PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.
Jesus, We belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Romans 14:1–4 (NIV)
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.
CONSIDER THIS
They were waiting for chapter 14. These Roman followers of Jesus would have listened carefully to all of the prior thirteen chapters, looking for clues as to how Paul was going to deal with their $64,000 question: How was Paul going to deal with our big problems?
What would Paul say about eating meat, drinking wine, and keeping Sabbath laws? It was tearing the community apart and they could not come to any peace around it. They had arrived at the place of irreconcilable convictions.
In one corner were the Jews (best we can tell). They brought with them the Law and all its requirements of circumcision, dietary restrictions, and the observance of the Sabbath.
In the other corner were the Gentiles. They were the newcomers to the faith. They had no problem with food and drink—meat and wine, and they weren’t about to get circumcised and keep Sabbath.
The Jews would have been regarded as the “weaker” in faith because they could not abide letting go of their Jewishness with all the rites, rituals, and culture. In fact, they expected the Gentiles (i.e., the stronger ones) to adopt their customs as a matter of requirement. The Gentiles weren’t having it. They knew they didn’t have to become Jews in order to follow Jesus. And they looked down on the Jews because they would not let go of the old in order to live in the new covenant.
The Jews were struggling to keep fellowship with the Gentiles because of this and took great offense at the brazen insensibility of their ways. In fact, they likely both considered the other infidels.
This is the big brouhaha in the little church of a hundred in the midst of the million lost souls in Rome. This is why Paul wrote the letter to begin with. This hostile dispute is the pretext and subtext and the real reason we have this most famous letter ever written.
You’ve heard the saying, “Don’t sweat the small stuff. And it’s all small stuff.” It’s not true. This is a story of how the little things turn out to be the big things.
For Paul, the big picture of winning Rome came down to this tiny community and their relationships. Could they, in their relationships with each other, witness to the reconciliation of the gospel in Jesus Christ? Everything, in a sense, was on the line.
That’s on the docket for this week, wrestling through the small things that turn out to be the big things in Jesus’s name. It may even lead us to see the same trends and troubles in our own day and age.
We will see, in the end, that it’s not really about meat and wine and sabbath at all, but about their relationships and the love of Jesus unleashed therein. We are going to see the righteousness of God unveiled and revealed in the most important mission field of all: our relationships inside the church. We are going to discover the secret sauce of the whole project.
Our relationships are the mission.
THE PRAYER
Abba Father! Thank you for the way it all matters when it comes to following Jesus and his royal way of loving God and neighbor. Prepare us for deeper understanding of what matters most. Awaken us to the way the small things are the big things when it comes to the gospel and our relationships with each other in the church. Prepare us for the deep revelation now coming to a climax in this letter. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen.
THE QUESTION
How does this notion strike you: our relationships are the mission? Does it resonate? Do you have pushback?
THE HYMN
Today we will sing “They’ll Know We Are Christians.” It is one of the choruses we likely know but don’t sing much anymore—“We are one in the Spirit. We are one in the Lord.” Unfortunately, it isn’t in our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise.
For the Awakening,
J. D. Walt
Subscribe to get this in your inbox daily and please share this link with friends.
5 Responses
I can honestly say that this enface on the relationships within the body of Christ could not have come with better timing. It seems to have been presented for a time such as this where Satan is doing his best to shred the “unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”
“Our relationships are the mission.” — “Love one another.” To move beyond superficial relationships to vibrant, intimate, and deeply caring relationships requires honest, heart-to-heart interaction. However, an audience gathered around social attraction and passive listening is almost never allowed to engage in humble, openhearted sharing.
Too often Christians either ignore the 50+ one another commandments in the New Testament or try to obey them in a forced, obligatory way. If only we would take the time and humility to gather to open our hearts to each other, we’d begin obeying those commandments out of love and compassion.
Christ died for the king and the pauper and everyone in between. Our flesh references the difference in each other on the scales of judgment. It’s not about the king or the pauper but the spiritually lost and the spiritually found. The found forget they were once lost when judging the lost.
Is it different when the found judge the found?
Should they judge?
Maybe a better word is correct.
In the past, I experienced drug and alcohol usage daily for 40 years. Can I love follow Jesus’ commands while experiencing substance abuse?
Yes, because Jesus loves me as I am!
No, because Jesus loves me as I am!
This I know, if I still indulged in chemical dependence while professing the love of Christ, I would have zero creditability to the person experiencing addiction. Actually, I’d find myself trying harder to conceal those addictive behaviors because guilt and shame would become more deeply rooted.
Where is the freedom Christ offers in that?
Becoming a new creature in Christ isn’t about rituals and tradition. It’s about love. Christ’s love changes humanistic love where it moves from me to them. It’s about being the example of Jesus’ love through all relationships.
Accepting and acknowledging Christ as Lord saves us from the authority of the evil one and ourselves forever.
Desiring to please Christ sets us free indeed.
Of all possibilities available, shouldn’t we desire Jesus’ approval the most?
Matthew 25:21
His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’
John 14:15
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
Staying 💪’ n Christ
Doc, this is brilliant and thank you for sharing your journey.
Our Relationships, inside and outside the church, are the mission!
Everything God has given us is for the purpose of opening doors and windows so the world, including the church, can see Jesus as HE revealed himself to us.
That’s the 1st and 2nd Half of the Gospel right there.