!  Merry Christmas!

Romans 14:19-23 Doubt Tosses Like the Wind!

Romans 14:19-23  Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.  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.  It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall.  So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God.  Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves.  But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin. 

In the modern Christian world, what people eat or drink is not usually a separating factor in the church.  In the early church because of the Judaic roots of Christianity, what was eaten or not eaten could divide a community of believers.  Many of the Jewish Christians were still highly invested in the Jewish culture: what was acceptable for people to eat and what was not acceptable to eat; whether men should be circumcised or not; what day of the week should be set aside to honor God; what yearly festivals should be celebrated; what to do with tithes and offerings, what conventions, principles, and rituals should govern a church gathering, and the like.  These traditions, conventions and cultural necessities united the Jewish people for centuries as the chosen people of God.  However, now with the Gentiles and the rest of the world included in God’s chosen people, how should believers carry on in life?  What is right, what is wrong were critical questions for this nascent church.  Religious norms and cultural traditions were tearing at the fabric of the early Christian church.  Paul in the above focus is talking about the subject of eating food as a divisive element in the body of Christ, but other traditions and cultural elements were also a problem for a diverse church, with many members originating from a variety of cultures and traditions.  Of course, since Christianity spawned out of the Jewish religion, many traditional, orthodox Jewish Christians were in the early church, believing that the Jewish way of life was the correct way of living.  For them, any variance of this Jewish lifestyle was a departure from God’s perfect revelation to the people of the earth, a perfect way to please God and to live a blessed life.  Paul is not attacking the Jewish traditions or God’s revelation to the Jewish people, he is suggesting the way people who are in the Christian community should live.  They are not to live as children obedient to a proscribed law, but they are to live as people of faith.  But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.  All activity the Christians enter into in their daily lives should be done under the umbrella of faith.  Remember how Peter went into a trance and when he was told to eat formerly unclean animals, he said, he could not, but the voice of the Lord said, Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”  (Acts 10:15)  If anything that is done is based on something other than faith in God, it is outside of God’s grace and mercy.  We are children of God.  He is our Abba Father, the one who knows our hearts.  If we honestly with full integrity and faith eat that which was once considered unclean, we are still under God’s blessings, for we are children of his household interacting with God the Father under the auspices of total love.  This relationship of father and child, a relationship of trust, carries into many other areas than just the eating of food designated as clean or unclean.  The Christian life is one of faith, believing in God’s love, believing He will accept an honest heart in all of our daily activities and experiences.  If anything is not of faith, originating from an honest heart, a total commitment to God, that activity, attitude, experience will be considered sinful.

If we lack wisdom or knowledge about what to do or not to do in any activity in life, we should seek God in prayer.  In seeking God for anything, we should try to put aside our own personal ideas or conditioned, societal beliefs about what should be done.  Of course, our own traditions and cultural norms make up our way of living, but sometimes, these conditioned ways of living have really no eternal or intrinsic value; they just help us navigate life in the flesh.  James tells us to ask God; believing He will give us the answer to how to live life under his perfect authority.  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.  But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.  That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.  Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.  (James 1:5-8)  We are to ask God about how to live.  James says that we should not waver or seek outside sources for our wisdom.  He tells us that God gives generously to all who ask him without finding fault.  Sometimes we have questions about our lives and whether we are even good Christians.  But James says that God wants those questions, even questions about our belief in him for we will find answers.  He deals with us without finding fault.  God is our source of wisdom and understanding.  When Jesus was going to go away, He told his disciples He would send the Holy Spirit and “He will guide you into all the truth.”  (John 16:13)  If we seek other sources, placing them equally with God’s direction for our lives, we will be like a person on the ocean, tossed to and fro by the waves.  If we treat other sources equal to God’s words within us, we will be unsettled in our decisions, having little stability, depending on who we have listened to lastly.  Otherwise, we need God’s word in us and the voice of the Holy Spirit if we are trying to decide what to eat or not to eat, or to decide the many other questions about serving God wholeheartedly.  Nothing else is pleasing to God but faith in his authority, without doubting his direction for our lives.  Other people that we respect can give us advice, but we still must depend on God’s word as our final source.  Consequently, we need to be in prayer continually and in his written word every day.  If we are going to live a Christian life respected by others, we need to know God in our lives every day and every hour. 

This world does not consist merely of good or bad decisions, or of what we buy or sell, or of the people we influence.  No, this world consists most importantly of following the will of God in everything we do.  Whether we eat kosher food or food that comes from what we consider to be detestable is not the main question of life.  The question to be answered in everyone’s life is: did he or she follow the will of God?  There are things the world considers good or bad, but God considers doing his will the currency of existence.  We will be judged by what we did in faith during our span of living.  The Christian life is not one of rules or laws, or even of what is good or bad.  If we completely satisfied every part of the Sermon on the Mount.  If our lives were exemplary in every aspect of living, we would still not be acceptable to God outside of Christ.  The early church had to struggle with this idea of how to be holy, righteous before God.  Before Christ’s death, righteousness was earned by following the law.  Consequently, the priests were more righteous that the general public because they were more careful about following the law.  In the early church, because of tradition and the way people thought God judged people, the law and the Jewish principles of living were very prominent in their attitudes.  But Paul cuts these ideas down to nothing.  His teachings are about pleasing God by faith and faith alone.  But the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’”  (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’”  (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).  But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim:  If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  (Romans 10:6-9)  The law’s way of making a person right with God requires obedience to all its commands.  If you are disobedient in one, you have violated the whole law.  But the way of faith is that you do not need to bring Christ up from the dead or to bring him down to Earth.  To be right with God, a person has to believe Christ has already accomplished the purpose for which the law was given.  He has already satisfied the law’s requirements.  Christ has once and for all fulfilled the requirements God has placed upon people’s actions and thoughts: his righteousness.  Therefore, what is saving faith?  For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  (Romans 10:12-13)  Our lives in every respect must be lived by faith.  We are saved by our faith in Jesus Christ.  We live by our faith in him.  We do nothing without asking God for knowledge and wisdom about our lives.  Anything else is not Christian.  Again, everything that does not come from faith is sin.  Praise God, we are people of faith, not right or wrong, nor good or evil.  We are people who live by the very words that come out of the mouth of God.  As Jesus said when He was tempted, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”  (Matthew 4:4)       

Romans 14:10-18 Righteousness, Peace, and Joy!

Romans 14:10-18  You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister?  Or why do you treat them with contempt?  For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat.  It is written, “‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me, every tongue will acknowledge God.’”  So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.  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.  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.   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 someone for whom Christ died.  Therefore do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil.  For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval.  
We are to serve God in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.  We are not to serve him by judging others, for we too are but human.  Only God judges correctly, completely, without bias.  Christ died and was raised again to be Lord of both the living and the dead.  He was three days and three nights in the grave to be Lord of the dead.  He was resurrected after those three days to be Lord of the living.  Christ is the Lord of all people whether they live or whether they are dead.  Therefore, why should we mere humans attempt to be the lord of others, judging or condemning people for what they say or do in life.  He who is creator of all things is the rightful judge and evaluator of everything He has made.  He is the Lord, not us.  Perfection, being right with God, comes through faith in his salvation plan: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.  (Acts 4:12)  The Lord who redeems is the only one who has the right to judge the quality of our walk with him.  Only Jesus’ life satisfied the righteous requirements of God’s holiness and the law.  Jesus Christ’s life is the template of a holy life.  He alone has the right to judge our waywardness according to God’s standard of righteous living.  Paul tells us that we frail humans are susceptible to sin and often lacking faith with no right to be other people’s critics.  We do not have the privilege to judge someone for what we perceive is a grave weakness.  He tells us that some eat everything, believing God blesses all that we eat.  Others believe we have to be circumspect in what we eat.  Regardless of what all of this entails concerning strength or weaknesses in our faith, we should let God determine the truth or the validity of such actions.  (See Romans 14:1-4)  Christians should be careful about criticizing someone who seems to take too much liberty in his faith or too little liberty in his faith.  Instead of judging the person, to the best of our ability we should live in harmony with him or her.  If we are not harsh, judgmental, critical with our fellow brethren who are IN CHRIST, we will live in harmony with them, sharing in the Lord’s supper with them without hypocrisy.  Preferring others above our own willfulness is a positive attribute when it comes to peace and harmony.  Rather than sitting in the judgment seat of others, we will be their servants, bringing cohesiveness to the family of God.  Unreciprocated love conquers much discord in a family, for love intends no harm.  As the Bible says, Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.  (1 Peter 4:8) 

In Luke 11, we see Jesus dealing with a Pharisee who sees himself as very righteous, as a person on the right track to pleasing God.  This Pharisee invited Jesus to eat with him at his home.  When Jesus failed to ceremonially wash his hands before eating, the Pharisee perceived this as a weakness, even as something that would separate Jesus from God.  He was amazed at Jesus’ unwillingness to follow the appropriate customs of the Jewish people.  Jesus confronts this Pharisee with a very strong word: fool.  Jesus calls his host a fool because the Pharisee mistakenly believes that the washing of hands makes him pleasing to God.  As many today believe, by going to church, by reading the Bible, by doing religious deeds, God finds people worthy of acceptance.  Jesus observed, Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.  (Luke 11:39)  Jesus said, washing of the hands or the outside of a person does not cleanse the inside, the heart.  Religious activities or customs do not change one’s position with God if an individual is not in right relation with God.  Jesus tells the Pharisee that God accepts a person who has a heart’s desire to bring love and justice to others.  Religious activities and customs can sometimes be self-serving, oriented only towards saving oneself from God’s judgement and insuring eternal life.  Otherwise, religious customs, traditions based on doing good, can be self-serving, not other-serving.  Jesus tells the Pharisee that giving to the poor is a much better activity than living a life committed to the customs or traditions of religion.  Good works to others is what God desires from people.  If the heart is pure, totally committed to others, then the whole man is pure, whether he washes his hands or not before he eats.  Jesus goes on to say to the Pharisee, what sorrow awaits Pharisees, for judgment will come to them someday.  Justice finally will prevail when God sits on the throne to judge everyone.  The Pharisees’ religious activities are not necessarily wrong, for people should tithe and should honor God in everything.  But by doing appropriate things, they should not ignore the more weighty matters: bringing justice and love to the needy, the neglected, the poor.  You may be disciplined in serving God through your religious activities, but God wants you to be fervent in loving people who are made in his image.  Jesus told the Pharisees that God was not pleased with their desire is to be honored by the people, to be respected by the people over obedience to God.  He said, your lives are oriented towards gaining adulation from the people, not towards serving God with your whole heart.  Inside you have hearts that are indifferent to God’s purposes for you: to bless people with the love of God, to make people better human beings.  Instead, you crave the praise of the rich and the influential.  Your hypocrisy makes you like hidden graves of corruption, undetected by the people who interact with you.  They do not perceive the deadness within your souls.  But God knows who you really are and eventually justice will be meted out to you, for God is a just God.  

If we judge people based on our perceptions of how religious they seem or on how they worship Christ, we can become as the Pharisees, looking at people in a judgmental way, always placing people in categories of being right or wrong with God.  Instead of letting God critique people’ lives, we become the critic, the know-it-all.  Judging from outward appearances is always dangerous.  To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’  “But the tax collector stood at a distance.  He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’  “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.  For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”  (Luke 18:9-14)  The church is one body, a body attuned to the voice of God.  We are known as the body of Christ.  Consequently, in the church there should be harmony, peace, mercy, and grace.  If we are looking at each other’s weaknesses rather than each person’s strength, we are concentrating on the wrong things in our relationships.  God desires the church to be one of enduring love, not a fragmented body of Christ based on what we see as good and evil in the church.  Today many stand outside of the institutional church doors, complaining about what is wrong with the church.  They judge and critique the church by the standards that they hold so dear to their hearts, projecting and analyzing the wrongness of the body of Christ rather than the positiveness of Christ’s body.  The failure at the Garden is still with every human being: the desire to be like God.  The desire to elevate our ideas and attitudes above others, even God, is in the DNA of every human being.  As a result, we see so much trouble and violence in the world.  But Paul says in today’s focus: 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.  We should compromise in the elementary things of religion that do not affect our faith: what we eat, what we do not eat; the organizational structure of the church; which songs or hymns we sing; what we wear to church; what we call each other; what structure the church services should follow; who should read the gospel, who should not; when should we take communion; who should be promoted to leadership in a church; and the like.  There might be rights and wrongs in the above list according to our traditions and practices, but these are not moral absolutes.  We should put those lesser issues aside; so we can hold the body together in love.  Most of all, worship God in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.  As we read earlier in this study, Live in harmony with one another.  (Romans 12:16)  

Note:  We have had a long siege of illness with Mom down with pneumonia and Dad sick with bronchitis.  We appreciate your patience with not receiving the breakfast these past weeks.  God bless you! 

Romans 14:1-9 Bless a Flickering Candle!

Romans 14:1-9  Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters.  One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables.  The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them.  Who are you to judge someone else’s servant?  To their own master, servants stand or fall.  And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.  One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind.  Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord.  Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God.  For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone.  If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord.  So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.  For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.

In the above verses, Paul talks about how the brethren in the church should treat each other even though they might have differing opinions about spiritual matters.  Some might think it is a sin to eat meat; others might consider some days more holy than others; others might have decided upon special ways to live in right standing with God.  But Paul says that none of us live for ourselves.  We are all members of Jesus Christ’s body as we represent him on this earth, individually and collectively.  As a corporate body, we should be sensitive to the opinions of others.  We should allow a variety of ideas in the body of Christ on matters where different thoughts exist.  We are not to separate ourselves over minute differences.  We see in Isaiah’s prophecy of the coming Messiah that the Lord is tender, kindhearted, sensitive to the weakest amongst us.  “Look at my servant, whom I strengthen.  He is my chosen one, who pleases me.  I have put my Spirit upon him.  He will bring justice to the nations.  He will not shout or raise his voice in public.  He will not crush the weakest reed or put out a flickering candle.  He will bring justice to all who have been wronged.  He will not falter or lose heart until justice prevails throughout the earth.  Even distant lands beyond the sea will wait for his instructions.”  (Isaiah 42:1-4)  God says He strengthened the Lord by placing his Spirit upon him.  Jesus was clothed with the Holy Spirit with he was baptized in water by John the Baptist.  Jesus did not need a new heart to become a new creature, to deliver him from the flesh.  No, Jesus’ heart was pure; not sinful like ours.  We become new creatures with new hearts at our salvation.  But Jesus did not need that for He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but He did need to be clothed with the Spirit when the Spirit came upon him at the time of his water baptism.  Consequently, He could say that I am in the Father and He is in me, and that I always do the Father’s will.  We who are in Christ are clothed by his Spirit, alive as Christ’s image on this earth.  With new hearts and immersed in Christ, we should be about our Father’s business.  In Isaiah’s description of the Messiah or the Lord, we find him without arrogance or aggression.  He does not crush or abuse the weakest amongst us, or put out the flickering faith of a weak member of his body.  Instead, He will bring justice to all who have been wronged.  He will support them, advocating for their claims of injustice.  He knows the heart of every person who is resident in his body.  As his body, we carry on in this world, revealing his likeness, bringing support to every flickering candle, helping the weak in faith.  Neither do we crush those so downtrodden they can barely struggle against sin and the pitfalls of a fleshly life.  We should bring the light of Jesus to every dark room, seeking justice for believers and nonbelievers alike.  Never growing weary or cynical, (We) will not falter or lose heart until justice prevails throughout the earth.  Abraham was to be the father of many nations.  Our faith in the Lord makes us part of his linage, his promise from God.  Just as the Messiah fulfilled the promise to bless the nations, as co-heirs with Christ, we bless the world.  However, as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 12:20, we will hurt the cohesiveness of the body and the mission of the church if we fall back into the fleshly nature: For I am afraid that when I come I may not find you as I want you to be, and you may not find me as you want me to be.  I fear that there may be discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder.  The weak ones in the church are the first to be hurt when sin inhabits the people of the Lord.  The wolves are at the door, waiting to attack, to come into body of Christ to destroy, to dishonor the name of the Lord if we are not diligent and fully clothed with the armor of God.  (See Ephesians 6)

How wonderful to know that we do not have to be afraid, for we are strong in the Lord, but we must remember what the Bible says: Be alert and of sober mind.  Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.  (1 Peter 5:8)  Thankfully, we are honored guests in the household of God.  We are part of the beloved only begotten Son, members of his family.  God chose us before the foundation of the world to be like him: holy, righteous, loving, caring, and the like.  Peter describes God’s people so beautifully:  But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.  Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.  (1 Peter 2:9-10)  What is our purpose?  People may question our purpose, but by the power of the Spirit, Peter makes God’s plan clear: we are to broadcast our love and devotion to our glorious Lord, praising him for bringing us out of sin into his righteousness.  We are to be his ambassadors of light.  Therefore, Peter tells us to get rid of all evil behavior, to be done with all deceit, hypocrisy, jealousy, and all unkind speech.  He asks us as newborn babes to seek out pure spiritual milk.  (See 1 Peter 2:1-2)  If we do, we will mature in our salvation experience and understanding of walking in the Spirit.  Since we have experienced the Lord’s kindness and goodness to us, as mature believers we should desire and possess the same attributes in us.  Christ is the cornerstone of each believer and of the corporate body.  As the cornerstone of the church, we are to pay attention to his direction for our lives, making him preeminent in every decision we make personally and in the church of Christ.  If we become self-absorbed in our ideas and ways, we will make ourselves the center of our lives.  But if we follow Christ’s will, being obedient servants to his desires, we will be fitted together in harmony, witnessing to the world what it means to love, to overlook small differences between us.  This is what the world is desiring: peace, not conflict; love, not hate; joy, not anger.  These are the attributes of the Messiah, the One who gave everything for us.  These are the attributes of those who are led by the Spirit and not by law.  Pentecost made a way for the Holy Spirit to come to all of us in his fullness who are willing to give up their ways and lives for the Lord’s ways and his life.  Jesus said we would go into all the world and be his witnesses after receiving the Holy Spirit.  This same Spirit gives us wisdom and humility to put the needs of others before our own, to love them as we love ourselves, and to serve them with unselfish devotion.

In today’s focus, Paul asks us to lay aside our opinions of correctness and appropriateness, our ideas of pleasing God, when it might offend someone else.  Instead, he suggests, look beyond the surface of things and be strong for the weak.  Encourage those who have their flame of faith flickering, not shining quite so brightly as others in the body.  Help those who are entrapped by a tendency to sin.  Help them to find a way out of this lifestyle.  Pray with those who need prayer.  Encourage those who are living without joy.  Love those who find little love within their family or community.  Comfort those who are struggling with sickness or the death of a loved one.  Be fitted together as believers in the body of Christ.  Each one of us is a minister, chosen by God to be a priest in the body of the Lord.  And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are his holy priests.  Through the mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that please God.  (1 Peter 2:5)  As priests, we are to carry out our spiritual duties to others around us in need of ministrations.  We are not to live unto ourselves, failing to discern the needs in the body of Christ.  How can we bring our gifts to God and take communion if we are out of fellowship and out of communion with fellow believers?  How can we say we are instruments of love, if we abandon our fellow church members?  Jesus said, “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar.  First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.”  (Matthew 5:23-24)  Do the people in your community of believers find you helpful, loving, caring, forgiving?  Do they know you will cry with them when they are hurting, rejoice when they are rejoicing over a victory?  You cannot live as though the church were an aside.  You must be enveloped by the community of believers by taking your place among your family of faith.  Provide them with the kindness and love that God has given you.  For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone.  If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord.  So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.  The world is dying in sin and violence, void of the redemptive power of the Lord.  We Christians know that power of God, and we know what it means to be lost and desperate.  Please do not make God work within your parameters of life: your family, your friends, your land, your ideas, your dreams.  Let God out of your restrictions.  Let him make of you what He desires: a person serving him in every situation, stretching you beyond that which seems comfortable or appropriate to you.  Accept the people who are not like you: Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters, for God is life, love, and light.  He will not lead you astray and He will use you for his glory!   

Romans 13:11-14 The Day Is Almost Here!

Romans 13:11-14  And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.  The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.  So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.  Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy.  Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.

Paul expresses the urgency of letting the Holy Spirit take over the Roman believers’ lives.  He tells them about the need to change their lives from a heathen way of thinking and living to lives that reflect the work of Jesus Christ in them.  Jesus said they are lights to the world; they are God’s living testimonies.  You are the light of the world.  A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.  Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.  Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.  (Matthew 5:14-16)  They are salt to the world, but if their lives mirror the heathens around them, they are nothing.  In fact, maybe not real Christians at all.  Of course, Christians are to live their lives every day with the expectation that the Lord will come again to this earth.  He will appear to gather his own, to end the darkness of their human existence: violence, killings, maiming, sexual abuse, thievery, humiliation, and all sorts of selfish depravation.  While waiting for Christ’s imminent return, Paul tells the Romans to put on love: Love your neighbor as yourself.  Love does no harm to a neighbor.  Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.  (Romans 13:9-10)  In many places, the Bible describes this world as evil, unredeemable without divine intervention.  No philosophy, heathen religion, profound ideas, political leanings, wars or revolutions can end the darkness that is continuously present in the hearts of men.  Out of the heart grows the wicked intentions of man towards man.  God sees this evil state as we read in the beginning of our study of Romans: The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  (Romans 1:18-19)  Now we are at a point in our history that man’s wickedness has so evolved that two men with the nuclear button from opposing countries could wipe out all mankind within a few minutes.  Man’s only hope of redemption from this evil in the heart of man is the creation through God’s saving grace of new creatures, with new hearts, and heavenly attitudes.  Paul tells the people in Rome to put aside this nature of man and put on the nature of Christ.  He wants them to let the Holy Spirit do his work in their hearts, to let his voice become preeminent in their lives.  Paul knows unless the voice of God becomes more real, more important, more persuasive than the voices that float as sound waves through the external world, they will never change, never become ambassadors of God’s great nature.  Consequently, he desires them to take the first step towards a new creature, one that is embedded in Christ, by putting aside the ways of the world, and instead, put on Christ.  He says, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.    

We who are presently IN CHRIST should understand that we have a responsibility to live for God each day with an expectant attitude towards Christ’s soon return to Earth.  God is timeless, so this is always the day of Christ’s return.  We never get away from that day, but sometimes we forget to live with the urgent expectancy of that day.  We start living as the world lives, as if Jesus will never reenter the affairs of man.  Christians’ lives can become lives of collecting, buying and selling, fulfilling mundane activities.  Rather than looking for the Lord, we can become fixated on the activities and things of this world.  Of course, we have to live in a world that demands our concentration, our minds, our abilities, our energy, but if we lose contact with the heavenly plan of redemption and of Christ’s soon coming, we will fill our thoughts and lives with the worldly functions of living.  When Jesus tells a parable that describes his second coming, the nobleman in the story who goes away says, “Occupy until I come.”  (Luke 19:13)  He means we should carry on with living.  Yet this close connection to the world can be very dangerous for Christians who need to listen to God.  For when the world is too much with us, the Bible can become a nonessential in our lives.  Our prayers will sometimes cease or be sporadic.  Media and entertainment tend to become essential to fill our lives with purpose and joy.  If we lose contact with God by not thinking of him or failing to commit ourselves to him and his purposes daily, we can become cold or even dead to the Holy Spirit’s voice inside of us.  Then our anemic spiritual lives will fail to emphasize the works of God in this evil world.  Rather than having a purpose in life that is God planned, we will be wanderers, trying to find an oasis of peace and comfort someplace in this world but looking in the wrong places.  But God has promised to be our peace, our comfort, our place of rest.  When we lose our daily Christian focus, the Bible becomes a dead letter to us: we have little desire to read it or if we do, it becomes a perfunctory obligation, not an anticipated activity.  If we lose contact with God by not thinking of him daily or relying on him, we will have a desire to fill our lives with other things.  Materialism becomes important to us.  Entertainment, sports, work and the like fill up our days.  In this world of electronics and media that can always entertain us, our spiritual commitment can die of a thousand cuts.  We can go through the whole day without praising the Lord, without singing a song about his goodness.  If we are like that are we really his people?  Are we really living under the banner of Christianity or are we just  people who belong to a group called Christians.  The world is supposed to have over two billion Christians.  How many are living lives that expect Christ to appear soon?  How many are living their lives with a daily expectation to hear his voice, to know his direction for their next steps?  Despite all this, we have a God who continually reaches out to his people, just as Jesus did when He walked this earth saying, “Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”  (Matthew 11:28)

The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.  Yes, salvation is near, available to each person who will come to him.  We do need to wake up from our slumber in this world with so many activities and demands on our lives.  We do need to know that our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.  If not in Christ’s second coming, then in our eventual death, our salvation every day is nearer than when we first believed.  This life is very short, transitory, fragile.  We lead lives that are finite, small in so many ways.  Most of us will not leave a big imprint on this world.  After our own demise, after a short while, not many will even remember or care that we once lived.  The Bible places great importance on genealogies.  For some reason, the writers of the Old and the New Testament wanted us to know the lineage, the heritage of people.  These lists of names are not very important or significant to us.  We do not know their lives or understand well why they are mentioned.  But to God, heritage is important or we would not have these lists of names in the Bible.  Heritage reveals the footprint of God in families, in generations of lives.  Heritage reveals his faithfulness to mankind.  His promises are passed down from one generation to the next.  He promised to honor those who serve him by blessing their children.  You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.  (Exodus 20:5-6)  We who are alive IN CHRIST are to honor Christ in our lives.  We are to live as if He were going to return today.  Our lips should be serving him by praising and singing his name.  Our minds should be constantly on him.  Our activities should be for his glory.  We should be fixated on his name.  We are Christians with the Holy Spirit resident in us.  Genealogy is important to God.  It should be important to us.  We should be living lives for the unborn, those who follow us, those we will never see.  Maybe our great-great-grandchildren or friends who we will never be introduced to will have something in them that we planted into someone else’s life a long time ago.  We should be living for the anticipated Christian impact that we will have on our descendants, even the unborn of the future.  Abraham’s faith was not only in God’s promise for his present life; his faith was for those who were unborn, who would see God’s faithfulness to the Jews.  Can you understand that if you live today for God as if Jesus would return in your lifetime, that that faith will have a reality someday in future generations.  We do not know the day of his return.  Jesus said, “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”  (Matthew 24:36)  Christ will return, perhaps in the day of someone from a future generation who has been touched by something from you—a spiritual thought you shared, a poem, a revelation you received.  They will be holding on confidently because of your imprint of faith on their lives through your faithfulness today.  Dear friends, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and live today with an expectancy of Christ’s immediate return.    

   

Romans 13:8-10 Pay the Debt of Love!

Romans 13:8-10  Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.  The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Love does no harm to a neighbor.  Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

The above focus for today is a powerful scripture.  We have one obligation to humanity and that is to love people as we love ourselves.  To do unto others as we want them to do to us.  Fulfillment of this scripture would eliminate all laws, all violence, all murders, all resentments, all envy, all quarreling, all bullying, all self-interest, etc.  This scripture is retelling the story of how God loved the first people he made in his image.  He did not make them for conflict, for punishing others, to mistreat others.  He made them to walk in the Garden with him in absolute harmony, in peace, in a place of rest.  Today, as you look around in your society, you find little harmony, peace, and rest.  Instead, everywhere we find an abundance of roiling dark clouds of conflict, disagreement, and even violence.  In every country, we find those who would seek to take advantage of others, to exploit others for their own purposes.  If some areas seem quiet at this time, just wait, for wars and rumors of wars have been a part of every country.  This is the basic nature of human beings.  The Bible says humans are disruptive from their childhood.  Amazingly, we often cannot get along well with our most intimate friends and family.  Christian families break apart at the same rate as secular families who claim no God in their existence.  The nature of man even in Christian families resides in all of us.  We cannot escape our fallen state on our own.  The last card in the game of life is often the self-interest card.  The prophet Ezekiel writes about this when talking about God’s judgment on the state of Israel: Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again.  Therefore in your midst parents will eat their children, and children will eat their parents.  (Ezekiel 5:9-19)  An awful thought, but survival is important to us.  We will do what it takes to survive or we will do what we feel is necessary to smooth out our lives.  Consequently, arguments, conflicts, wars, murders and every part of mayhem is in the history of mankind.  We are a very dangerous specie: we even assign others to do our hurting and killing.  Lawyers are abundant in almost every society.  They explicate our entanglements, they defend us when we are in trouble, they support us when we feel a need for legal help.  With the best of intentions, our governmental institutions are there to help us live together in some kind of peace and harmony.  We have police at every level of government to help us avoid doing only what is best in our own eyes.  They remind us that we must live together in an organized way.  And we usually obey them unless we feel we can get away with breaking the law, such as in the United States where almost all the people speed on the highways.  This is but an indication of human nature, a nature that came into the being in the Garden of Eden.

As Jesus approaches Jerusalem he weeps.  The crowd that sees him joyfully rejoices over him.  They praise him for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”  “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.”  (Luke 19:38)  Yet the Bible tells us: As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.  The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side.  They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls.  They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”  (Luke 19:41-44)  Jesus knew war would come to them, that they had rejected the one who brings peace, eradicates conflicts, and destroys ill-will.  Jerusalem and Israel rejected Jesus even though He had done so many supernatural things in their midst.  They really did not want a ruler who would curb their vices.  They wanted one to deliver them from Rome, but not one who would penetrate their hearts, who would make them clean from the inside out.  This they rejected.  Their nature of doing their own will was stronger than doing God’s will on Earth; consequently, they hung him on a cross, to do away with the king of peace, security, and harmony.  The meaning of life for the people was striving to implant their wills on others.  They strove to find what they desired in life, not to do the will of God: to love others as they loved themselves, to treat others as they wanted to be treated.  Love is all that God commands of us—to love God and others.  Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.  In Hosea 7 we see that God wants to heal his people, but their sins are too great.  I long to redeem them but they speak about me falsely.  They do not cry out to me from their hearts but wail on their beds.  (Hosea 7:13-14)  Hosea describes a wayward people, a people who have rejected his commandments, his hand in their lives.  They have chosen other ways, chosen to worship self and other gods.  They were as a people with thieves on the inside and bandits on the outside.  Otherwise, their society was depraved, wicked in every situation.  God saw it all and He sent a Savior to Israel and to the world.  The sins of the world were not too great for a loving God to show mercy and grace.  Jesus came to operate within our lives: inside and outside.  We are to carry his mission of love to the world.  He (Jesus) said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”  (Mark 16:15)  We have that obligation and privilege.

As a consequence of God’s great love for us and his command for us to love one another, how then should we live as children of God?  We find many scriptures in God’s Word concerning his love for his people and his plan for us to share that love abroad through our actions and reactions.  Loving others is so important that after telling his disciples He was giving them a new commandment to love one another, He went on to say, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  (John 13:35)  He could have selected a number of identifying characteristics for believers, but He chose love.  Your love for others will set you apart from the world.  Given this distinctive, we must stop and take inventory of our lives.  How does one who loves live in an unloving world?  Do our spouses, children, co-workers, other drivers on the road, and so on, know we are loving people?  Sometimes, yes.  Other times, not so much.  A little story from when our children were young illustrates our point.  We have used it before, but it is good enough for repetition.  The oldest three children liked to play school, and as the big sister, Christine claimed the role of teacher.  Jeff, second in line, came in one day with a long face and asked me, “Mom, why does Christine always get to be the teacher.  Don’t you think if she was a real Christian, she would let me teach sometimes?”  Seeing his point, I suggested he leave out doubting her salvation and that we nicely ask her to give him a turn once in a while so he could learn to be a great teacher like her.  Fortunately, this appeal worked, and he got his turn in front of the class of several neighbor kids and his brother and sister.  People are always looking and if they know we are Christians, they are looking for love in our deeds, not merely in our words.  Speaking of children, we learned that our children responded well to the idea of treating others as they wanted to be treated.  Instead of handing out harsh punishments when they mistreated each other, we spent time talking about how they wanted to be treated, how they felt when they hurt a brother or sister verbally or physically.  We talked about the need to ask God to help us, to start over by asking forgiveness, and trying to find a better way to solve problems next time.  We loved seeing how the Holy Spirit worked with their hearts.  They came to know the Lord when they were very young, so we did not need to treat them as unregenerate heathens.  We read in the Word that we may sin, But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.  (1 John 1:7)  This is true for all believers.  When Jesus went away, He promised to send the Holy Spirit—the Counselor, the Comforter.  He is the one who teaches us, guides us, and helps us become more and more like Jesus in our walking about lives.  There is an old gospel chorus that says, “Oh to be like thee, oh to be like thee, blessed Redeemer, pure as thou art.  Come in thy sweetness.  Come in thy fullness.  Plant thine own image, deep in my heart.”  This is the cry of a Christian: To be like Jesus.  Then we will love as He loves, forgive as He forgives.  We will leave no debt outstanding except to love one another.            

Romans 13:1-7 Do What Is Right!

Romans 13:1-7  Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.  Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.  For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong.  Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority?  Then do what is right and you will be commended.  For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good.  But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason.  They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.  Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.  This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing.  Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.  

God’s will is that the institutions that organize the human community have leadership: people in control.  In the family, in the church, in the secular communities such as cities and countries, people should have the authority to bring stability to the land.  This is necessary for the basic human condition is that everyone will do what is right in his or her own eyes without leadership and guidelines.  As we read in the Bible, In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.  (Judges 21:25)  Of course, everyone doing what he or she seems best for his or her own life leads to chaos.  Just imagine society if there were no authorities, no one to obey, no one to fear.  Let us say that there were no God in heaven to fear, no consequences or divine judgment to come for self-indulgent, self-willed, destructive behavior.  Let us say that there were no human authorities to require an account: rulers, judges, policemen, soldiers—no authorities at all to set parameters on behavior, no norms to follow, no regulations to govern people’s activities.  Every individual’s desires would rule the day.  People would be the kings and lords of their own little world, with no restraints.  However, man’s self-willed nature culminates in fleshly desires; corrosive, destructive behaviors such as murder, rape, stealing, extortion, mugging, lying, and the like.  What would the human condition on Earth be like if no laws or regulations were placed on people’s actions, no consequences for aberrant behavior?  Freewill without restraints leads to chaos, uncontrolled evil everywhere. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.  Humans need an authority to give an account to for behavior that is hurtful to others and to the community.  They need someone to organize the community, someone with the authority to police and protect the people.  Without leadership, without rulers, without an organized society, the controller of any neighborhood would be the local bully, the strongman who would be willing to hurt and maim others to gain and keep control.  In some countries today, these kinds of societies exist, always in flux, full of violence, poverty, and pain.  God’s design for human organization is to have authority that He establishes and blesses.

As believers, we have one supreme authority over our lives, God our Father.  Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings!  The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead—whom you killed by hanging him on a cross.”  (Acts 5:29-30)  As we see with Peter’s reply to the Sanhedrin, all authority is not necessarily blessed by God.  Some authority does not need to be heeded or honored in certain circumstances.  Peter and the apostles were given the directive by Jesus to go out into all the world and preach the gospel.  They had this commandment from the Lord; they were not going to violate God’s commandment, no matter what men would ask of them.  This of course is true for any Christian.  We will follow God’s commandments first, not man’s.  Authorities are given to men to rule over society, but the supreme commander in all things is God.  He rules over the whole earth.  All powers must bow at his words, not their words.  If a commandment is thou shalt not murder, then do not murder if given an order to do so.  If a commandment is to honor your father and mother, then do not under any man’s commandment dishonor them or abuse them.  The Bible says to love our wives as Jesus loves us, then do not abuse your wife even though you have control over her.  Jesus tells us to honor the little children, then do not harm little children with violence no matter who instructs us to do so.  We are to be absolutely obedient to God’s words for we are Christians.  Yet, we should honor authorities because we do live on earth in community.  Humans are meant to live in community.  The Pharisees and Herod’s supporter desired to trap Jesus into saying something that would get him into trouble with the rulers of that day.  They wanted to know, Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?  Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”  (Mark 12:24-15)  Jesus escapes this trap of separating him from his allegiance to authority by saying, Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.  (17)  In other words, honor those to whom honor is due.  We are to honor our authorities by obeying the laws and regulations that are set up to keep an organized society working efficiently.  However, we do not need to dishonor God by serving laws and regulations that run contrary to his will such as in the Old Testament when wicked Kings would direct the people to serve other gods than the only true God.  The prophets of the ancients did not follow these kings; instead, they railed against such policies, putting their lives in jeopardy of being killed.  As Peter would say, We must obey God rather than human beings!  God ordained order in society; therefore, he told us to be subject to our rulers, but He never intended for us to obey man’s laws at the expense of his commands.  We are citizens of another country, born into another family, the family of God.  Our first and primary allegiance is always to God.  As Jesus told his disciples,  Whoever has my commands and keep them is the one who loves me.  (John 14:21)  

Paul gives us a good example of how we should treat leadership in the following passage if they are not asking us to go directly against God’s will.  Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, “My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day.”   At this the high priest Ananias ordered those standing near Paul to strike him on the mouth.  Then Paul said to him, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall!  You sit there to judge me according to the law, yet you yourself violate the law by commanding that I be struck!”  Those who were standing near Paul said, “How dare you insult God’s high priest!”  Paul replied, “Brothers, I did not realize that he was the high priest; for it is written: ‘Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people.’”  (Acts 23:1-3)  Paul, chief of the Pharisees, a scholar in the law, knew the high priest was violating the law by having others strike him.  Consequently, he blurted out in anger, God will strike you, you whitewashed wall!  Then when informed that the man who struck him was obeying the high priest, he expressed regret by quoting what they all knew to be true: Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people.  Later on in Acts, we find Paul doing everything possible not to come under the authority of the Sanhedrin.  In fact, he even appeals to Caesar to evade the Sanhedrin’s authority over him, for he knew they would kill him if they ever got control over him.  Paul was fulfilling God’s commission to preach to the Gentiles the words of God.  He was doing right in God’s eyes.  The members of the Sanhedrin were the rulers of the Jewish people.  Paul was a Jew, yet he feared his leaders and escaped to Rome.  In light of Paul’s life, how do we come to terms with Paul’s statement that rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong.  For sure, Paul did not want to fall into the hands of the Sanhedrin.  How do we rectify all of this?  Let us look at Jesus’ words in his time of testing: Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan!  For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”  (Matthew 4:10)  We are people of the kingdom of God.  Our allegiance belongs to him first and only.  The Kingdom of God is preeminent in our lives.  We serve his commandments first in everything we do.  Paul knew he had a commandment to preach the gospel to the lost.  This was foremost in his life, nothing could quell that or hinder that commission, not even leaders.  He was obedient and respectful to his leaders, but he was not subservient to them.  He wanted to avoid their control over him because he wanted to serve the Lord.  We are to be respectful to our leaders and honor them for their roles in society, but nothing should ever quiet the Spirit of God in us.  We should hear his voice and do his will.  This will lead us not away from society, but will lead us to love others in society.  We will love our enemies; we will even heed their dictates if they do not violate God’s commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves.  We should be the best neighbors that any society would want.  We should be responsible citizens.  We should be the light of the world, the light in our communities.  Light does not spew out self-will or chaotic darkness.  Light shines forth everywhere with love and care for those in need.  Dear friends, obey your rulers, pay your taxes happily, be supportive to your community.  Let people see your light in the darkness! 

Romans 12:14-21 Bless, Rejoice, Do Good!

Romans 12:14-21  Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.  Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.  Live in harmony with one another.  Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.  Do not be conceited.  Do not repay anyone evil for evil.  Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone.  If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.  Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.  In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Once again we see Paul expressing the concept of God’s love to humans.  As humans we are basically at odds with the kind of love that Paul asks from us in the above focus.  Of course, we Christians believe we are made in the image of the eternal God.  We believe we will someday be with him in an eternal state.  Since we believe these things to be a reality, we must consider how we are to express God in this world of doubt and unbelief.  The New Testament clearly states that as new creatures, we are to be energized and motivated by love.  Not human love, but God’s divine unconditional love.  We should not function under our understanding of love, but under God’s eternal loving kindness and faithfulness towards others.  Human love exhibits limitations, tending to expect reciprocation, recognition, even praise for its display.  Often we expect love to bring cohesiveness, peace, and happiness.  But God’s enduring love demands none of those results.  His love is ever flowing.  His love refreshes, brings life to any environment, often to some very difficult situations, but his love does not demand anything in return.  Why?  Because God’s very nature is love.  As new creatures, we are to possess his nature.  We willingly express his love to the whole world, not just some people, but to the whole world.  Of course, when we talk like this, we are talking about perfection.  “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.  He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?  Are not even the tax collectors doing that?  And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others?  Do not even pagans do that?  Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  (Matthew 5:43-47)  The question that stands out in Jesus’ teaching so dramatically is, Do not even pagans do that?  Is our love easily identifiable as extreme, even nonsensical?  Does the world see us as God desires us to be seen?  Or is our love unidentifiable from everyone else’s love?  Jesus has strong words for the latter kind of love.  Man’s love is pagan, common, predictable, humanistic, having little to do with God’s everlasting love to a rebellious people.

Feigned love is not God’s love.  If we are loving only to heap coals of fire on our adversaries, we are not loving.  We are loving by law; we are loving because God requires it of us.  We are loving reluctantly, with devious intentions of getting our way eventually, knowing God will repay our adversaries for doing evil to us.  But this is not God’s love.  Jesus loved us while we were his enemies.  But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were sinners, Christ died for us.  (Romans 5:8)  Christ bore the cross for a rebellious people, not merely for those who willingly accept God’s authority in all things.  God is righteous.  He will eventually judge all people according to what they have done in their time of existence, but He is not a God who desires to mete out judgement.  The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.  Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.  (2 Peter 3:9)  Judgment will occur only because people choose to reject God’s call and eternity demands perfection.  People will not be allowed to bring in the deadly cancer of sin and death into eternity.  Sin must be dealt with eventually, not because God does not love people, but because his exact rule, his perfection, demands justice.  Consequently, justice will be meted out in the future.  Every sin not covered by the blood of Jesus will have to be paid for by the penalty of death.  This final judgment does not negate God’s enduring, unquenchable love for his creation; it just reveals clearly why Jesus died for all.  He died so that we might not have to die, so that we might not have to face death because of our own sins.  A perfect God, the God of forever, demands that all imperfection and inexactness must be eliminated from our eternal dwelling place.  Therefore, we see a God of love who loved humanity so much that He was willing to send his only begotten Son to the cross for a rebellious people.  God in giving his Son did not feign love.  He gave heaven’s very best to be humiliated, brutalized, and then killed.  His love darkened the sky that day of the crucifixion, but God gave Jesus to us on the cross for our eternal destiny, to be with him forever in perfection by his mercy and grace.

How do we do the impossible: to love our enemies, to bless those who persecute us; to Iive in harmony with one another; not to repay anyone evil for evil; to be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone; to live at peace with everyone, not to take revenge against evil people?  Paul helps us find the answer to that question in Philippians 3:8-14:  But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.  What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.  I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.  I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.  Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.  Paul’s desire was to know Christ in all of his power.  To know Christ, he knew he had to give up his life.  He had to surrender even the good things in his life, such as being recognized as a righteous, disciplined person, a scholar of the highest order, a person honored as a competent, zealous leader in the Jewish culture and religion.  He considered all of the accolades and praises that he had received from his fellow Jewish leaders as rubbish.  His purpose in life was not to receive the compliments of the world but to know Christ.  Paul longed to know Christ’s love, to be able to express God’s love to others.  He was pressing on to be more like Christ.  As a daily struggle, he battled his flesh for the purpose of fulfilling God’s plans in his life.  Of course, all of us have this goal in our lives.  What is the purpose of living?  For the secular world, most have a “bucket list,” what they want to do in their lives, what they want to accomplish or experience.  When they are old, they assess how meaningful their lives have been by whether they achieved the activities they desired for their personal fulfillment.  They will determine whether they had a good life or a meaningful life based on those temporal things.  However, a Christians does not assess life by the activities or experiences that they have participated in during their lives.  No, a Christian’s purpose for living is to honor God in all things.  He or she is to love in all situations so that God will be glorified.  Jesus came to honor his Father, to do his will.  We are IN JESUS so our lives should reflect Jesus who honored his Father in all circumstances.  Of course, we often fail in our flesh to honor God’s will in everything we do, but we know by faith that we are hidden IN CHRIST, so in reality, we are always honoring God one hundred percent because God loves his SON. Consequently, He loves us in the same way.  AS WITH PAUL, WE WILL PRESS ON TO WIN THE PRIZE OF THE HIGH CALLING OF BEING KNOWN AS HIS ADOPTED SONS AND DAUGHTERS IN THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD.