Today, I am reading and commenting on  Romans 15-16.

Today’s passage starts with Paul wrapping up his teaching that those who are strong in faith and in spirit should bear with the failings of the weak.  We should seek to please our neighbors in ways which build them up in faith in Christ.  Just as Christ accepted us and died serving us, so we should accept our fellow believers and be willing to die to bring salvation to our neighbors (and when Paul refers to our neighbors he is using the definition which Jesus gave us in the Parable of the Good Samaritan).

Paul then concludes his letter with a few more points worth remembering.  He writes that he will speak of nothing except what Christ has accomplished through Him.  In the same way, we should seek to give glory and credit to God for everything positive which has happened in our lives.  If you think that I have done something praiseworthy, even in writing this blog, the credit goes to God, Whose Spirit should be given credit for anything of value which might be contained in my writings (or other actions).

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Romans 15-16.

Paul concludes the treatise which was his letter to the Roman Church by  telling us that those who are strong in their faith should bear with the failings of the weak.  If you believe that you are weaker in faith than another person, so that they should bear with your failings rather than you bearing with their failings, you should not attempt to instruct them in faithfulness.  Paul tells us that we should accept each other as Christ accepted us.  Earlier in this letter Paul told us that Christ died for us when we were still sinners, which means that Christ accepted us, loved us, when we were still in opposition to Him.  Let us seek to be accepting of others in the same way.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Romans 15-16.

Paul continues, and wraps up, his admonition to accept those Believers who have different views on how to faithfully follow Christ.  He tells us that we should accept others as Christ accepted us.  If we look at the context of the rest of Paul’s letter to the Romans we see that he did not mean that we should not accept those who openly sin as fellow Believers.  Instead, Paul tells us to take the attitude of Christ who one more than one occasion said something which can be paraphrased as, “Your sins are forgiven, go and sin no more.” Let us strive to sin no more and encourage our fellow Believers to do the same.

Paul completes his message to the Believers in Rome by returning to a theme he mentioned at the beginning.  That theme is one of humility in that he expresses the confidence that they already knew what he had told them in this missive.  He emphasizes that what he wrote was merely a reminder of things they already knew.  I believe that if you had asked Paul he would have said that he wrote about these things because there were those who were taking some aspects of Christ’s teachings and twisting them to dismiss other aspects of His teaching.  Paul wrote to correct those distortions, but he emphasized here that he was not better than those to whom he wrote and that they should study both his writing and the Scriptures to come to their own conclusions about how to follow God.  We should not hold the teachings of one person, or even a small group of people, as authoritative, nor should we hold our own understanding as authoritative.  We should study Scripture for ourselves and allow the Holy Spirit to guide us AND we should listen to what other Believers have concluded from their study of Scripture and guidance from the Holy Spirit.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Romans 14-16

So, I did not touch on chapter 14 yesterday, but I really think what Paul said there is important to what he says in the passage for today.  Which means that I am including chapter 14 today.  In chapter 14 Paul refers to those who believe that one must not eat certain foods, and/or that one must hold special services on particular days.  He contrasts them to those who believe that it makes no difference what one eats, or when one holds services.  Paul tells us that either approach is acceptable to God.  Those who think it is a sin to eat certain foods should not do so, and those who think it is not should not press them to eat such foods.  Neither side should condemn the other.  Both sides should give thanks to God for what they eat and praise Him for providing them food to eat.  Instead of condemning others and trying to convince them to live as we interpret Scripture, we should live so as to help them do what is right.  Which is kind of a contradiction because helping them do what is right means convincing them to do that which is right. The key here has to do with condemnation.  If we believe that what someone is doing is a sin, rather than attempt to convince them of the sinfulness of doing it, we should attempt to convince them of the greater joy to be had by not doing it.  Our efforts should be to nurture people’s faith rather than make them feel inadequate.  Rather than argue over what is right and wrong, we should seek to live in harmony.  We will revisit this subject in a little bit as we read some of Paul’s other letters.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Romans 15-16

I never realized before reading through Romans this year that there is really just one theme running through the entire letter.  While Paul touches on other things as he expounds on this idea, he keeps coming back to it.  Paul says again and again, in different ways, we should love others as God loves us.  That means accepting people as they are, not as we wish they would be because God accepted us as we were when we first came to Him.  However, that does not mean that we should not encourage people to change.  Indeed, Paul tells us tat we should help others to do what is right and build them up in the Lord.  Just as Christ accepted us as we were, as we are, and gave us the Holy Spirit to transform us into who God made us to be, so we should accept people as they are and encourage them to accept the Holy Spirit’s transformation of themselves.