To Him - Forever

Today we enter the third chapter of application after the great doctrinal chapters of Romans 1-11. We begin Romans 14 and clearly the theme remains the same as in chapters 12 and 13: love your neighbor as you love yourself. But the specific issue in this chapter is how a church can hold together when some members are so different from each other.

The way Paul sums up that difference is by saying that some have weak faith and some have strong faith. The entire chapter of 14 plus part of chapter 15 (up through verse 13) is dealing with the danger of divisions in the church that can happen because of the differences between the weak and the strong.

But more is at stake in Romans 14 than whether we treat each other lovingly when we disagree about what to eat or drink or what days to celebrate. Those are the surface issues…

Paul’s burden, at one level, is that we not judge and despise each other because of these disagreements. In Paul’s mind what is at stake in this chapter is eternal life. He foresees the possibility that some professing believers—in the judgment of charity he calls brothers—could be destroyed if the church does not learn how to love each other in these minor issues of conscience.

It raises the question of eternal security—which I believe in. It raises the question of the certain, saving effectiveness of the cross of Christ—which I believe in. How we love each other in regard to non-essential differences is an essential issue because it can lead a person to heaven or to hell.

What Paul stresses in these verses is “every” and “each.” Verse 10b: “We will all stand before the judgment seat of God.” And the “all” is emphatic at the front of the sentence in the original language. Then verse 11, “Every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” Not some, but every. Then verse 12, “So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.” Each and every and all. That’s the stress. And it means that every person, as a single individual, will give a personal account of your life to God.

You and I will stand before the judgment seat of the Creator of the universe. We are not a statistic. We were created personally by God for a reason. And we will give an account of how you fulfilled his purpose for you on earth—namely, to trust him and love him and obey him and display his excellence in the world. We will give an individual account to God.

In Revelation 20:12-15, we notice that there are books with our deeds written in them, and there is another book of life with the names of all those who are in Christ—the book of the Lamb who was slain (Revelation 13:8). Works do not save us; but works confirm that we are saved. Not perfectly, but with humble longing for more holiness. Fruit does not make a tree good. Fruit shows that the tree is good. For the believer whose name is written in the book of life, the other books become books of confirmation, not books of condemnation.

Simply put: we love our brother, don’t judge him. We may have to correct him or admonish him or rebuke him. But let our brotherly affection show. Help him get to heaven, don’t make it harder. And whatever we do, don’t destroy him.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” (Matthew 5:7).

At the heart of all sin is a lie. The lie says to all of us in our sin, "The act you are now doing, the desire or attitude you are now feeling is not very bad because there are much worse things, not very bad because everyone else experiences the same things, not very bad because you can't help it, not very bad because there is no God, or, if that won't work, God knows you are but frail and weak and he will tolerate and pity your sin." There are a thousand distortions of the truth which sin brings with it into the human heart, so much so that Jeremiah cries out, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?" (17:9).

Nothing exposes our sinfulness like the Word of God. It blows away the thick fog of deception and lets us see sin for what it really is. Not that we might wallow in it, but that we might flee from it.

Chapter 14 makes it clear that we cannot view sin any more merely as breaking the ten commandments or transgressing a list of dos and don'ts. "Everything that is not from faith is sin." Coming to church may be sin, staying home may be sin. Eating steak may be sin and not eating steak may be sin. One of Satan's most successful lies is that sin can be limited to a manageable list of dos and don'ts. The reason this is so satanic is that it causes thousands of churchgoers to think that things are OK between them and God because they avoid one list of don'ts and practice another (much shorter) list of dos; but in fact may be sinning all day long, incurring the wrath of God, because their attitudes and actions do not come from faith in the promises of God.

Please don't think that this cannot happen to people in the church, in our church. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, "When I could bear it no longer, I sent that I might know your faith, for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and that our labor would be in vain." Among churchgoers, Satan is primarily in the business of replacing vital faith with mere morality. He loves to take a life flowing from happy confidence in God and turn it into a perfunctory religious regimen. Don't let him do it! For "whatever is not from faith is sin," including religion.

"Sanctification" is a very irrelevant word, but it is not an irrelevant reality. It's like a hundred technical medical terms. Nobody but doctors use them, but your life depends on the reality they stand for. "Sanctification" comes from two Latin words: sanctus which means holy, and ficare which means make. So to sanctify means to make holy. But, of course, the word "holy" isn't much more relevant today than sanctification—what with "holy mackerel" and "holy cow" and "holy buckets"—we've just about ruined one of the highest and most valuable words in the Bible.

Focus for a moment on this one fact: sanctification is the goal of Paul's missionary labor. He pictures himself as a priest. His ministry as a priest is to preach the gospel. And the offerings he brings to God as a priest are Gentiles. And these Gentiles are acceptable because they are sanctified. Paul is not merely aiming for converts; he is aiming to make people sanctified. The aim of Christian missions is to cause people to obey a new Commander. Sanctification is happening where the words of Jesus are being obeyed.

One of our goals as Christians, should be to be a people with a wartime mentality and a wartime lifestyle. There are a hundred ways for you to gain victory over evil in the power of Christ and advance his cause in the way you work and even play —if you maintain a wartime mentality. Paul has defined sanctification so that it can be a part of our wartime vocabulary. Sanctification is obeying the Commander-in-Chief. Sanctification is a wartime word. A sanctified person has unswerving commitment to his cause. A sanctified person has uncompromising loyalty to the Commander and to his comrades in arms. So whenever you think of sanctification, think of wartime missions and wartime character. It was the goal of Paul's mission strategy, and it was the radical obedience that fulfilled that goal.

The first and highest foundation of sanctification is the grace of God. God's grace turned Paul into a minister of Christ. Moved by this grace, then, Paul undertakes the service of the gospel—he preaches the good news that Christ died for sinners and offers eternal joy to those who believe. Then, the result of this preaching is that Gentiles become sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Sanctification happens when the gospel preached and the Spirit poured out meet with power in the human heart.

We see in verse 14, perhaps to our surprise, that the people themselves—the offering itself that “we” are preparing for God—are supposed to take the measure of goodness and knowledge that we have and use it to admonish each other. In other words, in our ministry to each other, we are utterly crucial in preparing ourselves as a holy and obedient offering to God. Which means that our aim is now this: to exult in Christ and his work through us to prepare an offering of holy and obedient people by preaching and teaching and praying and applying the gospel of Christ in such a way that other people themselves will be filled with goodness and knowledge to admonish and instruct and exhort and warn and encourage each other.

And underneath that goal lies the great God-exalting truth: In all our work—and in all their work—it is God who works. From him and through him and to him be glory, forever! Amen.