For the Glory of God

One of my daily routines is to do my best to remind the person I look at in the mirror every morning and say, “you don’t deserve to do what you get to do.” I don’t think that is some sort of pseudo-humility or depraved lack of self-worth – but the result of understanding the power of grace.

For a number of years I taught a class at Point titled “Life and Literature of Paul.” It was a survey of sorts of both the great apostle’s life and his epistles. I enjoyed teaching that class and decided somewhere along the way I wanted to figure out what made Paul the person he was.

I don’t know that I fully figured all of that out, but clearly his personality contributed to the intensity of his faith and mission. He no doubt benefited from two great educational experiences – in Tarsus as a Roman citizen and in Jerusalem with Gamaliel. But I don’t think either of those ideas fully explain Paul. What I think really added to creating the person we meet in the New Testament is that Paul knew he actually deserved to go to hell – but by the grace of God he wasn’t. From that he was determined to tell every person he met about Jesus and the good news.

It was that reality that led him to be willing to go to jail for the sake of Gentiles (Ephesians 3:1) or to sit down with a group of God-worshipping Gentile women alongside a river outside the city gates of Philippi and have a conversation about Jesus that led to a kingdom outpost being established. (Acts 16:11-15). Such stories can be found all over the place in Acts and Paul’s epistles.

All of that makes me think that the modus operandi for his life might have been something like what he says in Romans 15:7. “Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” (ESV) The word welcome in this verse was often used in the sense of to receive someone into your home or circle of acquaintance. 

I say all of this to make this point – the tension in our culture right now is powerful testimony of our desperate need for the good news of Jesus that calls us to welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us. The world into which those words were first spoken made nearly absolute judgments about others based on gender, group, or geography. Paul’s words (see Galatians 3:28 for example) and his actions (go back to Acts 16) declare that in Christ, we set aside gender, group, and geography as identifiers of one’s worth and welcome each other.

What we saw last weekend in Charlottesville is paradigmatic of our desperate circumstances. Instead of “welcoming another as Christ has welcomed us” we have decided to play a game of “they did it to me so I get to do it to them.” That, with an unhealthy dose of “my way or the high way” is a recipe for cultural meltdown. 

Without the reconciling power of the gospel we are stuck in a conundrum of pushing and shoving; violent behavior; inept explanations; demands for personal preferences; and who knows what else that will always end in more of the same. 

In Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, he prophetically reminds the church of the consequences of doing nothing. “So here we are moving toward the exit of the twentieth century with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a taillight behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of justice.” 

I know the Charlottesville tragedy is complicated and involves multiple levels of failure. The same can be said for the president’s remarks since that time. The idea of superiority based on race is so antithetical to biblical testimony that it causes me to wonder how people totally miss the testimony of creation and Scripture. (Ps. 19) No wonder the “words of their mouths and meditations of their hearts” are so far from “acceptable to God.” 

Paul wasn’t able to sit down with a bunch of Gentile women and have a conversation about Jesus because he attended a Dale Carnegie seminar on winning friends or thought it was time for Jews and Gentiles to start getting along better.

That happened because of the reconciling power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and he knew if that gospel had power to change him, the whole world could be changed.

By the way – Paul is very comfortable with letting the government do its job. (Romans 13) But he doesn’t think the government can do the gospel’s job. In King’s language – he thought the church ought to be headlights not tail lights. We should pray that our government will do its job, but dare not think it can actually genuinely fix the problem. 

It is worth noting that he ends that Romans 15:7 verse with this phrase “for the glory of God.” When, through the reconciling power of the gospel the church creates welcoming communities of believers all over the place – God is glorified. God made us to be “one.” Because we couldn’t on our own, He sent Jesus. When we tell that story and it happens, God is glorified. 

Headlights.

Not taillights. 

 

It’s time to decide which we will be!