Text for the Week: A Welcoming Light

Scripture: Romans 15:1-9

¹ We who are powerful need to be patient with the weakness of those who don’t have power, and not please ourselves. ² Each of us should please our neighbors for their good in order to build them up. ³ Christ didn’t please himself, but, as it is written, The insults of those who insulted you fell on me. ⁴ Whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction so that we could have hope through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures. ⁵ May the God of endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude toward each other, similar to Christ Jesus’ attitude. ⁶ That way you can glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ together with one voice.

⁷ So welcome each other, in the same way that Christ also welcomed you, for God’s glory. ⁸ I’m saying that Christ became a servant of those who are circumcised for the sake of God’s truth, in order to confirm the promises given to the ancestors, ⁹ and so that the Gentiles could glorify God for his mercy. As it is written,

Because of this I will confess you among the Gentiles,
    and I will sing praises to your name.

Questions

1. What does it mean to be a strong Christian in this passage and why does Paul identify himself as one rather than weak?
2. What does it mean to welcome other believers in the Church, is it simply a Sunday morning greeting or is there more to it?
3. How does Jesus taking on insults and being a servant relate to Christians welcoming one another?

Background

Related Scriptures: Psalm 67, Galatians 3:28, Colossians 3:11, Hebrews 13:2, 1 Peter 4:9

Paul is writing as one of the strong Christians, these are people in the majority, they have power.

In Romans “weak” and “strong” have nothing to do with maturity of faith or degree of faith. The weak are those who have strong convictions about specific moral standards, the strong are those who feel less need for such high standards of conscious. 

Welcoming the weak is about reflecting Jesus who welcomes us when we are weak. It means accommodating the needs and requests of others who have greater degree of conscious with issues of morality.

Verse 5 is a prayer and it is the first prayer since chapter 9 indicating that unity and welcoming are very important for Paul and something he wants the readers to emphasize.

For more background you can find my video here

Reflection

So often we want to make the Christian faith about what we know or what we believe, and the reality is that it is meant to be about who we know. It sounds obvious that knowing Jesus is the most important part of being a Christian but the difficulty arises when we encounter others who believe and do not share our opinions. This is what Paul faced in several of his churches and we see evidence in his letters to the Corinthians, Galatians, Colossians, and Romans. Each of these congregations had to deal with divisions within the church, not based on whether people were aligned to Jesus, but based on cultural, political, ethnic, social, and theological divisions. And they did this because they are human, and we as humans tend to want to create circles of insiders and outsiders, and such circles are often drawn around easily recognizable and tangible differences like culture, color, or beliefs, even within the church. We see this play out in our world in the form of denominations. Some denominations are formed around culture, others are formed around beliefs, and though these denominations are not inherently bad, many use them as a source to create division. But what Paul wants us to understand is that these divisions are left over from the natural human tendency divide people into insiders and outsiders, and we as Christians are supposed to be fighting that urge. We are supposed to create communities based on one rule, does this person express a desire to follow Jesus, if so we welcome them as N.T. Wright has said, ‘“justification by faith” entails “fellowship by faith.”’ (in Michael Bird Romans).

Unfortunately, we do not want to show the grace we have received through faith to others, because while welcoming the outsider sounds easy, in reality it is difficult. Paul dealt with many churches where this was the case. He dealt with churches where Jews wanted to ostracize Gentiles because they were not circumcised, where Gentiles wanted to disavow Jews because they refused to consume food sacrificed to idols Paul dealt with communities that wanted to denigrate women or be ethnically isolated. This is why he famously wrote, “There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28). We have a tendency to malign these controversies because we are so far removed from them but they were real and very important. These churches are dealing with teaching about idolatry, cultural preferences in worship, culture war issues, all the things we deal with today and Paul asks his audience to consider not right and wrong, but weak and strong. Paul divides the arguments into weak Christians and strong Christians, the weak are always those who need more help from Christ and the Church and the strong need less help. Now, unlike every other social setting, Paul implores the strong Christians to lay aside their power (especially in Romans where the strong Christians seem to be the dominant group in the church) to lift up and strengthen the weak ones. In Rome the group that Paul exhorts to give in is the group that he aligns with, the group that is probably right in the disagreement. Why does Paul do this? Because in giving in and allowing the smaller weaker group to have power these Christians were learning to reflect Jesus who gave up his will and desires to elevate us all.

The difficulty is that our natural tendency is to allow disagreements and differences of opinions to create distance between ourselves and those with whom we differ. And if this distance is allowed to be maintained (it does not even need to grow) we will find ourselves viewing this person as less of an insider and more of an outsider. The only solution is to work to cut the distance between us and others. And this is what Paul means by welcoming one another, to be welcome in a place is to feel safe and comfortable in that place. If I am a true host and welcome a person into my house, I am not simply allowing that person to enter, I am helping that individual to feel a sense of belonging. The same is true in the Church, our goal is to help each other feel a sense of belonging. Yet, we know that controversies are going to arise and with these there is an opportunity for division. Paul’s advice is that the person who is stronger, even if they are right, should defer to the person who needs more help to stay faithful. Paul’s message is to lay aside being right over even seemingly important matters to see your brother or sister experience belonging and a place where they can grow into their relationship and faith in Jesus.

Takeaway

“I will not attempt to change your opinions. If they are wrong, obedience alone can enable you to set them right.” George MacDonald instead I will love you so you can grow in faith alongside me.