WHO CHOSE WHOM?

by Ray C. Stedman

The ninth chapter of Romans centers around the thorniest subject that a preacher can preach on -- election (or, as some call it, predestination). This is one subject that is guaranteed to raise blood pressure whenever it is brought up, so I want to begin by reminding you that the duty of Christians is to love one another, even though they disagree about matters of interpretation. This subject has been the cause of major divisions in Protestantism. You probably know that Protestants in general are classified, theologically, as either Calvinists or Arminians. Now, that is not Armenians -- it has nothing to do with Armenia, or the folks who come from Armenia. It is Arminian, which is simply derived from the man who first successfully expounded these ideas: Arminius, a Dutch theologian who live in the seventeenth century. These two groups have divided Protestantism over the subject of the election of God. Roman 9 is the meatiest passage in the Bible that deals with this matter, and, in a sense, it is the test of a man's theology.

As I read through this chapter, in preparation for this during the last several weeks, I was more and more impressed that this chapter, to many, will seem like a violent roller coaster ride. It begins slowly -- you know, that long pull to the top -- but then it takes a steep plunge that leaves many people breathless. Let's see if we can survive the ride.

There are two things that I would like you to keep in mind: First of all, I did not write this; Paul did. I think the best that we can do is simply to work our way through the clear argument of the apostle. If you will follow with me on that, and, together, try to understand what he is saying, and, then, if you differ, your quarrel is not with me but with the greatest theologian the church has ever known. In fact -- since we believe that Paul spoke and wrote by the inspiration of God -- your quarrel is with God if you cannot agree with this passage!

The second thing that I would like to remind you of is that Romans 9 follows Romans 6, 7, and 8. There appears to be a rather sudden change of subject here when you go from Romans 8 to Romans 9 because, in the previous chapters, Paul has been concerned with the Christian and his development in spiritual life (learning to walk in the Spirit), and suddenly he seems to switch to the matter of Israel -- Romans 9, 10 and 11 is all centered about the nation Israel. But this is not really a change of subject. It is simply that Paul is illustrating, by using Israel as an example, the great themes that he has developed in Romans 6, 7, and 8. If you remember, the theme of those chapters is primarily that the life that you and I have received from Adam (our human life, as we call it) is a totally worthless and useless thing in the sight of God, so far as producing anything that lasts or endures. This is the unquestioned statement of Scripture: All that is of any value in your life or mine, all that will in any degree go toward satisfying that hunger in our hearts to do something worthwhile, can only stem from the activity of Jesus Christ dwelling in us. That is the great theme of Romans 6, 7, and 8. To paraphrase the little motto that you see on the wall occasionally,

Only one life, t'will soon be past,
Only what is done by Christ will last

The nation Israel becomes the example of that in Romans 9. As you know, one of the basic characteristics of our human nature is that we have a tendency to fix up the outside of our life and to let the inside take care of itself. In other words, as long as we can get men to approve of what we are doing, we feel that God certainly ought to -- and this ought to be acceptable to him. Especially is this true if we have a great religious heritage that we can display before anyone who is interested -- if we have been baptized by the right mode, if we belong to the right church, if we worship in the proper way, if we read the correct version of the Scriptures, if we observe the accepted taboos, if we sing the best hymns at the correct tempo, if we give heartily and heavily to missions -- then we think that certainly we ought to be acceptable to God!

I find that some people simply cannot believe that you can do all these things and still God would be totally unimpressed by it. This was the mistake that Israel made as a nation, and they are a picture for us of the mistake that many people continue to make today. We have in Romans 9 the prime example of unavailing privilege. Paul says:

I am speaking the truth in Christ, I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen by race. They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ [I think we will take the marginal reading here as more suited to the context], who is God over all, blessed for ever. Amen. (Romans 9:1-5 RSV)

Here is Paul, the great authority on Judaism, listing for us the remarkable privileges that Jews have enjoyed as a people. There are eight special marks of God's favor:They are the only nation in all the earth of whom God said, "Thou art my son," (Psalms 2:7 KJV). They had a sonship relationship to God. They had the glory -- they had seen the glory of God revealed. That is an amazing statement, but time after time God had appeared in glory unto this people, and no other nation can make that claim. They had the covenants: All the covenants, the agreements that God made with men, were made with Jews, made with the nation Israel. God never made covenants with Gentiles. The law was theirs. The Law -- the greatest statement of the character of God that we have outside the New Testament -- is the Ten Commandments, and this was given to Israel on Mount Sinai. To them was also given the worship, i.e., the divinely prescribed temple ritual -- the only divinely given religious system in the world was that given to Israel -- all others are cheap, man-made substitutes. But to Israel was given, by God, a divinely prescribed system of sacrifices and rituals.

To them also was given the promises of the kingdom glory, that they would be, at last, the head of the nations -- and God's kingdom would be centered in them. The patriarchs -- i.e., the fathers -- were all Jews: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David; all of them. Finally, as the supreme thing, and the climax of their religious favor, God himself chose to enter the human race in the person of Jesus Christ through them. This is a remarkable thing! What a heritage this is!

When I was a student at seminary, a Jewish Christian evangelist spoke to the seminary student body. He told us about a time when he was in Boston speaking to a group of Christians and non-Christians meeting together in a private home. After the meeting a very prim and austere lady came up to him -- one of these people that Dr. Ironside used to call "a female dreadnought." She steamed up under full power to this Jew, and said to him, "Sir, I am not all interested in what you have to say. You talk about this gospel as though I needed something. I want you to know that I am from one of the finest families in Boston, and our people have been here in this country from the beginning. My ancestors came over on the Mayflower, and I have a great ancestry." He looked at her, and said, "Lady, you have an ancestry? Why, you don't know what an ancestry is! You trace your ancestry back to the Mayflower, some 300 years ago. I have an ancestry that goes back to Abraham -- some 4,000 years ago -- I am a Jew. But my ancestry did me no good at all!"

This is exactly the picture that Paul is drawing here. What saddened the apostle beyond measure was that, with all this religious privilege and favor, the Jews were actually further from God than the Gentiles who didn't have any of this. The most religious nation that was ever on the face of the earth was Israel (it still is today), yet they did not know God. Isn't that amazing? It certainly shows the emptiness of mere religion, as favored and as genuine as it may be.

The fact that Israel did not know God was amply demonstrated in the treatment that they gave the Apostle Paul. They hounded him, harried him, persecuted him, opposed him, tormented him everywhere he went. Yet there is not one word of bitterness here, not one word of resentment against this people. So filled is Paul with the Spirit of Christ that he can only say that I wish that it were possible to send me to hell in order that he might save all my brethren in Israel! I don't think there is any statement in the Scriptures that more fully declares the fact that Paul was filled with the Spirit than this; it is a thoroughly divine statement.

Poor Israel! They thought that, because they had descended from Abraham, they were God's children -- that they automatically became children of God. But, instead, they were bitter, proud, self-deceived, and boasting in these empty privileges, and Paul's heart goes out to them because of that. Does this mean, since Israel was in this condition, that God was not true to his promises to Abraham? Does it mean that God meant to save all of Israel, as it sounds like from some of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, but somehow he just couldn't do it? Paul says, "No!"

The problem was that Israel misunderstood the basis of salvation -- and many people are doing the very same thing today. In this next section, Paul shows us the true basis of God's method and plan of salvation among men. This basis we can set forth in two words -- unpredictable election:

But it is not as though the word of God had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his descendants; but "Through Isaac shall your descendants be named." This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of promise are reckoned as descendants. For this is what the promise said, "About this time I will return and Sarah shall have a son." And not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of his call, she was told, "The elder will serve the younger." As it is written, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." (Romans 9:6-13 RSV)

(Here we have come to the top of the first section of the roller coaster, so hang on!) Paul says it is not that the promises have failed, but, rather, that God does not choose men on the basis of anything that man does, or is, at all!

There is a lady in this church who says frequently to me, "I ask myself every day, 'Who am I that God should ever be so good to me?' Or, 'What have I done? Why should he be so kind to me?'" She has been asking me that question for ten years, and I still can't answer her. The reason is because of what Paul brings out here -- that the Jews were obviously wrong in thinking that God chose men because they were descendants of Abraham (notice his argument). He says that, obviously, it can't be on that basis because God chose Isaac but didn't choose Ishmael -- and both of them were sons of Abraham. Only, as he says, the children of promise are acceptable to God -- only those born out of God's activity, not from man's activity, are going to be accepted before God.

In other words, nobody is born a Christian. They can't be! It isn't natural birth that fits us for the kingdom of God; it is divine birth alone. Those who have been acted upon by God's Spirit to create a new birth are the children of promise. You remember that Isaac was born after nature was dead in the case of his father and mother -- they were so old that they could not have children by natural means -- they had long passed that time. And then Isaac was born -- it wasn't by anything that they did -- Abraham and Sarah had nothing to do with it. It was completely and wholly God's activity. And, when Isaac was born, he was not only physically the child of promise, but spiritually as well. Ishmael was rejected. God chose Isaac and not Ishmael. Therefore, it could not be on the basis of being descendants of Abraham.

Moreover, neither is it on the basis of God's foreknowledge of what men will do that he chooses them. This is where many people feel that we have an explanation of why God chooses some and not others. They say he looks ahead and sees what they are going to do, and, because of his foreknowledge, he chooses them. No, it is not that! Paul says so! Before Jacob and Esau were born, when they had done no good or evil at all, God chose Jacob and not Esau -- and these were twin boys. You see, it is not a question of what man's character, or his work, may be. While these boys were yet in their mother's womb, God chose to bless Jacob and accept him, and to reject Esau and allow him to remain under the curse of the Adamic sin in which he was born. Well, you say, he foreknew that Jacob would be a good man and that Esau would be a bad man. No, he didn't. If you read the record very clearly, you can see that, in many ways, Esau was a much better man than Jacob. If we had our choice of which one to live with, I certainly would choose Esau rather than Jacob. Jacob was a schemer, a rascal, a usurper, always working underhandedly to see what advantage he could take of someone -- and he did this all his life. No, God didn't choose them because one of them was better than the other. Both of them were equally depraved at this point, and they were equally lost. Yet God chose to save Jacob but not Esau. Therefore he says, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."

I know that this quotation is taken from the book of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, and it has been pointed out that this was written long after Jacob and Esau had lived, and that this was God's conclusion after he had seen all that they were going to be and all that their descendants were going to be. But that is, of course, to ignore God's foreknowledge; he knew that all along. No, that is putting the cart before the horse:

Men are not good and then God chooses them, Men are good only because God has chosen them -- that is the point. The whole teaching of Scripture is that our fallen nature is such that it cannot please God, and, until God begins to operate upon our lives, there is nothing that we can do to please him. You see how clearly Paul sets that forth. Now notice specifically that he says that God's basis of reference is not man's work, but simply God's own choice, his calling:

...though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of his call... (Romans 9:11 RSV)

...this choice was made.

This is what our Lord Jesus meant when he said to Nicodemus, "The wind [or the Spirit] blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it [you can trace the activity but you can't predict it, you don't know where it is going to strike next]; so it is with the Spirit," (John 3:8 RSV). The Spirit of God moves according to his own will, and only that. No man can predict or control where he is going to go.

It is not that God looks forward to see what good man will do and then chooses them. They cannot do any good until God's Spirit in his sovereign will begins to move upon their life and heart. Unless you begin there in your theology, you will get nowhere in the study and understanding of God's work and character. Now we come to the next section, which we call unchallengeable sovereignty:

What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." So it depends not upon man's will or exertion, but upon God's mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, "I have raised you up for the very purpose of showing my power in you, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth." So then he has mercy upon whomever he wills, and he hardens the heart of whomever he wills.

You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" But, who are you, a man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me thus?" Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for beauty and another for menial use?" (Romans 9:14-21 RSV)

With this we begin to grasp the fact that God does not intend to save all men. He never did. He reserves the right to choose whom he will save. Then, immediately, someone says, "That's not fair! Everyone should have an equal chance to be saved, and God is unjust." This is what Paul faces here. The fact that Paul raises this issue right at this point is proof that he intended us to understand that God chose Jacob and rejected Esau on no other basis than his own will -- otherwise he wouldn't raise this question.

If, as some people say, God foresaw that Jacob would believe in him, and then chose him because of that knowledge, then, of course, it would be a very reasonable thing to choose him, and no one would ever raise this objection and say that God was unjust. But it is the very fact that our fallen nature rebels at this idea that indicates that this is exactly what God says he does.

Paul refers to God's words to Moses in Verse 15: "He says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion,'" (Exodus 33:19). I think it is very helpful for us to remember when God said this to Moses. It is taken from the book of Exodus, and, if you look in the 33rd chapter, you will see that this was at the time when Israel was at Mount Sinai. Moses had been up on the mountain with God getting the Law; he had been there for forty days and forty nights. While he was up on the mountain, down at the foot of the mountain Aaron and some of the leaders of Israel listened to requests of the people and decided that they would make a god for them to worship. Ignoring all the mighty acts that God had done for them, and his revelation of his own person and being to them, and though they had seen the mountain shaking and quaking, and the fire and the noise and thunder that had proceeded from it, nevertheless this people had turned to idolatry. They asked Aaron to make them a god, and Aaron collected all the jewelry in the camp, and melted it, and made a golden calf. Then the people began to dance around the golden calf just as the pagans around them did, in a voluptuous riot of sensuality, stripping off their clothes until they were naked, and running about this god and worshipping it in the most horrible form of heathen idolatry. When Moses came down from the mountain with the Law in his hands, he was tremendously angry -- he was furious at this -- he dashed the Law in pieces and went up to the top of the mountain again. God was angry with his people, but Moses began to intercede, and God pointed out that even Moses could not intercede for people like this. Israel had lost every vestige of any possible claim they had upon God. They had forfeited every possible right. Then God retreated into his sovereignty, and said to Moses in Exodus 33:19 (paraphrased): "I will bless whom I will bless, I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy, and I will show compassion to whomever I want to show compassion." The only hope that Israel had of escaping the just doom that was hanging over their heads (there stood nothing between them and the wrath of God at all) was God's sovereign choice that he would not show his wrath, but that, instead, he would have mercy.

So God's election, you see, operates against the background of a people who had lost all rights and all claims upon his mercy, he just shows it as he wills. Again, the basis of salvation is stated for us here: It is not that man wills, or chooses, it is not that God foresees that you are going to choose Christ, it is not that man tries or exerts himself or attempts to find God. it is simply that it is God's choice to show mercy on whom he will. The fact that a man wills to believe, or that he tries to please God, is simply an indication that God is at work, but these things are not the reason why he works.

There comes to mind the story of a man who was giving a testimony at a meeting, and he told how God had sought him and finally found him. This man became a Christian, and he was testifying to the grace and joy that was his. When he sat down, the leader of the meeting, a man with rather a legal turn of mind, said:

"Now, brother, you have told us about God's part in the way you became a Christian, but you never mentioned your part. When I became a Christian I had to read the Bible, and I had to seek, and I had to pray, and I had to do all these other things, and you have not mentioned anything about them."

And the other man was on his feet at once. He said:

"Yes, you are right. I didn't mention anything about my part. Well, my part, sir, was running away from God for thirty years, and his part was running after me until he found me."

Now, I don't know where he got his theology, but it was very straight and clear -- and it is exactly what Paul sets forth here. At this point in the chapter, Pharaoh is brought in to show the other side of it. Moses and the story of Israel is there to show how God shows mercy upon whom he will, but Pharaoh is brought in to show that God hardens whom he will. We are told that God raised him up for this very purpose, i.e., he put him on the throne for that purpose. It doesn't mean that he caused him to be born in order that he might be lost -- God never does that -- but he put him on the throne in order that Pharaoh's stubbornness and obstinacy would be the background by which God's power and grace might be displayed. I know that the Old Testament says over ten times that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, but Paul knew those Scriptures and Paul doesn't refer to that part of it. Paul picks up this phrase about God hardening Pharaoh's heart because he clearly means to indicate that Pharaoh was lost because God did not choose to show mercy on him -- and Pharaoh, of course, wouldn't want the mercy of God until God did begin to act upon his life and heart.

Now do you see the picture? Moses and Pharaoh both belong to the same guilty lump of humanity. Moses was not inherently any better than Pharaoh was. Neither of them had any claim on God -- so God was free to exercise his sovereign right to choose Moses but not to choose Pharaoh, and he did just that. Right here somebody says, "Well, look, if I can't believe until God chooses to act upon me, then why does he condemn me for not believing?" This is invariably the charge that man brings against God, and you will notice that this is exactly what Paul brings in here.

You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" (Romans 9:19 RSV)

This is the question that men ask. Many, many times in Bible classes, when we are wrestling with these themes of election and predestination, someone who is there, understandably, raises this issue: I have heard them say, "Now, look, did God know that man would sin when he made him?" And the answer, of course, is "Yes," because he knows all things. He knows the end from the beginning. God knew that man would sin when he made him. He didn't make him sin, but he knew that he would. Then the question is, "If that is true, why did God make man so he could sin?" I have had that asked me scores of times, and, usually, the one who asks it looks around with a rather self-satisfied look that says, "Well, that ought to settle your hash." And it sounds logical and unanswerable, doesn't it? It makes unbelief sound so reasonable and just. "Why, of course I can't believe until God chooses to allow me to believe; therefore there is nothing that he can blame me for. Fine!" But Paul goes behind that question to show its true character; he shows that it is really an attempt to put all the blame on God, and, thus, to make the creature more righteous than the creator, so that man becomes more just than God. It is really man saying to God,

"Look, God, step down from that throne a little bit. I want to talk to you. I have a few questions to ask you. Sit down here; I want to give you the third degree. Now, tell me this: 'What right have you to make me this way?'"

This is simply another way of saying, "You have no right to be God," for a God that is not sovereign is no God at all! When we talk about God, we are talking about a sovereign being, and sovereignty means "the right to do what you will without giving an answer or reason to anybody." And God must be that kind of a being or he is no God at all! Anyone who asks this question, or who raises this issue (as Paul brings it out here) is really saying, or demanding, that God submit himself to man's will, and, of course, that makes man God. This is the great lie of the Devil -- that man could be God. This was the great temptation by which he subverted and betrayed the original couple.

Paul goes on to show that, within the limits of man's finiteness, he exercises the same kind of sovereignty that he tries to deny to God. This is illustrated in the matter of the potter and the clay. Doesn't the potter have the right to take a lump of clay, divide it in half, take half of the lump and make a beautiful vessel that is designed for display in a living room, and take the other half and make a slop jar or something for the kitchen? Doesn't he have this right? Yes, he does. The potter has the right to do with the clay as he wishes -- this is Paul's argument.

"Well," someone says, "but clay is not human beings; clay is an unfeeling substance without will. We human beings have a will, and we have feelings." Well, then take man's relationship to the plants and animals -- these are living beings. Doesn't a gardener have the right to dig up a bush and throw it away if he doesn't like it, or to plant it in another part of the garden, or to take up this tree and plant another in its place? Do we deny him that right? Does anyone challenge his right?

If a farmer has cattle, does he not have the right to divide a certain number off and send them to market to be slaughtered, while he saves others for another two or three years? Does anybody question his right? You see, this is sovereignty.

You housewives, when you have flies come into your home, don't you have the right to either shoo them out the door or swat them with a fly swatter, one or the other? We exercise this kind of sovereignty all the time -- and we are only creatures -- but man in his pride and arrogance refuses to grant this same sovereignty to the only being who has the right to exercise it whenever he chooses. Now, when we call God, "God," we mean that he is sovereign, and if he is sovereign, then he can make man to be whatever he chooses him to be. To deny that is to deny God his godhood and to make man a god in his place. Finally, we will see how he exercises that sovereignty, because, of course, it all rests on the character of God. What kind of a sovereign being do we have? So, in this last section, we have what we may call unanswerable grace:

What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? As indeed he says in Hosea,
   "Those who were not my people
   I will call 'my people,'
   and her who was not beloved
   I will call 'my beloved.'"
   "And in the very place where it was said to them 'You are not my people,'
   they will be called 'sons of the living God.'" [God's saving grace is going to move among the Gentiles.]

And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: "Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea [as God promised Abraham], only a remnant of them will be saved [because it is the children of promise that are saved, not the children of Abraham]; for the Lord will execute his sentence upon the earth with rigor and dispatch." And as Isaiah predicted,
   "If the Lord of hosts had not left us children,
   we would have fared like Sodom and been made like Gomorah." (Romans 9:22-29 RSV)

The simple truth is that if God did not move upon man's will to make us believe, not one man in all of time would ever be saved. Jesus said, "No man can come unto me except my Father draw him, and all that my Father had given me shall come unto me," (John 6:44, 65). That is the same thought, the same teaching.

"Well," someone says, "you are teaching that God elects some to be saved and others to be damned." No, not so. All are lost already, and God is not responsible for that. God never elected man to be damned, that was man's own choice. The only time that man ever exercised his own free will was when Adam chose to accept the principle that the Devil set before him and to act independently of God. The moment that man made that choice he plunged himself -- and the entire race of men following -- into the natural results of that decision.

If I had sitting before me here this morning a glass of poison that I knew would kill me, I would have the choice of whether to drink it or not. But once I drank it I no longer would have any exercise of free will -- I must reap the results -- and this is the condition that God says the human race is in. Having drunk of the dregs of independence from God, at the instigation of Satan, man is plunged into the darkness and the depths of fallen humanity, and it is only God's saving, electing grace that calls any out at all. It is not God's hardening that deprives a soul of salvation; that merely leaves him in the state that he is already in. But if God did not move in mercy, we would all be like Sodom and Gomorah -- blasted, corrupted, ruined, and burned.

Think about that for awhile when you think over this matter of God's electing grace.

You see, if we find fault with God for saving some but not all, we are really asserting that men have a right to be saved, that they deserved to have mercy shown them. But the truth is that we deserve nothing but hell -- all of us! As long as we demand that God consult us about our salvation, we slam the door to discovering his grace. But if we are willing to let God be God, and be sovereign in the exercise of his will, then we begin to see what it costs God to save men -- not only the darkness and the anguish and the loneliness of the cross, but, as Paul points out, even today God is long-suffering in his patient dealing with evil men. God is putting up with all the foulness and hatred and enmity of man.

Listen to a conversation around you sometime, listen to people talk about God, listen to the way they take his name and cast it into the dirt and walk over it -- the very one in whose hand is their very breath, listen to the way they speak in arrogant independence of him, and act as though they have the right to do whatever they want to with the very body he created, and died to redeem, listen to that, and then think of how many centuries God has been waiting patiently with that attitude! God could stop evil any time he chose. With but a flick of his finger he could wipe out the whole human race, but he doesn't do it. And why doesn't he? Because, as Paul says here, he desires

...to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory, (Romans 9:22b-23 RSV)

Those verses suggest that, in order that some might be saved, there must be some who are lost. I don't understand this. I don't think anyone does. But I leave this with the sovereign choice of God who is willing to put up with all that man throws at him, century after century, in patient endurance, in order that he might bring to fulfillment the desires of his heart in the salvation of some.

Now, you will notice that it doesn't say that God made men fitted for destruction. No, he didn't. Adam did that, and men have helped him along ever since. But wherever man feels a hunger for God, wherever he finds faith in his heart to believe the record of the Scripture concerning Jesus Christ, wherever man grows weary of his selfishness and of evil, there is where the wind of the Spirit of God is blowing, wooing and fitting the man or woman, little by little, "to be a vessel of mercy prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has called."

Prayer:

Our Father, these are mighty themes, far beyond our limited understanding, but we thank you for the simple fact that if were not for your saving grace, not one of us would be here this morning, for there is none who seek God, none who really want to be holy and right and true, except as your Spirit does breathe upon us and create that desire in the first place. We thank you for that. We pray that any here who sense the moving of the Spirit -- who are hungry for you, who want to be right, and who want to be forgiven -- may recognize as well that this is the very indication that you do intend them to be forgiven and will find in Jesus Christ the fulfillment of their hopes and dreams, and the fulfillment of those passions awakened in them by thy Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

HOW FAR AWAY IS GOD

by Ray C. Stedman

I have just returned from visiting France, Germany, and England; and one of the things that I noticed about these three countries is that each is tremendously different. They have completely different languages, each has a different culture, the people of each nation have different characteristics, and, though they are very closely situated to one another (less than an hour's flight by airplane from Germany to England, for instance), nevertheless, these three European nations are tremendously different. Yet I was aware that, with each of these nations, there is a basic problem, one that is essentially spiritual in its nature, and it is exactly the same basic spiritual problem that we have here in the United States.

Perhaps one of the most influential men of recent times who is shaping the thinking of men is a Dane who lived in the nineteenth century; his name is Soren Kierkegaard. When he was a young boy, Kierkegaard was taken to church by his parents to the state church in Denmark every Sunday morning. He grew up in the church, and noticed that there was a great disparity between what was taught, and the way that people acted in church, and the way they lived the rest of the week. He was troubled by this, and eventually he wrote on this matter very penetratingly, very deeply, and very helpfully. His conclusion was that the basic problem of his nation, as with other nations of the world (of Western Europe, at least) was how to make Christians out of people who are already "Christians" -- i.e., how to make "Christians" Christian -- how to make men and women put into practice seven days a week what they so glibly state and sing on Sunday morning. This is the basic problem that is facing Europe today, and the United States as well.

As you open the pages of Scripture, especially here in the book of Romans, you see that this was exactly the problem with which Paul was confronted in the nation of Israel -- the most religious nation on the face of the earth. This nation has never been exceeded in its religious zeal (it was true then and it is still true today). Yet it was a nation what was very, very far from God. In Romans 9 we saw that the great theme was the sovereignty of God and his electing grace. It set forth the fact that not one of us would ever become a Christian, not one of us would ever remotely dream of seeking God, if it were not for the electing grace of God which sought after us first. The call of God awoke us out of the sleep of death, brought us to our awareness of our need, created a hunger in our heart, and set us to looking for him. That is the theme of Chapter 9.

By contrast, in Chapter 10 we have the matter of the responsibility and the moral freedom of man set forth. These are two themes that are usually regarded as opposed to one another. You can get into long arguments over this matter of divine election versus man's free will. There has been a great deal of heat (but very little light) that has been evidenced by the arguments that have gone on for centuries over this question. But you will notice that Paul puts them side by side and says that they are both true. I don't think that we will ever begin to understand the workings of God in our world today until we acknowledge that both of these great pronouncements are true: God must call us before we can possibly move toward him; yet, if we do not respond in a responsible decision, we are to blame for not knowing him and for continuing in our lost, fallen condition. Paul places these two ideas side by side: See how he analyzes the problem of the weakness of religion -- man presenting a religious facade, a false front, in life. This is what he has to say, beginning with Verse 30 of Chapter 9 and continuing through Verse 4 of Chapter 10:

What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, righteousness through faith, but that Israel who pursued the righteousness which is based on law did not succeed in fulfilling that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it through faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling-stone, as it is written,
   "Behold I am laying in Zion a stone that will make men stumble,
   a rock that will make them fall;
   and he who believes in him will not be put to shame."

Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened. For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law, that every one who has faith may be justified. (Romans 9:30-10:4 RSV)

The countries that I have just visited, i.e., England, France, and Germany, are religious lands. I was struck by the fact that, in every land, the church is very evident -- i.e., the buildings. Paris is a city of churches. I climbed to the top of the tower of Notre Dame. (There are 250 steps to the top, and, when you get there, you are glad that there are no more!) I looked out over the city, and the one thing that impressed me was the tremendous number of church spires. Almost everywhere they pointed up to the sky, breaking the skyline of Paris, but Paris is a city that is very far from God. And, through France is a land that has been dominated and saturated by the pronouncements and teachings of the church for centuries, yet it is a land that is suffering deeply from God-hunger -- a great and overpowering hunger for spiritual reality.

When I went through Germany I could not help remembering that this was the land of the Reformation, the land where Martin Luther lived. Once the Reformation had swept with a vital power throughout the whole land, awakening it, and transforming it. Today the churches of the Reformation are everywhere in Germany, but it is the same story -- West Germany is a country of full pockets and empty hearts.

In England it was the same. England is a land to which we are greatly indebted for the rich heritage that we have received from it. I visited Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral, an yet remembered that in London only 2% of all the population attend church. It was evident on Sunday in that land that there are very, very few who come into the churches. There, as in our own land, the problem is not the absence of religion, but of religious depth. There is plenty of the wrong kind of religion.

A number of years ago I remember reading a message by Roger Hull, the president of the Mutual of New York Insurance Company. He was speaking to a large crowd of business men in the city of Chicago, and he opened his address with these rather startling words. He said, "I am convinced the greatest problem that America faces today is that of the casual Christian." Now, that was from a business man: The greatest problem that America faces is casual Christianity! It is amazing, when you stop to think about it, how easily we slip into hypocritical acts -- even in church. I was rather surprised, and disappointed, to learn that last week on Sunday morning, here in this church, there were some folks listening to the World Series on a transistor radio while the church service was going on. I am sure that they didn't think that this was irreligious, or irreverent. I am sure that they had no consciousness of what they were doing, but, when I heard of this, I thought of the words of Jesus to the woman at the well when he said to her, "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth," (John 4:24 KJV), "for the Father seeketh such to worship him," (John 4:23b KJV).

The great problem of our land, and of other lands, is exactly what Paul outlines here: A superficial religion, a seeking after their own righteousness, a contentment with making the outside appear right, a complacency and satisfaction with the inside, even though it is completely wrong. I know, when we begin to face this problem, the remedy that is usually suggested is to find some way to get people to take their religion seriously and get more involved in the activity of the church. In other words, if we can find a way to turn the casual Christian into a concerned Christian the problem will be solved. In our country, more than in Europe, we have found a way by which we have enlisted people in religious activity, and our churches, in contrast to those over there, are full. We have people lined up in a program right up to their necks! They are immersed in it, they are on this committee and that committee, they belong to this group and that group, they are continually busy in a constant round of religious activity.

But we haven't solved the problem, because, as Paul points out here, Israel is forever an example of the falsity of this approach. The answer is not just "getting busy for God." It isn't just trying to be more active in the things that the church is doing. Zeal is no substitute for reality. Warming up a pot of spoiled meat doesn't change its rottenness. Or, as C. S. Lewis so graphically put it, "No clever arrangement of bad eggs will make a good omelet." Putting a man to work is no answer. The answer is not a program, the answer is a Person. It always is.

Paul says of Israel, "They have stumbled over the stumbling-stone," and he quotes from Isaiah, where God says: "Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone that will make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall; but he who believes in him will not be put to shame," (Isaiah 28:16 RSV). By these words he is saying that God never offered man anything except through Jesus Christ, and the transforming of a man, or a home, or a nation, is never accomplished except by a new appropriation of Jesus Christ -- that is all. Now, I would like to ask you, "Is your life weak, and fruitless, and afflicted with a great deal of casual Christianity?"

Well, if it is, the answer is not to try harder, the answer is not to get yourself involved in more programs. The answer to how to make "Christians" Christian is Christ -- not activity but receptivity, not effort but faith. Laying hold anew of the reality of the presence of Jesus Christ is the answer.

If I would gather up the impressions that were left upon me in this recent tour of Europe and put them in one phrase, it is, simply, that in every country that I visited, as in our own country, the great need is for men and women, individually, to come face to face with the Lordship and the sovereign claims of Jesus Christ in his or her life. Now, at this point, someone always says, "Well, how do I do this? What do I need to do in order to find this new power and this transformation, this saving grace?" Paul answers that question by outlining for us the simplicity of faith. Look at Chapter 10, Verses 5-13:

Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on the law shall live by it. But the righteousness based on 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 abyss?" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is the word of faith which we preach); because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved. The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches upon all who call upon him. For, "every one who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved." (Romans 10:5-13 RSV)

When I was flying out of Berlin, through the air corridor, I was very interested in what was going on in the villages and countryside beneath me, because that was the Eastern Zone of Germany. As we flew along, we came to a little town and my friend, Dr. Dirks, leaned over and said, "That town is Eisleben, where Martin Luther was born." Then, of course, I looked at it with renewed interest. Down in that little town was born Martin Luther, and, later, when his life drew to a close, he returned to that same little town, and there it was that he died. It was a strange feeling to look down into that little town where Luther was born, and had died, and to think that it was now behind the Iron Curtain, and there was no religious ceremony of any sort permitted in that little village. And I recalled the story of Martin Luther --

How, as a monk in the Augustinian monastery, he sought to make himself acceptable to God, how he would spend long, weary hours lying flat on his face on a cold stone floor, praying hour after hour, beating his breast, weeping and crying over his sins, trying to discover some way of release and of forgiveness, how he put himself under punishment and made his body undergo suffering in order to do penance for his sins, and how, finally, reading through the Scriptures in this very book of Romans, he was struck by one phrase out of the first chapter -- "the just shall live by faith" (Romans 1:17b KJV). Those words hit him like a sledgehammer, and he realized that God was saying that it wasn't necessary to do anything. God isn't asking us to do a thing. He is asking us to believe what Christ has already done. Martin Luther stood up and began to walk in the strength of that verse, and it gained power upon his soul and his heart until it gripped him, and he sent it in flaming letters of fire across Germany. It created the Protestant Reformation: "The just shall life by faith" -- not by doing anything!

The most deadly question that a man can ask is the question we ask when we begin to sense that we need something from God: "What shall I do to win God's favor?" Well, there is nothing to do, Paul says. If it depended upon doing, if you were going to accomplish what had to be done to deliver you, this is what you would have to do: You would have to climb up into heaven and bring Christ down from heaven. You would have to go down into the grave and bring Christ up from the dead. Now, who can do that? Obviously, all that needed to be done was far beyond our ability to do it. The great word of the gospel is that it has all been done. Now, believe it! Believe it, and walk in it! This is what we have difficulty doing. But it is the simple walk of faith that, when the heart begins to rest upon it, transforms a life and makes available to an individual all the mighty transforming power of God to make him what he ought to be. This is what happened to Martin Luther, and it is happening to men and women all over the world today -- by this same simple process of resting on what God has done.

I am amazed at the way we Christians continually seek something more before we are ready to do anything for God: We want God to give us some kind of an experience, we think we have to have a special call, we need a special kind of a feeling about a work before we will undertake it (no matter how obvious it is, and how much it needs to be done). I have had people say, "Well, I'll pray about it, and if God calls me to do it, then I'll do it." No, this isn't what the word of faith is.

I know that there are people who are looking for a special additional experience that will give them power. They think, "If I could only speak in tongues, then I would be able to do, and be, for God what I ought to be." So they begin to seek this experience some way. All of this is simply a means by which we are trying to escape the force of what God has to say to us -- that Jesus Christ is instantly available to us or to any heart that is willing to acknowledge his Lordship, his right to be sovereign, and who will obey him on that basis.

This is what Paul says, "The word is near you ... because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." This doesn't mean just the initial experience of the Christian life, it means anything in the Christian experience from which we need to be saved. In other words, let's believe him and move out to meet any demand that comes, because he says that Christ is here -- he is available since he has taken up residence in our life by that initial act of faith.

He saved you: Now believe it and you are saved. He is your strength: Now believe it and do whatever needs to be done. You don't have to wait for a feeling. You don't have to wait for a call. Whatever is before you that needs to be done, do it in the name of the Lord because he is with you. He is your peace: Now believe it and count it a sin to worry any longer because he is there to be all that you need. This is what he is saying in this passage: Now believe it!Now, if Christ is available to all without distinction or reserve, then there is only one thing left: That is the necessity of proclaiming it, or preaching it. This is what we have in this last section, Chapter 10, Verses 14-21:

But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? And how can men preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news!" But they have not all heeded the gospel; for Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?" So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.
But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have; for
   "Their voice has gone out to all the earth,
   and their words to the ends of the world."
Again I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says,
   "I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation;
   with a foolish nation I will make you angry."
Then Isaiah is so bold as to say,
   "I have been found by those who did not seek me;
   I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me."
But of Israel he says, "All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people." (Romans 10:14-21 RSV)

Paul is simply proving that Israel had no ground of complaint for not having heard what God had to say: They had heard! Not only through men sent of God, but through the silent witness of nature and of their own hearts, they had heard! In other words, no man lives untouched by God and unaware of his existence in all the world.

Dr. Richard Halverson spoke to a small group of men in Germany and described something of the work of International Christian Leadership. After speaking, he had a question time, and one of them asked this question:

"You have been talking to men who are members of a church, encouraging them to work, but what do you say to a man who is a Communist, who doesn't believe in God, who has no interest in the church, who thinks this is all tommy-rot? What do you say to him?"

I thought Dr. Halverson's reply was very wise. He said:

"There is no place in all the world, whether it is behind the Iron Curtain or anywhere else, where a man doesn't have an empty heart if he doesn't know God. So, begin with the empty heart, the life that is unfulfilled, and the unsatisfied yearnings and longings of a heart that knows no rest."

This is what Paul says, too. In all the world, men are waiting to hear, and they are convinced by the silent witness of their own hearts that they need something. The full power of the Christian gospel is only known by the process that we call "incarnation." That is, it is better caught than taught -- it isn't the preaching of the words so much as it is the witness of the life. When the Spirit of Christ dwells in a human heart, that man or woman becomes a witness, sent by God, to be an influence wherever he or she is. This is a tremendous truth if we really grasp what we have here and in other parts of Scripture.

Jesus said to his disciples one day, "Greater works than these shall ye do because I go unto my Father," (John 14:12 KJV). Did you ever think of the implications of that word? What he is saying is that when he goes to the Father, the Spirit of truth (see John 14:17) will come into the world and the Spirit of God will take up his residence in human life -- your life and mine. When the Spirit of God comes into a man or woman's heart and life, that person becomes capable of doing the works that Jesus Christ did in Galilee and in Judea -- not only the works that he did, but greater works than these shall be done. Now, in the world today, it has been estimated that there are some 81 million Christians. When our Lord was here on earth, he was only one man, living in one country, and he could never be anywhere else, but in the world today there are 81 million Christians. I realize that they are in various stages of knowledge and belief, but just suppose that in 81 million Christians there was carried out what God had in mind for them to do, and to be, so that in 81 million places in the world there was going on what was going on in Judea and Galilee 1900 years ago! You can see the possibilities for reaching a world for Christ -- 81,000,000 places where the Spirit of God would be working through a man or a woman to transform, by his saving grace, the lives around them. That is what we have set forth here, and it is a matter of simply being available to him -- of presenting ourselves to him -- in order that he might use us in any way that he pleases.

In Isaiah 6, when Isaiah was in the temple, and he saw God, and he was overwhelmed by that presence, he said, "My lips are unclean, I can't say anything," (Isaiah 6:5). He felt his human weakness, and this is the proper attitude to have in a place like that, but that wasn't the whole story. God sent an angel who took a coal from the altar, symbolic of the Holy Spirit, and put it on that man's lips, and then said to him, "Who will go for us?" (Isaiah 6:8b RSV). Now, it is interesting that God did not say to Isaiah, "Isaiah, will you come and go for me?" He put it on the basis of a volunteer; he said, "Who will go for us now into the world to be a witness, to be a proclaimer of what Jesus Christ can be in human life today?" And, when Isaiah was touched and cleansed by the coal from the altar, he stood and said, "Lord, here am I; send me," (Isaiah 6:8c).

That is what God is saying to us today, "Who will go back into the world, back into the place where you live, into the shop where you work, into the home where you are, into the neighborhood where you live? Who will go for me?" He is waiting for men and women who know Jesus Christ, who are walking in the obedience of faith, and who know that everything that Christ is is already theirs, and they need but to simply step out and to respond to it in faith. He is waiting for us to say, "Lord, here am I; send me!" Will you say that? This is the process by which God means to fulfill the words of the Lord Jesus, "Greater works than these shall you do because I go unto my Father and the Spirit has come unto you."

This morning we are celebrating the table of the Lord together. I hadn't meant to say this, but I am so impressed with the fact that Christians simply seem to wait for God to do something more before they are ready to respond in obedience to him. It is for this reason that there is such difficulty getting people to do things, because they are not ready to be his, they are not ready to say with Isaiah, "Lord, here am I; send me," (Isaiah 6:8c).

"You are not your own, you are bought with a price" (1 Corinthians 6:19b-20a RSV)

What does that mean? Well, if it means anything at all, it means that you no longer have the right to say, "No!" when God says there is something to be done. Do you know that we could find no one to prepare the Lord's table this morning? It was asked at the women's meeting for volunteers, for somebody to prepare the Lord's supper, and no one was willing to do it. And, finally, somebody had to drive in from the country in order to get this done -- a simple thing like that!

I have been so disturbed by the fact that Christians are unavailable to God! No wonder nothing is going on! No wonder neighborhoods aren't transformed! No wonder doors are shut! No wonder the saving grace of God is seemingly locked out! No wonder nothing happens in our country! How do you make "Christians" Christian? The only answer is by a new glimpse and a new contact and a new confrontation with Jesus Christ, in order that we might respond to his call with "Lord, here am I; send me."

Prayer:

Our Father, we wonder how long it shall be before we begin to evidence the simplicity of faith. How this word, Lord, has rebuked us. What do we need more? What yet have we need of, Lord? You have said, "The word is near us, even in our hearts, even on our lips" -- we need nothing further. We have him who is all, if we know Jesus Christ as Lord. Now, Lord, may we, in the quietness of this moment, acknowledge before you that we are indeed men with unclean lips, but you have cleansed us with the coals from off the fire of the altar of God. And may our hearts say, in this moment, as we meet at this table this morning, "Lord, here am I. Forgive my deliberate withholding of myself from you. Forgive my subtle attempts to invent excuses to keep from doing what is before me that needs to be done in your name, and accept me, Lord, to be your instrument by which your mighty transforming, saving power may flow out to men and women today in my neighborhood, in my house, and in my office." In Jesus' name. Amen.

THE CHRISTIAN AND THE JEW

by Ray C. Stedman

This eleventh chapter of Romans throws a great deal of light on the strangest nation that ever existed -- the nation of Israel. Today we view it against the background of over forty centuries of anti-Semitism, that dark, unexplainable, yet consistently recurring pattern of hatred against the Jews. You may have read in the paper recently of the sudden and violently brutal attack against a Jewish rabbi in New York that resulted in his death. It stirred up an entire neighborhood there. Whether this is just hoodlumism or another outbreak of anti-Semitism is not particularly clear, but it is true that we never seem to get away from the strange and unexplained hatred of the Jew. The root of anti-Semitism is undoubtedly the resentment that other nations feel against the Jews' claim to be God's chosen people, and it finds expression in various ways, some violent, others merely mockery. Perhaps one of the best known expressions of this feeling in its milder form is the little jingle:

How odd
of God
To choose
the Jews

This is the background of this chapter in which Paul asks, and answers, two questions which are still being asked today about Israel: The first question is in Verse 1: "I ask, then, has God rejected his people?" To phrase it another way, "Is Israel a total loss as far as God is concerned?" Is it true that the Jews have really had their chance? Is there no hope of salvation for a Jew?

The second question is in Verse 11: "So I ask, have they stumbled so as to fall?" That is, "Is God through with Israel as a nation?" Is there no longer a place for them as a chosen people in the future history of the world? And you will recognize that these are questions that are still being asked about this enigmatic people.

We want to examine these questions as Paul brings them out, but, as interesting as these questions are, they are not the major reason why this chapter was written. I think we will totally miss the point if we stop with merely answering these questions. I know that many people divide the letter of Romans into three great divisions: Chapters 1-8 they say are doctrinal, Chapters 9-11 are dispensational (having to do with God's dealing with Israel), Chapters 12-16 are practical in their application. I think this is a mistake because it treats Chapters 9, 10, and 11 as though they were merely a parenthesis in Paul's development -- sort of an interjection of Paul's favorite hobby horse -- his concern for the Jews which he couldn't get away from (so he kept putting them in -- in somewhat the same way that Baptist preachers are accused of interjecting the mode of baptism into their subject matter). But we must never forget that Chapters 9-11 are really a great illustration of what Paul has been teaching the Christians in Chapters 1-8.

Therefore, we will miss the point unless we apply this illustration to what he is saying. In other words, if we want to understand how God works with us, we can look at the way he is working with Israel. So let's look at the illustration now, beginning with the first question that Paul asks, "Is Israel a total loss?"

I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? "Lord, they have killed thy prophets, they have demolished thy altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life." But what is God's reply to him? "I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal." So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.

What then? Israel failed to obtain what it sought. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written,
   "God gave them a spirit of stupor,
   eyes that should not see and ears that should not hear,
   down to this very day."
And David says,
   "Let their feast become a snare and a trap,
   a pitfall and a retribution for them:
   let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see,
   and bend their backs for ever." (Romans 11:1-10 RSV)

Now, the question is, "Is God through with Israel?" When God set the nation aside upon the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, their appointed Messiah and Redeemer, and turned to the Gentile world, does this mean that the Jew is cut off from God's grace and favor?

This is the question that Paul asks, and the answer is: "No. By no means!" Then he points to himself as an example. He says, "I myself am an example of this." The mass of the nation was blinded and hardened by their official rejection of Jesus Christ, but there is, Paul says, a remnant of grace which is permitted to see the truth about Christ and to believe. And, he said, "I am an example of that remnant." You remember that, despite his positive hatred against Christ, and, though he lived and breathed in a continual attitude of hatred and unrelenting persecution against the church of Jesus Christ, nevertheless, God's grace arrested him on the road to Damascus, and broke through the darkness, and the blindness, and brought the light of Jesus Christ to his heart.

Paul says, also, that this has been true in past days, when the light of faith of the nation has burned very low. He reminds these Gentile readers of the days when Elijah came to the conclusion that he was the only one left who was faithful to God. After his remarkable triumph over the pagan gods on Mount Carmel, when the fire came down from heaven and consumed his offering, Elijah fled into the wilderness from the wrath of Queen Jezebel. There he crawled under a juniper and said to the Lord, "Oh, Lord, let me die! I am the only one that is left!" (1 Kings 19:4-10).

All too often some of us in the ministry know how he felt. There are times when we feel like crawling in, and saying, "Let us die. We are the only ones left." There are some of us, in these days of declension and darkness, who have this feeling that we are the only ones that are faithful. But God's answer to Elijah was, "Elijah, I have seven thousand men who haven't bowed their knee to Baal. You are not the only one left. Why, there are seven thousand that you don't even know about that are still true to me," (1 Kings 19:18).

So Paul says, "God had his election of grace even in those dark days of Israel's history." But he also says that if God works this way by grace, then it can't be on the basis of works. That is, it isn't what men are doing by which they can merit this position of election in God's sight, but rather grace puts the matter beyond justifiable complacency. In other words, God saved some where none deserved to be saved -- that is the argument.

So, through the centuries since Paul wrote these words, there have been Jews who were raised, perhaps, to regard Jesus Christ as an impostor; they were taught to call him a bastard; they regarded him as a blasphemer, and a man claiming to be God -- yet their eyes have been opened and they have turned to faith in Christ and have been saved. There have always been a band of wonderful Hebrew Christians who have seen the truth about our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the proof that God has, even through these intervening centuries, a remnant among Israel -- so Paul's answer has been well sustained.

Now, what is the application of this to us? Why does Paul tell us this about Israel? What is pictured for us in this relationship that God has with Israel? As we have pointed out, what God does with Israel as a nation is a picture of what God does with a Christian as an individual. This is a very helpful rule of thumb to apply to you study of the Bible, especially the Old Testament. When you see what God does with this peculiar, elect people, Israel, then you see what he is planning to do in your particular, individual life.

Paul points out that God has rejected most of the nation, but has preserved for himself a remnant of grace. Now, what does this picture in your life as a believer in Jesus Christ? Well, as we learned in Chapters 5-8, there is a part of our life that God utterly rejects, that he will not have anything to do with, that is as utterly worthless to him as anything could be --

Our own human efforts to please God, our own attempts to do what we think is right and best without reference to the work of Jesus Christ in us, -- this is what the Scripture calls "the flesh." God says in these chapters that this is utterly worthless. He rejects it. He sets it aside. Though we sincerely mean to serve him (our sincerity is never in question) just as Israel through all those centuries sincerely sought to serve God through their offerings and all their little additions to the Law. Nevertheless, these things in our life are tainted by our self-interest and wrapped around by our own plans and programs, and they are disowned, utterly, by God.

The interesting thing is that when we begin to think that we really have obtained some status in God's sight, this is the indication that we really are in a most pitiful condition. Have you noticed that? Remember that letter to the Laodicean church in Revelation, the church that could pride itself on how much it was doing and how much it owned and said of itself, "I am rich and have all things and have need of nothing." But God said to it, "You do not realize that you are poor and wretched and miserable and blind and naked," (Revelation 3:17). This is the position of any person who thinks by their church works, by their efforts, by their sincere zeal for God's work and program, that they are pleasing him. God says, "No! All this is set aside as utterly worthless."

I imagine that some of you, who were listening as we went through Chapters 6, 7 and 8 of Romans, perhaps, became aware, for the time, how much of your Christian life was spent in just that way. Perhaps you realized that doing the best that you can was really an ignoring of the provision of God in Jesus Christ for you, and that you had been doing the best that you could for a long, long time. And you wondered if, perhaps, those years were utterly wasted, and you may be even crushed by an awareness of the barrenness and fruitlessness of your Christian life. But here is a word of encouragement, because what Paul is illustrating here is that, in the life of every believer in Jesus Christ, God always preserves for himself a remnant of grace -- we can put it that way. In other words, our Christian lives are never quite a total loss before God. There are many things that the Spirit of God permits us to do which are wrong -- terrible, spiteful, hateful, lustful things -- which fill up the record of Christian life much too much, but there are some things that you cannot do! That is what he is saying: There are barriers which you are not permitted to cross. This is what Paul means in Galatians when he says,

For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would. (Galatians 5:17 RSV)

There is the area where God draws the line, and will not let the Christian go beyond. It is not because the Christian is trying to be good or is intent upon keeping the will of God, but simply God's grace that draws the line, and says, "You cannot go any further."

I wonder if most of us have not at one time or another experienced that checking point of the Holy Spirit. Have you ever noticed in the Scriptures that, though Christians often act wrongly (and we have to admit this), it is never said of the genuine believer in Jesus Christ that this wrongness is his character, but rather that he is really something quite different from the way he is acting at the moment? You remember in Ephesians, Paul says, "once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; [therefore] walk as children of light," (Ephesians 5:8 RSV).

The basic character of the life of Jesus Christ remains unchanged, even in the Corinthians, in that church which was so troubled and so filled with problems and schisms and divisions, in those men and women who (though they were Christians) were living in dishonor and disgrace and division, he writes these words:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. (1nbsp;Corinthians 6:9-11 RSV)

So God preserves a remnant of grace, even in the lives of some of us who stumble and fall so frequently. I think you can see that this is the basis for the doctrine of eternal security of the believer. Scripture says that It is possible to lose much, it is possible to remain withered and stunted as a Christian for years, it is possible to wander in a wilderness of unbelief where you are tortured with hunger and are thirsting after the things of God and are never satisfied, it is possible to stand someday before the Lord Jesus Christ and be ashamed and guilty for all the wasted years and be saved though as by fire, and yet purely by God's grace. Scripture also says that, at that time, every man shall find praise of God -- a remnant of grace. That is encouraging, isn't it? In spite of yourself, God breaks through at times and makes you act like a Christian. This is the only basis that we have for maintaining that Christians are "the salt of the earth," and "the light of the world," (Matthew 5:13-14 RSV).

It is true that, when the salt has lost its savor, it is good for nothing but to be cast out "and trodden under foot by men" (Matthew 5:13 RSV), as Jesus said. And a Christian who has not yielded his life to the controlling power of God is a worthless testimony before the world, but there will be times, even in that life, when something of Jesus Christ shows through -- a remnant of grace. That is encouraging, isn't it? Now notice, in Verse 11, Paul's question, "Is Israel through as a nation?"

So I ask, have they stumbled so as to fall? By no means! (Romans 11:11a RSV)

That is, "Is Israel to be made the head of the nations, as once promised by God?" "Have they lost forever their privileged position before God?" And, interestingly enough, many commentators today say, "Yes." They say that the church has now assumed the promises that were once made to Israel, and Israel will nevermore have a chance, as a nation, to fulfill these promises.

And, also, this is the place which the nation Israel has taken for itself today. You read the writings that come out of the land of Israel and, except for a very small group, the majority of them are taking the position that the nation Israel is no more than any other nation in God's sight, and that they want to take their place among the nations as no different than any other nation.

But Paul says this is not true. Paul says that the promises of national blessing are still valid to this nation. Then Paul has three things to say about their present rejection. Let me just quickly go through these, because I want to come to the application of them to ourselves: He says, first of all, that it was necessary to set Israel aside in order that the Gentiles might be saved:

But through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!

Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? If the dough offered as the first fruits is holy, so is the whole lump; and if the root is holy, so are the branches. (Romans 11:11b-16 RSV)

In other words, he is simply saying that we must understand that Israel was set aside, and it was necessary that they be so, in order that the gospel go out to the Gentiles.

Remember when Jesus was approached one time by a woman from the coast of Tyre and Sidon? She wasn't an Israelite. She came and asked him to heal her daughter, and, at first, he wouldn't even speak to her -- he uttered not a word. But she wasn't discouraged, and she kept after him. Finally, he said to her, "I am not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," (Matthew 15:24). In other words, the time is not yet come to reach Gentiles, and this woman was a Gentile. But she persisted in her faith and her knowledge of the basic character of God, and, as you know, she won through and the Lord did deliver her daughter. But this is simply our Lord's recognition that there was a time when God confirmed himself in a special sense to the nation Israel, and it was necessary that Israel be set aside before that free gift of God's grace could go out to the Gentiles. God had originally intended to use Israel as a showcase of his grace. He said,

"If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit... And you shall chase your enemies,.. and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand; and your enemies shall fall before you ... (Lev 26:3-4, 26:7a, 26:8b RSV)

The crops would not fail, the wine would last till the next vintage, they would be healthy and strong, and so on. He promised that he would break off the shackles from their back and they would walk uprightly among men. The nation was to be such a manifestation of the visible presence of God that all the nations of the world would hear it and come to them and seek to know the secret of this people. But, as we know the record of history, they did not do this because they had not learned the basic lesson of human life -- that man himself is nothing. They seized the position of favor and perverted it, and made it center upon their own glory, so that ultimately God cut them off as a nation, in order that the gospel might go out to the Gentile world. It was sent out to the Gentiles, who had no standing before God at all, in order that the grace might operate in their lives, so that when Israel would see how God would bless people who had no standing, no rights, no covenant in his sight, they might become jealous, learn of their own insufficiency and thus turn to God on the right basis.

This is God's great program -- what he is working out in the world today. Paul argues that if the setting aside of them brought this blessing to the world, how much more will their restoration create worldwide blessing. Out of this comes this next thought. He says that the Gentiles need to beware lest they, too, become proud and self-sufficient before God:

But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the richness of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you. You will say, "Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in." That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast only through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. (Romans 11:17-21 RSV)

I think this is a word well taken. Have you ever really realized that God was under no obligation to save you? He didn't have to. He would be perfectly just in not giving you a chance at all. Have you ever realized that? The Jews at least had a covenant to which they could point, but we who are Gentiles don't have anything to stand on before God. At any time, God could stop this process of calling out believers from among the Gentile nations and none of us would have any just cause of complaint before him! We take our salvation so much for granted, I am afraid.

Listen to these words from Helmut Thielicke, one of the great preachers in Germany today:

We do well to grasp the tremendous implication of this thought, for it is to the effect that my acceptance by God cannot be taken for granted, and that Jesus' death on the cross for me cannot be taken for granted. We European Christians have gradually become accustomed to the dangerous and unhealthy idea that the grace of God is thrown at us. Voltaire cynically said of the forgiveness of God, "It is His job." But this is not so. Things are quite different from the popular assumption. The kingdom of God is not thrust upon us. The grace of God can also be silent. We certainly cannot claim it. It may be (and, if so, I cannot blame God) that in my last hour I will sink into darkness and the one figure who might be with me through the gloomy portal will be missing. It is in no sense of duty or obligation of Jesus to bear my sins and to take me through the black gate of death. If he does this, it cannot be taken for granted. And I make bold to say that even the most orthodox churchman will not enter the kingdom of heaven unless he is continually surprised that mercy has been shown to him.

That is a rather startling thought, isn't it? Someone once asked Charles Spurgeon concerning the statement of the Bible, "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated," (Romans 9:13 KJV). They said to him, "How could God ever say, 'Esau have I hated'?" And Spurgeon said, "That isn't my problem. The thing that makes me astonished is how could God ever say, 'Jacob have I loved.'"

When we get into that position, I think that we will begin to appreciate the marvelous grace of God toward man. Paul goes on to say, in the last verses here, that there is a day coming when God will restore Israel to its promised place as head of the nations, and all the living Israelites will be saved.

Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brethren: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved; as it is written,
   "The Deliverer will come from Zion,
   he will banish ungodliness from Jacob";
   "and this will be my covenant with them
   when I take away their sins."
As regards the gospel they are enemies of God, for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved for the sake of the forefathers. For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable. Just as you were once disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may receive mercy. For God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all. (Romans 11:25-32 RSV)

I assure you that the present happenings in the land of Israel is in no sense a fulfillment of these words: God has not restored Israel to the land. God has permitted the nation to come back to the land, but this is not the restoration that is predicted here, or in the rest of the prophecies of Scripture. It is only after the darkness of that terrible day that is coming to Israel, referred to by the Lord Jesus as the "great tribulation" (Matthew 24:21), that this day shall dawn of which Paul speaks, and which was described by Zechariah when he says,

...when they look on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a first-born. (Zechariah 12:10b RSV)

Then shall Israel, all Israel, turn to their appointed Messiah. But Paul's promise is that God has a place, yet, for national Israel. What does this mean to us? Again, this is an illustration. "So," we ask, "what is he illustrating in the life of the believer?" Well, it is exactly what we have set forth in Romans 8. There we learned that God indeed sets aside the entire self-activity of the human life as being unable to accomplish anything in his sight. And, just as God set Israel aside in order that grace may do its work among the Gentiles, so God completely sets aside all the flesh, all my self-effort, all that I am by human nature; and then (and only then) do I begin to learn what God can do through me.

When we freely admit in practice -- not just in word, but in practice -- that without Jesus Christ we can do nothing, then we shall learn that we can do all things through him who strengthens us Philippians 4:13). It is when we quit trying to plan everything out and think that it all depends on us, when we begin to realize that he has placed within us the very One who is able to plan all things well, when we understand that he intends to do through us -- through our will, through our mind, through our thoughts, through all our activity of life -- that which will accomplish his purpose, then we begin to see wonderful things happen! It isn't that we look different or that we act differently, but we begin to notice that strange things begin to happen in our lives -- when we constantly expect God to work through us in Jesus Christ:

First, we learn that little things that we say fall with great weight upon people's minds and hearts around us. Doors open that we don't expect, and we have opportunities to move into areas that we didn't realize could ever be opened us. And sometimes our smallest remark seems to come as a bolt from heaven to somebody's heart, opening up a whole new vista of living grace, Christ working through us -- that is what he is teaching here. When we are willing to let our self-effort be set aside, as God set Israel aside, then grace begins to work.

Secondly, we learn that it will never be any different than this, no matter how long we are Christians. We, ourselves, never become any better, or more able, to serve Christ in ourselves. Just as Gentiles, having been saved by grace, and then becoming proud and self-sufficient, find that God is just as able to cut off that grace as he is to begin it in the first place, so we, individually, as Christians, must learn that it is always, and only, Christ working in us that accomplishes the Father's will. Therefore, pride is forever our greatest temptation and our cruelest enemy. The one thing that we must continually watch is that we do not begin to feel that we are anything, or that we can do anything, it is all Christ within us!

The last thing is the revelation of Scripture in Chapter 8 that someday even our flesh will serve God. By his grace, in that day of which Paul speaks, when creation is freed from the bondage of sin, and the sons of God stand forth in resurrection power, even that which has once been set aside as useless is now rendered useful to God. The sons of God, in resurrection bodies, serve God in the flesh. And then even that which was once rejected and cursed is made to fulfill the promise and to demonstrate the power of God. Now this is why Paul ends this chapter with these wonderful words:

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable are his ways!
   "For who has known the mind of the Lord,
   or who has been his counselor?"
   "Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?"
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:33-36 RSV)

How this cuts away all the pride and self-sufficiency of our lives! How this reduces us to a place of weakness -- yet with the knowledge that his strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9)!

Now you can go out to serve in the glory of this mystery -- not you any longer, but "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27), working through you -- in your home, in the place where you carry on your business, in the way you drive through traffic, in your attitude toward every living person you contact. Jesus Christ at work -- 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year -- in your life. This is the grace of God!

Prayer:

Our Father, what a revelation of the might and the power and the wisdom of your grace this gives us. How truly you set aside all the empty, foolish planning and struggling of men in order that you might provide in us that dynamo of power which is able to be and to do all that you ask of us in Jesus Christ our Lord! Now give us the simplicity of faith to believe this, and to begin to walk and to live in these terms, quietly trusting you to fulfill it. In Jesus' name, Amen.

DISCOVERING THE WILL OF GOD

by Ray C. Stedman

When we come to this point in the book of Romans, we are ready to talk about commitment. In a way, I approach this subject with trepidation because I feel it can be a very dangerous subject. There is a type of preaching that has a ministry of exhortation, in which Christians are continually being exhorted to commitment -- to Christian commitment. Often this ministry is carried on without the minister ever saying what we should commit to, or why, and, especially, never saying how. As a result, there are many Christians who are stirred to the point of commitment and eager to do something for God, but they don't know the first way to go about it. Thus they become what is so frequent in our modern American life -- consecrated blunderers. The result is a barrenness in their own ministry. That is why I am afraid of the subject of commitment.

On the other hand, I am aware that there is a danger of having understanding without activity. Activity without understanding results in blundering barrenness, but understanding without activity is equally bad. There is such a thing as knowing without going -- a willingness to sort of sit and sour -- and understanding without activity is disobedience. So we need to beware of both horns of the dilemma. To err in either direction results in coldness, hardness, complacency, and barrenness in life.

The chapter division between Romans 11 and 12 is rather misleading. The division falls right in the middle of Paul's line of thought, and when you start with Romans 12:1-2 (which is one of the most quoted passages in the New Testament), you miss completely the force of the apostle's argument. It is like going to the grocery store and taking the middle can out of a stack of canned tomatoes -- it makes a mess out the whole affair. You cannot understand this great passage until you tie it with the great doxology with which Paul closes Chapter 11. Let's start with what we may call the logic of commitment:

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable are his ways!
   "For who has known the mind of the Lord,
   or who has been his counselor?"
   "Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?"
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:33-36 RSV)

This is more than just a hymn of praise and worship about the greatness of God, this is more than an expression of the awe and wonder of the apostle's heart at the majesty of God, this is primarily an expression of the utter madness of trying to live a life apart from complete divine control. In this passage we have two basic philosophies of life meeting in a headlong clash.

This last week the world has been watching with bated breath the two greatest powers on earth threatening to meet in a headlong clash in the Caribbean Sea. Everybody has been waiting anxiously to see what the outcome will be. In very much the same way, here in this passage, there comes together at last two very conflicting and diverse outlooks upon life which meet headlong -- and one is completely demolished by the other. Here the common philosophy, "My life is my own to live as I please," meets headlong with the philosophy, "My life is God's to do with as he wills." You can recognize how diverse these two are. We frequently hear the idea reflected in our conversation that man is somehow sufficient unto himself -- we don't need God. That idea comes directly in conflict with the concept of the apostle that man is but a vessel, made to contain God, and is utterly and totally useless without him. Here we see what the outcome is.

The big gun that Paul used to demolish the argument of man is simply to say, "Take a real look at God." Look at his omniscience first of all; his wisdom and knowledge are such that man doesn't even remotely approach it. We love to boast about our accomplishments, and we speak in glowing terms of how tremendous it is that we can send our vehicles into space and fling a heavy object up onto the moon. In comparison with what we were doing fifty years ago, of course, this is great -- but, in comparison with what God does every single day, it is nothing. We think we have done so much when we finally get a satellite to successfully revolve around the earth, but God does this every night. We look up in the sky and see that he has millions of them, billions of them, uncounted trillions of them, "squillions" of them, revolving around each other -- and no one even thinks it is worth applauding. This is the greatness of God! I think it is a healthful exercise to read the 38th through the 41st chapters of Job occasionally. There God summons Job to a little debate on the natural realm -- the realm of natural theology -- and simply asks him a long, long line of very embarrassing questions about what goes on in the natural world. He sums it up by saying, "Now, Job, can you do these things?" And Job has to admit that he can't. And then God says, "What right have you to complain about the way I am running things in your life, if you can't do these things?" It is a very humbling experience to read these chapters in Job. That wonderful passage in Isaiah 40, Verses 10-18, concerning the greatness and majesty of God, and his wisdom and knowledge, far exceeding anything that man ever remotely approached, describes what Paul brings forth here.

Then he says, "Look at God's inscrutability:" This is what theologians today love to call his "wholly otherness" -- i.e., his difference from us. Cowper caught it in his well-known poem:

God moves in mysterious ways,
   His wonders to perform.
He plants his footsteps in the sea;
   He rides above the storm.

We humans can't comprehend his actions. Who can predict what God is going to do? Who can explain his methods? We know that there are times (all of us have experienced it) when we have been in the midst of circumstances that have totally baffled us, and we have said that there is no rhyme or reason for this -- it makes no sense whatsoever. But, as we have lived it through and look back upon it, we can see that there was a pattern working its way out through all the dark and difficult days -- and we see that God's wisdom was greater than ours. This is what Paul is speaking of; he says that man continually tries to thwart God's will and to escape his control, but God takes the very plans that are made to defeat him and uses them to accomplish his purpose. How are you going to win with a God like that? He has an unfair advantage in this game of international chess today, and it is only necessary for us to remember that, to have a sense of peace of heart about what is going on.

Actually, man never violates or breaks God's laws. We think we do, and, sometimes, in our strutting ignorance, we fancy that we can get away with things and that the result will never catch up with us -- but it always does. We never break God's laws -- we only illustrate them. If you announce that you are going to break the law of gravity and then step off the top of a twenty-story building, you won't break it -- you'll just illustrate it. When they dig you out of the pavement, you will have proved that the law of gravity still works.

And when we break (in our fancy) the moral laws of God, we don't really break them; they are still in action; they still exact their relentless vengeance upon us. The other day I received in the mail an advertisement for a new book on sex. We are getting a lot of literature flooding the mails today, more than ever before, and there is a license that has seized the publishing industry in this respect to publish almost anything on sex. This was advertising a book entitled, Sex and the Single Girl. The author had written a little bit of an introduction to the book which was printed on the advertisement, and she said something like this:

There are many people who feel that a single girl has no sex life at all. Nonsense. The modern single girl can have an unending series of affairs with attractive males, yet without loss of self-respect or independence.

When I read that I thought, "There is the old lie again, as Satan whispered to Adam and Eve in the garden, "Yea, hath God said? 'Ye shall not die,' (Genesis 3:1-5 KJV). There won't be any results like he said would take place, if you do this." This is exactly the attitude reflected by the writer of this book. She was giving the impression that it is quite possible that all this Victorian nonsense about observing the laws of sex is pure rubbish -- it is quite possible to violate them and none of these evil results will follow. But anyone who has sat and listened to those who have lived like this and then come for help in time of trouble knows that, inevitably, the unending series of affairs becomes harder and harder to find. The attractive male becomes whoever-you-can-get, and self-respect turns to disillusionment and self-pity. All too frequently, the end to that kind of living is a bottle of pills and a phone call to the police.

You see, God doesn't need to throw his thunderbolts at us, or threaten us with brimstone. God's wisdom and knowledge and character are such that, even when we run against him, and try to thwart what he is doing, quietly, inevitably, and relentlessly the judgment begins to enwrap us, and to entangle us, and we destroy ourselves. Paul tells us to remember God's inscrutability and then to look at God's inevitability:

For from him and through him and to him are all things. (Romans 11:36 RSV)

Think of that! From him comes all things, through him all things are holding together (as we read in Colossians 1:17), and to him all things are trending. God stands at the beginning and the ending of every path upon which you stand today, and there is no escaping him anywhere. Paul says, "In him we live, and move, and have our being," (Acts 17:28). Whether we recognize his presence or not, he is absolutely inevitable.

Someone was telling me last week about Charlotte Bennett, who, as many of you know, lay long in the hospital, suffering greatly. Just recently she confessed to one of her friends, "You know, the thing that has been worst about all this has not been the pain, or the long, unending hours when there seemed to be no release, but the worst thing has been my inability to swallow!" Just a simple thing like that, a thing we take so for granted every day, our ability to swallow! We never dream that it might be taken away -- that it is a gift of the grace of God upon us. We are in God's hands, he is never in our hands, but we are in his hands -- for better or for worse.

And, in view of this, Paul is saying that the most logical, the most sensible, the most natural thing in the world is to present your body to him as a living sacrifice. Or, to put it in terms of the Ten Commandments, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength, and with all thy might," (Deuteronomy 6:5 KJV). What is more natural? All your life is in his hands, everything you are is his to control. How foolish, then, to try to live on any other basis.

Recently there was a poll taken among the university students in Europe to determine their basic approach to life. It was discovered that, by far and away, the most common approach to life was one of simple anxiety -- not anxiety about death, but anxiety about life itself.

I remember that during the Billy Graham crusade in San Francisco there was a group of young high school students that went up to the crusade one night, and I rode on the bus with them. At the crusade, a number of them went forward and registered a decision for Christ. On the way back home, one of these young men, a fine-looking football player, was sitting there in the seat by himself, and I slipped into the seat beside him to talk to him. I was talking along the line of what this decision for Christ would now mean in his life, and, among other things, I mentioned that it would mean freedom from the fear of death -- that he need not look upon death as a fearsome thing. He stopped me, looked over at me, and said, "You know, I have never been afraid of death, but there is one thing that I have been afraid of: I have always been afraid that I will waste my life!" I think a lot of people have that fear -- a fear that we are going to waste our lives -- and we will waste our lives if we live them on any other basis than what Paul now sets forth.

This is the logical, inevitable, natural result of an awareness of what God is like, what he is, and what he does. So, here, in a sense, in Romans 12:1, we have a formula for how to avoid a wasted life:

I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Romans 12:1 RSV)

The heart of the whole matter is right here. I want you to listen closely to this, because you are not truly committed to God unless these things that Paul speaks of are true in your experience. He says four things about what true commitment is. There is a great deal of misunderstanding about what it means to be committed to God -- to be a committed Christian -- but here it is made clear:

The first thing he says is "present your bodies." Why bodies? Why not present your spirits? That is the inner part of our being. Why not present your souls? Or, Why doesn't he ask for what we usually ask for in a commitment service: Present your money? Or your time? Or your life? No, Paul says, "present your bodies." I think that it is because man is so made that, when we at last get around to making our bodies available to something, we have given our whole person to that cause. That is what he means.

I frequently hear, as all pastors do, somebody say to me, "Well, I am sorry I can't make it to the meeting tonight, but I will be with you in spirit." And I understand what they mean, but I find it rather disconcerting to speak to a hall full of spirits; I would so much rather they bring their bodies. You see, if you move your body into action, you have really given yourself. You can come short of it in a thousand different ways, and sound very pious in doing it, but it is when you finally put your body on the line that you really have given yourself.

Men frequently say, "Well, I'll give you my time." Or, "I will give you my money." But this is oftentimes a very pious dodge to evade a genuine commitment, because it is only part of the life. Or people say, "I am totally available," but the first request they get, they find an excuse to beg off. You see, our minds may be committed, our spirits may be available, but, yet, not our bodies. This is where we resist the pressure of God's Spirit, but this is what commitment is.

This is why we can publish urgent requests in our bulletin for help in very badly need areas, we can beg for cooperation, we can plead for help from a church which is made up, largely, of "committed" Christians, yet so few respond. I feel very strongly, when I go elsewhere around the country, that we have so many wonderfully "committed" Christians here at this church. Yet, it is interesting that we can ask "committed" people to help and nobody helps -- it is because we haven't given our bodies. James says, "He who is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, deceives himself," (James 1:22). He doesn't deceive anyone else, he is only deceiving himself, and his religion is vain -- it is empty.

The first test of your commitment to Christ is this: Is it an active commitment? Have you just stood up in a service, and said, "I give myself to God," or, in your heart, said, "Lord, I am available whenever you want me," and then have sat back and waited until some special call comes that drives you into a corner where you can't evade it any longer? The test is: When a need occurs before you, and you can fill it in some way, are you instantly responsive to do so? Wasn't that the gist of our Lord's story of the good Samaritan? Here was a man in great need -- wounded, bleeding, attacked by robbers.

First a priest went by and he saw the need, but he said to himself, "I'm sorry. I'd like to help, but I am very busy. I have a special service I have to minister down here in Jericho." And on he went. Then a Levite came by, a lawyer. And he said to himself, "I'd like to help, but I have a special case coming up before the Sanhedrin and I can't." And then the good Samaritan came, and he saw the need, and that was all that was required. He responded. That is committing your body! Paul says, secondly, that it is "a living sacrifice." This is, again, a word that is much misunderstood. It simply means that true commitment is perfectly reasonable thing. You see, when we use this word "sacrifice" today, we almost always think of something that we voluntarily give up which we have a perfect right to keep. We feel a sense of satisfaction that we have been so kind to sacrifice something to God.

That concept of the word is utterly foreign to the Bible. The Jews never used it in that sense at all about their sacrifices. When a Jew brought a lamb or a calf as a sacrifice, he was simply bringing what he had no right to keep. He was bringing God's property to God and offering it to him; that is all. The farthest thing from his thoughts was that he had any right to that sacrifice. He had set it apart from the beginning as God's, and he had no right to it at all. It was God's property. Therefore, he could take no credit for doing it, and, on the contrary, he would have been accused of robbing God if he had not brought it.

Now, you see, when you genuinely surrender your will to God, and when you really mean that you intend to make Jesus Christ Lord of your life, and that He is to have access to every part of your life, and that He is to have the right to direct any part of your life, you are not doing him any favor -- this is his right! I wince when I hear testimonies in Christian services as to how somebody gave up their riches -- or their fame, or their love -- for Christ's sake, and they assume an attitude of "how lucky God must be now that I am on his side!" It is really quite the other way around -- how miserable you would be in your fancied independence and folly! The only life that is really life is: A life that is utterly given to God, a life in which he is in control, and a life in which God rules and reigns! And, when it calls for a living sacrifice, it simply means that this goes on all your life. It is no credit to you. Your life belongs to God and he alone has the right to use it. That is the unquestionable position of Scripture.

The third thing that Paul says is that it is "holy and acceptable to God." This simply means that true commitment rests on an awareness that the only life pleasing to God is that of Jesus Christ living in you. We have already learned, in Romans 5-8, that the flesh cannot please God, and that God's plan of salvation has no provision in it whatsoever for the improvement of the flesh. The only thing that God does with our personal, fleshly efforts is crucify them. That is all. The only life that is acceptable to him is the life of Jesus Christ lived again in us. As we have seen, God has put all that I am to death -- my plans, my programs, my desires -- are all tainted with self, and are worthless. But, the minute I accept this and acknowledge that it is true and right, then it is possible for Christ, who lives in me, to begin to work out his plans, his programs, his ideals, his desires. He does it through my conscious will, but then it is something holy and acceptable unto God. Anything else is burning false incense, false fire, before God.

The fourth thing is what he calls "your spiritual worship," which means that true commitment is a satisfying thing. Man is made to worship God, and when he does so, truly, he has a sense of fulfillment and joy beyond anything the world knows anything about. There have been times when all of us who know Christ have worshipped him in such a way that we have been lifted up, strengthened beyond measure, made to face disagreeable and difficult circumstances with a new light in our face and a new hope in our heart -- this is worship, and we were made to do this kind of thing.

You remember that Jesus said to the woman at the well, "God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in Spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him," (John 4:24, 4:23b KJV).

Worship is really nothing more or less than being what you were made to be, and doing what you were made to do. When a flower blooms, it is worshipping God. when a bird sings, it is worshipping God. when a plant grows, fulfilling its appointed task with its leafy arms outstretched, it is worshipping God. when a man, right in the midst of his daily life, right where he lives and where he works, right in the midst of those circumstances is being flooded with God himself, he is worshipping God. The worship of a Christian isn't confined to those moments on Sunday morning when he gathers with others at church -- that is just our corporate worship -- we worship God all day long. When in some small, or even obscure, way we become the visible manifestation of God to someone -- then we have worshipped.

A young man was asked what was his favorite book of the Bible. He said, "My favorite book is the Gospel according to Mother." That mother had learned the secret of worship. Now, you have seen in these verses what true commitment is: It is active: It is not just sitting around waiting for something. It is at work meeting the needs that are right around at the moment. It is reasonable: It is doing what is to be expected. It is nothing to your credit at all -- quite the opposite -- you can be accused of robbing God if you are not truly committed. It is spirit and power: It isn't resting upon your ideas, and your plans, and your programs. It isn't trying to do your best for God. It is resting upon his announced intention to do his best through you. It is satisfying: It is the most wonderful experience that a man can have. It is fulfilling. It makes you sense, at last, and be, at last, what you were made to be. Anything less than that is a cheat, and a fraud, and a hypocritical act! Now let's look at the results of commitment:

Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2 RSV)

I like Philips' version here:

Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God remould your minds from within, (Romans 12:2a J. B. Philips)

The first result of a genuinely committed heart is a transformed mind. Here again you have this headlong clash of two philosophies: There is the philosophy of the world -- self-centered, self-pleasing, indulgent, indifferent to others, dog-eat-dog, devil-take-the-hindmost. That is the world, isn't it? Are you not conscious of the pressure to be squeezed into that mold all around you? Well, if you know Jesus Christ and you have begun to yield to his Lordship, you will be also conscious of another force in your life -- re-making your mind from within so that you no longer look at people as you once looked at them, as either obstacles or helps to you. This is the trouble with what sin does to the human perception -- it makes us look at another person in terms of a symbol, not as a person. We see them as either "someone who can help us" or "someone who opposes us" -- and we resent them or bless them accordingly. But when the mind is transformed by the Spirit of God, you no longer look at people that way. You see a man as a person, even though he has been a crotchety, grouchy, old boss whom you thought was out to make every moment that you lived unpleasant. You begin to see that he is a person with an ulcer, that he has his own problems and troubles, and that he needs help. This is the transforming of the mind.

You begin to see that money and material things are no longer important, as they once seemed to be. The big thing in your life no longer becomes this matter of whether you can close this deal and make so much money, but whether you will do it in a way that honors and glorifies the Lord your God -- whether you make money or not. That is a sign of a transformed mind. You no longer take everything that is said to you personally, but you become able to back off and look at it objectively.

I think women have a special problem in this respect. I remember Carl Thomas saying, at a meeting, that it was characteristic of women to take everything personally -- even those things that were said in a general way. At the end of the meeting a lady came up to him, and said, "What do you mean? I don't take these things personally at all!"

The transformation of the mind means that we no longer begin to take everything personally; we see it in its true perspective. This is the work of the Spirit of God, and you find a concern for others beginning to show and to grow in your life. You see more and more how utterly self-centered you've been, and you become concerned that you demonstrate that concern for someone else. This is the transformed mind.

The second result is a discovery of the will of God. In other words, you begin to experience the conscious guidance of the Spirit of God. You discover that when you have put God in his rightful place and you are willing to do his will, this in itself is the will of God. There is so much nonsense made about the matter of the will of God in Christian affairs. We think of it as specific directions at a specific time, and we only seek it when we have some big problem to face. But this isn't what the will of God is at all. The will of God is your being willing to do his will.

As Paul writes to the Thessalonians, "this is the will of God, even your sanctification," (1 Thessalonians 4:3a KJV). That is, even your willingness to be available to him, this is his will. Once you get to that place, then he is free and able to direct your steps -- every one of which is a fulfillment of his will. It is evident that there is a gradual growth of this awareness, as Paul sets it forth here. He says you will discover, or prove, "what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God." That is, at first, you will learn that what God sends is good. When you begin to see your daily happenings, your experiences, your trials, your joys from this point of view, you begin to see that all these things are designed for your good. You learn not to murmur or complain, and, even though you still, perhaps, have difficulty in seeing how everything is going to work out together for good, you still believe it. Then, as you walk on with God, you begin to see that whatever he sends is not only good but acceptable -- even the trials and the difficulties. You don't enjoy them, but you know that they are good for you -- so you walk on, in faith, accepting what God sends.

But eventually the day comes when you accept God's choice for you as perfect. In other words, if you had your own life to live over again, you would choose exactly the same things that came already; you would do it exactly the same way, it was perfect. You begin to rejoice in your sufferings and trials, knowing that they are perfecting the very things that you want to happen in your life, and in God's program. That is full maturity, and this is what happens when we begin to yield our lives to God.

Now, where does this start? Well, as Paul says, it starts with your body. In other words, bearing these things in mind, begin to get involved in something. Don't be content to just sit and learn, but begin to do. Come to grips with life. Expect the Spirit of God to use you. Be willing to take on something bigger than you are, and do it in his strength. You see, God is saying to you, as he said to Isaiah: "Who will go for us?" (Isaiah 6:8). This is what God is saying about the whole world today: Who will go into the place where you work? Who will go into the neighborhood where you live? Who will go into the family circle where you are? Who will be my representative there? Who will be me in that place? Will you say, like Isaiah said, "Lord, here am I. Here am I. Send me!" (Isaiah 6:8b).

Prayer:

Our Father, we pray that we will more than just intellectually grasp this truth, but that it may grip our hearts and our souls, and release our paralyzed wills, and energize us to begin to be available to you, not in words but in deeds. In Jesus' name. Amen

THE BODY AT WORK

by Ray C. Stedman

When we come to the twelfth chapter of Romans, we come to the second major division of this book. The first eleven chapters are all devoted to what a Christian life is, and, as we have seen, it is a radically new life. It isn't an improvement of the old life in any degree at all; it isn't taking a man who has certain longings for being a bit better and helping him along until he lives a cleaner or a more moral life. It is cutting off entirely of the old life, whatever its manifestation may be, and the beginning of a new life in Jesus Christ which we continually appropriate -- like we breath fresh air -- by continual expectation. Just as when you take a breath you expect the oxygen to be there, so a Christian learns to depend on the indwelling life of Christ in exactly the same way. Every step he takes he expects Christ to operate, and to empower him, that it may be effective. Now, in coming to Romans 12 and the rest of the letter, we are coming to that which describes how the Christian life looks when it comes contact with the world. This is a very practical section and one that I think that we will get a great deal out of because of its practicality. In this section we see Christian living coming in contact with society, with the ordinary, work-a-day world. It begins with the church, then goes to government, and then to society in general -- considering the special problems that arise out of it. So this is a very practical section.

As you have noticed from our last study in Romans 12, the first two verses indicate that the application of Christian living starts with a surrendered will: "Present your bodies as a living sacrifice," as Paul puts it. This is another expression for the acceptance of the Lordship of Jesus Christ in your life -- a willingness to seek his advancement rather than your own. This is the heart of all Christian experience. A Christian is one who recognizes the authority of Jesus Christ and loves to put himself under his control.

Somebody has well said that there are only two kinds of people in the world. There are those who wake up in the morning and say, "Good morning, Lord," and those who wake up in the morning and say, "Good Lord, its morning!" This recognition of the immediacy of Jesus Christ all through the day, and through all of life, is the mark of a genuine Christian life. The evidence of a surrendered will, as we saw last week, is an available body. Yesterday I was with 200 men up above Los Angeles, and, among other things, we discussed this very matter. One man stated it very accurately: "If I talk about being a Christian, and about serving the Lord, but I never do anything for him, I am just kidding myself."

The evidence of a surrendered life is an available body, a willingness to help, to put yourself out, to be expendable, to respond to the needs about you. Therefore, a Christian with a continual excuse for doing nothing is deceiving himself about his surrendered will and is resisting the rightful control of God in his life. This is where we start in Romans 12, and the first place where this activity of service becomes visible is naturally in the church itself -- in the body of Christ, in the community of believers, in the circle of God's family. This is where Paul begins in Verses 3-13 of Chapter 12.

We are not going to take all of it this morning, but I'll give you this little preview of it: He speaks about two things, activity and attitude. We are going to look at the activity this morning -- the great question of the spiritual gifts that God gives his own to minister in the body of Christ. He says only two things about these. He says: Don't try to do everything, and Whatever you are given to do, do it wholeheartedly. The first is the measure of our ability, the second is the mark of our genuineness. Now let's look at these. First, the measure of our ability:

For by the grace given to me I bid everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him. For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. (Romans 12:3-5 RSV)

This is a picture of life in the body of Christ, the church. It is made up of all believers who share the life of Jesus Christ, and it is a living organism in the world today. When you begin to discover the true power of a Christian, as we have looked at it in Chapters 1-11 of this great letter, you discover that a remarkable thing begins to happen. I don't think the Christian life is worth a 'snap of the finger' if something exciting isn't happening from time to time. It really never begins for us until we begin to see that God intends to work through us individually, and that, when God is at work, things begin to happen. It isn't always some spectacular, outward display, but things take place.

I was privileged to speak at a Bible class in the home of Andrew Carey, the third baseman of the Dodgers baseball team, in Newport Beach last Thursday night. There were about 35-40 people at the class, which was begun by Lloyd and Jackie Johnson, who used to be here with us. Lloyd is the regular teacher of the class, but I taught it this one Thursday night. Jackie Johnson and a friend of hers picked me up in Los Angeles and drove me out to Newport Beach, and, on the way, they were telling me what had been going on in that class. They got so excited they kept turning around and talking to me -- even though one was trying to drive. So, I finally suggested that I do the driving and let them talk, because they were so excited over what God was doing in their midst in that class. Now, that is as it should be. This is the kind of excitement that prevails whenever God the Holy Spirit is at work.

Once you discover this, as a result of the availability of the life-changing, transforming character of Christ dwelling in us, life becomes an exciting thing. You can hardly sleep at night, at times. When you experience that thrill, you begin to want to do everything -- you want to do it all yourself! You see how wonderfully God can work and you think, "There is nothing that I can't do!"

It is at this point that we must begin to realize what Paul brings out here, that we are members of a body, and it isn't given to each member of the body to do everything that the body does. There is a division of labor within the church of Christ, and other members of the body are filled with the Spirit too, and need to be exercised.

Do you remember when Peter learned this? You recall that, after the resurrection, when Peter had denied the Lord and wept bitterly in the streets of Jerusalem, the Lord Jesus met him in Galilee beside the sea on a beautiful morning (see John 21:15-23). He had spread a breakfast of fish for them -- broiled fish on the coals -- and, after breakfast, he turned to Peter, and said to him, "Peter, do you love me?" And Peter, who had been so boastful in the Upper Room, could only hang his head and say, "Lord, thou knowest." And again the question came, "Peter, do you love me?" Three times the Lord asked, "Peter, do you love me?" And Peter was driven, at last, to the only recourse, the only ground upon which he had to stand -- not his own energy or ability -- to say, "Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you." And then the Lord gave him his job; he said to him, "Peter, I want you to feed my sheep. Your job is to minister to those who belong to me -- to teach them, to feed them, to nurture their life along. This is your job." But Peter still had some of old Peter in him. He turned to the Lord, and looking at John, he said to the Lord, "Lord, what do you want that man to do?" If you read the Scriptures carefully, you'll notice that there is indication of jealousy between Peter and John before the crucifixion. Peter evidently resented the fact that John was the one who was always leaning on the Lord's breast, and he was jealous. So, he turned to the Lord and asked this question. The Lord's answer was quick and to the point. He said to Peter, "What is that to thee?" That is, "That is none of your business, Peter. You follow me. I'll give him a job to do." There Peter learned that the body has many members, and all do not have the same function, but all of the functions are necessary to the life of the body.

All of us will discover this. God gives us gifts, but we do not all have the same gifts. We need one another. We are members one with another, not just of this church, but of other churches, other denominations, other groups as well. Nothing is more heartening today than to see how the Spirit of God is breaking down denominational lines all over the country, and around the world, making people aware of how much we need each other in the body of Christ.

Here we come to this question of the distribution of spiritual gifts, and I think, in many ways, no question is more discussed and more appropriate than this today. The Lord, we are told, distributes gifts as he wills. That is, it is the prerogative of the head of the body. Whenever our bodies function, they never take orders from the hand or the foot -- they take them from the head.

It is the head that sends down messages; it isn't our fingers that operate on their own. You put your finger on a hot stove and a message runs up your arm and travels right up to the head that says, "It's hot down here." And the finger does nothing more about it yet; it stays right there on the hot stove until the message comes back from the head that says, "Get out of there!" Then the hand moves. It is the head, you see, that directs the action of the body. This is what we need to remember in the body of Christ. It is the prerogative of the head to give the gifts as he wills.

There are many who are being urged to seek some gift today. Never once in Scripture is there any exhortation to seek gifts. Oh, I know that it says in First Corinthians to "covet the best gifts" (1 Corinthians 12:31), but the pronoun that is used there in the Greek is plural. It means "pray or covet that there be manifest in the entire assembly the better gifts of the Spirit" -- not for any individual to seek any gift for himself. I think it is very essential to understand this. Now, what is a spiritual gift? Let me give you a definition, if I may. I have been struggling with this, and trying to think it through, and this is the definition that I have come up with:

A spiritual gift is a divinely-given capacity for service.

Now, I did not say that it is a divinely given ability, because ability suggests power and a spiritual gift does not have anything to do with the power of it. Power can be from one of two sources: The power can either be the power of the Holy Spirit allowing that gift to be used, or it can be the power of the flesh, and the energy of the flesh, even though the gift is given by God. It is a capacity to receive power to exercise a certain ministry -- that is the spiritual gift.

I think I can illustrate that to you: Suppose I had here a number of electrical appliances -- a toaster, an iron, an electric fan, a hair dryer, and a few other gadgets such as we have abundantly available today. Each of them is designed to do a different thing, each has a different function, but they all used the same power -- and unless they are connected to that power, they are useless. This is the way with the spiritual gift -- it is a divinely-given capacity to receive power. However, that power can be: The power of the Holy Spirit so that the gift is exercised in such a way as to bless, to minister, to help, and to advance the cause of God, or it can be: The power of the flesh so that the gift is exercised in such a way as to destroy, to injure, to divide, and to sever. This is one of the areas that is so misunderstood today. We are talking about spiritual gifts, and among them the gift of tongues and the interpretation of tongues in which we see a revival of interest today. But people forget that the gift of tongues can be exercised in the flesh as well as in the Spirit, and we need to make that distinction clear. I am glad that this passage in Romans 12 deals with the matter of spiritual gifts but never even mentions the gift of tongues, yet it is an authentic and accurate listing (even though partial) of the gifts of the Spirit.

How do we recognize the gifts of the Spirit that are given to us? If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, the moment that you were born again, God gave you gifts. Notice that I do not use the singular word. I don't say "gift" -- I say "gifts." I hear people talking about how to discover "the gift God has given them." I think we are short-changing God when we talk that way.

Have you ever noticed the liberality with which God gives? He just pours out his gifts. Just think of the number of flowers in the world, the billions of stars in space, the abundance with which God gives, the lavishness with which he gives gifts!

I don't think that any Christian possesses just one niggardly gift of the Spirit; I think that all of us have several. And we need to discover what they are, and begin to use them. Paul gives us the way to discover the measure of our gift, the measure of our ability. He says it is "according to your faith" -- the measure of the gift is your faith. In other words, that is what Jesus said when he said to his disciples, "According to your faith be it done unto you," (Matthew 9:29). That is, "What do you believe that God can do through you?" Start there! What challenge of the Spirit lies before you at the moment that you really believe God can do through you? Start right there! When you start there, you will discover that gradually there comes a broadening and a widening of the knowledge of what gifts you have. This is why Paul writes to Timothy, and says, "Stir up the gift that is in you which was given unto you," 2 Timothy 1:6). That is, get busy and use it! And when you start with what you have, usable for God, you discover more.

There is one man in the New Testament whose gift is always associated with his name. Do you remember who it is? Haven't you ever heard of Philip, the evangelist? He didn't start out as Philip, the evangelist; he started out as Philip, the deacon. A deacon was not a highly honored, highly paid individual in the New Testament. In the sixth chapter of Acts, a deacon was a man who had the job of dividing up the common provender among the squabbling group of quarreling widows. That is where he started, for he had a gift for service -- Philip, the server. And, when he was faithful there, he discovered that God had also given him another gift, that of an evangelist. It is that by which we know him. This is the place to start -- begin where you are.

What can God do through you? Begin there! Don't wait for a call. You don't need a call. Gifts are given to you by the Spirit immediately upon your conversion, and, no matter how humble a place it is, begin there! Make your body available for the ministry of this gift, and, as you faithfully follow through, you will discover other gifts that are also yours. And you can rejoice in the ministry of others as well. In the second part of this section, Paul brings before us the mark of genuineness of a gift:

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching; he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. (Romans 12:6-8 RSV)

This is a partial list of spiritual gifts. There are others that are listed in Ephesians 4 -- evangelists, prophets, pastors, teachers, apostles -- and in First Corinthians 12. But let's look at this list that Paul gives here to the Roman church:

There is, first of all, the gift of prophecy. Now, that does not mean prediction. That isn't the ability to predict some event that is yet in the future, but it is really the gift of preaching -- of being able to proclaim truth with a powerful effect upon the hearers. Do you have the gift of prophecy? It isn't confined only to those who are pastors by any means. There are many laymen who have the gift of prophecy too. The gift of being able to speak so that you put forth the truth in a powerful way: That is the gift of prophecy.

Others may be helpful in helping you determine whether you have this gift, because sometimes we don't always recognize it in ourselves. Dr. Ironside used to speak of those who thought they had the gift of preaching but to whom nobody had the gift of listening. Now, that is a tragedy. But the gift of prophecy is a God-given capacity to receive power in preaching. Though it can be exercised in the flesh (and what a deadly thing it is when a preacher preaches in the energy of the flesh), it can also be exercised rightly in the power of the Spirit. Next, there is the marvelous gift of service. This is what is called "the gift of helps" in First Corinthians 12. This is the ability to see things that need to be done, and do them -- that is all. What a blessed gift that is!

I thank God for those who have the gift of service here in this church. We have one man I think of, who, whenever an announcement is made that something needs to be done, is always there on the spot. It doesn't make any difference whether anybody else shows up or not -- he is there and he gets something done. And, may I say, that is one of the most effective and powerful testimonies for Christ in this church. The person concerned may not be able to preach a sermon (I am sure that he would feel that he couldn't), but his life is a continual testimony to the reality of Christ living in him. He is one of the most effective ministers for Christ in this whole church.

That is the gift of service, and what a wonderful gift it is. Then there is the gift of teaching mentioned here. This is the capacity to impart truth, or to instruct, by analysis and application. By the way, it is not determined by your age group. You don't have a gift for teaching young people rather than a gift for teaching middle-aged folks. Incidentally, I have never run into anybody who thought they had a gift for teaching old people, yet, if this were an age matter, you would expect to find that. It is simply the gift of teaching, wherever it is employed. It is the God-given capacity to instruct, and, thus, a very valuable gift.

It has nothing to do with the office you hold; you may be a teacher in the Sunday School and not have the gift of teaching; it is too bad if you are. We hope that those who teach have the gift of teaching, but just the fact that you are given the job of teaching doesn't mean that you have the gift. It is up to those who can determine it to find out who has the gift of teaching.

Then there is the gift of exhortation. Frequently this is given right with the gift of teaching, but it is a different gift entirely. The gift of exhortation is the capacity to move the will, to warm the heart, to impel to action. You have met people with this gift. We have some here, and we thank God for them. But let me say something about these two gifts of teaching and exhortation especially. It is such a silly thing to blame someone for not exercising a gift that he doesn't possess.

Frequently we have someone speak who has the gift of teaching, He instructs us, our minds are illuminated, and we understand things so much better than we did before. All the intellectuals go away from the meeting saying, "My, what a wonderful speaker. That was wonderful. What I learned under that man!" But all the emotionally-oriented people go away saying, "Oh, that was terrible. So dry!" This is blaming the man for not exercising the gift of exhortation which he doesn't possess. On the other hand, when an exhorter comes along who has the gift of exhortation but not of teaching, all the intellectuals go away saying, "That was terrible -- nothing to edify me at all!" And the emotional people say, "That was wonderful. I could have listened to that man all day!" Well, let me say that this is wrong! If a teacher teaches, thank God for the gift, and go and warm your own heart. And if an exhorter comes, thank God for the gift of exhortation, and go and get a book and teach yourself. You see, these gifts are given to bless and edify the whole body.

There is, also, the gift of contributing, or of giving, that is mentioned here. All Christians are expected to contribute -- this is a sign that you have received: "Freely you have received," Jesus says, "freely give," (Matthew 10:8 KJV). All Christians, without exception, if they really know the Lord, will give. But there are some who have a special gift of giving, and, by the way, it is not always the rich people either. Sometimes the very poorest people have the gift of giving, and, even out of their poverty, they find ways to give. They give cheerfully and gladly to bless the heart. Thank God for these!

I think with this gift there is often given the gift of making money. If God has given you the gift of making money, remember that it is a definite gift and that it is not given in order that you might have a much higher standard of living than anybody else. It isn't given to you in order that you might enjoy luxuries that others don't have, but, rather, that you might employ it in advancing the cause of Christ and ministering to the body of Christ -- that is why it is given. It is the capacity to receive the power of the Holy Spirit to give in such a way as to bless and advance the work of God. It is as much a necessary part of the ministry of the whole body as the ministry of teaching or preaching. Thank God if you have that gift. We couldn't exist, the body could not work without those who have the gift of giving.

Incidentally, I believe that there is nothing in Scripture that sustains the idea that you should leave your giving until after you are dead. Second Corinthians 5:10 says, "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body." So, as the jingle puts it,

Do your givin'
While you're livin'
Then you're knowin'
Where it's goin.'

And that is a good idea! Next, Paul mentions the gift of giving aid, or, really, the gift of ruling or administering. Oh, what a blessed gift that is! This is what is called the gift of administration in First Corinthians 12. It is the capacity to plan or execute and organize, and it is of tremendous value -- not only in the actual organizing of the church, but in planning conferences and meetings, and in setting up special projects, missionary enterprises, and so on. If God has given you this gift, by all means get to work with it!

Then there is the gift of showing mercy. This is the gift of what we might call consolation or encouragement -- the ability, as Isaiah so beautifully puts it, "to speak a word in season to him who is weary," (Isaiah 50:4 KJV). The ability to encourage, to bless in time of special need, to come into a home where things are upset and difficult, and say just the right thing.

Now, these gifts are not limited to those in the professional ministry, to just the so-called "clergy." It would be horrible if they were. The whole ministry is the work of the whole body -- that is what the Scripture teaches. All of us together have gifts of the Spirit which we must exercise -- and the whole body falters and fails if you aren't doing your part in exercising the gifts that God has given you. This is only a partial list here, but I believe that every Christian has several of these gifts. Now, you find out which gifts you have, will you?

You find them out and use them, because, if you are not using the gift that God has given you, you are robbing Christ of his right to be in you what he wants to be. You are robbing him of his inheritance in the saints Ephesians 1:18), and hindering him from the work which he longs to see accomplished. The point that the Apostle Paul is making here is not so much to give us a list of what the gifts are, but that, no matter which gifts we have, we need to put them to work for God. What he is saying is: Get with it! Wholeheartedly enter into this. Unreservedly give yourself to the ministry of the gifts you possess. Make this your calling. Make this your reason for existence -- that you might find occasion to exercise your gifts! Then, you see, the work of Christ will prosper. Observe how he goes through this. Let's go through it again: "If you have the gift of prophecy," he says, "then preach in proportion to your faith." Or, as Philippianslips puts it, "Unto the limit of your vision." Don't hold back! Present everything that God gives you to see in the Scriptures. If you have the gift of service, then give yourself to serving. Don't wait till somebody comes around and asks you to do things. Get busy and find opportunities. Give yourself wholeheartedly to the exercise of this gift.

If you have the gift of teaching, then you ought to be teaching. You have no business sitting in the pew continually, without a ministry of your own, if you possess the gift of teaching. Find an avenue of teaching, in the home, in the Sunday School, in the church -- somewhere. Call some folks together (you'll find someone who has the gift of listening) and then start there. If you have the gift of exhortation, then be exhorting, Paul says. Get with it, in other words. Get involved. Start using the gifts that God has given to you. If you have the gift of giving, then keep on giving out liberally. Don't just give until you have reached your quota for the deduction on the income tax, but keep pouring it out and give liberally. If you have the gift of ruling, do it with zeal. Do it with concentration and with eagerness. If you have the gift of mercy, do it with cheerfulness. Oh, that is a blessed word, isn't it? None of us want any of these Job's-comforters to come around when we are down and defeated, just to pour more gloom on the occasion. No, if you have the ministry of speaking the word of help, do it "with cheerfulness," Paul says.

The mark of whether it comes from the Spirit or of the flesh is that it be done in the wholehearted, unrelenting participation of the Spirit. That is, it never ceases. Why is this the mark? Because these gifts can be exercised in the flesh, and they can be a fair imitation of the real thing -- for a while. But there is one thing about the imitation: If it isn't patted on the back and ministered to, or given full credit, or public recognition, it stops! The mark of the ministry that is in the flesh is that it just flashes up for a while, and, as long as it has the public center of attention, it goes ahead. But as soon as that fades, it quits. On the other hand, The mark of the ministry of the Spirit is that, regardless of whether anyone says anything or sees anything, it keeps right on going! That is because it is unto the Lord. You can't continue with the perennial enthusiasm that you show without having discovered the secret of resting on the indwelling life of Jesus Christ. That is why this wholehearted, continual service is the mark of a Spirit-filled ministry. It is the mark that you have discovered the fountain of living waters, and, therefore, out of your own inner being there flows rivers of living water and blessing to others. It is the mark that you have the secret of a life-time of fruitful service -- twelve months out of the year the fruit of the Spirit is evident in your life because you have learned how to really live in the fellowship of an ungrieved Spirit, in the smile of the Lord Jesus, and delighting the heart of the Father. That is the secret of real, wholehearted participation in these ministries.

A friend was telling me about seeing a truck driving down the highway the other day. It was a moving van, and on the back of it was a sign. As this man pulled up behind the truck, he read:

ANY LOAD -- ANY TIME -- ANYWHERE

And he thought to himself, "That is exactly what the Christian life ought to be -- 'any load, Lord Jesus, any time, anywhere!'" That is the key to the ministry of the gifts of the Spirit in the body of Christ. I am just praying that many will heed the Word of God we have just considered and that your heart will be saying right now, as mine is: "Lord Jesus, any load, any time anywhere -- I am available!"

Prayer:

Our Father, how we need these practical admonitions. How much they touch our lives right were we live. Lord, how often we have short-changed you -- we who are designed to be your instruments of expression, whose very bodies are intended to be the means by which you manifest your life on earth! Lord, how many times we have withheld them and refused to respond! Forgive us this and, by your grace, Lord, may we recognize that the whole purpose of our existence and the whole glory and thrill of life are to be an instrument of yours. We cannot do this, Lord, in the flesh, but, by that power of your indwelling life, we pray that we may sense this, and present ourselves anew to you in this moment. In Jesus' name. Amen.

AUTHENTIC CHRISTIANS

by Ray C. Stedman

This last week, through the magnificent ministry of Major Ian Thomas, we heard about the indwelling life of our Lord Jesus Christ lived again through the Holy Spirit expressing himself in terms of our humanity. We learned why our Lord has moved into human life and how he has done it. Now, as we turn again to the twelfth chapter of Romans, we are coming to a section which describes what the Christian life is like when it comes into contact with the commonplace conditions of life -- when it comes to grips with the world in which we live. In this wonderful passage in Chapter 12, Verses 9-21, we have a description of a Christian life being lived.

In the words of Ian Thomas, "This is a life not explainable in terms of human personality, but it is explainable only in terms of God." This is the only life worth living -- I hope you have discovered that! The first thing that Paul says, in Verse 9, is: "Let love be genuine." The rest of the chapter is simply an exposition of that phrase. I hope you have learned that under no circumstances is the Christian life a matter of imitation. It is never that. It is never you trying to do your best to imitate the character of Jesus Christ. This is impossible. Yet it must be a life of genuine love. God is love, and, if the life that we live is God the Son living his life again through us, then it must be a life of genuine love. It won't be any flabby, cheap, sentimental imitation. This is what this chapter expounds to us and there are two divisions to it: Love extended -- love reaching out to those around about -- and love offended -- love slapped in the face, and how it reacts. Let's look at the first section -- love extended:

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality. (Romans 12:9-13 RSV)

The first quality that marks genuine love is that it is faithful. As Paul says in Verse 9, "Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good." Notice how that marks the balanced quality in love. It isn't love which simply manifests itself in affection for everything -- that is sentiment. Nor is it love which cuts everyone off in an attempt to be rigidly faithful to the truth and is harsh, unyielding, and difficult -- that isn't love. Love is a balance. It is hating what is evil, and holding fast to what is good.

This must begin with ourselves, and it is interesting that the Scriptures say we can only love others in terms of ourselves. The Law says, "Love your neighbor as yourself" (see Luke 10:27). We must begin with loving ourselves in a genuine way before we can love anyone else. How do we do this? Well, it begins with hating what is evil and holding fast to what is good. The measure of what is evil must be determined, not by what we think is evil (or what our up-bringing has been, or our reaction to it), but by the Word of God. That is what determines evil. And that which is good is determined, not by the way we think or react, because the one thing that the devil does in the world is to try to make evil look as though it is good, and good to look as though it is evil. So, if we simply judge by outward appearances we can never love. It is only as we walk, think, and look at life in the light of the revelation of the Word of God that we can hate what is evil and love what is good.

This must begin with ourselves, and this means, as we think of ourselves, we learn not to justify evil in our life. Oh, how frequently we do this! We love to call it by another name, and, thus, make it look acceptable. We look at our lives and we see worry, but we don't call it sin, we call it concern which is simply to call it by a name that sounds more acceptable. But it isn't concern, it is worry -- and worry is sin. To love ourselves as God loves us is to look at ourselves and call that evil which is evil. In this case, we must call it worry and treat it like a sin, not like a poor relation to be kept in the back room; that is, we don't actually kick it out, but we don't bring it out in the front room either. The first aspect of true and genuine love is to hate what is evil.

On the other side, love does not reject that which is good. We don't become falsely humble. We don't act, for instance, as if the body were evil, because God says that it isn't; he says it is good. There are those who try to manifest a love for themselves by rejecting what God calls good, and this is wrong. Love is always the hating of that which is evil and the holding fast to that which is good -- it is being faithful to reality. Love is always eminently realistic.

Now this is true also as we move outside to the circle of family. Love doesn't spoil a child by saying that we hate to hurt it. Many parents are literally wrecking their children's lives by the fear that they are going to hurt the child in some way. Children need to be hurt. If they are not hurt it means you don't love them, because life hurts children. Either they are hurt in a small way where they learn how to adjust to a principle, or they grow up absolutely protected from all hurt till they come to a place where the barriers can no longer be maintained or upheld and they are exposed to life and are hurt in a terrible way that utterly destroys them, and breaks your heart in the process. Love is not that way. Love begins with facing small hurts now, and being able and willing to expose our children to them, that they might learn how to live.

But neither does love act in harshness, rejecting a child because there are a few faults in him, and demanding a toeing to the mark in unyielding insistence on carrying our a standard, without ever relenting or yielding to any degree. It is not that either. Genuine love is God's kind of love, which hates what is evil -- relentlessly, inevitable, and inescapably. Genuine love never varies, is without shadow of turning, never compromises with evil, never pats it own back and says, "This is going to be all right; let's forget about it." Genuine love never does that. It does not reject what is good, nor does it ever call good "evil" or treat us as though we were unimportant, or act as though there were nothing of any real value. There is real value in each one because God has made us, and what he makes is good, and he treats us this way.

This is love. What a wonderful description of it we have here. It approaches all of life realistically. It doesn't exude flabby, sentimental nonsense and gush. It doesn't deal harshly or critically because of the presence of evil. It doesn't throw out the baby with the bath water. It deals with life realistically because God is a realist and God is love. Therefore, the mark of love is to hate evil and to hold fast to what is good. That is faithfulness. Then, in Verse 10, we see that the next mark is that it is courteous:

...love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor. (Romans 12:10 RSV)

Did you wonder why it says "brotherly" affection? Some of you who remember back in the days when you lived with your brothers in the home are wondering where the affection was. Yet what this is saying is that we who are members of the body of Christ should love one another with "brotherly" affection. I think it simply means that wherever brothers have learned to be affectionate to one another (there are brothers who are like this, and you meet them quite frequently), it is because they have learned to live closely together with mutual respect. You can't have affection for someone with whom you are closely bound, in terms of living together or ties of relationship, without it being based upon mutual regard for each other's welfare, property, and so on. Brothers learn affection only when they are willing to do so on the basis of a mutual respect for each other. That is what this is talking about. When Christians love, they are to love this way: Showing regard for someone else, "in honor preferring one another" (Romans 12:10 KJV), asking the other one to step first, to have the preferred seat, the preferred honor, the preferred place. This is having a due regard for the welfare and the importance of someone else. That is genuine love -- just simply courtesy -- and it's something that is greatly lacking today.

I don't know how may married couples I have counseled with in which the problem would have been solved by the simple showing of courtesy, one with another, in the home, just not allowing themselves to fall to the level of speaking discourteously to each other, but to simply be respectful of each other's person and property. That is courtesy. The third mark of genuine love is that it is available. Look at Verse 11:

Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord. (Romans 12:11 RSV)

Zeal is simply "a willingness to be available, a readiness to minister." That is zeal. The sources of it must be the glowing of the Spirit within.

Have you ever noticed that, by nature, we are all of us moody and easily grow reluctant to do things for people by ourselves. We only want to act when the mood is on us. We say, "Oh, I don't feel like doing this." A call comes for service, and we say, "Well, I'd like to, but I am not in the mood right now." Or, after we have undertaken it for a while, we say, "I'm tired of it. Let someone else take it for a change."

This is not the mark of genuine love because genuine love is available -- it is zealous, it is eagerly ready to minister. The secret of it is that it has caught the glow of the Spirit within. We read that our Lord Jesus on one occasion went into a city after he had spent long hours throughout the day healing, preaching, teaching, and ministering to those in need about him. Then he went into the house to rest, but the evangelist records that "he could not be hid," (Mark 7:24). Why not? Because, in the next verse it says that outside there was a woman who had a daughter who was afflicted with an evil spirit, and she had come to Jesus. He couldn't be hid because there was something that demanded his ministry, and he couldn't be unresponsive to that. So, outside he went to minister to her. This is what you have here.

Genuine love is available. It is love that doesn't shut itself away in a closet, or build inaccessible fences or barriers around it so that it cannot be reached, but it is always ready to minister. That is availability. The fourth mark of genuine love is that it is rejoicing in hope. Paul says in Verse 12:

Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. (Romans 12:12 RSV)

Genuine love is always rejoicing and giving thanks. Remember that definition of a Christian?

A Christian is one who is:
Completely fearless,
Continually cheerful, and
Constantly in trouble.

Why? Because he has hope. Do you know what hope is? Hope is the anticipation of future delight because of present circumstances. Hope is the onward look which sees in the present something which, in its final resolution, is going to bring delight in the future. Hope is looking right at the present, seeing it exactly as it is, and seeing within it the seeds of something which, when they come to germination, will bring a delightful expression. That is hope.

A farmer plants his grain in hope, doesn't he? He puts the seed into the ground, and he anticipates a harvest. Why? Because he knows that there are forces at work, in the process of which he has fulfilled, that will bring the harvest: There is life in the seed; there is power in the sunshine; there is fruitfulness in the soil; there is release in the rain. These forces combine the very things that are needed, and are now at work, that will produce the very harvest that he is looking for. That is hope. Hope isn't just a blind, vague, misty desire for something to come in the future -- that is never real hope, that is blind hope and it is utterly worthless. True hope is something that is based upon present circumstances, and this is what we have in the Christian. He is going through tribulation and trial, and it isn't pleasant, but there is something about it that he sees that is producing and working toward a culmination which will be delightful beyond measure. This is why he rejoices in his tribulation.

As Paul says, "We know that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us," (Romans 8:18 KJV). "This light affliction which is but for a moment is working for us the exceeding eternal weight of glory," (2 Corinthians 4:17). And it is these very circumstances that is making the glory possible. Now that is what hope is.

Therefore, genuine love is always revealed in a cheerful countenance, in a face of radiant hope, being continually aware that even though the present circumstances are dark and unpleasant, yet forces are at work in them which are bringing about that which will be delightful beyond measure. Therefore, it is "patient in tribulation" -- no murmuring, no complaining about what you are going through, no taking someone else to task or blaming them.

It is "constant in prayer" -- always dependent upon the Lord, always aware that he is the vital factor in every situation, always believing that he is transforming and changing each situation to work out his way. This is the normal, natural, "plain vanilla" Christian life. There is nothing unusual about it. This is the way it should be. This is rejoicing in hope. The last mark is given in Verse 13: It is generous. Genuine love is generous:

Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality. (Romans 12:13 RSV)

It is generous because it recognizes that there is plenty more of what it has received, and, therefore, it can give liberally, gladly, and freely because the supply is inexhaustible. The one who supplied this that we have now will supply more; we don't have to hang onto it then. We can give it freely and distribute it to the needs of the saints.

This is most markedly evident in someone who doesn't have much to give -- as Paul said of those Macedonian Christians, "Out of their deep poverty they gave liberally, ... first they gave themselves to the Lord, and then they gave themselves to us," (2 Corinthians 8:2-3). This is the normal Christian life -- it is easy to live with, it is easy to work with, it is a wonderful kind of life. When you meet people who, like this, are showing the genuine love of the Spirit of God, you find that they are delightful people -- you love to be around them, you love to work with them, you find them pleasant and approachable. James describes these people in his letter: "the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason [i.e., approachable, easy to be entreated], full mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity," (James 3:17 RSV). That is generosity!

This, then, is genuine love -- but the most revealing test of love is yet to come. It comes in the time when love is extended to someone else and is rebuffed. What would you do when your motives are twisted and perverted, sincerity is doubted, and your goodness is met with malice and with hate on the part of those you are trying to help? Here we see the real test of whether love is genuine or not. Let's look at it in this section, love offended:

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; never be conceited. Repay no one evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." No, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:14-21 RSV)

You'll notice that it begins with the attitude first. What is your attitude? How do you feel inside when somebody does something evil back after you have done them a favor? Is it, "Well, that's the last time I will ever help him"? Is it a tendency to run them down, degrade them, curse them? Well, genuine love says, "Bless them -- do not curse them." It gets practical too. It moves right into the realm of activity in Verse 15: "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep." Now, this isn't just an extraneous thought that is thrown in here out of some other part of Scripture; it vitally ties in with what he is talking about. He is talking about these who offend us, these who have injured us in some way. He says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep." That is, don't withdraw from them, and shut yourself away from them, and say, "Well, this is the last that I want to do with them."

This is what we do, isn't it? Somebody does something back, and we say, "Well, that is the last time I will ever have to do with them! I'll never waste any time with them again." We withdraw ourselves and go our separate ways and never speak to them again. No, that isn't right. You see, if we live on this level, as Jesus said, "What do ye more than others?" (Matthew 5:47 KJV). What is there about our life that is any different than any other life? How can we be explained on any other level than what is just ordinary human reaction to things? "What do ye more than others?" Jesus said. If you love those who love you, everyone does that. It is when you begin to love those who don't love you, and you love the unlovely, and you bless those who curse you that you are beginning to demonstrate a life that cannot be explained in terms of your own personality, but must be explained only in terms of God in you. Bless those who curse you -- don't avoid them, don't withdraw yourself. When there is something for rejoicing in their lives, go and rejoice with them -- even though they don't like you. Send them a note and say you are glad to hear what has happened to them. If there is sorrow that comes, don't say, "It served them right; I knew something like this was going to happen." Rather, go and weep with them.

Then, in Verse 16, we have wonderful insight into the nature of human life, where Paul says, "Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; never be conceited." Why does he put that in here? Well, if you have ever tried to fulfill this word of loving someone who has harmed you, you'll see why. Have you ever really put this to practice, and gone out of your way to do a good deed in response to one that was evil? If you have, how did you feel when you got through? Didn't you feel like patting yourself on the back, and saying, "I've really done all right -- I have really shown that person what a Christian is." And you go away feeling ten feet high, as though you had done something really unusual. That is the subtlety of the flesh. It wants to take something that God has done in you, and through you, and twist it so that you become proud over it, and, therefore, you lose all the benefit and blessing of it in your own life. So he adds this word, "Never be conceited." As Jesus taught his disciples, "When you have done all these things which you ought to do, then say to yourselves, 'We are but unprofitable servants. We have only done that which was our duty to do!'" (Luke 17:19).

There is nothing unusual about showing this kind of love -- or at least there shouldn't be. This is the way Christians ought to be, and there is no credit to us when we behave this way. This is just the manifestation of the normal, natural, Christian life. Paul moves a step further -- from the attitude it moves to the outward act. In Verse 17 he says, "Repay no one evil for evil." Here is a prohibition against any kind of act of retaliation. What do you do when somebody does something to you that you don't like? You say, "Well, I'll show him how it is." And you retaliate in some way. You don't get along with your neighbor, maybe he does something difficult, so you throw your garbage over his back fence. You'll show him!

I remember when I was a boy in Montana in the cattle country. One frosty morning, I looked out and saw the cattle in the corral. There one old cow who, in turning around, bumped another cow. That cow kicked at her, so the first cow kicked back, but she missed that cow and hit another one. Pretty soon they were all kicking one another. The entire corral full of animals was kicking at one another. What a demonstration this is of the folly of kicking when you get kicked!

Have you ever seen a family behave this way? One little act, perhaps unintended, of injury to one member of the family, and that one strikes back, and somebody else gets into the act, and pretty soon the whole family is yelling and screaming at one another. That is because we are not acting like Christians; we are acting like what we are. There is no genuine love being evidenced, and we need to judge it on that very basis.

Then, in Verse 19, there is a third degree of this spirit that says never attempt revenge: "Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.'" That is, revenge goes beyond just getting even. Revelationenge is excessive retribution. It is not only getting even, but it is giving him something else besides. God says: Never do this, never try to get even in the first place, never go beyond that -- ever, never attempt to exact vengeance. That is God's job. When you try it, you are usurping his job without his power and wisdom, and the result is that you will inevitably make things worse.

We only have to look around us at our life, and the life of our family, and our nation, to see how true this is. Vengeance only perpetuates the evil, expands it, and flings it out wider, so that it touches more lives and hurts more hearts. The only one who has the wisdom and the power to do this rightly is God himself. Therefore, he says, "You leave vengeance to me. I will take care of the individual that has injured you. You must never try to handle this yourself."

Furthermore, he says in Verse 20, "...if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink..." I wish that some of these misguided saints, who are so conscious of truth and the need to be faithful to truth in these days, but are so harsh and unrelenting to those who disagree with them, would read this verse again. "If your enemy is hungry," what do you do? Do you cut yourself off from him and refuse to have anything to do with him? Do you refuse to talk with him and run him down on every side? Do you print up pamphlets and distribute them so that you can tear him down? No! Read the verse again: "If he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head."

Now, don't misunderstand that verse. "Burning coals" does not mean that you will make him feel so ashamed of himself that he will finally come around, and say that you were right after all. It isn't making him so miserable that you can sit back and say to yourself, "Uh-huh, I've got you now. You are really squirming." No, that is not genuine love. Burning coals, here, means "the hot coals of love." You just heap more love on him because of the evil he is doing -- that is what Paul is saying. Remember what love is -- not sentimentality, not just gush. Rather, love that hates evil but holds to what is good is what you are heaping upon him. It must be genuine, of course, you can't have ulterior motives of trying to reduce this person to a state of shame or self-reproach -- that can't be the motive.

During the war, I remember hearing of some American soldiers in China who found that life there was very delightful because they had Chinese houseboys who were assigned to them to do all the dirty work. They did all the cooking, laundry, sweeping, and cleaning; they took care of everything in the house. In certain ways, this life was wonderful because the soldiers had everything done for them. There was one group of soldiers who had a fine houseboy whose Chinese name they couldn't pronounce, so they called him "Charlie." They used to play tricks on Charlie. It was fun, for them at least, to nail Charlie's shoes to the floor, so that when he put them on he couldn't move. And they would put buckets of water up over the door, and, when Charlie came in, the water would fall on him. They would laugh at his expense. They would short-sheet his bed, and play all the other little, diabolical tricks that young people know. Invariably, Charlie took it with wonderful grace; instead of getting angry, he would laugh along with them, and he seemed to almost enjoy it. Finally, they began to feel ashamed of themselves. One day they said, "You know, we really shouldn't do these things to Charlie. He has been so gracious about this, and is always so ready to serve us, and then we repay him with these dirty tricks." So they felt ashamed of themselves, and said, "We'll never do this again." And they called Charlie in, and said, "Charlie, we want to tell you that your attitude has made us feel so ashamed of ourselves that we are not ever going to play these tricks on you again." He said, "You mean, no more nailie shoes to floor?" And they said, "No more." And he said, "You mean, no more bucket over door?" And they said, "No more." And he said, "You mean, no more short-sheet bed?" And they said, "No more." He said, "Good! Then Charlie no more spittee in soupee!"

You see, if you have an ulterior motive, you are not demonstrating love. This isn't it. This is simply a farce, an outward front. No, as the Word says, "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals [of hot love] upon his head. Do not be overcome by evil..." That is what happens when we try to repay or avenge ourselves. We are "overcome by evil." We are the losers. We have lost that battle. Instead, we should "overcome evil with good."

Now, all of this, you will recognize, is simply the manifestation of the life of Jesus Christ at work. You go back through the passage and you'll notice how parallel it is to First Corinthians 13, but even in a more practical sense. This is what love is, and all of it is Christ at work. It is impossible for you to do this, but it is not difficult for him. He can manifest this kind of an attitude and heart without any difficulty at all -- he did it all the way through his life and ministry. So don't try to imitate this. If you think you are going to go out now and try to do this kind of thing without depending on him to do it through you, you never will. If you do try, the result will be some cheap, shoddy thing that everyone will see through, except yourself. This is the sentimental kind of affection with which Christians sometimes meet one another.

Have you ever been talking with someone about a person, and the conversation has been very derogatory? Then that person has walked up, and you say to him, "Oh, I'm so glad to see you! We have just been talking about you and how wonderful you are." That isn't love. That is a cheap, imitation, shoddy kind of thing. Genuine love is the kind of love portrayed in this passage of Romans. If you don't have this kind of love, and if you are not living this kind of love, it will do no good to just try to force yourself to it. The answer is that something is blocking the flow of his life in your life, because he delights to be this kind of a person through you. He is ready. He is available. You don't have to plead with him, and beg him, to be this kind of love. You don't have to say, "Lord, give me love." He can't give love -- God is love, and he can't give it. He is it. There is no use to beg him, or try to plead with him, to do this because he is ready to do it. He is eager to be this through you.

If this isn't working in you, if this isn't the thing that is manifest in your life, then it is because, somewhere along the line, you are trying to cling to your life and show forth his life at the same time, you are insisting on being unloving and refusing to give up that attitude, you are not facing what you are, you are covering up or protecting it in some way, you are justifying it, you are saying, "Well, I have a right to be this way!" So long as you do that, you are clinging to your own natural, Adamic life, and you cannot have his life flowing through you. There is a block because, as we have been reading all through Romans, it is not "Christ and I." It is, "not I, but Christ." The thing to do, then, is to come to grips with what is blocking the flow of his love through you. As Jesus said, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone," (John 12:24 KJV). If it isn't willing to yield the kind of life that it has now, it never will have any other kind of life. If it is still determined to run its own life, be its own boss, run its own affairs, set its own standards, make its own way, it will always be exactly what it is -- nothing but a corn of wheat. But, if it dies, then it will discover the hidden Lordship that is built into a corn of wheat, which takes over and begins to direct its life from then on; and It becomes, then, abundantly fruitful, and all that it ought to be in reproducing itself in a tremendous way.

This is what Paul is saying here. All of this chapter is simply impossible, depressing, and discouraging if we have not discovered that it is possible only if Christ lives his life through us. He is quite willing to do this. When we are willing to stop living our lives on our own, then his life is instantly available.

Paul said this in Second Corinthians 4:10: "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus." That is the cross. That is the facing of the end of my kind of life in order that the life of Jesus might be manifest in my mortal flesh. This life is available to me now so that I may be all that is set forth, all that he is.

Prayer:

Our Father, how thankful we are for the Lord Jesus Christ and his availability to us today. And, as we measure our lives by this standard, we see how little there is of genuine love in us. Lord, keep us from the folly of thinking that we can produce this by our own efforts, or that we try to love. Rather, help us to see that the only thing that is standing in the way is the clinging to some part of our life that has been judged at the cross -- our unwillingness to lay aside the bitter spirit, the resentful attitude, our unwillingness to allow others to be blessed without any apparent reason for it, our insistence that they come and minister to our pride, or in some way grovel before us, that we might feel a sense of satisfaction. Keep us from this, Father. May we judge this evil spirit, and, thus, allow the full course for the flowing of his life through us -- this wonderful life, this attractive, compelling life which makes us easy to live with, easy to work with, and returns good for evil. For we pray in his name. Amen.

CITIZEN-SAINTS

by Ray C. Stedman

This is a tremendous passage on the subject of the Christian's relationship to government. If we are Christians, where is our citizenship? Heaven. Do you remember Philippians 3:20, which says "our citizenship is in heaven, from whence we look for the coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ"? In other parts of Scripture we are told that the character of Christians journeying through the world is that of pilgrims and strangers. We are citizens of heaven, journeying through this earthly time, and heaven is our home.

If this is true, does it mean that we are not to have anything to do with the government and politics of earth? Not at all; and this is the subject that is discussed in Romans 13, because it would be easy to get an unbalanced attitude from the passages which set forth the very real truth that believers have a citizenship beyond the earth. Like all truth, it must be held in balance, and this is one area where we definitely need to see the other side. This passage is a full discussion of the attitude of the Spirit-filled Christian toward all governmental authority.

We are going to look at Verses 1-7 as they are summed up for us in just three phrases: God's institutions, God's instruments, and God's intruders. We will explain that last word more fully when we come to it. Now let's look together at the first section, God's institutions:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. (Romans 13:1 RSV)

This declares that the authority behind the authorities is God. I feel that this is a lot easier to preach here in America than it would be in China or Russia today, but it is still true in those countries as much as it is here. All the governments that exist are of God. It is hard to come to grips with that, isn't it? We like to think that God is behind governments like America and England, but that he has nothing to do with governments like Russia and China. (Some of us think that perhaps India and Yugoslavia are doubtful, and a few others that we could list.) But Paul makes the flat statement that those governments that exist are instituted by God -- regardless of what their nature is like.

Remember when the Lord Jesus stood before Pilate, that proud representative of Rome? When Jesus refused to answer one of his questions, Pilate asked him, "Do you not know that I have the power to crucify you?" (John 19:10 KJV). The Lord Jesus looked at him and said, "Thou couldst have no power except it be given thee from above" (John 19:11 KJV). That is, Pilate could not even lift a finger to crucify him if it were not permitted by God that he do so.

In Chapter 9 of this letter to the Romans, you remember, Paul tells us that God raised up Pharaoh, that wicked, hardhearted king, and set him on the throne of Egypt. God did that! In the Old Testament we are told that it was God who gave Nebuchadnezzar power as the mightiest monarch who ever reigned on earth. And we are told that Cyrus, that cruel Chaldean lord, was his servant, raised up and set upon the throne by God. All through the Old Testament God represents himself as the controlling force behind every government on earth, without exception.

So Paul is well within the authority of Scripture as he writes this word to us. In fact, when Paul wrote these words, the emperor seated on the throne of Rome was none other than the infamous Nero -- and perhaps there has never been, in all the history of the world, a more cruel and malicious man to sit upon the seat of high power. Yet, when Paul wrote, "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities," it was Nero who sat on the throne. Later, when Paul wrote to Timothy, and said, "Honor the king" (2 Peter 2:17), it was Nero that he had in mind. All of this is simply confirmation of the statement that government is of God.

Therefore, it isn't man's elections or his revolutions that determine the governments of earth. We think it is. We get very busy holding elections, we campaign up and down, we have election night, we wait eagerly at the television set for all the returns, then we get up all disappointed the next morning -- but it isn't really the election that has put these men into power. In Mexico they used to do it by the process of revolution -- you never could change the government there without a revolution. I wonder if they could, even today, change the government there without a revolution. Revolution is the process of the change of government in many parts of earth.

But neither elections nor revolutions determine who sits in the seats of power -- it is God who does so. These things are only the instruments by which he works his will; and the revelation of Scripture is that God puts in power the men of his choosing, whether they be good or evil, whether they are beneficent rulers or tyrants like Hitler or Krushchev, or any of the others on earth. Somebody has said that God gives to each nation the government it deserves, and there is a great deal of truth in that. I think that God, because of his mercy and love, does better than that, and we sometimes get a government better than we deserve. At any rate, Scripture is clear that the governing authorities, the ones who occupy the seats of power, are there by the permissive choice of God.

If you struggle with that, it is because you don't see what is behind God's purpose in the world today. I think so many of us, even we Christians, suffer from the misconception that God is really making an all-out effort to try to govern the earth properly, and that he is having difficulty in doing so because of the recalcitrance and stubborn resistance of men -- but he isn't. God isn't attempting to govern the earth properly today; he never has been. All through the span of human history, God has not been trying to govern the earth. No wonder people sometimes shake their head, and say,

"Well, I don't understand what is happening. I don't understand how God can permit these things. If I were governing the earth, I would never permit anything like that -- and you tell me that God is a God of love and wisdom! Why, then, does he allow this kind of thing to go on?"

This is the question that so frequently comes from the human heart. It comes because we do not realize that God is not attempting to govern the earth properly -- he is waiting, he is withholding, he is restraining evil, he is governing to a limited extent, -- but he is not trying to do the job as he will someday.

He could have done it well all along; anytime that God chooses he can arrest the force of evil, and cancel out all the follies and failures of men, and set up a government that is right and perfect. He could have done this at any time in past history. But the fact that he doesn't, as Peter tells us, is evidence of his love and of his mercy and of his grace, which is withholding the judgment that is necessary in order that all may have a chance to hear the gospel of his grace.

Christians should remember that God is not only here on this earth to save. (We are so aware of that -- we know that he has come to save -- this is the great task primarily entrusted to those who are his visible manifestations on earth today. We who know the Lord, we who are the bodies possessed by the indwelling Spirit of God, have been given the task of declaring the word of reconciliation.) We know he has come to save, but that isn't all that God has come to do in the world today -- he is also here to restrain and limit evil (to keep it from coming to the full force of its ugly development), and to maintain his power and his truth among the nations.

Do you know that, in the recent Cuban crisis, if God had not allowed Krushchev to believe, at last, that the United States really meant business about the blockade, we would have been in nuclear war right now? It wasn't our clever strategy that finally convinced Krushchev that we were ready to fight down in Cuba, because there were many other times in the past when the same sort of attempts didn't work -- it was simply the fact that God permitted him to believe something that was being set before him. And, if it were not for the permissive will of God, we would have been at war. It isn't the tremendous build-up of armament, or the political intrigue that a nation goes through, that keeps it at peace (necessary as these things may be, and are), but it is the control of God in the affairs of men and nations, and it is only the part of wisdom to recognize this.

This is what we have set forth here in the first great statement of the apostle: Every government that exists is held in the palm of God's hand. It can only go as far as God wills; it is under his control; it has been instituted by him. Because of this fact, Christians should have a great concern about governing authorities, for they are specially marked out by God as his territory, and, therefore, we can expect a special responsiveness to our witness among those who are God's servants. Three times in this passage, the government agencies are called "the servants of God" -- especially his. Therefore, I believe that we who are Christians ought to be very much concerned that there be a forthright, clear-cut, powerful Christian testimony going out among men who are in positions of earthly power -- because God says they are especially his, and we can expect a special responsiveness.

I was interested, during our breakfast meetings last April when the International Christian Leadership men were here in town, that the ones who seemed to respond most openly and enthusiastically to the witness of the gospel were men in positions of governmental authority here in this area. The city manager of Mountain View, who is a Roman Catholic, was very interested, and, as a result, that man is today leading a breakfast meeting on Friday mornings to which, at his invitation, men in executive areas of business and government are meeting together to read the Scriptures. I was tremendously thrilled to have one of the men who was there last week say to me:

"You know, after the meeting last week, I was going down to my office and fire a man. But, as I was driving from the meeting, I reflected on our discussion together of the parable of the Good Samaritan, and I thought to myself, "If I fire this man, this will solve the problem for me, but I won't be helping him at all." This parable had gripped my heart; Jesus had made it clear that, when we see someone in need, we are to go to their aid. I went down to the office and, instead of calling that man in and firing him, as I fully intended to do, I sat down with him and we talked over the problem and I found out what the trouble was. The result was that we worked it all out, and he is going to make a good man I believe."

That is the ministry of "the salt of the earth" (Matthew 5:13), arresting corruption and restraining evil which would otherwise be at work. It is essential, therefore, that there be a Christian witness among government agencies and authorities. In the Scriptures (see Acts 13:1), we are told that there was a man in the church at Antioch named Manaen who was a member of the court of Herod the tetrarch (one of the government agencies from the court of Herod the king). Also, when Paul and Barnabas went through the island of Cyprus (see Acts 13:7-12), they sought Sergius Paulus, the proconsul and the ruler of the island, and bore a strong Christian witness to him which was opposed by Elymas the sorcerer. It was there that Paul called down the judgment of God on that man's head, and he became blind for a season, as he opposed the witness of these two men to this leader.

In the Philippian letter, remember how Paul writes about the saints who were in Caesar's household, (Philippians 4:22)? Somebody had reached into the emperor's household and won some people for the Lord there. Then, at the end of this very letter to the Romans, we read of greetings sent to many people in Rome, among whom was Erastus, the city treasurer, (Romans 16:23 RSV). All through the Scriptures, then, you see how these men who were in positions of power were exposed to a Christian witness because the early Christians recognized the truth that every government is authorized and instituted by God -- it belongs to him.

Now, the second declaration of this passage is that the authorities are God's instruments:

Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoers. (Romans 13:2-4 RSV)

Twice in this passage the man in power is called "the servant of God," either to aid or avenge. In either case, he is doing God's work; therefore, to resist human authority is to resist God. Of course, where human authority itself resists the direct command of God it is proper to rebuke it, and, if necessary, to disobey it. We have an example of this in the incident in Acts when the authorities commanded the apostles not to preach in the name of the Lord Jesus. Peter said, "Whether to obey God or man, you judge. You are God's servants. You are in a position of authority. Now you tell us, which should we obey, God or man? -- for we cannot but speak in the name of the one by whom we were called, Jesus Christ," (Acts 4:19-20). They went out, then, and filled Jerusalem with their doctrine, and ceased not to preach and to teach everywhere that Jesus was the Christ (Acts 4:19-31). Here human government had overstepped its proper authority.

But, in general, governments are not a terror to good conduct, as the apostle says, but to bad conduct. If you want to have a clear conscience when you are working with the government, just behave yourself. Obey the laws and you don't need to have any fears -- unless in the odd instance they come directly in conflict with some command of God, you need have no fear. Obey the laws and you can have a perfectly clear conscience, and can sleep nights. You don't have to worry about anybody coming to your door, or calling you up, or serving a warrant on you. You don't have to hide behind doors or duck around corners, or cross the street when you see somebody coming. You can just walk through life with a perfectly clear conscience. This is what he says.

On the other hand, if you break the law, the authority is then the instrument of God to judge and punish you. It isn't the human element that is doing it, it is God that is doing it -- through the instrumentality of a human being. We were all interested to read in the paper last week about the president's sister being arrested for driving without a driver's license. Now, thank God we live in a country where the president's sister can be arrested. But, judging from the picture that appeared in the paper, she didn't enjoy it very much. She looked very gloomy as she was standing there before the judge. That judge, you see, had the authority from God to pass sentence -- and a president's sister has no exemption from the law. Governments are of God.

Then someone may ask, "How far does this authority go?" Notice what Paul says in Verse 4: "He does not bear the sword in vain." That means that the authority extends to the right to take life, because that is what the sword does. I think this puts the question of capital punishment in its right perspective. You see, capital punishment is not "legal murder" as some people call it, nor is it simply a relic of a more barbarous age (it is hard to understand how any age could be more barbarous than ours when you think in terms of the atomic bomb and so on), but it is the avenging hand of God himself operating through human instrumentality. When a criminal is executed for a crime, the executioner who pulls the switch (or drops the capsules into the acid) isn't the one who has taken the life. Nor is it even the state. It is God who has done it, and the state is simply the instrument by which God does his work and carries out his judgment on earth.

If you are driving down the street, and somebody bumps into you with their car, and smashes your fender, do you leap out and start complaining about the automobile and start beating the other car over the hood with a wrench? Are you angry at the automobile because it hit you? No! You go to work on the driver, don't you? It isn't the car that did it. It is the one that controls it, isn't it? It is foolish to blame the instrument. It is the one who controls it who is to blame.

I think we need to put this in the right perspective in regard to capital punishment because so much fog and haze has been created to obfuscate the issues. (I looked that word up especially: It means to cloud the issues and to make them difficult to see really clearly.) But Paul puts it in the right perspective, doesn't he? Capital punishment is the act of God in human society. Therefore, God is the one who must be called to account for this, if anybody is. It isn't "legal murder." The last point that the apostle makes is that government agents are God's intruders:

Therefore one must be subject, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. (Romans 13:5-7 RSV)

I think you will all agree that tax collectors are intruders. We feel that way, don't we? You who are in business love to sit down and plan what you are going to do, and plan the profit that you are going to make -- then there comes that disagreeable moment when you have to knock off 30% and realize that this has to be paid for taxes (or 90%, whatever the case may be). You wish that you could get out of it some way. We don't like this official arm that reaches into our business and extracts a good portion of our income, and says, "This is mine." But Paul says that these men who do this are God ministers.

This word ministers is an interesting word. It is the word employed everywhere in the New Testament for priests -- "ministering priests." In fact, in Chapter 15 you have the same word. Paul uses it in Verse 16:

But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister [same word] of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, (Romans 15:15-16a RSV)

In the Old Testament, one of the duties of the priests was to receive tithes and offerings and sacrifices from the people. They were acting as God's agents in receiving these tithes and offerings and sacrifices. Paul simply transfers that ministry and that work to the government, and says that governments have this right given to them by God to collect taxes, and that, in paying your taxes, you are paying properly authorized revenue to God -- for these are his agents in carrying out this ministry. In other words, the power to tax is a God-given power.

Now, this doesn't mean that all taxes are just -- I don't mean to claim that -- but the principle of taxation is right, and, if there needs to be correction, machinery is usually available for the correction of unjust taxes. Notice that this matter of paying taxes, among other things, is put under the matter of the realm of conscience. That is, Christians (for this whole passage concerns the attitude of Christians to government) are under a higher law than the world in regard to the demands of government. The worldling pays his taxes and obeys the laws largely because he fears the penalty, or he realizes that this is the only way that law and order can be maintained. But the Christian is put under a far higher responsibility; he is told to pay these things for the sake of conscience. That is, he knows that to fail to do this will affect his own relationship with God:

If he cheats on his income tax, he has grieved the Holy Spirit and can no longer manifest the indwelling life of Jesus Christ in that ministry of power and conviction that glorifies God and makes the invisible God visible to man, If he is unjust in his treatment of government authorities, rude or crude in his dealings with them, or disrespectful (not giving "respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due" even through he doesn't like the man or his motives or methods) he is affecting his conscience and is under the disapproval of the grieved Holy Spirit within. I think that this makes it clear that, ultimately, Christians pay taxes not to the government but to God.

Now, don't try to deduct them from your income tax on that basis -- the Internal Revelationenue doesn't understand theology in this respect, but the Christian is expected to do so. Not only do you pay taxes for your conscience sake, but for others' conscience sake as well: The way you treat government officials is a testimony of whether you are a Christian or not. The way you pay your taxes, if you pay them, and the way that you pay other revenues, custom duties, and fees of various sorts, is a testimony -- one way or another -- of your Christian life.

When I was in England, a man told me about an American speaker who came over there to speak. He was a prominent American Christian and he had been scheduled for a series of meetings. This man said that he met the speaker at the plane when he came in. As they were riding in from the airport to town, the man looked at his watch to see the time, and this fellow noticed that he had three watches on his arm. So he said to him, "What is the trouble? Do you have trouble telling time by one watch? Do you add them all up, or what?" And the man said, "No, I'll tell you: I found out there is a customs duty on the import of watches, so rather than put them in the suitcase where they would be found, I simply slipped them on my arm, and nobody noticed that they were there, and I came right through." The Englishman said, "You know, from that moment on, that man's ministry was a dead thing as far as I was concerned, and I noticed that there was nothing of blessing in his meetings all the time that he was here." You see, this sort of thing immediately touches the spiritual life of a believer and renders him inoperative as far as a testimony and a witness for Christ is concerned.

A great many Christians have been greatly blessed by the reading of books by Bishop O.H.  Hallesby of Norway. I have been challenged and blessed by them myself, and Bishop Hallesby had a great ministry of writing that was a help and a strength to Christians around the world. His books were sold in many countries of the world. But, a few years ago, he was brought into court because of an income tax discrepancy, and it was proved that he had cheated on his income tax. As a result, his ministry absolutely ceased. Few of his books were sold any longer. Only those who hadn't heard of this bought his writings, but it was publicized in Time Magazine and around the world, so that one act of attempting to evade his justified responsibility absolutely cut off his ministry; and he was placed on the shelf for the few remaining years of his life. He is dead now, but this is such a sharp testimony of what happens when we cheat, or don't play fair, in this area of life.

Again, all of this is placed in the context of the Christian's responsibility as he touches life around him. As we have been seeing all through Romans, especially in this last section, a Christian is simply a body in which Christ walks through this life. When our Lord Jesus was here, he paid taxes. You remember he sent Peter down to the seaside to catch a fish once to take the money out of the fish's mouth to pay his tax (Matthew 17:24-27). He didn't have any money of his own, so this was the way his need was supplied. On another occasion he took a penny and asked, "Whose is this superscription? Whose is this picture?" (Matthew 22:17-21, Mark 12:14-16, Luke 20:21-15). And they said, "It is Caesar's." He said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's."

Now, when he was paying taxes, was he not just as Spirit-filled and Spirit-empowered as when he raised Lazarus from the dead, or did any of his other miracles? Of course he was. Did he not need the fullness of an indwelling Father for that task as much as he needed it for anything else? Of course he did. We also are to do all the necessary tasks of our life in the fullness of the indwelling life of Jesus Christ. We need the Spirit of God for everything that we do: If we pay our taxes and fill out our income tax report, if we treat government officials with respect, if we pay our fees and so on, and if we do this in dependence of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ within us, this becomes a powerful, potent testimony that will have eternal effect in the lives, not only of these officials, but of those who observe us in our acts and our relationships to them. Thus, it becomes a powerful instrument to transform and change the society in which we live, and arrest the corruption and dispel the darkness that is about us.

The Christian, as we have seen here, is called to God-likeness. That is, as Major Thomas said, "making God visible in human life through the outworking of his indwelling life." As we, even in little things, display honesty, and respect, and honor, and carefulness (not for the sake of some better relationship between the government and us, but because we are God's men from head to foot), this thing becomes an instrument and a channel by which the Spirit of God opens doors, right and left. Thus, the influence of a Christian becomes a potent, vibrant, powerful testimony -- a vigorous thing in the life of his community and beyond to that of the nation as well.

Prayer:

Our Father, we have been looking at these words of such intense practical import. There is little here to challenged the heart and lift up the eyes in spiritual vision, but, oh, so much of intense practical application of the truths that we have been learning and hearing out of the Word. We pray, therefore, as ones who are indeed citizens of heaven and walk through this world, that we may remember also that those men who sit in the seats of power, and who exercise authority in our cities and in our nation, are your servants. We pray then, Father, that our testimony, our experience, our relationship to them will be one in which your Spirit will find opportunity to be a channel of testimony and of transformation in their lives and in the lives of those who observe our relationship. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

THE DEMAND OF THE HOUR

by Ray C. Stedman

A Christian faith that doesn't change your life isn't worth a 'snap of the finger,' but when Christ changes a heart and a life, the change that he makes is going to affect everyone around you! This is really the theme of what we have in Chapters 12-16 of Romans. It is a picture of a Christian 'up to his ears' in life. The result of a truly Christ-like life, lived out in the world, is going to be that some around you will be upset by the way you act. You will be upsetting some and comforting others. As someone has said, "The ministry of a Christian is to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable."

We have already seen in this section the true attitudes that a Christian life produces: First of all, there will be an eagerness to minister among the body of Christ, to other Christians, according to the gift that God has given you. Of course, every believer in Jesus Christ is given gifts; to withhold the ministry of those gifts is to rob Christ of his right to be available and ministering to men through you, and to rob him of his inheritance in the saints. I think it is interesting to face the implications of that.

Then, also, there comes an awareness and a readiness to accept and to love others just because they are brothers in Christ -- not because they are nice, or lovable, but because they are Christians. No matter where they are, what the color of their skin, or the background of their life, we love them because they love the Lord Jesus Christ. This is brought forth beautifully in the twelfth chapter. In the latter part of Chapter 12 we saw the attitudes and changes made in our life as we relate to the sometimes hostile world around us. In this relationship, the attitude of a Christian is to return good for evil; he overcomes evil with good, and he doesn't give back in kind or, if he does, he is not living a Christ-like life.

The third aspect, you remember, was the effect of Christian faith on our attitude toward government. We recognize that government is an institution of God, and that government agencies are servants of God deserving our respect and obedience. We realize, further, that our own fellowship with Christ is affected by the way we behave as citizens, and that our conscience can be very vitally disturbed if we do not give to government, and to those who represent the government, the rightful respect and obedience that they deserve as servants of God.

This brings us to Verse 8 of Chapter 13. In the rest of this chapter, Paul flings back the boundaries of life to include all human society, and, in this section, you will find the people that you rub shoulders with every day. What are you going to do with them? How do you treat them?

Paul summarizes the Christian outlook here in one great tremendous word, and it is brought before us as the demand of the hour:

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. (Romans 13:8-10 RSV)

Now, I think that many people have questions about this opening sentence, "Owe no one anything": They ask themselves, "Is it wrong for a Christian to contract a debt, or to buy on the installment plan, or mortgage his house. Is this wrong? Is it prohibited by this sentence, 'Owe no one anything'?" Well, the answer is, "No!" It is not wrong because a contract, of course, is really just a mutually agreed upon arrangement by which the money is to be paid. It is mutual, and it is never a debt unless you miss a payment; then you come under the enforcement of this passage.

But, of course, if you deliberately go out and contract for more than you are able to pay for, this is dishonesty in the extreme. Paul is pointing out that no Christian must do this because, if you live on this basis, what you are really doing is living on another person's money without his permission, and that is simply a glorified form of stealing. So he urges, "Owe no one anything."

But there is a debt that you can never fully pay, and it is a continually valid debt -- the debt of love. You remember, at the beginning of this very letter to the Romans, Paul says, "I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians," (Romans 1:14). I owe every man a debt; I owe him the obligation to love him; I owe him the necessity of love. The reason Paul gives here, you will notice, is because law is fulfilled by love: Love alone fulfills the Law. In other words, love makes a good citizen out of you without any need for a police force, without any need for enforcing agencies, because no man who loves his neighbor is going to injure him. If you love your neighbor: Whether he lives next door to you or across town from you, whether he works in the shop next to you or at the desk next to you, whether you have any other relationship with him, if you love him, you can't injure him! You will never commit adultery with his wife, or kill, or steal, or covet something that he has. You won't envy his brand new car, or his fine green lawn, or anything else that he possesses because, if you love him, you are concerned about his welfare. But the man who hasn't learned to love is merely forced to wait until he can find a good opportunity to do some of these things that are unlawful and injurious. That is why love alone fulfills the law.

I was reading just the other day a report in which Chief Justice Warren said that laws are not enough to preserve order in our land. He is right. We need a widespread desire to keep the law, first of all, and, if we don't have that, law alone is insufficient to control life. This seems to be the missing element today in so much of life. Just this week I heard of a young lawyer across the bay who was prosecuting a couple of men in a case. He had just obtained a conviction when, right in the court room, as soon as the sentence was pronounced, these two young men arose, and ganged up on him, and beat him so seriously that he had to be sent to a hospital. This happened right in the very presence of the judge, the bailiff, and the other agencies of law in that courtroom. This attorney has now discovered that the wife of one of these men is threatening to kill him. This is a criterion of the lawless spirit that has seized our age, and the reason is because men are losing their ability to love, and their capacity to love, and law is being relied upon alone as sufficient to keep order -- but it isn't! As Paul points out here, it is impossible to maintain government if you just have law alone. Love fulfills law. As a result, in our present situation, the Chief Justice felt the situation is so desperate that he is calling for the formation of what he calls "ethical counselors" -- that is, men who can really teach other people how to love. This is the great need -- love alone can fulfill law.

If this is true, then I think you will agree that the great and overwhelming demand of our day is to find a way to create love in men's hearts, to find a way to teach us how to love. The other day at a breakfast meeting of executives, one of the men brought up the passage in which our Lord quotes these words: "Love thy neighbor as thyself," (Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 19:19, 22:39, Mark 12:31 KJV). It was agreed among all those men present that, if men would do this, this would solve all the problems of our lives. Everybody nodded his head very sagely, and fully agreed, but somebody had the temerity to ask, "How do you do this?" And no one had an answer. You see, this is the great demand of the hour.

Now, I think it would be easy to leave this right here, but I am not content to do so because this isn't the whole picture of love, and I don't want you to get a false and distorted emphasis. It is true that love will keep a man from ruining or harming his neighbor, but love goes further than that. That will satisfy the law, but that will never satisfy the heart of God if that is all that you show. I think it is easy for Christians to be very smug right at this point. So many of us pat ourselves on the back, and say, "Well, I have never done any harm to anyone," and we expect to be commended for that position. I have found that kind of an expression usually doesn't stand very close examination when you analyze it carefully. But, even if it did, this isn't the full expression of love. Look at Verse 20 of Chapter 12 of Romans, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head." That is love. Not just an attitude that says, "Well, I've never done any harm to anyone. I won't hurt anyone." But a positive approach that says, "I will do good to someone." You see, the Golden Rule is not "Don't do unto others as you would not have them do unto you." It is positive. That negative way is the pagan form of the Golden Rule. You'll find it in the writings of Confucius and Buddha, but it is always in the negative form, "Don't do unto others as you have them not do unto you." But that isn't what Jesus said. Jesus said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," (Matthew 7:12). This is a positive approach.

Now, I think that we will never begin to manifest this kind of love, which is so needed today, for lack of which society is simply coming unglued, coming apart at the seams -- we will never begin to manifest this outreaching love, illustrated by the Lord in the parable of the Good Samaritan, until we first become aware of how pitifully we Christians often lack it.

I picked up in the bookstore this week a very delightful little book. It is called He Sent Leanness. The subtitle is Book of Prayers for the Natural Man. It is a very engaging little book in which are set forth prayers as men are really praying them -- not the words that we usually hear, but the thoughts that are usually behind them -- the way we would pray if we prayed honestly what is in our heart. I want to read a portion of a litany which is written in this book setting forth that kind of prayer. This is the way it reads:

From a universe where things can be extremely unpleasant,
Deliver us, Good Lord.

From everything that calls from us courage and endurance,
Deliver us, Good Lord.

From all ignorance, insecurity, and uncertainty,
Deliver us, Good Lord.

From all personal needs that give the love of others a chance to find expression,
Deliver us, Good Lord.

From suffering the balloon of our pride to be pricked,
From suffering the castle of our self-satisfaction to be attacked,
From suffering the thunder of our egotism to be stilled,
Deliver us, Good Lord.

From all vicissitudes and deprivations that throw us back upon You,
Deliver us, Good Lord.

We miserable owners of increasingly luxurious cars, and ever-expanding television screens, do most humbly pray for that two-thirds of the world's population which is undernourished;
You can do all things, O God.

We who seek to maintain a shaky civilization do pray most earnestly that the countries which suffer exploitation may not be angry with the exploiters, that the hungry may not harbor resentment against those who have food, that the downtrodden may take it patiently, that nations with empty larders may prefer starvation to communism, that the "have not" countries may rejoice in the prosperity of those that have, and that all people who have been deeply insulted and despised may have short memories;
You can do all things, O God.

We who prosper through the work and patience of others pray that we may have the sense not to drive them too far;
You can do all things, O God.

We pray that our statesmen may do everything they can to promote peace, so long as our own national history and honor and pride and prosperity and superiority and sovereignty are maintained;
You can do all things, O God.

That the sick may be visited, the prisoner cared for, the refugee rehabilitated, the naked clothed, the orphan housed, and the we may be allowed to enjoy our own firesides, evening by evening, in peace;
You can do all things, O God.

O Son of God, we beg, we beseech, we supplicate, we petition, we implore You to hear us.
Lord, be good to us.
Christ, make things easy for us.
Lord, deliver us from the necessity of doing anything.

This is written with tongue in cheek, but there is much truth in it, isn't there? How this points up the need of the hour -- the supreme need for men and women who have learned how to show the simple grace of love in action. We will see in a moment how this is to be done; but now, from the demand of the hour, Paul asks us to take a look at the hour that demands:

Besides this you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake up from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand. (Romans 13:11-12a RSV)

Do you notice what he says here? He says you know what hour, that is, what season it is. Do you know that? Do you know where we are in the great program of God's redemption? Do you know where the events of our day are taking us? Do you know what lies ahead? Do you know what God is doing today? Do you know that? Well, if you know these things from the Scriptures, then you know that from the appearance of Christ in the manger at Bethlehem to the present time is what is called in the Scriptures "the last age" or "the last hour" of human history. And, if you know that, then you know, as Paul says, that it is the time to wake up! I submit that this is the word we need to hear today. I am afraid that we often hear men preaching who are aware of the fact that the age is drawing to a close, but their word to us is not to wake up, but to hurry up. Yet, as I turn to the pages of the New Testament, I never find that word "hurry" occurring. It isn't "hurry up," it is "wake up" that the Lord is continually saying to us. It is not hurry that is needed. Back in Isaiah, Isaiah says, "He that believeth need not make haste" (Isaiah 28:16 KJV). That is a wonderful word: "He that believeth need not make haste." Did you ever see Jesus Christ in a hurry? In all the record of the four Gospels, there is no account of him ever hurrying. He didn't need to hurry because he knew. What the hour demands of us today is not to hurry up, but to wake up. It is not hurry that is needed, it is awareness. "Watch," Jesus said over and over to his disciples. "What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch," (Mark 13:37 KJV). Act intelligently. Don't act in panic, but in knowledge. Be aware of what you are doing. Act purposefully and intelligently, Wake up!

If we look around us, with our Bibles in our hands, I think we can see that the long, dark night is beginning to lighten. This long, dark night of sin began at the fall of man, at the fall of Adam in the Garden of Eden, when man, through disobedience, passed from life unto death, and was plunged into the dark depravity of fallen human life. Thus he introduced the world into the darkness of night which has been running through the course of history from the very beginning. But now, the dawn of God's day of "peace on earth, good will to men," that was first announced by the angels when Jesus came to Bethlehem (Luke 2:14), is very near at hand. That is what Paul is saying, and "now is our salvation nearer than when we believed," (Romans 13:11 KJV). Of course, these Romans already had salvation in the personal sense, but here he is speaking of salvation in the ultimate sense -- the fact that God is going to save the world and the earth, deliver it, and bring it into a place of blessing.

"But," somebody says, "these words were written two thousand years ago, and if Paul expected the end in his own lifetime, as it implies here, then he must have been mistaken, because it has been two thousand years since these words were written." No, he wasn't mistaken. Suppose we were driving down a freeway together, and I looked at your speedometer and it was registering 85 miles per hour, and I knew a sharp curve was ahead, and I said to you, "Be careful. Watch out for that curve up there. Death is near." You would know what I meant, wouldn't you? You would know that I wouldn't necessarily mean that we were going to die in the next few moments, but that there was a very real possibility that we might if you didn't adjust the speed of your car. But, of course, it is true, isn't it, that death is always near to us. The minute that we are born, death is near. Though you live for seventy-five, eighty-five, or ninety-five years, death has been near all that time. The older we grow, the more we realize, and the more certain it is, that death is nearer than when we were born. Paul is saying the end of the age, the last age, is near. It has been near all along because no one knew when the end would come, but it is certainly much, much nearer now than when Paul first wrote -- since we can look back across the span of two thousand years of human history.

It is interesting that thoughtful men (not necessarily Christians) are becoming more and more aware of an approaching climax in human history. You can't read the newspapers without being aware that there is an air of sober experience on every side. You travel about, as I have been privileged to do this last summer, and you get the feeling, as you visit various nations, that things have gotten beyond men's control. We sort of stumbled onto a treadmill which is carrying us with frightening rapidity toward an event from which we cannot escape. Men no longer are in control of their own events. Governments are no longer able to govern by advice and consent; they are governed by crises, muddling through, doing the best they can as each crises develops, and they never know what is coming.

Charles Malik, president of the United Nations for a while, said recently,

The important thing to learn today is that we are living, as the Germans say, "Zwishen der Zeiten," that is, "between the times," when demonic forces can quickly soar very high and can take possession of the world in very short order. The one thing that we must remember is that there is no security between the times -- no security whatever.

I think that you will agree that one of the most evident characteristics of the present hour in which we live is this growing spirit of lawlessness, and utter disregard for authority and order. This is the age of the goof-off in industry, the pay-off in sports, and the buy-off in politics. It is evident also in the mounting cruelty of our times.

Winston Churchil said,

While men are gathering knowledge and power with ever-increasing speed, their virtues and their wisdom have not shown any notable improvement as the centuries unroll, and under sufficient stress, starvation, terror, war-like passion, or even cold intellectual frenzy, the modern man we know will do the most terrible deeds, and his modern woman will back him up.

Yet, coupled with this, is the most pathetic confusion and blindness that I think the world has ever seen. Men and women today are like children lost in a haunted woods. Every pastor hears the most pitiful stories of people who live like very clever animals, but the have no idea what life is all about, and they are restless, and bored, and they don't know why. I am sure that you are aware of this as much as I.

Now, what is the word for an age like this? What does this kind of an age need? Judgment? No, that is God's work. God is going to speak that word in his own time, and perhaps very shortly, but that isn't the word for today. What is it? Well, we have already looked at it -- it is love. This is the demand of the hour. On every side this is a great hunger in human hearts, and we are living in a love-starved world where men have forgotten how to show simple concern for one another. The great need, then, is for men and women who can love.

That brings us to the key question: How do you do this?How do you love these crazy, mixed up, hard-eyed, hate-filled, offensive people that are so common today? How do you love these confused, pathetic, shameless folk who live in moral apathy around us? How do we meet the demand of the day in which we live? Paul gives us this in this last section. Here is the hour fulfilled and the demand met:

Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness [anybody can do that], not in debauchery and licentiousness [that is common on every hand], not in quarreling and jealousy [that is what you find in the church]. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:12b-14 RSV)

I like that expression, "Put on the armor of light." Now, what does it mean? Well, you remember the words of John in his Gospel about the Lord Jesus: "In him was life and the life was the light of men," (John 1:4). His life is the armor of light that we are to put on. So, when he says here, "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ," he is saying the same thing as when he said, "Put on the armor of light." That is, live in continual dependence upon the risen life within -- this is the only way to love. This is the only possibility of love for this kind of person.

You read the four Gospels and all the way through is a manifestation of our Lord loving this kind of people. How did he do it? Well, he said himself, "The works that I do are not mine, the Father who dwelleth in me, He doeth the works," (John 14:10 KJV). It is the Father who loved, and, as Jesus sent us forth, he said, "As the Father has sent me, so send I you," (John 20:21). As the indwelling Father loved through the Son, so the indwelling Son loves through the Christian, through the believer.

This is why we are taught that the secret of loving is not to struggle after it, not to work up some affection for somebody, but simply to put on the Lord Jesus Christ (see Colossians 3:10-14), make his life available to you, appropriate all that he is, and cast away the works of darkness -- then you begin to love. Do you see how this agrees with what we had in Romans 6? -- "yield not your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but yield yourselves to God ... as instruments of righteousness" (see Romans 6:13). And in Ephesians, "Put off the old man with his death and put on the new man which after Christ is created in true righteousness and holiness" (see Ephesians 4:22-24). This is the same exhortation. In other words, you have Christ, now count on him. Appropriate him. Use him! Don't sing,

I need thee, Oh, I need thee.
Every hour I need thee.

Sing,

I have thee, Oh, I have thee.
Every hour I have thee.

And love -- that is what he has come to do! As Paul points out, there is only one thing that is necessary to this -- the desire to break with the old life of lovelessness, selfishness, greed, ambition, and all the other things. It must be a clean-cut thing; there can be no mental reservations about this or any subtle subterfuge. You take him in all the fullness of his overwhelming adequacy for all your utmost needs, but you are to make no provisions for the flesh to gratify its desires along with it.

You remember when Jesus went to the pool of Bethesda, he found lying there a man who had been bound with a disease for 38 years (see John 5:1-9). Without ceremony, Jesus walked up to him, and said, "Do you want to be made whole?" John 5:6). It was a startling question, and I'm sure the man was taken off guard for a moment. But he looked up in his confusion, and said, "Well, Lord, there isn't anybody here. I have no man to help me get into the water." Jesus cut him short, and just simply said, "Arise and take up thy bed and walk" John 5:8). The man, looking into his eyes, saw that here was one whose word was with authority, here was one who had all the resources to supply all that his word inferred; so he arose, took up his bed, and walked. Now, what was it Jesus said? He said to him, "Take up thy bed and walk." Now, why "take up thy bed"? Have you ever wondered about that story? Why did Jesus insist that the man take his bed with him -- the little, dirty pallet that he lay on? Why didn't he just have the man leave it behind? It was a filthy enough thing after 38 years, I am sure. Why did he have the man take it? As someone has well said, "Because he desired that he should make no provision for failure." If the man had left the bed there, he would have been back on it within 24 hours. When Jesus says, "Arise," in the fullness of deliverance, then he also says, "Take up your bed." Don't make any provision for failure, or, as Paul puts it, "make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." Let this be a complete appropriation of all that he is, which means a total renunciation of all that you are.

I heard of a man who was delivered in his Christian experience from smoking. He had the habit of smoking that bothered him, and he was delivered from it. He took all his paraphernalia -- his pipes, his tobacco, and his cans, and everything -- and dug a hole in the back yard and buried them there. Then he put a stone over the spot so he would know where to dig in case he couldn't hold out! You see, that is making provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

You say, "Because I died with Christ, I see that I no longer need to permit this hot temper to rule my life, and I will appropriate him. I will count on him for continual victory in the hour of temptation -- except when someone does me dirt! If they go too far, I think that is justification to loose my temper." Well, that is making provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires, you see. You rest on the flood tide of his indwelling life to keep you free from lust and passion -- but occasionally you read a sex magazine just to see if you can resist it. That is making provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

I had a friend who was a printer, and one day a man brought to him a pornographic card to be printed, one of those filthy, lewd things, which he wanted printed for his personal use. He handed it to my friend, the printer, and he said, "I would like you to print this for me. I will pay you extra well for it." The man looked at the card, saw the nature of it, and handed it back, and said, "No, thank you. I don't print this kind of stuff." The other fellow said, "Oh, come on now. Don't try to pull this pious stuff with me. You know that you really enjoy this kind of thing. Just be honest." And the printer looked at him, and said, "You're right. I do. I have a nature which likes to feed upon this kind of thing, but I don't feed it!"

That is what Paul is saying here. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, take his life, take all that he is and all the fullness of his being to be all that you need, but, along with it, be sure that you are not making some subtle little provision for the flesh to gratify its desire, because you can have all of his life, all that you need, but you can't have it for your program. That is what he reminds us of here. "No," he says, "clothe yourself with his life." Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, but remember it is never "Christ and I" -- it is "not I, but Christ." This is what the world is waiting to see.

Some of you have read the little booklet entitled The Need of the Hour that Dawson Trotman, founder of the Navigators, wrote. He delivered this message shortly before he died, and it has been printed and circulated around the world. In that message, Trotman comes to this conclusion:

I believe that the need of the hour is an army of soldiers dedicated to Jesus Christ who believe not only that he is God but that he can fulfill every promise that he has ever made and that there isn't anything too hard for him.

I think he is right. I like Philips' rendering of this fourteenth verse:

Let us be Christ's men from head to foot, give no chances to the flesh to have its fling. (Romans 13:14 J. B. Philips)

Do you know what will happen if you begin to do that? All around you people will begin to see Jesus Christ in you, and their lives will be changed. They will begin to feel his love and his concern for them burning out through your heart to touch them, to help them, to pray with them, to weep with them, to rejoice with them, to love them! You'll always be finding yourself, somehow, at the right place, at the right time, with the right people, saying the right thing. You will discover, as you look back, that your life has become what God asks us to be: A light in the midst of a dark and perverse generation.

Prayer:

Our Father, as we look at the world around us, we are so aware of the truth of these words. How desperately the world needs to see this kind of life lived; and the only place, Lord, that this kind of life can be seen by other people around us is in the lives of men and women like us where your life dwells. We pray, then, that these words may come home to us with increasing meaning. May we see that the secret is not the struggle of our own life to do something, not some effort to approach men through some knowledge of psychological principles, but rather the simple effect of a life and a heart that is filled with the presence and the person and the glory of Jesus Christ. May we feast upon him, thank him, dwell with him, live with him, put him on, and appropriate the fact that he indwells us and is ours. Then, Paul tells us, our own life will be changed from glory to glory into the same image, and people will begin to see Jesus Christ walking in the midst of this twentieth century. Lord, we pray for this in Jesus' name. Amen.

ABOUT DOUBTFUL THINGS

by Ray C. Stedman

In this chapter of Romans, we come to grips with the problem of religious scruples. This is a very practical section, as you have noted in our previous studies. In our Bible classes in the homes, we have found that the most frequently asked question by non-Christians is, "What about the heathen who have not heard the gospel?" And the most frequently asked question by Christians is, "What is wrong with such-and-such activity?" Both of these questions, I think, are in the nature of a defense mechanism which reveals a sense of guilt to some degree.

This section deals with the question of doubtful things, religious scruples, that area of life where the Scripture does not directly specify an answer, and about which we have many questions. This whole chapter is summed up with three words, and I hope these words will remain fixed in our minds as the key of the teaching of this great section: The first word is a word to all Christians:

As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not for disputes over opinions. One believes he may eat anything, while the weak man eats only vegetables. Let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats; for God has welcomed him. (Romans 14:1-3 RSV)

The important word here is the word welcome, or receive as you have it in the Authorized Version: "As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome him." Receive him. Make him welcome. Whatever else may be done, this must be done. This is the one word that governs our relationship to the man weak in faith.

I think you can see already, from these verses, that the subject of this chapter is one of scruples. Here is a man who is called "weak in faith." Notice that he is not called "weak in the faith," as you have it in the Authorized Version. It is not a question of weak doctrine, it is a question of weak practices. It is not that he is "weak in the faith," but that he is "weak in faith." He doesn't have much faith, and he is facing the problem of taboos or doubtful things. Here is the section that deals with how to handle someone who is a legalist in the matter of eating meat, drinking wine, or observing days.

It is interesting that, in the early church, in the first century, these were the only areas of doubtful activity that are mentioned in the Scriptures. These doubtful things are mentioned in several of the letters of Paul, in Corinthians, in Galatians, in Colossians, and here in Romans, but it is always about these three areas -- observing days, drinking wine, and eating meat. You can see the progress that we have made in twenty centuries: Now we have a much longer list -- smoking, wearing lipstick, improper clothing, doubtful recreation, going to movies, playing cards, watching television -- we have a long, long list, all the way from eating onions to wearing buttons!

Paul says that the one thing that we must not do with such a person is argue with him. You notice that Paul says, "welcome him, but not for disputes over opinions." That is, don't have doubtful disputes to try to settle his mind or make up his mind for him. You are not to have disputes over opinions, and opinions are all that you can have in this area because, in these matters, Scripture is silent. The rule is that, where Scripture is silent, conscience rules. There are areas where Scripture does not speak.

On the other hand, there are some things that are always wrong, no matter when you do them or where they occur. They are always wrong, and Scripture speaks very plainly and precisely about these areas: It is always wrong to steal. It is always wrong to lie. Drunkenness is always wrong. Gossip is always wrong. Jealousy and slander and bitterness and all these many things that we find in Scripture are always wrong! There need be no question about those things. When we are guilty of them, we are wrong because Scripture says so. This is apparent even in our own conscience, as well as in the Word of God. But there is another vast area where things are not wrong in themselves, but the consequences following their practice frequently make them wrong, and this is the area that we are considering -- the area of doubtful things. I think that it is important to notice that Scripture is deliberately silent in these areas. It is not that it couldn't have spoken about many of these things, but it is that the writers, inspired by the Spirit of God, are led to be deliberately silent about them.

When Paul received the letter from the Corinthians, they wrote to him about some of these things and asked him to give them direction upon how to act in regard to some of these things. It would have been very simple for the apostle to have written back, and said, "As an inspired apostle, my judgment is that you must not eat meat offered to idols," or "you should observe days," or "you should not observe days and holidays, Sundays and Saturdays, and so on," but he didn't. Instead, he spent several chapters explaining the principles upon which these matters must be decided. Here in Romans he does not settle these matters with direct authoritative words -- as he has in other places about other matters -- rather, he leaves it deliberately inconclusive, but clearly gives us the principles. This is very important because it means that we must follow the same rule.

We must not be presumptuous in judging someone else in these areas. This is not for others to settle but for each man to settle himself, as we will see. The one thing that we must do is to welcome them and receive them as a brother or sister in Jesus Christ, as one who shares, with us, life in the body of Christ. The reason is, as Paul says, because "God has welcomed him." That puts things in the right perspective, doesn't it? And what a blow this is to all forms of exclusions in the church of Jesus Christ -- to closed communion and all such attempts to separate among the people of God, and to shut out those who don't act in exactly the way we think -- who don't subscribe to the same minor variations of doctrine, or Who carry out an ordinance in a different way than we do! All of this is regarded as unscriptural in the light of this passage. The one thing that we must do is to receive them, because God has received them. If we reject them, we are in danger of becoming holier than God. I am afraid this is a great danger today. So frequently we meet this attitude. Somebody says, "We don't want them here in our church. "They are not our kind of people. "Yes, we recognize that they are Christians, but they are just not our kind of people!"

But, you see, we have no right to think that way, or to talk that way, because it is the Lord who determines the make-up of his church -- not the people of the church. And Paul insists upon this here. The one thing that must be extended to all who come in the name of Christ is a free and glad welcome, simply because they are believers, because they are Christians, because they know him. We are not to get them in just with the hope that we might be able to back them into a corner and argue them out of some of their "quaint" beliefs, rather it is to receive them, love them, welcome them, make them feel at home, despite their quaint beliefs! This is the clear-cut teaching of these opening verses. This is the word for all Christians in this area: Welcome them! In the next section Paul gives a word to the weak Christian, in Verses 4-12:

Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Master is able to make him stand.

One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike. Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. He also who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; while he who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God. None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. (Romans 14:4-7 RSV)

The word here is judge not! This is for the weak Christian, the one who is bothered by what other people do in the realm of doubtful things. Now, remember, it is right for the Christians to judge one another in the areas where Scripture speaks. Where someone is engaged in an activity that, in the light of the Word, is clearly wrong (some of these things we have mentioned), it is the responsibility of other Christians to: Go to that one and point out his fault, between you and him alone, then, if he will not hear you, take another with you, and if he will not hear them, tell it to the church. But, in these doubtful areas, we are not to judge one another. I want to make that clear because so many are confused about this. Many think that when Scripture says "Judge not," it applies to everything. No, it applies only to these doubtful areas where Scripture does not speak precisely on these lines.

The word judge means "to condemn" -- to say about that person that, perhaps, he is not a Christian, or that he is a worldly or a carnal Christian. That is what it means to condemn or judge in this sense -- to regard him as not being all that he should be as a believer, or being unspiritual, because of these doubtful things in which he engages. Paul's word is: Judge not! Of course, if these things lead to outright evil, they need to be judged; but, until they do, you are not to judge. There are two reasons given for not judging one another:

First of all, judge not in view of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That is, you have no right to judge. "Who are you," Paul says, "to judge another's servant?" Now, this is an interesting relationship, isn't it? A believer in Jesus Christ is not regarded as answerable to the church in these areas, but answerable to the Lord. The church hasn't a shred of authority to set up any rules or regulations in these areas. This is an area which the Lord reserves to himself, and the man stands or falls before him, and not before anyone else. Paul's question is, "Who are you to sit in judgment over somebody else's servant?" After all, they are not your servant, nor are they the church's, they are the Lord's servant. You have no right to judge them, and you have no authority to do so.

Furthermore, it is no help for you to judge in this area. Look at the latter part of Verse 4: "he will be upheld, for the Master is able to make him stand." I like Philippianslips rendering of that clause. He says:

God is well able to transform men into servants who are satisfactory. (Romans 14:4b J.B. Philips)

Now, you leave it to him. He is well able to do it. This is an area where God assumes the right to correct, and he alone. If correction needs to be done, it is up to him to do it; and he is well able to do it! It is interesting to watch people in this respect. We always seem to want to judge other people, but we forget that we have taken sometimes ten, or fifteen, or twenty years to learn the same things. What it took the Lord thirty years to teach us, we want somebody else to learn in thirty minutes! As soon as we learn it, we expect everybody else to conform to our standard; but it sometimes has taken the Lord a long, long time to teach us these things. Paul says that you can't help somebody else in this area. This is an area where only the Lord can help, and he is able to do it. Leave it to him.

Moreover, there is no merit in abstaining from these things -- any more than there is merit in doing them. This is a very important note in Verses 5-6: "One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike." Does this mean that a man who observes a special day for the Lord is any holier than the man who doesn't? No, it doesn't. Nor is the man who doesn't observe it any holier than the man who does. They are all alike.

I think that, in this area, we have to put the question of the way we observe the Lord's Day, and the way we observe special days through the year, e.g., Christmas, Easter, and other days. There are some Christians who object very strongly to an observation of Christmas; they think it is wrong. All right, they don't need to do it. They object to it, and they feel it is wrong because they feel that God is not pleased -- they do it unto the Lord. They fail to observe Christmas because of their regard as to what the Lord would have, but there are other Christians, perhaps a majority, who feel that the observation of Christmas is a wonderful thing. They also do it unto the Lord. Paul says that, in either case, there is no merit for one or the other. The observation of a special day doesn't add anything to you, or make you any holier, it is what the heart says with regard to the Lord that is important.

Again, he says, with regard to the question of eating, one doesn't eat meat because he thinks it is only right to eat vegetables and that he would be defiled, or in some way injured in spiritual development by eating meat. All right, he gives thanks over the vegetables and he thanks God for the supply of it. But the other man, who eats meat, gives thanks for his meat and therefore his heart if as perfectly right before God as the first man. There is no merit, therefore, in abstaining from one or the other.

It is interesting to see that Paul doesn't try to legislate here. He doesn't put down a rule and say, "It is wrong to eat meat," or "it is wrong to drink wine," or "it is right to drink wine," or "it is right to eat meat." He doesn't say this at all. He says, "Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind." And leave the other person's mind alone. It is up to them in these areas. Then the fourth point under this is that there is no proper ability to judge.

None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. (Romans 14:7-9 RSV)

There is only one Lord, you see. None of us live to ourselves. No man is an island -- no Christian, especially. We all have a relationship to the Lord, and whatever we do touches that relationship, whether we live or whether we die, it makes no difference. We do not live all to ourselves and according to our own desires; everything we do is related somehow to him. Then he alone has the right to be Lord and to rule in these areas of our life; he won that right by his death and resurrection.

This is a helpful passage to remind us that the Lordship of Jesus doesn't start when we die. I think that a lot of Christians act as though it does -- that we only really become subject to him after we die and go to heaven. No, his Lordship begins now! He won the right to be Lord both of the dead and of the living. His Lordship is true of us now, and, in these areas, he alone has the right to be Lord. If he says to you, through conscience or through some sense of conviction, "Stop this thing," then you'd better stop it because he is Lord. If he says that you should eliminate some practice, or begin some other practice, or change your attitude, this is his prerogative.

But Paul's word to all others is: "Don't judge in this matter. If you are troubled by what someone else does in these doubtful areas, remember that the Lord is able to make him stand. He is the one who taught you, and he can teach him. Pray for him. If you feel this is a weakness in his life, pray for him, but don't talk to him about it because we are not to judge one another in these matters." Now we come to the second reason for not judging one another: Judge not in view of the judgment seat of Christ:

Why do you [the weak one] pass judgment on your brother? Or you [the strong one], why do you despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God; as it is written,
   "As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
   and every tongue shall give praise to God."
So each of us shall give account of himself to God. (Romans 14:10-12 RSV)

Now, we have many references to this in Scripture. You know we are told that the day is coming when the Lord shall come and judge the secrets of men's hearts, the hidden motives which will then be revealed. This is the problem now; this is why we can't judge each other: We don't know the motive for our participation, or non-participation, in some of these things, but God does.

The only one, therefore, that we are free to judge is ourselves, because we must stand someday, each of us, before the searching eyes of the Lord himself, and all the secret things of our hearts will be exposed to him and to all those present. Then we must give an account of what we have been, how we have acted, and what our thoughts have been. But we won't judge anyone else in that day. Therefore, "don't judge anyone now," Paul says, "because we do not know the facts, and we have no ability to judge in this respect." Now comes a word to the strong Christian, in Versus 13-23:

Then let us no more pass judgment on one another, but rather decide never to put a stumbling-block or hindrance in the way of a brother. I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for any one who thinks it unclean. If your brother is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died. (Romans 14:13-15 RSV)

This word is hinder not, -- don't cause another to stumble. This is addressed to the one who thinks he has liberty to do these things. It is true that you do have this liberty, and the weak one is not to judge you, but, remember also, that your liberty is to be exercised within the bounds of love. If you make it difficult for someone else by your liberty, then you are not walking in love. Therefore, hinder not in view of the nature of love -- that is his first argument here.

I remember Dr. Ironside used to say to me on many occasions, "Remember, Ray, don't ever insist that other people walk in the light of your conscience." That is a good rule. Don't try to get somebody else to walk in the light of what you feel free to do, or feel restrained from doing. In these areas we stand as individuals, alone, before the Lord. Every man stands or falls before his own master, and the Christian who insists on exercising his liberty at the expense of somebody else is turning liberty into license. The action of love, you see, is to restrain yourself, deliberately. Did you ever see a father walking down the street with his little boy? How he walks slowly? And takes small steps? And goes along adjusting himself to the little one at his side? He has perfect liberty to walk out in full, free stride if he wants to, but, if he did, he would walk away from his little boy and leave him alone. So love limits. And love limits in these matters.

You may have perfect liberty to go into some these places of amusement and to participate in things that you would feel perfectly conscience-free to do, but you won't do them if you feel that they are becoming a stumbling-block to someone else -- not if you love them, because love limits in this respect. The greatest right we have as Christians is the right to give up our rights. This is what our Lord manifested, wasn't it? The right to give up his rights -- this is the mark of love.

Paul says, "Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died." I might point out that the word ruin here doesn't mean "perish." It doesn't mean ruin in the sense of eternal perishing (that he will be lost), but, rather, it refers to the wasting of his life. It is quite possible for Christians to feel free to do something themselves which, if other younger believers see them do it, will lead them into an area beyond their control -- where they are beyond their depth. They are not strong enough to handle it, so they get involved in an activity that sweeps them along and sometimes wastes years of their life -- this is what Paul is talking about. Don't let it ever have to be said of you that someone else spent years in a wasted relationship, wasting his life, because of something he saw you do or heard you say. This would not be the activity of love.

I think the most searching words that ever came from Jesus' lips, perhaps, were those words when he spoke to his disciples and said about little ones, "If any man offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him if a millstone be hanged about his neck and he be cast into the depth of the sea," (Matthew 18:6 KJV), not because he has brought about the eternal damnation of that one, but because he has caused that little one to waste much of his life by something he has seen in another. Hinder not, therefore, in view of the nature of love. Then Paul goes on to another point, Verses 16-21:

So do not let what is good to you be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God does not mean food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit; he who thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything indeed is clean, but it is wrong for any one to make others fall by what he eats; it is right not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother stumble. (Romans 14:16-21 RSV)

That is, hinder not in view of the nature of truth, for, after all, what are the important things of life? Are these things that are of a doubtful nature the great issues? Is it so important to you that you eat meat, that you drink wine, that you go to movies, that you dance, that you smoke, or whatever it may be? Is that the important thing? Is that the thing for which Christ has indwelt your life? Oh, no! The kingdom of God doesn't consist of these things -- pro or con. Rather, the kingdom of God consists of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. These are the important things of life!

We were having a Bible class some time ago and were discussing, in a question and answer session, some of the principles concerning the Christian life when somebody raised the question of the Christian smoking and drinking in society -- at parties, etc. This became the subject of discussion; others contributed to it, and soon it became apparent that the impression was being given that to be a Christian is not to drink or smoke. I felt disturbed enough about it that I interrupted the class and tried to bring it back to the point, because these are not the issues. Whether you drink or smoke has nothing to do with whether you are a Christian or not. I think that we need to make that crystal clear in these days. The important things are righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Therefore, because of these important things, don't demand that you have the right to exercise your liberty at the expense of somebody else. It is not that important to you, really. If you have righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, that ought to be enough. These other things you can let come or go, as they will.

I think this is a clear-cut example of what we call consequential evil. Is it wrong to eat meat? Is it wrong to drink wine? No, of course not. But, in Verse 21, Paul says,

It is right not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother stumble. (Romans 14:21 RSV)

We just said that it is not wrong to eat meat or drink wine, but Paul says that it is wrong to eat meat or drink wine. Why? -- if it makes your brother stumble, then it is wrong. There is nothing wrong in the thing itself -- this a consequential evil. If it is a hindrance, a drawback, or a stumbling block to somebody else, then it is wrong.This is beautifully brought out in First Corinthians where Paul says, "If eating meat makes my brother stumble, then I will never eat meat again as long as I live," (1 Corinthians 8:13). It is not that important to me; I can live very well on vegetables. If it is going to bother somebody, then I will not eat meat. That is love in action, isn't it? That is awareness of the nature of truth. Then Paul makes a third point:

The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God; happy is he who has no reason to judge himself for what he approves. But he who has doubts is condemned, if he eats, because he does not act from faith; for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. (Romans 14:22-23 RSV)

That is, hinder not in view of the nature of sin. Sin is lack of faith, but faith is the attitude of dependence upon someone or something. We have a wonderful example of this in our home. We have a new baby -- and what a baby -- little Laurie! She is ten months old and has developed a marvelous feat: She leaps from the refrigerator. We put her up on the refrigerator, which is a tall one, higher than my head, and she sits up there and looks all around and beams at everybody. But she also notices the tremendous chasm around her and is a little bit frightened. We have found that, if we hold up our arms to her, and ask her to leap off, she will. But she closes her eyes, and shakes and trembles, and then finally squints her face up, and leaps off, expecting you to catch her. Now, that is faith: She is afraid, very much afraid. She shakes and trembles before she throws herself off the precipice; she is quite willing to do it, but not willing to look. Yet she jumps off into our arms! She has confidence that we will catch her; she is dependent upon us -- that is what faith is.

Faith is a leap against the circumstances. It is a trust, despite some of the apparent dangers around, trusting in a force or a person who can sustain. This is what we have been getting all through Romans: Faith is the attitude of dependence upon the indwelling Lordship of Jesus Christ to meet all our needs for any occasion. Anything that doesn't come from that -- any activity or action of our life that does not proceed from this attitude of dependence upon him -- is sin. "Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin." And, as the writer to the Hebrewssays, "without faith it is impossible to please God," (Hebrews 11:6). Not that it is difficult, it is impossible, without faith. We cannot please him without this attitude of our conscious dependence upon his indwelling life.

As you see from this, it is not the nature of an action that makes it wrong, it is the origin of it. Does it originate from an awareness of Christ within? Well, if not, it may be very sincere, it may be religious, it may be costly to yourself, but it does not please God. It cannot please God. Therefore, it is sin, because whatever does not proceed from an attitude of faith is sin.

If we try to get somebody to act beyond his belief, or we force some young Christian into some activity, or we lead them on by our example into something that they feel conscience stricken about, we have caused them to commit sin. Or, if we ourselves move into an area where we feel very ill-at-ease and conscience-stricken, we are not ready for that. Perhaps sometime later, after we have learned more of the reality and the liberty of the Spirit of God, we can come to that activity, but we can't yet. So, "whatever does not proceed from faith is sin." Thus, the word to the strong is: Hinder not, do not cause another to stumbl.First, because of the nature of love, second, because of the nature of truth, and third, because of the nature of sin.

Ah, but there is another word in Scripture that says, "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," (2 Corinthians 3:17 KJV). And the one way that we will be delivered from bondage, from being bound to observation of days, and things, and events, and restrictions, is by our continual role in the awareness of the presence of God in our life. When we learn to accept this relationship, we find that his presence doesn't limit us, it enhances. It doesn't narrow us, it enlarges our life. It doesn't inhibit us, it inspires us. And we can take on far more than we did before.

How beautifully this is seen in the life of our Lord Jesus. He did all those things which pleased the Father, and "without faith it is impossible to please him," (Hebrews 11:6). Everything that he did was out of faith, in relationship to the Father. He did everything out of an awareness of the indwelling life of the Father in him. He did always those things which pleased the Father. Yet, there was never a freer man who ever lived than Jesus Christ! Have you ever noticed that, in reading the Gospels? He was bound by no one. He was limited by no one. He was in control of every situation into which he came. He had perfect freedom to eat with the publicans and the Pharisees and others, even though his enemies scolded him because of this. He had freedom to go down into the haunts of the lowest, vilest sinners, and sit and eat with them, and talk with them, and mingle with them. He did everything in relationship with the Father, and he had freedom such as men have never had.

This is what Paul is bringing out here. It is the indwelling life of our indwelling Lord who delivers us from all restrictions, but we must walk in realism in this respect and go no further than we have been taught by the Spirit of God. As we walk thus, we discover that we have entered into life at the small end, and the result of it becomes a continual branching out into greater and wider freedom and liberty. After all, isn't that what Scripture says? "I am come that you might have life and that you might have it more superlatively, abundantly, with peace that passes knowledge, joy unspeakable and full of glory, and love that passes knowledge" (John 10:10, Ephesians 3:19, 1 Peter 1:8). All these things are to be part of those who walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh.

Prayer:

Our Father, we thank you for your awareness of our life, and for the fact that you are very concerned and aware of these areas that are doubtful areas in our life. Thank you, Father, for the liberty that we have in this. Thank you also for the love that limits us in our relationships one to another so that we are willing to wait for someone else -- willing to help along the man or the woman who doesn't yet see things quite as fully and freely as we do. Lord, teach us to walk in this relationship. What a marvelous manifestation this is! That we, who learn by grace to be set free of all inhibitions and all bondage, and to walk through this world enjoying everything as you have made it, also have the grace to limit ourselves for the sake of another, and to inhibit our actions, restrain ourselves, and control the impulses of our life that we may live in such a way that we may demonstrate the marvelous grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for this in his name. Amen.

POWER TO PLEASE

by Ray C. Stedman

Do you remember the prayer of the little girl who once prayed, "Lord, make the bad people good and the good people nice"? This is really the subject of Romans 14 & 15 -- making good people nice! One of the problems of the Christian church is that we may be quite correct in our doctrine and practice, but very irritating about it. How do you live with people like that? That is the problem of these chapters, and it is a problem that abounds everywhere -- how to live with other Christians who persist in looking at things differently than you do.

Someone has well said that Christians can be compared to porcupines on a cold winter night, they need to huddle together in order to warm each other, but, as they draw together, their prickly spines dig into each other and they have to pull apart, so all night long it is a process of huddling together and pulling apart. Many churches, I am afraid, fit that description very aptly. This is the essential problem that Paul faces in the application of all the mighty doctrine that we have had in Romans thus far -- the practical matter of getting along with other Christians. The first thirteen verses of Chapter 15 deal with two major causes of division among Christians. There are those divisions that arise from a difference of conviction, of point of view. Then there are those divisions that arise from difference of background. These two factors are at work today to divide Christians all over the world.

We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves; let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to edify him. For Christ did not please himself; but, as it is written, "The reproaches of those who reproached thee fell on me." But whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 15:1-6 RSV)

Now, please, don't look around and be glad that so-and-so is here this morning, listen patiently yourself as we look at this. The first two verses give us the problem and the answer: The problem is those weak (or we might call them legalistic) Christians who have the irritating habit of differing with us about certain points of view. They are rather short-sighted, perhaps, in their outlook, and they grow offended at the liberty others feel they have in participating in actions and activities that the first group deplores.

May I just plunge in and take an example that will sort of give us a flavor of what this is about? I think the fact that Christians differ in the matter of the use of the Revised Standard Version as compared with the King James Version in public reading and teaching is one example of a different point of view which can create divisions among Christians; and there are others of this nature, some far more serious than this.

What is Paul's answer to this problem? Well, he says to the strong (to those who feel at liberty to do these things) to bear with the weak, don't get angry with them, don't defy them, don't cut them off from your love and concern, but try to please them, patiently instruct them, and edify them to their own good.

This is Paul's answer. They don't need criticism, they need instruction. They don't need neglect, they need attention. It is easy for us to please ourselves in these things and do as we like regardless of what they think, but don't do that, he says. No, give some attention to what they feel and try to please them, if possible; but at least please them by trying to edify them. Try to instruct and help them to see the reasons why you act the way you do about these things, but don't cut them off. Don't treat them as something inferior in the way of Christians, but love them and please them in this sense. The illustration that Paul gives is that Christ himself (though he was Lord) did not please himself, but, rather, lived in such a way as to edify those around him. He didn't come to live for himself, and proof of it is that he continually met with reproach.

In Verse 3 he uses the quotation, "The reproach of those who reproached thee fell on me," (Psalms 69:9 KJV). That is from the 69th Psalm, which is one of the Messianic Psalms pointing forward to Christ, and those are the words that the psalmist puts into our Lord's mouth as he faces the continual criticism from the Pharisees and the Sadducees in his ministry. In this prophetic passage, he says to the Father, "The reproaches of those who reproached thee fell on me." That is, Jesus says, "I didn't come to do my work, but yours. But, in the doing of it, I have met reproach. That reproach belongs to you, but it has fallen on me."

This, I think, is very indicative of the radical character of true Christian conduct. It moves quite contrary to our natural inclinations. We all like to please ourselves by nature, but, if we are living in the full strength of the indwelling life of Christ, we discover that it is quite possible to live to please our neighbor in this sense of edifying him to his own good. The result will be that we demonstrate a life that is upsetting and disturbing to people. They don't like it, and sometimes we are reproached for the very liberty that we engage in and the attitude we show of wanting to live for someone else. Have you ever noticed that?

People who are genuinely unselfish bother other people; they bother us sometimes. We don't want them around because they make us feel uneasy. They are a little bit too thoughtful of others, and they bother us. That is because the animal in us is very strong and altogether self-centered, and our initial reaction to someone who challenges our liberty is to say, "What do I care what you think," and to go ahead and please ourselves. But if we do this, we are just following the philosophy of the world, because this is the way that the world lives and thinks.

There are three ways that I have noticed in which you can go about trying to please yourself: There is, first of all, the outright egotist: The man who is openly selfish, who obviously doesn't give 'a snap of his fingers' what people think about what he does, who is selfish and doesn't care who knows it, who says, as the rhyme goes,

I live for myself, myself alone,
   For myself and none besides,
Just as if Jesus had never lived,
   And as if he had never died.

Their philosophy is, "Me for me, and the devil take the rest." There are lots of folks like that. In a way, you sort of respect them, because they are at least openly honest about what they feel. You know exactly where they stand, even though they are very irritating to have around at times. Well, that is the outright egotist, and he is the most honest of the groups because he is openly being exactly what he is, and he intends to live and do exactly as he pleases.

But then there is what we call the reciprocating egotist. This is the man who looks at the first individual, and says, "I can see that being openly selfish creates quite a bit of difficulty; after all, it makes people strike back and creates enemies." So his approach is to say to someone, "Now look, I know that we both have our own interests at heart, but I'll tell you what we'll do: You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours." That is, "You do a favor for me and I will do one in return." He is very careful to see that he always keeps his accounts in good balance, and, if someone does something for him, he immediately feels that he must by all means do something back and return the favor. It also works the other way, of course. If somebody does something evil to him, he insists that he pay him back in kind. This is the man who is saying, in effect, "As long as I get something for what I give, well, then I don't mind giving a bit." But, really, he is just as self-centered as the first one.

I think the majority of us tend to live on this level. We don't like to be openly, clearly, unmistakably selfish. We like to have it look as though we are doing good things, but we want it carefully understood that there is a reciprocating pattern expected. We want people to give back to us in some manner. Then there is the third kind of an egotist that we might call the deceived egotist. He is the one who thinks he is very unselfish. He tries deliberately and honestly to please everyone, and he is always in hot water because, of course, he can't please everyone and he is honestly bewildered by his failure. He, too, is really just as self-centered and interested in self-pleasing as the others, because the thing that he wants above all else is to be popular or accepted. This is what pleases him, and he knows that the way to get it is to try to be as nice to others as he can, so his whole aim in life is to please everyone.

The result is that he really ends up pleasing no one, and he can't understand why his philosophy fails. It is because, basically, he is really still pleasing himself. There are these various ways in which the heart deceives us in the philosophy of self-pleasing, and we attempt to look as though we are doing something else, while behind it all is still the same old basic drive of the unredeemed flesh to do as I please and to get what I want.

Now, if, as a Christian, we are behaving in any of these ways, then we are on no higher level than the world around us. We need to hear our Lord's words in that searching question that he voiced to his disciples, "What do ye more than others? If you love those who love you, what have you more than anyone else? What do ye more than others?" (Matthew 5:47 KJV). This is not a Christian response. Rather, the Christian response is a radical thing, and, because it is radical, it is always disturbing. It upsets people, and it oftentimes results in reproach of one kind or another. A Christian is so anxious to please God, to give him his heart's desire, that he is no longer concerned about himself, and his concern is honestly for another because that is the person that God is interested in. This is what we have reflected here.

Isn't that the way that Christ lived? Remember, it was said of him on the cross, "He saved others, himself he could not save," (Matthew 27:42 KJV). It was true, wasn't it? He couldn't save himself and save others. He could have saved himself and not saved others, but he saved others and himself he could not save. This was said to him in reproach, and it was true. But, in the mighty mystery of resurrection, not only did he gain all the others, but he gained himself back again as well. There is a principle of the Christian life: We give up in order to get. This is what you will find reflected again and again throughout the Scriptures. Jesus said, "If a man save his life, he shall lose it," (Matthew 15:25, Mark 8:35, Luke 9:24, 17:33). "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it dies [if it gives up its rights, loses itself], it shall bear much fruit," (John 12:24). This is the principle that we have here. I think it was C.S. Lewis who said,

If the Christian aims for heaven,
   then earth will be thrown in as well.
But if he aims for earth,
   he loses both earth and heaven.

That is simply the reflection of this same principle. This is further illustrated, not only in the life of Christ, but, also, as Paul says in Verse 4, by the whole of the Old Testament. All these men of old teach the same lesson, for "whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope." Who of you who heard that wonderful message of Ian Thomas' on Moses and the rod, and his repeated affirmation "drop it," will ever forget the power and the searching quality of that message? These Old Testament stories are designed to teach us, by graphic and lucid illustrations, the very points the New Testament sets forth in this respect; and all of the Old Testament is simply a record of how God taught men to live not to please themselves, but to please him.

There is the story of Jacob, that scheming, shrewd operator (we would call him a BTO today -- big time operator) who was always looking for his percentage in everything that he did, and scheming to get his own self-interest satisfied. As you read that account (in Genesis 25-32) you see how God dealt with that man through years and years of his life, until, at last, he brought him to the place where he wrestled with the angel alone beside the brook of Jabbok. There God touched him and rendered him helpless, and, in his helplessness, all he could do was cling to God, to the angel that wrestled with him, and it was then that his name was changed from Jacob (the usurper, the supplanter, the impostor) to Israel (the prince of God). What a wonderful picture that is for us of the way God is at work in our lives to teach us self-centered creatures the same truth!

Take the story of Abraham (Genesis 11-25) and his long pilgrim journey, and how God led him through crisis after crisis. Each crisis reflects something that you and I go through, and, out of it, we see the working of God in the ways of human affairs. Take Joseph and the time that he languished in prison (Genesis 40-41), when it looked as if all hope had failed and that he would spend the rest of his life in that dungeon -- there was nothing but darkness in the days ahead. Yet, out of it and through it, God worked to bring him, in just a short time, to the very highest and exalted throne of Egypt. Then there are the stories of Samson, of David, of Hosea, of Daniel, and of all those men and women of God of the Old Testament.

Paul says that all of these were written down, not only to give a historical account of what they did, but, more than that -- to show us how God teaches us how to turn from a life of self-pleasing, and to tell us what he has done to cut it off and render it invalid, and to make us able to lay hold of the indwelling life of Jesus Christ, and to walk in the way that will be not pleasing to ourselves but pleasing to him.

The Old Testament is really the richest commentary ever written on the New Testament. If you are coming to a place where faith is beginning to fail and your heart finds itself in the grasp of doubt, then turn to the record of God at work with men of the Old Testament. You will find, as you read thoughtfully, that your faith will begin to flame up again because "faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God," (Romans 10:17). It's as the Word of God rings in our ears that faith is created in our hearts to lay hold of the truth we hear, and to make it available in our lives.

Verses 5-6 give us the result of living this kind of life, and the secret of it: "May the God of steadfastness and encouragement [of patience and comfort -- that is kind of a God he is, one of reliability and encouragement and comfort] grant you to live in such harmony with one another [even though you have different points of view], in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Now, that is the end and aim of human life, to "glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Every Christian heart wants that. Is there any Christian who, deep down in his heart, does not want the glory of God in his life? Well, then, the way to produce it is to live in harmony with one another. That is the procedure. It says that even though Christians: Hold different points of view (they do not come to some universal agreement on doctrine -- that isn't what is necessary), despite this, they can be so interested in one another and so concerned about one another that they can live in harmony, and the result is that they glorify God. What is the key to it? It is tucked away in one little phrase which, if you miss it, you will want to live in harmony with others but you will find yourself quite incapable of doing it. The key is this little phrase, "in accord with Christ Jesus." You see, when Paul mentions that Christ did not please himself, he is not holding him up as an example to follow, he is lifting him up as a life to appropriate! That is the big difference! We are not just to try our best to live the same way, because we can't. Our own natural inclinations of self-pleasing rise up and refuse to permit us to do that. But we must never forget that these exhortations that we read in these last five chapters of Romans rest solidly and squarely on the teachings of Romans 5, 6, 7, and 8. It is back there that we learn that God has done something about this old Adamic life which naturally moves to evil -- has cut it off, and has given us, in place of it, the indwelling life of the Son of God himself, and it is his purpose and desire to live that life again through us!

In the doing of it, we find it quite possible to do all that he does because he does it through us. This is what it is speaking of here when it says, "in accord with Christ Jesus," that is, in fellowship with him. Biting your lip, and trying to keep your temper is not the secret of living with difficult people; that is never it. The secret is a thankful heart which continually looks up to the Lord Jesus. It says, "Thank you, Lord, for the quietness and the calmness, the purity and the love which is available to me through you continually. Thank you." A thankful heart and an obedient will that seeks to please another for his own good is the secret of living with difficult people. You try that and see if it doesn't work.

The second section, in Verses 7-13, is that of harmony despite differences of background. The apostle handles it along the same line. He begins, first of all, in Verses 7-9a, with the problem and the answer:

Welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. (Romans 15:7-9a RSV)

That is, there were two groups in the Roman church, as in most of the churches then, the Jews and the Gentiles. They were both Christians but they came from varying backgrounds, and the problem of the divisions in the church arose over these varying backgrounds. I think it is difficult for us to comprehend how different these backgrounds were because, today, we don't see it quite as strongly as they did then. To a Jew of Paul's day, a Gentile did nothing right -- he ate the wrong foods, he read the wrong books, he followed the wrong leaders, he observed the wrong customs, he even talked the wrong language; he did nothing right!

So, when these two come together in the church, there was considerable friction that arose between them -- not because of any difference of their acceptance of Christ and their appropriation of his life, but because of these different points of view that came from their background. But Paul says, "Welcome each other, nevertheless. Receive one another because Christ has received you." That is, all racial and class distinctions are to make no difference whatsoever among Christians. All these things are merely superficial, surface points of view. The important thing is that God has received a man; therefore, we must receive him because he is a brother in Jesus Christ.

This is a greatly needed truth these days. I think that if the Christians of the South had believed these words and grasped this truth, and had practiced it, all this tragic and heartbreaking story that is going on now in Mississippi, and in other places in the South, would have been avoided completely. I believe the fault of it lies squarely with the Christian church in the South because the Christians did not practice what the Lord himself had made so crystal clear. But yet, even here in the North, we are hardly above criticism in this respect -- along either racial or social lines. There is a great danger of Christians becoming class conscious as well as race conscious.

I was reading Eternity Magazine this week, the January issue, in which there is a review of all the world events of 1962. William Petererson, one of the editors, comments about the national scene in this way:

Christianity became in 1962 more of a class religion. For those who couldn't afford a second home but who didn't feel uncomfortable in a white shirt, church attendance was still fashionable. The labor movement peacefully coexisted with the church and neither bothered each other very much.

There may be a great deal of truth in that. We tend to be cliquish, and to think of our church as being restricted only to those in our income group, but we must always remember that, within the church of Jesus Christ, there are no distinctions at all. There cannot be, for God has received a man, and this must be our basis of our receiving him as well.

I had a couple introduced to me one day with the words, "This is our kind of people!" It made me wince when I heard it because the clear word of God is to welcome all who come in the name of Christ, because God has received them. Again, the illustration of this is Jesus himself:

He became a servant to the Jew and the Gentile alike. He came to the Jews in accordance with the promises given to the fathers. He went about doing good and ministering to Israel, healing the sick and raising the dead, and ministering good throughout the length and the breadth of the land of Israel exactly as the fathers had foretold, as the patriarchs had promised. But he also came to the Gentiles. Remember he said, on one occasion, to his disciples, "Other sheep have I which are not of this fold, them also must I bring," (John 10:16). He was looking out from the borders of Israel to the Gentile world, and, in accordance with Scripture, on the day of Pentecost the gospel began to go out to the Gentile world. Paul says, as he quotes Scripture to prove what he said here, that all this was in line with what was promised when Christ came -- both for the Jew and the Gentile. Then, in Verses 9b-12, he gives us these quotations:

As it is written,
   "Therefore I will praise thee among the Gentiles,
   and sing to thy name";
and again it is said,
   "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with the people";
and again,
   "Praise the Lord, all Gentiles,
   and let all the peoples praise him";
and further Isaiah says,
   "The root of Jesse shall come,
   he who rises to rule the Gentiles;
   in him shall the Gentiles hope." (Romans 15:9b-12 RSV)

Perhaps this doesn't strike us now with the importance that it did then, because, then, the question was hot as to the differences between the Jew and the Gentile. But, in application, it covers all the problems of racial, and creedal, and political differences that we find in our churches today.

You see, no Christian has the right to refuse fellowship to another Christian because of the color of his skin, or his national background, or his political creed -- even if he comes from a communist country. (I know that it is not possible to be a convinced communist and a true Christian, but it is quite possible to be a true Christian in a communist regime.) I think we need to remember, in these days, this word of the apostle: "Welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God," (Romans 15:7 RSV).

Now again, in just one verse, Verse 13, we have the result and the key for making this possible:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Romans 15:13 RSV)

The result of Christian harmony is abounding in hope, the conviction of the final victory -- that is what hope is. You remember that, earlier in our studies, we saw that hope really is a look at the present and an extension out into the future. Hope is: Looking at your present circumstances, seeing forces at work in them that will change the whole picture in some coming day, and rejoicing because, by looking at the present, you see the possibilities of change and the blessing of the future. That is what hope is.

If you can't see anything in the present that is working that way, you have no hope. But hope is really a look at the present moment. Paul says that as Christians begin to overlook and bear with one another in these differences of background and outlook, and thus live in harmony, they then "abound in hope" because they see in the present circumstances the possibilities of unheralded blessings in future days. They see that this ability to love, in spite of differences, as it is applied to the eternal ages, is going to mean a wonderful blessing throughout eternity. That is hope, the abounding hope, and the procedure of it is in the power of the Holy Spirit: In other words, this is not a natural thing -- to have hope in these days. It is not natural for people to live together in harmony when they have different backgrounds. It is not natural for us to expect to see blessing coming out of differences. No, it takes a unique power to do that. It takes the power of the Holy Spirit of God. And the key to the release of that Holy Spirit is given in the one word, believing: "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing."

I want to stress that briefly because I think that we have gone astray in this respect. Oftentimes people come to me, and say, "What is the matter with my Christian life? I have come to a plateau where I seem to be so bored, and nothing interesting is happening, and I have lost all vision and joy and victory in my life. It seems to be so dull and lifeless. What can I do?" For years I think I gave a wrong answer to that. I said to them, "Well, are you reading the Bible?" And usually it turned out that they weren't. Or, "Are you having times of prayer?" And I gave the pat answer which is so easily given by most of us, "What you need is time for prayer and reading the Scriptures -- prayer and the Bible." But I have come to see that this isn't the answer. What they need is to believe what they read in Scripture, and believe what they pray -- that is the answer. These other things are merely mechanics which make possible the believing, but believing is the real answer. It isn't Bible reading, or prayer, or Christian fellowship that unlocks the power of the Holy Spirit. It is believing what you read or what you pray:

When you believe that Jesus Christ indwells you, when you believe that he is all that you need, when you believe that he intends to act through you, then you can act! You discover that all that he is becomes visible through you and accomplishes all that needs to be done. The result is power and joy and peace, as Paul prays here. This is the way I learned to drive a car, didn't you? I believe that, when I get into a car, there is gas in tank (and usually I am right) and there is an engine under the hood, and I believe that these are fully adequate to take this car over any road I choose to drive it, and I believe that all of it was designed to be responsive when I turn on the key and step on the gas. So I do it, and it works. I don't get into a car, and say to myself: "I believe there is gas in the tank, I believe there is an engine under the hood, I believe that it will work," then get out and start pushing! No! I do it, I try it, I step out on it, and it works!

That is exactly what Paul is talking about. The God of hope cannot fill us with joy and peace if we don't believe -- which means to act on what we know. But it is when we believe and act that the power of the Holy Spirit begins to work through us and causes us to abound in hope -- for all around us are the evidences that God is at work accomplishing his purposes in our lives. Let me read these two brief prayers of Verses 5, 6, & 13 again, because they are prayers that the apostle closes these problems with:

May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 15:5-6 RSV)

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Romans 15:13 RSV)

Isn't that a wonderful prayer for 1963?

Prayer:

Our Father, we can but echo the words of these prayers. How they sum up all that we need, as a body of believers together, in the understanding of one another's differences, and to be ready and concerned with each other, and ready to help and bless one another. We pray that we may begin to believe thy word, and act upon it, and, thus, discover the power of the Holy Spirit to make our lives such that we may abound in hope. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

THE MINISTER OF JESUS CHRIST

by Ray C. Stedman

You may not have realized it, but we finished the book of Romans last week as far as doctrine is concerned. From the 14th verse of Chapter 15 to the end of the book, we are now in matters that are a personal postscript that the apostle added to this letter. He wrote this letter to Rome, probably from the city of Corinth, and said all that was on his heart -- and what a tremendous and full message this was! Then, as he came to the close of the letter, he added certain personal words. It is this section that we enter into now. It is almost as though we have been listening to Paul teaching these Romans, and class is dismissed, and we get a chance to meet the teacher a bit in these last sections.

In this autobiographical section, Paul speaks of four aspects of his ministry and reveals here the heartbeat of a true minister of Jesus Christ. Since every believer in Christ is in the ministry, in the sense that the ministry of the gospel is committed to them (and not to some special class called "the clergy" who wear their collars backwards and don long robes), the words that we read here of Paul as a minister apply to each one of us. Therefore, this is a very relevant passage for us. The first ministry that Paul speaks of is what we might call the ministry of reminding. That is a blessed ministry, the ministry of reminding other Christians:

I myself am satisfied about you, my brethren, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another. But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:14-16 RSV)

In a sense, everyone who reads the letter to the Romans is taking a self-examination of his own spiritual effectiveness. I don't think a Sunday goes by but that someone says to me after a message, "You know, you were talking just to me this morning. In fact, I noticed that you kept looking right at me all the time you were talking." I must say that I have no awareness of picking out individuals at all as I am teaching through this book, but this is the phenomena which often occurs when the Spirit of God is taking the truth and bring it right home to the heart. You can't listen to the book of Romans honestly and openly without having this sense of being under examination yourself. I am sure that these first recipients of this letter had that feeling as the letter was read in the gathering in Rome.

Now, as we come to the close of the letter, Paul gives them their grade. And, although he has been saying things that sound rather penetrating and that get right underneath their skin, he says to them, "I myself am satisfied with you." That is a wonderful grade to have from such a man as this! He said, "I am satisfied." That is, "I have never been there to Rome, but from all that I have heard, I believe that you are in good shape spiritually." There are three things that convinced him of this: First of all, they were full of all goodness, that is, their hearts were right. Paul could sense that their motives were true -- that the Spirit of love and truth and goodness was at work among them -- otherwise he couldn't say something like this. This is an admission and recognition on his part that their hearts were right and he acknowledged that.

Second, they were "filled with all knowledge," that is, their heads were right as well. This doesn't mean that they knew all things, that there was nothing that they needed to be instructed in, but, rather, that they acted intelligently -- they acted from knowledge. They weren't, as he wrote to one of the other churches, "tossed about by every wind of doctrine" that came along (Ephesians 4:14), but they acted out of an intelligent comprehension of what God wanted them to know. They acted purposefully. He commends them for that. They were not like many Christians, even today, who seem to spend their whole Christian life just trying to muddle along and do the best they can, hoping that it will all turn out all right in the end. No, these Romans didn't do that. They knew something, and they acted from that knowledge. They didn't act apart from it. Paul recognizes that, so their heads were right as well.

The third mark was that they were "able to instruct one another." That is, they were beginning to show signs of real maturity. This is such a wonderful mark of growing up in Christ, of beginning to take on full stature as a believer, when you are able to help someone else with what you have learned -- "able to instruct one another." Remember, he wrote to the Hebrews "You have need that some teach you again what be the first principles of the doctrine of Christ; for when you ought to have been teachers, you were in need of being taught, and as such you were as babes and you were uninstructed in the word of righteousness -- you needed to grow up," Hebrews 5:12). In other words, you have never passed beyond babyhood in your spiritual development until you have come to the place where you can genuinely help another person in some aspect of their life. Now, I don't mean just teach them. I mean really help them, deliver them, bring them out of difficulty by a word of counsel, or advice, or opening of Scripture that helps them to see something that they have never seen before.

This is the mark of maturity, and I think here is one of the great problems of the American church, particularly. Most of us suffer from what someone has described as "prolonged adolescence merging into premature senility." We never grow up -- that is the problem. One of the great admonitions the apostle continually makes is that Christians begin to grow up into Christ so that they are "able to instruct one another." Despite all this, they still needed the ministry of reminding -- they needed the apostle. No matter how much their hearts desired Christ, no matter how much they knew of him, they were still subject to the very human failing of being apt to forget.

When I was traveling with Dr. Ironside, I saw in action what I had heard of previously -- an exhibition of the marvelous memory that he had. For instance, he could read a poem five or six stanzas long through just twice and he would have it memorized. He demonstrated in many ways a remarkable facility for memory. (His wife used to say that his memory was so remarkable that he could even remember some things that didn't happen at all!) But most of us are not equipped like that. Most of us have wonderful "forgetters," don't we? No matter how many times we hear truth, we still have difficulty remembering it, and putting it to work when we should. We need, therefore, each other to remind one another of what we have learned.

This is the ministry that Paul engages in by writing the book of Romans. "I am simply reminding you of those old things that you need continually to know." One point especially concerned him: He said he is concerned "that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit." That is the supreme thing. In saying this, he recognizes the clear possibility that there is service which is not acceptable, that it is quite possible to labor diligently as a Christian, and be engaged in many forms of activity, and to do so out of earnestness, faithfulness, and even costliness in terms of time and effort, and yet have it totally unacceptable to God, because the one thing that makes service acceptable is that it is sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

I think you remember when Major Thomas was here, he told us that the word sanctified, which I think has theological overtones that frighten us, really means, simply, "to devote something to the intended purpose for which it was made." You sit on a chair and you sanctify it; you use it for the purpose it was intended for. When you play an organ, you sanctify it; an organ was intended to be played. You don't attempt to type a letter with it -- that would be to use it in an unsanctified way -- but you play it. When you sanctify your shoes, you put them on your feet; that is what they were intended for. This is the simple meaning for sanctification: "to put to the intended use."

What Paul is saying here is that, if we want our lives to be acceptable to God: Then the only possible way in which this can be done is for our human personality to become available to the indwelling life of Jesus Christ, that, through the Holy Spirit, his transcendent power may be continually manifested through us to accomplish the purpose and the program that he has set before us. He wants us to do the thing which is right in front of us -- that is what we were made to do. We were not made to sit down and decide how to please God, and to work out a program of our own, and bring it to the Lord, and say, "Now, Lord, this is what I have decided I'll do for you." This is unsanctified service. Sanctified service is to say, "Lord, here am I. Send me," (Isaiah 6:8 KJV) and to present yourself to be used for the fulfillment of his program, and to the carrying out of his purpose, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, using his power and depending on his indwelling life. That is acceptable service, and this is the thing that concerned the Apostle Paul.

This is what man is made for. We have it carved in letters at the front of our platform here, "You are not your own ..." -- you were never made to be your own, and, if you think you are your own and can run your own life, you are defeating the purpose for which you were created. "You are not your own, you are bought with a price." Therefore, acceptable service is simply to allow yourself to be available and at the disposal of the One who has the right to use you as he pleases, in the place that he pleases, and under the conditions that he chooses. That is being sanctified by the Holy Spirit, and this is what Paul was concerned about. We continually need this reminder because the philosophy of the flesh, the Adamic theory, is that we can do all things ourselves -- that we don't need God. We find this philosophy underlying almost all the activity of the world today. We get so proud over what we have created: All the missiles and the marvels of modern scientific life, all the gadgets and the gimmicks that are available to us, all the tremendous knowledge that we have ferreted out during the centuries.

We become so proud of it that we think we can do everything. And when we come to the place where we think that we can do everything, then we discover that God lets us go ahead on that basis, and we have no one upon whom we can rely except ourselves. It is a very disconcerting experience to suddenly find that we are alone on the bridge of the ship and that we have no one else to seek advice from. We have to control this tremendous vessel as it makes its way across the sea of life, and it is a frightening thing. That is why men who think that way always have, underneath, a sense of uncertainty and an awareness that they are not equipped, they are not able, they are not capable. We never were made to be -- that is the whole point. And the Christian life is simply one that has recognized what we were made to be, and is willing to be that. Paul says that this is "sanctified by the Holy Spirit," and the Spirit is ready to put that into practice. Now, this is further illustrated in what Paul says about the ministry of reconciling, Verses 17-24:

In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God. For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has wrought through me to win obedience from the Gentiles, by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that from Jerusalem and as far round as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ, thus making it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on another man's foundation but as it is written,
   "They shall see who have never been told of him,
   and they shall understand who have never heard of him."
This is the reason why I have so often been hindered from coming to you. But now, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, and since I have longed for many years to come to you, I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be sped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a little. (Romans 15:17-24 RSV)

Here is a man who yearns to preach Christ in the farthest corner of the earth. He is a debtor, as he says at the beginning of this letter, to the Greeks and to the barbarians, no matter where they are. He owes them something, and, in this brief reference, he reminds us how he journeyed up and down across Asia Minor, and he crossed into Europe, and he preached in Philippi and Thessalonica, in Berea and down in Athens, then in Corinth and the city of Ephesus, and in all the little villages in between in western Asia and eastern Europe.

Now he longs to go on to Rome where he has never been, and see these Christians whom he has never seen but whom he greets by this letter. But his eye looks even beyond that -- it looks on to the farthest western regions, to Spain, and wherever men have never heard the saving name of Christ. His ambition is to preach Christ where he has never been named before. He hasn't any desire to build on another's foundation, but his is the heart of a pioneer. He found in Isaiah, the 52nd chapter, a verse that has seemingly become his life verse: "They shall see who have never been told of him, and they shall understand who have never heard of him," (Isaiah 52:15). Throbbing in his heart is this passion and yearning of the apostle to reach out to all men everywhere who have never heard -- that was his calling. He was called to be an apostle (a sent one) to the unexplored, the untouched regions of earth, carrying the name of Christ. That was his calling. Yours may be very different.

This week we are going to begin a Missionary Conference, and, as the conference goes on, we trust and pray that the Holy Spirit will be continuing his work of thrusting out laborers into the harvest. We hope and pray that God will speak to the hearts of some young people here in our midst, and say to them, "I want you, and I want you out there, or there, or there" -- some place in the far corners of the earth. But we are also praying and hoping that the Holy Spirit will say to others, "I want you to stay here, and work for them, and send these others out -- that is your calling, your part of the work." All of them are together in fulfilling the ministry of reconciliation which has been committed to us -- that we declare to world, wherever there is a need for it, that God has reconciled the world to himself in Christ, and that anyone who will may come and receive him. But the imperative note in what Paul says here is (and I want to stress this so we won't get this out of focus) that, in any case, whether you fulfill the pioneer ministry of going out to the regions beyond, or whether you stay home and teach a Sunday School class and work here, it might be Christ at work in you and through you -- and not you trying to do your best for him -- that is the important thing.

You notice how Paul puts it. He says, "If any part of my ministry does not stem from God's work through me, I don't even want to talk about it. I have nothing to say about it. It isn't even worth mentioning." He says, "I will not venture to speak anything except what Christ has wrought through me."

I want to say that this was a difficult truth for the Apostle Paul to learn. It was a long and weary way before this man, this brilliant young Pharisee, who had sat at Gamaliel's feet, and had risen quickly to a position of high prominence in the councils of the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem, ever really came to the full realization of what he says here. Even after he met Christ on the Damascus road, if you read between the lines of all the autobiographical references that he gives in his letters, you see that he didn't immediately begin preaching Christ and allowing Christ to work through him, but there was, at first, the very great consciousness that he seemingly had so much to offer Christ. There was his background. He was a Pharisee. He had been raised a Hebrew. He knew all the Law -- had been trained in it. He had standing and prominence in the school of the Sanhedrin, and he had authority. He knew everything! At first there was reliance upon these things to make him an effective and profitable minister. As you trace the story through, you see how the Spirit of God was at work to show him that this wasn't true: He led him off into Arabia, then brought him back into Damascus. There, when Paul tried to reason from the Scriptures and prove that Jesus was the Christ, the Jews wouldn't have anything to do with him. They rejected all the brilliance of his ministry, and, finally, he had to be let down over a wall in a basket to escape the city -- as though he were a common criminal.

Then Paul came to Jerusalem and tried to join himself to the disciples there. Since the Jews wouldn't have him, he thought that the believers would. But he found that even the disciples wouldn't receive him, and it was only when Barnabas came and took him by the hand and spoke for him that they would even let him in.

Crushed and heartbroken, he went into the temple, and, there, the Lord Jesus appeared to him, and said, "Paul, get out of this city." Paul said, "Lord, I came here to preach to these Jews. I am the one who can reach them. I was the one who held the garments of the young men when Stephen, the martyr, was slain. They will listen to me. I was on their side and now I am on the other side. They will listen to me." But the Lord Jesus said to him, "Depart and get out of this city, for I will send you far hence to the Gentiles." Paul had to go down to his home town -- the hardest place to go -- and, there, for some seven to ten years, he never said a word. He didn't minister. There is no record of his doing a thing. He was simply learning that the strength and power of the ministry did not rest in his background, or his training, or his abilities in any sense. At last he began to reckon upon the indwelling life of Jesus Christ and to know that God can use any man, any woman, any person, any human being, that all God wants is a vessel, no matter what it may be like, and that God can, if that vessel is available to him, manifest through it all the marvelous power of his ministry and life. This is the secret!

When Paul learned that secret, the Spirit of God sent Barnabas back to Tarsus to bring Paul over to Antioch. There he began the marvelous ministry that is recorded for us in the pages of the Word. It was only after years that he could write these words: "I will not speak of anything in my ministry until I learn the truth that it is Christ who works through me." This is the only thing that amounts to anything.

Who does the work, then? Well, who did the work when the Lord Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount? Who was doing the work there? When he healed the sick and cleansed the temple, and when he washed the feet of the disciples, who was it who does it? "The Son can do nothing of himself. The Father who dwelleth in me, he doeth the work" (John 14:10 KJV).

Who does the work when you try to serve Christ? When you witness to somebody? Who does the work through you? Do you? Well, then it is not worth speaking about. Do you only take on what you feel capable of doing because of your background, your training and education? Is that all you undertake for Christ? Well, then you won't do much. Do you feel that God cannot use you because you haven't been to Bible School and you don't have all the training that others have had? Or are you still trying to do your best and just thinking, "Well, if I just do my best, that will be all that is necessary." Have you become content with God's second best, as you call it, without realizing that there isn't any such thing as second best?

That which is not "gold, silver and precious stones is nothing more than wood, hay, and stubble," (1 Corinthians 3:12). There are only two kinds: It is either that which comes from the indwelling Spirit working through you, or it is that which comes from your own self-effort trying to serve the Lord in the best way that you can -- one or the other. It is either "gold, silver, and precious stones" 1 Corinthians 3:12), or it is that which is only to be burned. This is the great secret.

Do you have trouble obeying the Great Commission? I find so many Christians who are seemingly ineffective in this matter of being a witness. They hear, over and over, the words of Christ, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark 16:15 KJV), and yet they are never able to witness to anyone. Do you have that trouble obeying the Great Commission? It is quite possible that you have had that trouble because you have never realized that the motive that drives us out to seek the lost is never the imperative of a divine command -- that isn't enough. That is enough authority, but it isn't enough motive, it isn't enough ability. The motive that drives us out to seek the lost is not the imperative of a divine command, it is the impulse of an indwelling presence. It isn't the world's need that calls us out to the regions beyond, it is the love of Christ which constrains us; that is what Paul says (see 2  Corinthians 5:14). This is the ministry, you see, that is effective, and that which will indeed make us become witness of his grace. "We cannot but speak of what God had done for us" Acts 4:20), the early disciples said: "We can't do anything else -- we have become so filled and captured by what he is to us, by all the ability that he can give to us, and by all the adequacy that he is through us to meet every situation that comes to us -- we can't help saying something about it!" That is the impulse that makes us witness.

Paul speaks next of the ministry of relieving:

At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem with aid for the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem; they were pleased to do it, and indeed they are in debt to them, for if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material things. When therefore I have completed this, and have delivered to them what has been raised, I shall go by way of you to Spain; and I know that when I come to you I shall come in the fulness of the blessing of Christ. (Romans 15:25-29 RSV)

These words date this letter as having been written just before those stirring events that are recorded for us in the closing chapters of Acts when Paul was in the city of Corinth on his way to Jerusalem with the offering that had been taken up for the saints of Jerusalem. We read in Acts that there had been a great famine in Judea and many of the Jewish Christians there were in danger of starving to death, and there was great suffering among them. When the word that their Jewish brethren were suffering came to the Gentile churches outside Judea that had been raised up under the ministry of Paul, they took up an offering for them, and appointed Paul and several of the other men to travel to Jerusalem to deliver the offering. Paul speaks of this considerably in his letter to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 8-9). He says that the Macedonians delighted his heart by the way they gave -- they first gave of themselves to the Lord, and then out of their deep poverty they gave liberally to his cause. So it wasn't just wealthy people who were giving -- it was those who didn't have much themselves -- but they were sharing together with those who were in need in Jerusalem. And Paul counted it a very high honor to be appointed to deliver this offering to the church of Jerusalem. He didn't feel it was beneath him. He thought it was a great honor. He was on his way to this ministry of relief, with gladness in his heart over the generosity of the Gentiles, and also with a great yearning that he might somehow reach unsaved Israel, as the letter shows. His heart went out, he said earlier in this letter, for those who were his "kinsman according to the flesh" (Romans 9:3 KJV) who hadn't yet known Christ.

Paul little knew what lay ahead of him. He could not foresee that the very longing of which he spoke, that was born of the Holy Spirit, would be twisted by the flesh to trick him into the only act of disobedience that is recorded in the Scriptures against this mighty apostle --

He would end up in Jerusalem besieged by a mob thirsting for his blood, spend two long, lonely years in prison in Caesarea, at last depart for Rome in chains as a prisoner of Caesar aboard a ship, and suffer shipwreck and hardship all along the way before he would at last arrive in Rome. Paul couldn't foresee this, but thank God for the honesty of Scripture. One of the delightful things about the Bible is the way we can trust it to tell us the truth about its heroes. It doesn't hide the blemishes of even the best of saints. Here it tells of Paul, who was so overwhelmingly desirous of being used as the instrument of God to reach Israel, even though God had sent him to the Gentiles, that he gladly undertook this ministry of relief for needy saints and went up to Jerusalem when the Spirit told him not to. As a result, he stumbled into great difficulty. How much, therefore, he needed the ministry with which he closed this section -- the ministry of restraining:

I appeal to you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf, that I may be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, so that by God's will I may come to you with joy and be refreshed in your company. The God of peace be with you all. Amen. (Romans 9:30-33 RSV)

Here is a record of how God answers prayer. Paul asked that these brethren would strive together with him. It is a word taken out of an athletic contest, i.e., a wrestling contest. He asked that they exercise the ministry of prayer in restraining evil. That is what prayer is so oftentimes -- a way of putting a barrier around someone and protecting them in their ministry. This is what Paul is asking for.

You'll notice that he makes three requests: He asked, first of all, that "I be delivered from the unbelievers" in Jerusalem. And God answered that request in his own way and time. In Acts we are told how Paul's nephew "accidentally" overheard a conversation of those men who had determined they would put Paul to death, and carried the word to Paul. Then, after being sent to the centurion over him, Paul was able to thwart that plan and escape out of Jerusalem, and out of the very jaws of death, by means of that "accidental" overhearing of a conversation. That was an answer to prayer as these Roman Christians prayed that he would be "delivered from the unbelievers" in Jerusalem.

Second, he asked that they pray that his service might "be acceptable to the saints." Well, God answered that. You remember that when Paul came, James stood up and said to the believers that this was "our beloved brother, Paul," who had come to them, and he welcomed him (Acts 21:18-20). Thus, through that intercession, the service that Paul brought to Jerusalem was accepted by the saints there.

The third request was that they pray that he might come to Rome "with joy and be refreshed in your company." You know how, through painful experiences, and after several years of waiting, God answered that prayer and brought Paul to Rome -- even though it was in chains. But, as he came and landed on the coast of Italy, the believers in Rome came all the way out of the city and down to a little village they called "The Three Taverns," and there they met Paul. His heart was overwhelmed with joy as he saw them -- and that prayer was answered. I wonder what would have happened if this passage had never been written and Paul had never asked them to pray for him? I wonder if the record of Acts would have been different if he had never thought to ask these believers to pray? What if the Romans hadn't prayed for Paul? Would it have been different?

I remember Dr. Ironside telling of visiting up in northern Idaho, years ago, a little group of Christians who didn't believe in prayer. They lived in a remote region around St. Mary's, Idaho, and, in order to get to them, he had to cross a river where there was no bridge or any way to cross except a little boat that was rowed across to pick him up. He used to go up there once or twice a year, ride his horse down to the edge of the river, and then stand on the bank, and yell across, "Le bateau sil vous plait." They spoke mostly French, and this meant, "Bring the boat, please." So they would row the boat over, pick him up, and row him back across the river. Then he would have a ministry there with them for a week or so, and then he would go on. He said that, on one occasion, he had a blessed week with them.

At the close of it, he said, as he was leaving, "Now, I do wish you would pray for me. I have a heavy schedule ahead." They said, "We don't pray for anybody." He said, "How is that?" They said, "We don't believe that there is any necessity for prayer." "Well, why is that?" he asked. "Well," they replied, "we believe God meets our needs. God had promised that he would take care of us, so we don't have to pray for ourselves. We believe that this promise applies to every other believer in Jesus Christ, so we don't feel we have to pray for them. Why pray, when God has promised?" "Well," he said, "have you ever noticed that the Apostle Paul asked people to pray for him?" "Yes," they said, "we have noticed that, but perhaps Paul didn't understand all the truth in this matter." (There are some folks who always feel they have a higher theological degree than Paul had.) Dr. Ironside said, "At any rate, I wish you would pray for me."

Then he left and went to Minneapolis, where he contracted a very serious sickness, until he was almost at the point of death. After weeks, he recovered, and, after several months, he visited these people again. When they met him with the boat, and took him across the river, they said, "Oh, when we heard you were sick, do you know what we did? We remembered that you had asked us to pray for you, so we gathered our people together and we had prayer for you." Dr. Ironside said, "Well, thank you, but, you know, if you had prayed for me first, I might never have been sick." Prayer is a mysterious thing that none of us really understands. But we do know that the apostle, with all the marvelous insight and understanding he had into the ways and purposes of God, nevertheless highly valued the prayers of others for him.

I know you are wondering if Paul ever got to Spain. Well, we don't know for sure. There is some evidence that perhaps he did. I personally think so. But we do know that, after several more years of ministry here and there, he was taken once again as a prisoner to Rome. This time, instead of having his own private house where he was free to minister to those who came to him, he was thrust down into the dank darkness of the Mamerine Dungeon. From that deep, dark, sodden hole in the earth, he wrote his second letter to Timothy, in which he says those unforgettable words: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith," (2 Timothy 4:7 KJV). Sensing that his departure was near, because he was soon to appear before Nero, and he knew the cruelty of that implacable tyrant, he wrote these marvelous words: "Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing," (2 Timothy 4:8 KJV). What a wonderful encouragement to faith this man is!

Prayer:

Our Father, we thank you for the example of the Apostle Paul. We pray that we may catch the emphasis that he emphasized. May we realize and discover in our own lives this marvelous secret; and, touching the well-springs of the hidden resources of deity within us, may we minister in the name of the Lord Jesus. We pray, Father, that we may stop fighting a battle that is already lost, and begin to fight one that is already won, in his strength. We pray that you will turn us from our continual tendency to move in our own fleshly efforts. May we, instead, reckon upon his indwelling strength to meet every situation and remember that he is fully adequate and overwhelmingly competent to do through us all that needs to be done. May we reckon upon that, and thank you for it. We pray that you will teach us that there is no such thing as 'second best' in your work, but that whatsoever is not gold, silver, and precious stones is nothing more than wood, hay, and stubble. We pray that we may minister in such a way as to be acceptable in your sight. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.

THE FORMER DAY SAINTS

by Ray C. Stedman

This closing chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans is a very personal one in which he simply commends his greetings to many of the saints, Christians that he knew in the city of Rome, yet it is a very instructive passage. I jotted down the notes for this message while I was in Mexico City in my hotel room, and the paper that I was using was the letterhead of the Overseas Ambassadors group. I picked up the paper and saw the words "Overseas Ambassadors," then I wrote underneath it the heading for this study, The Former Day Saints. I was struck by the correspondence between the two titles. Here, indeed, Paul was writing to some "overseas ambassadors" in his day and generation.

Many of the names that appear in this chapter were friends of his whom he had met around the Roman Empire. The apostle was writing this letter from the city of Corinth, just south of Athens in Greece. Far across the sea to the west was the city of Rome, the great capital of the empire. Although he had never visited it, he had a great host of friends there because, among the Christians of that day, there were many who considered themselves "overseas ambassadors" and thus carried the gospel of Christ out to the far corners of the earth. It is some of these that Paul writes this letter as he addresses them in a personal way in this closing chapter. These are "the saints which are at Rome" to whom he addresses this letter.

They are called saints because they are sanctified people. Now, as Major Ian Thomas so beautifully taught us when he was here, the word sanctify simply means, "to put something to its intended and proper use." Here were people who, by coming to grips with Jesus Christ, by having received the fullness of his indwelling life, and by believing the message of the gospel, had now entered into a relationship in which their whole lives were put to their proper and intended use. That is why they were saints. They were sanctified -- being used, at last, in the right and proper way.

Among the many thrills of this week that I have just spent in Mexico City was an opportunity to visit with the Catholic bishop of the city of Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City. I went out there hardly knowing what I might find, but I was tremendously amazed to discover a bishop of the Catholic Church whose heart was as genuinely evangelical and committed to Christ as any Protestant that I have ever met. I was also amazed when I saw the church in which he ministered -- an old Catholic cathedral in the city of Cuernavaca. It was built in 1576 and is one of the oldest cathedrals in the western world. When we went inside I was immediately struck by the difference between this and any other Catholic cathedral in which I have ever been: All the saints were gone from the walls. There was no Virgin Mary. All the rich and ornate gold trappings which are usually behind the altar were gone. For the altar there was simply a plain marble slab around which the bishop and his priests gathered in celebration of the Lord's table. They had simple stools around the table. There were Scripture verses everywhere.

I learned that this bishop had personally seen to it that copies of the Scriptures were distributed to every one of his people in the Spanish language, that they might read them. And he urged them to carry on worship in their homes. As several of us talked together, the entire subject of our conversation was our Lord Jesus Christ. What a wonderful time of fellowship we had there together! I also noticed inside the church that there were none of the plaster saints around. I said to him, "Bishop, where are the saints?" He said, "Well, I have taken them down and locked them in the cupboard -- now the saints come walking in through the door."

I thought that was a tremendous expression of exactly the truth that Paul is getting at here in Romans 16. Here are the saints at Rome. They were not plaster; they were common, ordinary, plain vanilla people like you and me, but they had been put to the proper use in their lives by an encounter with Jesus Christ. Therefore they were sanctified; therefore they were saints.

In this chapter there are three general divisions which we can briefly note. There is long list here of greetings to the saints at Rome, references to the saints who were with Paul at Corinth, and then it closes with a wonderful dedication from the apostle. Paul begins the greetings to the saints at Rome, Verses 1-16, with a reference to one of the women who had been with him but who had gone to Rome:

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deaconess of the church at Cenchreae, that you may receive her in the Lord as befits the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a helper of many and of myself as well. (Romans 16:1-2 RSV)

We judge from this introduction that this lady was the bearer of this epistle to Rome. They didn't have post offices and mailing systems in those days; they sent letters by the best means possible, by private individuals who were traveling here and there, and this woman was entrusted with this priceless document -- to deliver this letter from Paul to the Romans. She carried it from the church at Cenchreae, a little village south of Corinth, over to the great capital of the Roman Empire.

As she come to Rome with this letter, the apostle urges that they receive her because, he says, she is a deaconess. Don't be confused by that -- it doesn't mean that she was an officer of the church. A deacon or a deaconess in the Scripture is never an appointed officer holding office in the way we use the term today. It was, rather, simply a person who was selected to do a specific task -- someone who had a job to do -- one whom the church had asked to undertake a specific mission. Whoever they were, they were called "a servant" -- that was the meaning of the word deacon or deaconess. She was the one who bore the letter to the church at Rome. Then he moves on to greet Priscilla, or Prisca, and Aquila:

Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I but also all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks; (Romans 16:3-4 RSV)

If you have read the book of Acts, you know this couple. Priscilla and Aquila were tentmakers whom Paul had met when he came into the city of Corinth. They had been driven out of Rome by an edict of the emperor ordering that all the Jews must leave Rome, and they had come to Corinth and settled there.

When Paul came into the city of Athens, he arrived penniless, discouraged, temporarily defeated in spirit -- as he tells us. As he went about this great heathen city, he realized that if he were going to preach he would have to eat. So he sought out the area of the city where the tentmakers lived and arranged to enter into a business relationship with some and made tents -- which was his trade. While he was engaged in the business of making tents, he used his profession as his pulpit, and preached Christ. The fruit of that ministry was this couple, Priscilla and Aquila.

We don't know exactly what he refers to when he says they "risked their necks for my life," though later on they lived in the city of Ephesus and it was there that Paul went through the traumatic experience that he later refers to as "having fought with wild beasts in the city of Ephesus," (1 Corinthians 15:32). It was at Ephesus, you remember, that the whole city was brought to a riot and Paul and the other believers barely escaped with their lives. Perhaps it was at such a time that this couple had risked their lives for him.

They were a mighty influence for Christ wherever they went. Do you notice what Paul says about them here? Greet "also the church in their house." I think that is remarkable. Wherever this couple went, they soon had a church meeting in their house. (This, by the way, is the proper place for the church to meet.)

In Mexico this week, after the Tuesday morning breakfast at which Ambassador Thomas Mann, the United States Ambassador to Mexico was present, he very graciously invited our entire team over to his house for tea one morning. We went over, and sat down with the ambassador, and talked about the problems of Mexico and the United States. Then he began telling us something about the church in Mexico. He spoke about how the church dominated the landscape and politics in certain areas, but how weak and ineffective it was in its ministry. I said to him,

"Mr. Ambassador, is it not true that when the church is confined to a building, and thinks only of services within a specific center, it is never anything or of any influence at all? But, when the church begins to move out into the homes, and when the gospel is preached in the homes, this is what makes for a powerful and effective ministry?"

And the ambassador said, "Exactly. Unless Christianity is lived in the heart and the home, it is of no use at all." This is what spread the gospel throughout the whole of the early world. Christians were not interested in trying to get people to come out to church, but, instead, invited them into their homes. In their homes they talked to them about Christ, and there it was that they won their neighbors to the Lord -- and, so, there began to be churches meeting in the homes. In the city of Rome there were probably half a dozen churches meeting like this throughout the city. No doubt they all got together on occasion, perhaps on Sunday in meetings such as we have today, but the rest of the time the church was carried on in the home. Now Paul goes on, and says:

Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who was the first convert in Asia for Christ. (Romans 16:5b RSV)

You know, there is something precious about a first baby when it comes into the home. All the preparations that are made for it and the expectation of weeks and months -- everybody is holding their breath waiting for the baby to come. With the coming of the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth, it gets rather commonplace -- but the first one is wonderful. Here was the first convert that Paul won to Christ in the province of Asia, where the city of Ephesus is located, and he never forgot him because he was the first fruit of Asia for Christ. Then we read:

Greet Mary, who has worked hard among you. (Romans 16:6 RSV)

That is all that is said about her, but what a testimony, and what a remarkable epitaph for her!

Greet Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners; they are men of note among the apostles, and they were in Christ before me. (Romans 16:7 RSV)

That is rather a wistful note, isn't it? We learn of these two, Andronicus and Junias, probably brothers, who were related to the Apostle Paul, and they had become notable Christians, but he says, "I will never forget when I was a young Pharisee, breathing out threatenings and slaughterings against these Christians, how angry, how terribly disturbed I was when I learned that my own kinsmen, Andronicus and Junias, had become members of this hateful thing." Yet, it was probably the prayers of these faithful ones, praying for their brilliant kinsman, which was used of God to bring him to that position on the Damascus road whereby he came to know Jesus Christ, himself. Then his attitude toward Andronicus and Junias was tremendously changed. Then we have a group that are individually characterized for us, in Verses 8-10. He says:

Greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord. Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, and my beloved Stachys. Greet Apelles, who is approved in Christ. (Romans 16:8-10a RSV)

That is a remarkable word there. I think if I had a choice of something written on my tombstone after my death, it would be those words -- "approved in Christ." Think of that! And, for each one, he selects a special word concerning them that is characteristic of them.

Greet those who belong to the family of Aristobulus. (Romans 16:10b RSV)

These ones that he speaks of were doubtless Christians, but what about Aristobulus? He doesn't send greetings to him, only to his family. Perhaps he was not yet a Christian. And then he speaks of another relative of his:

Greet my kinsman Herodian. (Romans 16:11a RSV)

And that is all he says. It is suggestive here that this man is not yet a believer, and all Paul can say of him is that he is a relative. Then:

Greet those in the Lord who belong to the family of Narcissus. (Romans 16:11b RSV)

Again, here is a group of unnamed Christians whom he greets as a body, but the family head to whom they belong, Narcissus, is not included. Then we have a delightful duo in Verse 12 that have always fascinated me:

Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphaena and Tryphosa. (Romans 16:12a RSV)

These are female names, and I always imagine these to be old-maidish twin sisters. Tryphena and Tryphosa (you'd never name anybody that but twins), who loved the Lord and labored for him, were among those who had never married and yet had devoted themselves wholeheartedly to Christ -- and what workers they were for him!

Then he greets the beloved Persis, who is another lady who has worked hard in the Lord. You know, the interesting thing is that, as he goes through this letter, all the women he greets he characterizes as hard workers. I think this is very significant. What would we do without the ministry of women in the church? The men, you know, are of the "executive" type, mostly. They love to plan. It is the women who do the work; and it was so in the early church. In the first century, these women labored hard carrying out the work of the Lord. In Verse 13 is another interesting note:

Greet Rufus, eminent in the Lord, also his mother and mine. (Romans 16:13 RSV)

In the Gospel of Mark you will find a mention of this man, Rufus. As our Lord was carrying his cross down from Pilate's judgment hall to the scene of the crucifixion at Golgotha, he made his way through the streets of the city in the heat of the day, and, with the great burden of the cross on his back, he stumbled and fell. The soldiers impressed a man, a bystander, into the job of carrying the cross. His name was given to us as Simon of Cyrene, and this Simon became the father of Rufus. Most Bible scholars feel this is that Rufus mentioned here, the son of the man who bore the cross for Jesus. Simon never forgot that day. It drastically altered his life. Though it was but an incident on that morning, it was the transforming incident of all his life, and his children were raised in the Lord. Evidently Paul knew this home and had often visited it, and Rufus' mother, Simon's wife, had been like a mother to Paul.

Then you have a group of men together that sounds like a businessmen's association. They must have come from the islands of Greece because all their names are Greek. He says:

Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the brethren who are with them. (Romans 16:14 RSV)

I don't know what this was. Perhaps it was another of those small churches in a home, or it may have been a business organization -- the first Christian Businessmen's Committee, here in Rome! Then he gives us another series of greetings:

Greet Philippiansologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints who are with them. (Romans 16:15 RSV)

Here again is probably another small church in a home that contains both men and women, and it is headed very likely by this man named Philippiansologus. I wonder if perhaps this was his true name. It may have been a nickname because the meaning of his name is "a lover of the word." Here is a man who loved the Word of God, and, as such, he has become the center of a group which constitutes a church in a home in Rome. Paul sends his greetings to them, and says,

Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you. (Romans 16:16 RSV)

Having just come from Mexico, I was struck by the difference in the way people greet one another there. You don't just shake hands, you embrace. This is a carry-over from the custom that Paul refers to here, of "greeting one another with a holy kiss," and, among the Christians of Mexico, this is very common. When two greet each other, they have an abrazo (embrace), and sometimes I think we have gotten too far away from this kind of greeting. It was such a wonderful expression of true Christian love. In Verses 17-20, there is a reference to "false saints" who were in Rome:

I appeal to you, brethren, to take note of those who create dissensions and difficulties, in opposition to the doctrine which you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by fair and flattering words they deceive the hearts of the simpleminded. For while your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, I would have you wise as to what is good and guileless as to what is evil; then the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. (Romans 16:17-20 RSV)

This is not a reference to Christian believers who had differences of opinion. You remember, he handled that when he wrote in Chapter 14: "Him that is weak in the faith, receive him, but not to the settling of his doubts for him," (Romans 14:1). There was to be the manifestation of love despite the differences of background, outlook, and conviction over doubtful matters. They were to receive one another and love one another, even though differing.

But, in every Christian church, there are those who outwardly, and perhaps in many other ways, appear to be Christians, but are not. They are counterfeit saints. Wherever you find the true, you always find the counterfeit; but Paul says that the counterfeit are evident by three remarkable distinctions:

First of all, they are busy creating dissension and divisions contrary to doctrine (i.e., contrary to the Word of God). They are preaching and teaching things that are different from what you find in Scripture, or in addition to Scripture. This is always the mark of a counterfeit believer, or a false teacher. They were busy at Rome -- as they have been busy in every church in every century since. Second, they could be recognized by speaking fair and flattering words: They did not come and speak roughly or so boldly as to disturb people; they came speaking very sweetly; they seemed to be such lovely people; they seemed to have such a desire to advance the knowledge and the welfare of believers; but there was always something wrong about what they said; it didn't quite ring true. Paul says that this is a mark of the false.

The third mark was that they served their own appetites. If you look at what he says here in contrast with what he says about these true believers beforehand, you will notice one remarkable thing: In the case of all those who were true believers, he speaks of their abundant labors for Christ and for one another -- they love each other and they serve each other. But the one who is counterfeit is only busy serving his own interests. He is not interested in doing something for someone else, in giving himself or herself completely for the advancement of a cause for Christ's sake. They serve their own appetites and live for their own interests, whatever they may be. This is the three-fold mark of a false believer -- the counterfeit saint. What did Paul say to do about them? Excommunicate them? Burn them at the stake? No, just avoid them. Don't listen to them. Don't pay any attention to them. Don't give them an audience. Don't let them take your time with their false ideas. I think this applies well to those zealous cultists who come around so frequently to our doors with books under their arms that claim to be explanations of the Scriptures, but which are so contrary to it in teaching and doctrine. They usually require that you join some organization, or take your counsel from some inspired teacher or center somewhere else. Paul says avoid them -- that is all.

As he puts it, I want you to be "wise as to what is good and guiltless as to what is evil" -- that is, uninformed, simple-minded (almost), as to what is evil. Don't investigate it. Of course, this doesn't apply in every circumstance; God leads some to investigate some of these sects so that there may be answers given to some of their claims. But, for the usual Christian, he says just don't bother to waste your time with what they have to say. When you do so, the God of peace will crush them under your feet very shortly. God will take care of them.

Remember, when the disciples came to Jesus very disturbed because they had found somebody who was preaching in his name and didn't belong to their group, they asked, "What shall we do with him? Shall we call down fire on his head?" Jesus said to them, "Every plant that my Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone," (Matthew 15:13-14). Don't worry, God will take care of them. Be concerned with the positive affirmation of that which is true. Give yourself to that which is good in the Scriptures, and never mind these others. God will take care of them. In Verses 21-23 we have the references to the saints who were with Paul at Corinth:

Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you; so do Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my kinsmen. I Tertius, the writer of this letter, greet you in the Lord.
Gaius, who is host to me and the whole church, greets you. Erastus, the city treasurer, and our brother Quartus, greet you. (Romans 16:21-23 RSV)

This gives a little insight into how Paul wrote his letters. He evidently was dictating his letter to a man whose name was Tertius. Others were in the room as well, perhaps many of the church at Corinth were there with him. As Paul came to the close of his letter, they said, "Paul, will you send our greetings along with yours?" So Paul sends them here.

We see that Timothy, his fellow worker greets them. And there are three of Paul's family there. What an amazing impact the apostle had on his own family! How many of these did he win to Christ himself personally? He sends greetings from Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, all of them his relatives.

Then we have the writer of the letter, the secretary, who, after all has been said, takes his pen and writes, "I Tertius, the writer of this letter, the secretary, greet you too." The word "Tertius" simply means, "the third." His brother was there, Quartus, which means, "the fourth." They had a very simple way of solving the problem of names in those days. The first one that arrived, they called him Primus; the second one, Secundus; the third, Tertius; and the fourth, Quartus; and so it went. They were probably slaves, because this is the way people referred to slaves -- they just numbered them.

Then we have Erastus, the city treasurer of Corinth, a man of high position and one who had been won to Christ. He sends his greetings too. The letter closes in Verses 25-27 with a wonderful dedication from the apostle:

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed and through the prophetic writings is made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about obedience to the faith -- to the only wise God be glory for evermore through Jesus Christ. Amen. (Romans 16:25-27 RSV)

Very likely this was written in Paul's own hand. It was his custom, when he came to the end of dictating a letter, to take the pen and write the final words in his own hand. Because he was troubled with dim eyesight, he wrote in large letters, as he tells us in the letter to the Galatians. So he scrawls across the bottom of the letter this beautiful dedication to the only wise God who can strengthen them. It is God who does the strengthening in our lives, and, Paul says, it will always be along three lines, or by three particular means:

First, "according to my gospel," Paul says, "and the preaching of Jesus Christ." That is, it will be right along the lines that the Holy Spirit has led me to set before you, and no other way. God will not move in different ways in your life than he has recorded in the Scriptures. If you want to know how God will work for you, study your Bible -- that is how he will work with you. It is according to the gospel, and along these lines, and above all, "according to the preaching of Jesus Christ, because he is the one whose life, indwelling us, makes possible strength in our experience.

Then, too, strengthening will be "according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret." What was the mystery? Simply the mystery that God would call out from Jew and Gentile alike the people who would belong to him and to each other. This is important because, if you are going to be strengthened in your Christian life, it means that it will be in connection with other believers as well. It is impossible for a Christian to grow strong all by himself. We need each other, and we need all the others who belong to the body of Christ. This is the great mystery -- as we share together in the life of our Lord Jesus and in each other, we grow strong in the Lord.

The third principle of strengthening is "according to the command of God to bring about obedience to the faith," i.e., the final great foundation upon which all our Christian growth and strength rests is the fact that God has set about a task which he will perform. As Paul writes to the Philippians, "being confident that he who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ," (Philippians 1:6).

Yesterday morning in Mexico City we gathered as a team together and asked dear old Dr. F. J. Huegel, well-known author, to bring us a Bible study. Dr. Huegel brought us a masterful summing up of Romans, Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8, all in the course of about 45 minutes. When he finished, he was commenting upon the closing words of Chapter 8: "We are more than conquerors through Christ."

Lt. Genesis. Silverthorn of the U. S. Marine Corp in Washington was a member of our team during the week, and was sitting just a few places down the table from Dr. Huegel. Dr. Huegel turned to him, and said, "General, perhaps you can give us a little help on what this means -- to be more than conquerors. To me it means: That, in Christ, we triumph despite everything, that even though we fail and stumble, and though there is much of folly and weakness in our experience, nevertheless God has set about the task, and that He will bring us through to the place where we are indeed more than conquerors in Christ! Now, General, can you help us with that?" I had been watching General Silverthorn as he had been listening to this, and watched his face light up as these truths came home to him, and he just said: "Help you? No, I can't help you. I just want to shout, Hallelujah!"

That is what it means to be more than conquerors, because, you see, after all, the work that God has begun does not rest upon our feeble efforts to carry it through successfully, but upon his unchanging grace and his eternal commands that he has set about to bring together those who fulfill all the desires of his heart.

Prayer:

How we thank you, our Father, for this word which renews our confidence in you, and reminds us again how wonderfully adequate you are to fulfill in us all that we long to see and all that you long to have. We thank you for the Lord Jesus who indwells us and imparts to us all that he is. We pray that we may be reminded anew of the love which he has shed abroad over us, and of the blood that he has shed for us, all as a guarantee that he will perform all that he has promised in our lives. May we enter into it, Lord, and experience this in Jesus Christ. Amen.

Copyright: © 1995 Discovery Publishing, a ministry of Peninsula Bible Church.

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