Let’s read verse 17. “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17)”. I just said earlier that our salvation is only based on our belief. We don’t have to be circumcised, or have a certain diet, we just have to believe. God’s main concern isn’t with these trivial matters. His main concern is that we believe in Him. How many of you have seen the movie “Moneyball”? It’s an alright movie, if you like baseball. The premise of the movie is that the Oakland A’s don’t have a lot of money, and therefore cannot afford quality players. The manager, Billy Beane, really wants to have a winning team, so he decides to team up with Peter Brand, an economics major. Peter Brand has a radically new way of assessing a player’s value. Most mangers choose players based on what they see; how good the players form is, how athletic they are, and things like that. Peter Brand’s idea is to not look at the player’s attributes, but at their numbers. One example is when they are looking for a pitcher. The pitcher that Brand recommends to Beane has very unconventional and awkward form when he pitches. However, Brand tells Beane that if you look strictly at the numbers, this is a good pitcher who can get a decent amount of strikes. Sometimes we are like the managers who are focusing on the wrong things. At the end of the day, what matters is that the pitcher can throw the ball over the plate well. His form shouldn’t be an issue if he is able to pitch. In the same way, nothing others do should be an issue, if they are saved. The only time we should be concerned is if someone is sinning against God, but other than that, we should accept each other.
Let’s keep trucking along here. Read verse 19 with me. “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification (Romans 14:19).” The next reason we should accept one another is so that we encourage peace and unity. Why is unity important? Jesus told the people who thought He drove out demons because He was a demon gave them this response- “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand (Matthew 12:25)”. If we are not united, the church cannot stand. Let’s also read chapter 15 verse 2. “Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up (Romans 15:2)”. When we are accepting of others, we encourage their growth. How many of you babysit or have babysat in the past? How many of you abandon the baby because he or she was not able to walk without your help? If any of you said yes, I’d have to tell that baby’s parents. We don’t get upset at the baby because they can’t walk, we hold their hand and help them walk. We accept that they are not as strong as we are, and cannot walk on their own. We help them walk so they learn how to walk on their own. We encourage their growth. We shouldn’t get upset at others who are not as spiritually mature as us, we should make an effort to help them grow by building them up.
Verse 3 tells us that “for even Christ did not please Himself but, as it is written: ‘the insults of those who insult you have fallen on Me’ (Romans 15:3).” If you think about how Jesus should have come to this earth, it was as a king. He is the Lord over everything, so everyone should have served Him. Instead: Jesus, “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8)”. Jesus came not as a king, but as a servant. What does Paul desire in verse 5? That “the God who gives endurance and encouragement (would) give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had (Romans 15:5)”. In others words, we should be a servant to each other. Now, before you all start ordering me to serve you, we should also remember that Jesus never asked anyone to serve Him. We should take the same attitude that Jesus had for us. He could have easily judged us and left us to die, yet He chose to love. We also should choose to love, not to judge. “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters (1 John 14-16)”. So let us “accept one another, just as Christ accepted us (Romans 15:7)”.
The last reason that we should accept one another is that we bring glory to God. Read verse 6 with me. “So that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 15:6)”. Accepting each other in love brings glory to God. Ephesians 2:21-22 tell us that “in him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” God wants us to be united so that His spirit can dwell within us. How can we have unity if we do not accept one another? How can we bring glory to God if we do not accept one another? Like I said earlier, whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we do it for the glory of God. Accept one another because it brings praise and glory to God.
Now we have all of the reasons that we should accept one another. I want to talk about what the last part of the passage has to do with what we’ve learned today. Paul suddenly just starts writing about the Jews and Gentiles. Or so it seems. This letter was written to Rome, where there were both Jewish and Gentile Christians. The Jews considered themselves to be God’s chosen people, who had to uphold the law. These were the people who abstained from certain foods, and regarded some days as sacred. Even though they knew about Jesus, they still held on to their old traditions. The Gentile believers were a lot freer, since they did not have any traditions regarding God. They understood God in a different way than the Jews did. These conflicting views of how to live as a Christian caused tensions between the Jews and Gentiles. The Jews thought the Gentiles were unclean because they ate meat and treated all days alike. The Gentiles thought the Jews were weaker in faith because they followed old traditions and restricted their own freedom found in Christ.
Earlier I quoted a verse from Ephesians chapter two. I’d like to read more of the chapter to give you some context. “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit (Ephesians 2:14-22).” God’s plan was not to have two separate groups of people worshipping Him, but that everyone would worship Him as one. The Jews had to accept the Gentiles, and the Gentiles had to accept the Jews.
Today we learned a lot of different things about accepting our fellow believers. We’ve learned that accepting means receiving others without judging them, in order to build each other up. We’ve also learned many reasons to accept one another: God is our Master, everything we do is for the Lord, only God is Judge, Christ died for all people, the Kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, we build one another up, Christ has accepted us, and we bring praise and glory to God. I think the most important reason to remember is that Christ died for us to accept us, so we should extend that to others by accepting them. Christ died for all of us, not just the strong in faith. Sometimes we let trivial matters break our unity. It can be very difficult to accept certain people we don’t agree with, or we don’t like. How can we accept them? We have to follow Jesus’ example. He had every right to abandon us in our sins, but He chose to become a servant and to die for us. He humbled Himself. This is the key to accepting others. We have to humble ourselves, as Christ did. If we’re able to accept one another, God will fill us with joy, peace, and hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Let’s read the key verse, chapter 15 verse 7 again. “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God (Romans 15:7).”
-Smart
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