Romans Chapter 14 cont'd
One believer regards one day as more sacred than another. Another believer views each day as equally sacred. Things like this should be seen as a matter of personal conscience that allows for individual liberty. The one who celebrates a certain day as special, does so as an expression of love for the Lord. The one who equally celebrates every day also does so as an expression of love for the Lord. Just like the one who eats freely worships the Lord in his eating, and the one who abstains from meat worships the Lord by not eating. Can't you see that the truly important issues are not the externals, but the motives of the heart- love and worship.
Comments:
It is so natural for us to pick out external-oriented preferences in life and make them the measures by which we evaluate our own spirituality and the spirituality of others. (Consider things like preferences in clothing, fashion, food, beverages, hair styles, music, forms of praying, family traditions, spending money, entertainment, sports, language idioms, "secondary" doctrines, ways of "doing church" and the like.) This very human habit is rooted in our desire to look and be "right" and externals are easy targets for us to use to "prove" our rightness to ourselves and the people whose opinions matter to us. (Someone said that "being right" is the booby prize of life!) Yet, when we read through the gospels, we are confronted again and again with how Jesus lived, ministered and worked to undermine this kind of self-righteousness...and...we love him for it! He heroically sees beyond the externals of race, religious (or non-religious) background, cultural prejudices, social standings, religious titles, economic states and man-made traditions and looks upon the "heart" of both matters and people.
Now there are obviously sinful "external" ways of living and relating that can be clearly identified and properly condemned. The NT has several contrasting lists of the kinds of attitudes and behaviors that are of the flesh or of the Spirit. (Galatians 5 comes to mind.) But the problem arises when we add to the list our own culturally/personally derived "taboos", "do's and don'ts" and "biases" and place these matters into the "essential" category. We must make room in our church cultures, without it being viewed as divisive, for fellow believers to have and hold ongoing and differing preferences and convictions regarding non-essentials. Beyond this, we must actually fight for their freedom to choose differently than we would. (When we apply this same principle to people who haven't yet come to faith in Christ, we often find ourselves tempted to "write people off" who have transgressed a true ethical essential without offering them a chance at receiving God's mercy in Christ. Maybe they've "blown it" over and over again, but their hearts could truly be crying out for freedom and they would jump at the chance of receiving forgiveness and repent for their wicked ways.)
Romans 14 is an apostolic appeal to us to live in and proclaim the freedom and liberty that Christ has modeled and purchased for us with his blood. He has come to free us to live in God's love and allow the "present-tense" love and personal leadership of the Holy Spirit to help us transcend fleshly hatred, prejudice and self-justification so that we can reach out to people who are either "coming from a different place" than we are on non-essential matters or to people who need to be touched by the good news of Jesus. May the Father help us to rise up from our insecurities and fear-based judgments to love others with his compelling, joy-filled, attractive and liberating love through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen!
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