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How To Get Right With God
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If you are new to Northview, know we don't have this thing fully figured out, and we are in a study on the book of Romans. We're discovering every single week things that we can do better, myself included. You are coming in towards the end of a pretty lengthy study — we took the book of Romans and laid it out over 38 weeks, and we are nearing the end of that.
The book of Romans is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to a church in the center of the Roman Empire. It's included in the Holy Scriptures, the Bible, which is not a book — it is a library of 66 books, of which Romans is included. It is known as the believer's constitution. If you're wondering what Christians believe, what the gospel is, there's no better, more concise, thorough explanation of the gospel than the book of Romans.
What's interesting is how many non-believers are being drawn to this study, engaging with this thorough, at times exhaustive explanation of what we believe. It's dispelling some of our clunky religion, some of the unnecessary or unproductive assumptions we often make about the faith. Hopefully it is rooting us collectively in a foundation we can operate from moving forward as a church.ateur
Chapter 14 comes after chapter 13, as well as 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, and on down the list. I say that because we have entered the portion of this letter where Paul is now applying the gospel to our lives. Essentially, he is saying: this is the natural byproduct, this is how you ought to orient your life, and this should be the aim of your existence now moving forward as a Christian.
However, if you don't realize it is necessary and critical to have the foundation in place, you will discover this is very difficult to live out. Chapters 1–11, Paul is laying the foundation for the gospel — how it is a free gift we receive in faith by placing our trust in Jesus Christ. It is the redemption of our souls, the grace that pardons us of our sins. It takes the shame off our back. We are no longer burdened by the failures of our lives, and we get to live in freedom in Christ, knowing that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is renewing us from the inside out and we are taking on the maturity of Christ.
Many have tried to manufacture a religious life, manufacture their own form of righteousness and virtue. But it's very hard to live out a life that looks like Jesus for a long, sustainable time without resting fully on Jesus. So the foundation of chapters 1–11 is critical to the application of chapters 12–16. Anytime we try to go about this without full dependency on Christ, we're going to run out of gas.
Today's passage is specific to the church as a church family, addressed to individuals who consider themselves Christian. If you're not a Christian, you get to peer in on our family conversation and sit in the living room with us. Paul is saying: this is for individuals who have surrendered their life to the lordship of Jesus and received in faith the finished work of the cross. With that in mind, put this into practice in your life.
Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. One person's faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.
One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God. And whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us live our lives alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord. And if we die, we die for the Lord. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life, so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.
You then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat. It is written: "As surely as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow before me, and every tongue will acknowledge God." So then each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.
Sometimes it's helpful to start a sermon with a question. Have you ever looked at someone and thought, "You are so dumb"? Church ought to be the most honest place on the planet. Some of you are thinking, "Yeah, this morning on the way in here I looked at someone like idiot, bonehead."
Here's the reality: we go through life and the inner critic in us is constantly judging, observing, critiquing, measuring, comparing those around us. A lot of times we all have this tendency to swell up in a superiority type of way and look down on others. We think we have it right, and those who do not align fully with us we consider foolish and out of line.
Paul is raising to the surface: what do we do in the local church? What do we do as a family of individuals who now belong to God? How do we manage disagreements and differences of opinion?
There's a movie growing up called The Stupids. There's a scene where the main character is about to chase someone down the road. He runs into his garage, sees a unicycle — "one wheel." Sees a bicycle — "two wheels." Turns around, sees the car — "four wheels." But at the last second he looks up and sees roller skates and says "eight wheels," then ends up chasing the guy down the road on roller skates. You think to yourself, you are so dumb.
But play that out: say it's your child chasing someone down the road, running into the garage. Sure, roller skates wouldn't make sense, but it also wouldn't make sense for your nine-year-old to take the car. Their best bet is probably the bicycle.
Paul is raising the tension of what to do when people come together as a family of believers, all trying to navigate the complexities and uniqueness of our circumstances, our lives, our families, the different dilemmas we run into. We're all discovering, or at least need to be notified, that wisdom is not black and white.
We would love for it to be black and white — every person in this season, in this situation, making the same decision. But you live long enough, open your heart to the words of God, and prayerfully clothe your decisions in prayer, and you start to realize what is wise for one person is not wise for another.
What is wise for someone is not wise for somebody else. Paul says that in addressing these things, we are dealing with what he calls disputable matters — things that should not carry weight in a way that becomes disruptive or divisive within a family of believers.
That's the problem in our culture right now — we are being primed, programmed, and trained to turn our differences into divisions. Paul is coming to this point in the text where he's essentially saying: that's nonsense. You don't take your cues from culture; you take your cues from Christ. We live counterintuitive, against the grain, and embrace a different approach to life — we know how to sit in tension with individuals who do not agree with us on everything.
As we started this series, we laid out this grid for our beliefs — think of it in terms of a target. At the center are your die for beliefs. Outside of that, your defend beliefs, and then your discuss beliefs. What is so common in churches is we place things in the die-for category that really only belong in the discuss category.
These are doctrinal matters, and they always need to be the things we stake our claims on and stand resolutely in. But where we miss it is when we start to overinflate secondary matters while overlooking doctrinal matters.
As your pastor, here are several common examples of disputable matters represented in our church family, based on conversations and messages I receive — things we do not have full consensus on:
I could go on down the list of ways we approach life. We're all doing our best to navigate the complexity of the world coming at us, but we are all going to arrive at different conclusions on some of this stuff.
The question is: what are we going to do as a faith family when there is a difference of opinion or conviction? The world says you demonize the person who disagrees with you, and where there's a difference, there ought to be a division. But that's not going to play out, because what Paul is saying is this is a conversation for people who place their faith in Jesus Christ — people who have been grafted into the family of God, who are going to forever be part of the church of heaven.
That's going to be such an awkward experience for most Christians, because they're going to cross into eternity and look at people they've been hating on and think, "Oh my goodness, you're here, and now I'm stuck worshiping with you for the rest of eternity." If that's going to be our future, we ought to reverse-engineer it into our present. If there's coming a day of worship from every tribe, nation, and tongue under the banner of Christ, we ought to figure out how to do it well now.
So there's doctrinal matters and there's disputable matters, and whenever we overinflate one and overlook the other, churches begin to operate in wonky ways. There's an old quote passed on throughout church history — some attribute it to Augustine, but most accurately it was a Lutheran theologian in the 17th century who said it:
In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. And in all things, charity.
In essentials — the character of God, who Christ is, our source of salvation, our source of truth — there's unity. In non-essentials, there's liberty and freedom and permission for the believer to resolutely move forward trying to live wisely and discerningly unto the Lord. In all other matters, matters Scripture doesn't speak to at all, we live open-handed and extend love and grace to people trying their best to get it right.
Where Scripture is silent, our love ought to be the loudest. And when something is not commanded in God's word, it should not be demanded in God's church.
This is where all of us, myself included, need to be very careful — we do not start to take on the characteristics of the Pharisees in Scripture. When we read the Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — we find Jesus was constantly debated and opposed by the religious elites of his day. So for all of you non-Christians who bump heads with religious people, you actually have more in common with Jesus than you think.
The Pharisees were originally and initially bent on doing well. They wanted to honor God, honor God's word, and be faithful according to their convictions. But what happens is their preferences become convictions, their convictions become commandments, and then they develop a blind spot.
Where it is not binding in Scripture, it has the potential to become blinding in our lives.
All of us have to continue, with open hands, to reflect on life, clothe our decisions in prayer, harness discernment, and make wise decisions anchored in conviction that honors God. There's never going to be a cookie-cutter, carbon-copy for every person looking the exact same.
That's the difference between unity and uniformity. Uniformity fences people out — if you do not agree wholeheartedly and behave identically, you can't be part of the group. Unity folds people in. Our convictions help us stand, but conformity keeps us silent. It is learning to approach this stuff with a much greater level of humility.
Paul is saying whether you are in the category of the strong or the weak, be careful when you fall into despising and judging your other brothers and sisters in Christ. I would say three things we should pay attention to: proximity, posture, and practice.
December is right around the corner — some of you are already thinking about decorating for Christmas. What do we celebrate over Christmas? The incarnation, the arrival of Christ — where God takes on human flesh and becomes one of us, where Christ comes on a rescue mission, leaves perfection, and steps into brokenness. He draws near to the wicked. He draws near to the evil. He draws near to the broken. And as followers of Christ, taking our cues from Christ, we do not divide over differences that are secondary in nature.
We lean in because we take our cues from Christ, recognizing that disputable matters will always show up in relationships. But as a family of God, when those moments happen, love draws near. Why is that such a brilliant thing to hold on to? Because it's really hard to dislike, mistreat, or hate someone up close.
You ever discover that person in your life who on social media is a keyboard warrior ninja, bold and cruel and just telling people how it is, and then you meet them at Walmart and you're like, "Dude, you're a cupcake, a teddy bear"? Up close, you do not represent who you are online, because at a distance, from the confines of your living room when no one's around you, there's a boldness and a cruelty that comes out. But the moment you are toe to toe with somebody having a conversation, you find it's very difficult to treat someone that poorly.
What the gospel does is say we don't keep people at a distance. We lean in and realize they too are just a faulty, imperfect individual trying to navigate the complexities of this life. Chances are they're giving it their best attempt. Chances are the person in your life who you're criticizing most is giving it their best attempt.
Paul says there are some who are strong and doing well and there are some who are weak. Anytime you lay out categories like that, what category do we think we're all in? We all assume team strong. We would benefit greatly if we were to just ask the more sobering questions:
Paul says there were weird things showing up in the church in Rome. What were they debating? Emperor Claudius, when he was in power, kicked the Jews out of Rome. If you read about it in the book of Acts, at Pentecost, Peter preaches the first message of the gospel and all these people are saved. Then people head home to their hometowns, and individuals made their way back to Rome and started a church there — a community of believers predominantly Jewish.
Then Emperor Claudius kicks them out of the empire and out of Rome, and eventually Emperor Nero takes office. Keeping the Jews out of Rome isn't a pressing agenda for him, so they're able to make their way back in. When they do, they discover the church still exists — but now it's not predominantly Jewish, it's predominantly Gentile.
For the new person in the room, if you are of non-Jewish descent, you're a Gentile. So anytime you see this scuffle over who's in, who's out, should we allow the Gentiles in — you ought to be thankful for the cross and the fact that God bridged the chasm so that every single one of us could be grafted into the family of God.
The Jews show up proud of their heritage, their lineage, their training and tradition. They are proud of the fact that they hold on to things like the Torah and the prophets — these things instruct and shape their lives. They are also anchored to very strong rituals and practices: a kosher diet and a Sabbath day that was holy. Now they're engaged in a worship experience sitting next to Gentiles, thinking, this person eats meat I would never touch, they do things on a Saturday I would never do.
Paul is saying if any church gets so zealous over fighting over those things, they will exhaust their energy and effort and lose the opportunity to have a tremendous influence in the world. They'll lose their way, because if you don't keep the main thing the main thing, it is very easy for all of us to get distracted.
There are things as a church we are always going to have to take a strong, resolute, and at times very uncomfortable stance on. We would do well to make sure we are not exhausting our efforts and preparing ourselves for those moments coming our way — the faith is always going to be tested. We need to be careful where we are doing harm, and people within the body of believers are getting taken out by friendly fire.
Paul says: lean in. Be careful. Embrace relationship where there's a difference. We don't push people out. We fold them in — whether they are cultured in the faith and been around for years, or whether they're very new. We're going to do this together, remembering that at some point all of us were new, at some point all of us were very clumsy in our faith. In the same way Christ met us in our clumsy state and walked with us, we get the opportunity to walk alongside other people who are new and trying to figure this thing out.
We cannot be a church that holds a litmus test at the door for people to come in and be part of our church family. We enter the kingdom of God through a blood test — what Christ did on the cross for every single one of us.
In addition to drawing near, love leans low. There is a humble posture required. If you've been a Christian for a long time — maybe you went through seminary, or you've been on the discipleship walk, led small groups, been on a missions trip, and you don't miss a Sunday, and you're rock solid in your faith — that's wonderful. But it doesn't give you license to look down on anybody. It only gives you the responsibility to look out for somebody.
We don't look down. We look up, we look out. It's a matter of carrying a humble posture: recognizing there are things in my life I'm still discovering — oh, I got that one wrong. What you find is that we can function with an unwarranted pride and a superior complex that harms the family of God as we're trying to figure this thing out together. My prayer as a church is that we always do our best to remain humble in our efforts here.
Lastly, we have to pay attention to our practice. Love lifts up. Life is going to be hard on all of us — you don't have to go looking for trouble, it knows where to find you. You are either heading into a storm, walking through a storm, or just now coming out of a storm.
As Christians, when we gather together, much of what we are doing is serving in a role to encourage and edify someone's life, to fill their cup up, and to remind them: God is still for you and God has great things in store. Just stay the course. Remain faithful. Continue living unto the Lord.
When it comes to developing discernment and navigating your convictions, consider a few things:
Paul is saying that if you've entrusted your life to Christ, you now belong to the family of God, and every single one of us is doing our best to live unto the Lord.
A great thing to consider when studying scripture is the times a passage is repetitive — is there anything that's just said over and over again? Pay attention to the repetition. And the repetition in this text is: the Lord, the Lord, the Lord, the Lord.
This is one of the titles of Christ we struggle with the most. We love him as our wonderful counselor. We love him as our savior and our good shepherd. But we have a hard time receiving him as Lord. Why? Because none of us want to be guided and instructed, and none of us want to be corrected. But if he's Lord, he rules and reigns. And so we live unto him.
Our lives are going to be different — different portraits — but it has to be the same frame. As a community, we are living unto the Lord. It's the same Lord, just different roads.
When I say different roads, please do not hear me saying all roads lead to God. That's a very dangerous thing to think. For the non-believer in the room, I would say this with as much delicacy as I possibly can — I do not mean to be offensive, but I truly, wholeheartedly would stake my life on the belief that Jesus Christ is the only way of true salvation for all of eternity, by the finished work of the cross and the empty tomb, and what Christ has done for us, that you and I can ever be reconciled to our heavenly Father. I believe that.
Some will say, "Well pastor, that is really exclusive." Maybe the atheists in the room would say, "Golly, that's narrow-minded." You're absolutely right. I would rather walk a narrow path than a slippery slope. It is wildly exclusive — Jesus is our only option. However, it is wildly inclusive. It's exclusive in that it only comes through Christ. It is inclusive in that it is available to all people.
So the world will say all paths lead to God — not in a salvation type of way. The gospel says all people are loved by God.
For the atheists in the room, I would say this: if you're a betting person, let's consider this in terms of a gamble, because in some ways that's what faith feels like.
If you're right and there is no God, and God doesn't exist, and this life is meaningless and there is no truth — so yolo, you only live once, because you're here and then you're gone, and for some random reason you're this speck of dust within this galaxy — if you're right and I'm wrong, we get the same result. But if I'm right and you're wrong, we get two very different outcomes.
So I would say to the non-believer: it is a far greater gamble, far more of a risk, far more of a leap of faith not to believe in God than to believe in a Christ who is completely set apart and who can make claims that no one else in human history ever could.
Again, that's a doctrinal stance. But in terms of disputable matters, folks, let's be careful.
"They will know that you are my disciples by how you love one another."
I'm convinced we are entering a season where there's momentum at all of our locations. God, for whatever reason, is opening doors and making things happen, providing in ways we didn't even know to pray for. My prayer continues to be: Lord, help us function in a way that stewards what you're trusting us with. Keep us healthy and unified. And would we proceed in a way that invites more of your trust, your confidence, and your favor.
I think that is largely dependent on how well we treat each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. So folks, let's just stack hands and say: team Jesus, all of us. And where we differ, we're not going to divide.
