Welcome!

The theologically dense and tightly wound neighborhoods of Romans 1-8 and 9-11 can sometimes cause us to miss the equally challenging “therefores” of 12-15. But Paul seems unaware of the possibility of thinking that what you believe (orthodoxy) and how you behave (orthopraxy) can ever be separated. As N.T. Wright suggests, “It isn’t about a moralistic framework in which the only question that matters is whether we humans have behaved ourselves and so amassed a store of merit (“righteousness”) and, if not, where we can find such a store, amassed by someone else on our behalf. It is about the vocational framework in which humans are called to reflect God’s image in the world and about the rescue operation whereby God has, through Jesus, set humans free to do exactly that.” (Paul: A Biography. Page 408)

Think about that as you read the words of Romans 15:7: “Therefore welcome one another just as Christ has welcomed you, to the glory of God.”  Were I to paraphrase those words, they might sound something like “receive into your own place in life one another in the identical way that Christ received you into His own place in life. When you do that, God is glorified.”

The intensity of these words is controlled, at least to some extent, with how we define “one another.” If I want to lessen that intensity, then I will quickly say “one another” means fellow believers. But if I want to think more like Jesus – I’m pretty sure he redefined “one another” when He told that in-your-face story we call The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25ff). Somehow it seems I need to define “one another” in the context of a Jesus who welcomes me, but also a Jesus “who came into his own world and his own people received him not.” (John 1:11) How the world responds to me should impact how I welcome it. 

If, as a follower of Jesus, my “citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20ff) that seems to suggest that as an undocumented alien, Christ welcomed me into this new status with Him.  That seems all together consistent with the more “dense and tightly wound” words of Romans 5:6: “For while we were still weak, in the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” Think about “welcome one another in the same way Christ welcome you” in the context of those words! If you want to get it even more convicting, add Ephesians 2:11, 12 to the mix: “Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called ‘the uncircumcision’ by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands – remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope  and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” (ESV) Those verses are loaded with “status” language and the bottom line is that until Christ welcomed me, I had no status!

If “the one another” of Romans 15:7 includes “without status me” in its spirit of welcome, then that takes away most of the pushback I might have when it comes to being a kingdom person with a welcoming spirit.

Here’s what I know for sure. The person Jesus welcomed into His kingdom when He welcomed me didn’t deserve to sit by the charcoal fire and share in a breakfast of grilled fish and bread. (John 21:9ff) Nevertheless Jesus said, “Come and have breakfast.”

That invitation reflects God’s heart. My vocation as a human in love with Jesus is “to reflect God’s image in the world and about the rescue operation whereby God has, through Jesus, set humans free to do exactly that.” 

If those of us who authentically desire to follow Jesus would start “grilling some fish on a charcoal fire” and say “Come and have breakfast,” we might just change the world.

As Thanksgiving Day approaches, I can only say how grateful I am that He welcomed me to breakfast one morning and everything has changed.