Romans Chapter 14 cont'd
So how can we condemn or disregard our fellow believers? For we shall all have our individual turn before the judgment seat of Christ. The scripture says, "As surely as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow before me, and every person will verbally acknowledge what is true to God." Every one of us will give an account of ourselves to God. So let's not get sidetracked by critically evaluating each other, but zero in on evaluating what is critical- how we can avoid causing another believer to get tripped up by any insensitive attitudes or actions on our part.
I know by personal revelation from the Lord Jesus, that no material thing is intrinsically evil, but to the person who views it as unholy, it really is for him. If your fellow believer's heart is grieved by observing your liberty to eat anything, then you're not doing what love would dictate. Don't crush another believer's spirit by your not sacrificing a petty liberty when Christ sacrificed his very life for him! Be concerned about even good things you do that are easily misconstrued as being improper.
For the Kingdom of God cannot be reduced to personal and cultural preferences like habits of eating and drinking, but it is defined by the transcendent realities of righteousness, peace and joy which are inseparably linked to the person and ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Comments:
Servants of God possess a "missional" heart and they are those who cherish perspective..."zeroing in on what is critical" in any and every situation in which the Master has placed them. Helping to connect human beings with the Trinity and establishing as healthy (truly loving) of a relationship with them as possible, are the two most important matters before them. Paul had been enculturated as a Jewish leader of a most rigorous religious sub-group in the formative years of his life. But meeting the risen Christ on the Damascus road re-formed his heart and liberated him into a new perspective about the essence of true righteousness and the kind of robust spiritual bond between people and people groups that God has provided for the whole earth through Jesus.
When we are ushered into the real presence of the kingdom of God through the Holy Spirit's ministry, the cultural preferences by which we naturally tend to measure our (and others') degree of "right-ness", pale in significance to witnessing to (and participating in) the radical transformation of human beings (whatever their cultural background) by the power of the gospel of Jesus. The advent of the presence of Christ in their lives will enlighten them to turn away from and lead them out of the intrinsically evil aspects of their culture (various local versions of pride, greed, hatred, envy, deceit and lust) which we are also called to lovingly point out in a timely manner. However, this renewed perspective of what is genuinely critical in the eyes of God will provide for us a high degree of tolerance for and patience with people and their ways of living and relating that are different than ours.
Beyond this, when we touch and are touched by a different human culture than our own, we will inevitably learn many important new things ourselves that God himself has providentially placed in that culture that will draw us even closer to him. When we find the courage to cross over the cultural barriers for the sake of Christ (and truly there are cultural barriers right in our own "neighborhoods"), we will joyfully discover that he has gone into that culture ahead of us and that he has been waiting to meet and partner with us there on that "ground". Our eyes will be opened again and again to spiritual blind spots we've suffered from and new levels of our self-righteousness will be exposed, sprinkled afresh in and washed away by the shed blood of Jesus Christ. This perspective on life gives new guts and meaning to "following Christ"!
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