May 25 2025
Romans 15:1-17
A couple of weeks ago, I was invited by my daughters to go with them to see the play, “Shucks’, up at Playhouse Square in Cleveland. As we headed north I couldn’t help but to say something we would say as a family when headed out into the world, the saying which goes, “As far as anyone knows we are a nice normal family”. This was our appeal as parents that our children act decent as we interacted with others. We had a number of these little sayings that we would say to our children as they were growing up. We had to often remind them, “Be a duck not a chicken.” That makes sense, doesn’t it? Well what this weird saying refers to is all those things that people would say about them. You see, when the chicken and the duck are caught out in the rain, the chicken allows the rain to go right through their feathers, soaking that poor hen to the bone. The duck, on the other hand, has the ability to close its feathers tightly against itself so that the rain rolls right off its back, and the duck stays nice and warm. So, when someone would insult our kids, we would tell them, be a duck, let those nasty words roll off of them because they are not the truth about who they are. You see, they and all of us have a choice. We can let the judgments people throw at us roll off, so that the coldness of this world doesn’t affect us.
In a world full of people who are unable to judge others in a right manner it is important that we take these judgments people might have about us and not accept these as the truth. This is so important when we live in this time that Jesus calls an evil age. Yet, when we at last come to the good judgment of God we must move from being a duck, with our feathers shut tight against the cold rain of this world, to being a chicken, opening our feathers so that the warmth and goodness of God can soak us all the way through.
You see the truth about who any of us really are was decided one Friday, on a lonely hill, where yet another crucifixion took place with yet again another rebel seeking to be king. There, on that cross, the wisdom of God, was displayed as an historical event, a wisdom that looked like so much foolishness to those so wise in the ways of this world. That man, judged to be so weak, so low and despised by the world was nonetheless, the very one who revealed to us the wisdom of heaven. As we have said many times in this series on the King’s way of life, Paul tells us, in the first chapter of the first letter to the church at Corinth, “…you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, holiness and redemption.” All wisdom is about making choices, choices which will become actions, actions that will prove the wisdom that is expected. So here at the cross we witnessed, in this historical event, the choices God made using his wisdom. The Father decided that every person is worth the infinite worth of his Son when he offered Jesus for our redemption. This meant that the Father would send his Son to our world, and the Son entered into our human story by taking on our flesh in order that Jesus might be for us our kinsman-redeemer, given as a ransom for many. The Son of God took upon himself the judgment that justice demands for all of us deserved death as a just and fair penalty for our own wrong judgments. Yet, this was not all, for Jesus, using the wisdom from above decided that now that our past had been dealt with, we are now welcome to come into his life so that we might experience the love he has known from his Father for all eternity. This favor shown to us is the grace of God and because the Son of God has given such grace to all people then we are to know that we are all equal and deserving of grace for this is the just wisdom of God. This is the way the wisdom of God becomes in us our righteousness. Yet this is not all that was revealed that Friday for the wisdom of God also decided that the blood of Jesus would be not only the means for the forgiveness of our past sins, and not just the blood of the new covenant where all our equals deserving of grace, but the blood of Christ also cleansed us so that now we have become a holy temple in which The Holy Spirit might abide. As God’s holy nation we are to be true sons and daughters of Abraham who take God’s blessings out to all the world for the cross has indeed broken the curse which has long held our world captive. If we withhold the blessings of God that we enjoy , from just one person, then we call into question the power of the cross to break the curse. No, we are called to be holy just as God is holy, loving and blessing all people just as God has always done.
So, the wisdom of God has judged every person as being of infinite worth, and that we are all equals according to the judgment of the righteous judge named Jesus, deserving of the grace and welcome of God. God has also judged all of us as being his living temples who are worthy of being called holy, empowered by God to actually be holy as God is holy. This is what has been revealed in the once for all historical act of the cross, the wisdom of God and his judgment of us all, the question though is, do we believe that this really is the truth about ourselves and everyone else? Yes, this is the truth, God’s judgment about us, so it should be obvious that this is a judgment without fear. We never have to fear because the cross shows us that the wisdom of God flows out of his great love for all of us, a love which casts out all our fear.
Paul gives us a glimpse of what it means for us as followers of Christ to live under the judgment of God here at the end of the book of Romans. As always, it is best that we begin with the reason for this letter which may surprise many people because this letter is not primarily about salvation or theology as it is often referred to be about, but instead Romans is all about a church quarrel. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Just like in the church at Corinth, the church at Rome struggled to get along. The problem in the church at Rome was that there was friction between those who had converted from the Jewish faith and those who had previously been idol worshippers. The wrong way wisdom of our world had infected this church so that those who were previously idol worshippers began to judge the Jewish converts to be weak in their faith of Jesus. These formerly Jewish people struggled to give up those food laws, and purification rights when they accepted Jesus as their Savior and Messiah. Those who had previously worshipped idols saw this refusal to let go of their past ways as being their need for a crutch to lean on, something they proudly boasted they never had to do when they received Jesus. So there was much judging going on, the former idol worshippers judging their Jewish-Christian brothers and sisters with contempt, which of course, set those Jewish-Christian brothers and sisters to judge them right back. This is the mess that Paul is actually addressing in his letter to Rome.
With all of that in mind, we come to the fifteenth chapter of Romans, where Paul is wrapping things up by telling his audience what they must do to get their church back on track to have a united life. Knowing what we know about the fighting going on in this church, imagine how these words of Paul must have hit this audience when he says, “We who are strong have an obligation, you owe it to the weak, to bear with them when they are without any strength or any power.” Far from judging others as being weak, Paul is saying this is a sign where those who are strong, those who do have power, to step in and do something. In fact, Paul insists that they have an obligation to lift up those who are struggling in their faith, those who are clinging to their past so tightly that they are in danger of missing out on the present and the future. We are left wondering just why does Paul believe that the strong owe it to the weak to do something when they are struggling? Well, the answer is found back at the fifth chapter of this letter where Paul has previously told his audience, that it was while, “…we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.” Paul here is reminding this church of the judgment of God found in their redemption, that time when they were too weak to find freedom on their own, this is when Christ, the very Son of God died for the ungodly, those so unlike himself. Paul continues in this fifth chapter speaking to the wisdom of God to do such an action for us, “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person- though perhaps for a good person one might even dare to die…” Here Paul is using this world’s wrong way wisdom, to decide just who it is that might be worthy of another person dying for them. Most people would agree that it would have to be someone pretty special to justify giving ones life to save them. Yet the wisdom of God is different because as Paul continues, “…but God stands with us, even while we were sinners, Christ died for us.” Even though we were weak people, so unlike God, continually missing the mark with our wrong judgments of others, God stood beside us; Christ our kinsman, redeemed us by dying for us on the cross. This is why Paul tells those in this church who know the strength of their faith that they owe it to the weak, for when it was when they were weak, this is when Christ, in the strength of heaven, came and gave his life for them. Paul is asking them and us, just how are we going to repay the ransom given for us all? The answer is that if we now find our faith in the wisdom of God then we must become like God and be those who bear others up when they are weak.
Paul continues in this fifteenth chapter by contrasting the results of the wisdom from above and the wrong way wisdom of this world, when he tells his audience that they were not to seek pleasure for themselves but instead each person was to please their neighbor, doing what is best for their good, so that the whole house is built up. Now if we can recall when we began this series, we talked about how the church at Corinth was being torn apart by factions and quarrels. What we found to be the source of the problem was that they had begun to focus on eating, drinking and being merry instead of being the church. Here at the Church of Rome, then, it is not difficult to understand why Paul strictly tells them to not seek their own pleasure because if they did so, their pleasure seeking would only end with fighting. Yet Paul is not calling for some dreary existence but instead he states that everyone is to be about pleasing those that cross their path, the one scripture calls the neighbor. As Jesus defines just who are neighbor is in the tenth chapter of Luke, we find that our neighbor is the next person we find who stands in need of our mercy, just as the Good Samaritan did for the man who he found half dead in a ditch. The longing behind these actions is for a world where we all look out for each other knowing that as we look into each others eyes, there in that other face, is one who desires to be full of joy, to find faith in their belief and to abound in hope by the work of the Holy Spirit, just as Paul knows is possible for us to experience. This is the righteousness of Jesus as we witnessed there upon the cross. He never sought to please himself but as our equal, Jesus sought to please us by inviting us spiritual orphans to come home with him, to live with him in the Father’s house. This is the righteous judgment of our righteous judge named Jesus so it comes as no surprise that when we live under this judgment that we are to “…welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, as Paul urges us to do.This is the righteousness demanded by Jesus to do unto others as we would want done to us.
When we seek to please our neighbor this is when Paul states that they will be then, built up. Now, in the original text, Paul teaches us, that when we seek to please not ourselves but instead seek to please all people by seeking their good, we are building a house. That sounds rather strange, doesn’t it? Well, Paul helps us unravel this mystery when in writing about how Christ did not please himself, Paul uses the sixty-ninth Psalm. I believe that Paul expects his readers to know this Psalm because if we read it we find that the people had gotten angry at God and because the writer has such a passion for the Temple, this holy place of God, then the anger aimed at God lands on him as well. Paul is saying then that when we begin to live under the judgment of God using the wisdom of God then we can expect some rough sailing. When we seek the pleasure of others before ourselves as Jesus first did for us, then the world will begin to wonder about the wisdom it follows for now there has come into the world, a new way of looking at the world. Just as the Temple of old was a physical representation of what the world would be like when heaven at last becomes united with earth, when we as God’s people seek to please everyone else before ourselves we become a living representation of the world to come. As we please our neighbor, doing what is best for his good, we are building a house, a new and holy Temple, a new reality where the perfect love of God is found to be perfected in us. When we go about pleasing others before ourselves we are stating our faith. This is the reality we believe God brought forth when he cleansed us by the blood shed on the cross. Now all of us are indeed holy for this is the judgment of God, worthy places for his Holy Spirit to dwell. We are holy for now through the Holy Spirit the holy love of heaven is poured into our hearts. This holy love is the love of our holy God who loves all people, all the time, forever and ever, amen. It is this holy love that is now able to live in us, so that we have the power from on high to bring forth this new creation. This new living Temple of God, formed out of living temples of God, is built every time just one more person seeks to please their neighbor for their good. In that moment is the proof that the curse has indeed been broken, and the blessing of God is at last unleashed upon the earth. This is where all scripture is pointing us to and this is why they are so necessary for us so that we do not lose heart and can endure until the end. This is the hope of Paul, that this church and us as well, might know the God of all endurance and encouragement. Through our working with this God under the judgment of the cross, we are to become people of one unrelenting passion, this building up of his house, to have such a zeal for this new way of life given to us that we become consumed by our love for what our God is doing in the world, even if in doing so, the world holds us in contempt. This one passion is to result in our oneness in Christ so that together we all with one voice will glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. As Paul wraps up his letter, he holds out this hope for them and us as well, ‘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.” Amen.
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