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!