The Romance of Romans-Part 103

Romans Chapter 15 cont'd

Even the most powerful man of all, Jesus Christ, didn't use his power to create for himself a pain-free and pleasure-filled earthly life. As scripture says, "I have personally identified with and embraced the rejection they have shown you O God." All the scriptures have been written to impart knowledge, patience and comfort to us so that we can live in hope- a confident expectation of a glorious future.

Comments:

I have been very blessed through many years to learn from Dr. Larry Crabb--both through his ground-breaking books and in person. (I have had the unusual and joyful opportunity to get to know most of the authors of our generation whose books have impacted me the most.) For decades now, Larry has studied, pondered, wrestled with, prayed through, reconsidered and written about the doctrines, instructions, poetry and narratives of Scripture and applied them specifically to the conditions and situations of our individual lives and relationships with God and people. I have great admiration and respect for this dear friend in Christ and will say more about his teaching in the next few blogs.

I think of Larry's body of work when I read again the final sentence of this paragraph from my devotional paraphrase of Romans 15: "All the scriptures have been written to impart knowledge, patience and comfort to us so that we can live in hope- a confident expectation of a glorious future."--wow, what a lineup.

Let's ponder briefly the quote above.

First, God has given us the amazing gift of the holy Scriptures. They are meant to be meditated upon and applied by us throughout our whole lives and are an inexhaustible supply of reliable truths that are divinely inspired, or "God-breathed". Are we doing this kind of study in both our personal and communal lives? So much more could be said about the power of the written and spoken word of God in this world and in our lives!

Second, and I'll start at the end point, to live in an atmosphere of hope is a present tense experience whose power lies in a certainty about a marvelous future because of something absolutely revolutionary that happened in the past...the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Followers of Jesus Christ are empowered by the Holy Spirit to live as "prophetic" (i.e. future reality) witnesses to the kingdom of God that is truly here and present now, but not fully revealed or demonstrated, as it will surely be. Jesus is risen from the dead and, because of this, all the other effects of the fall of both angels and humanity into rebellion against God and it's countless negative consequences will surely be undone.

Then, the Scriptures are filled with the knowledge we need to live lives of integrity (i.e. wholeness) and true success. At one point God laments through the prophet Hosea, "...my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests...." Hos 4:6 Followers of Jesus are called to live as "royal priests" in our fallen world who embody and radiate the wisdom, beauty and knowledge of the living God to all the earth. "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light." 1 Pet 2:9

Next, Paul refers to how the Scriptures inspire the cultivation of the virtue of patience in our lives. Without holding before us the perpetual example of the heroes of faith in the Bible, who loved and served God and people (and who also recovered from failing to do so!), we can easily lose heart in the saga of our struggles with injustice, rejection, abandonment, illness, material need, tragedy, seemingly unanswered prayer and personal failure...to name just a few trials of life. But again and again, the Bible provides for us divine perspectives that equip us with the kind of "shock absorbers" for our life's "vehicle" so that our hope does not bounce out of the car. One of these primary perspectives is how patience (like the kind that God possesses) can only be worked into our souls through enduring and surmounting trials...and another...that there will be a more than commensurate, but eternal, reward for the temporary sufferings we experience, if we do not give up.

Finally, there is the comfort that God gives us through our engagement with holy Scripture. I think that comfort is the most mysterious of the elements here in view. (Why do scrapes feel better when kissed by our amazing mothers?) We all long for comfort in our lives and we too often settle for false ones that do not go deep enough or last long enough to satisfy our aching hearts. So much could be said here, but it is sufficient to say that the most exquisite comfort possible comes to us by experiencing the genuine presence of the Trinity in the midst of a life in which, assuredly, not everything is going well and nothing is going perfectly. This, most often and most promisingly, happens for us as God interacts with us through his written word. The Holy Spirit...who is called "the Comforter"...who originally inspired the writings and has watched over their accurate transmission through the centuries is the very same Spirit who draws near to us, rises within us, kisses our hearts and whispers the truth we need to hear into our spirits. There is no comfort in this hurting earth greater than this.