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Romans

Take Me to the Other Side

We have been travelling on a journey of transformation, trying to understand Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. In the previous post, we began unravelling the mystery of God’s mercy. If you read that post, then you now know that the mercy of God is his forgiveness and provision for those who love him. In this post, we will look at the other side of mercy.

As a reminder, Paul tells us in Romans 12, that it is because of the mercies of God that we are to be living sacrifices, transformed by the renewal of our minds and not conformed to the way of the world. Last time we looked at Jesus’ story of the Samaritan to illustrate the provision and compassion of God that mercy requires of us. Today, we start with another of the parables in Luke that illustrates mercy.

Tax Collectors and sinners gathered regularly around Jesus. We are told in Luke that one of the frequent complaints of the good people about Jesus is that he welcomed these people and ate with them. The world is always good at labelling sinners. The “un-desireables” vary from generation to generation and culture to culture, but there are always those whom the world labels and gives up on. Jesus gave up on nobody.

In Luke 15, the religious people are concerned about how Jesus welcomes any and all. So, he replies with parables like the lost sheep and the lost coin. He tells them that Heaven itself is filled with rejoicing when one of the lost returns to the Lord. Each of those parables starts as a rhetorical question, “who among you would fail to act the same?” Then Jesus brings it so very close to home.

He says that a certain young man tells his father to give him his coming inheritance. In that culture it was the equivalent of a child telling their parent to “drop dead”. The young man then travels to what is described as a far country where he squanders his inheritance in loose living and find himself at what the alcoholics refer to as rock bottom.

The young man decides to swallow his pride and return to his father. He will throw himself at his father’s feet and become a servant rather than an heir because he has learned the errors of his ways. Anyone hearing this story would have connected with the parent who was wronged. Judgment of the son upon his return was the anticipated result.

Instead, Jesus tells us that when the son was still a long way off, the Father ran! Again, this was not a culture in which grown men ran for anything but fear and battle. Yet the father ran to meet the son! Before the son can even give his rehearsed speech, he is met with forgiveness and love. He is given a choice robe, the signet ring that marks him as an heir, and a celebration will be had with a fatted calf. He experiences mercy, unconditional love and provision.

Here at the end of the story Jesus reveals that there is an older brother; a sibling who has not done anything wrong. He has served the father in the proper ways and has not squandered any of the resources entrusted to him. He has been patient and dare we say righteous in his relationship to the Father. The older brother refuses to participate in the celebration because he cannot see past the behavior of his sibling.

The father comes out to urge the other son to join the party. The son reminds the father of all that the younger brother did no doubt certain that his judgment against the son is correct. Where is the justice in these actions you have taken to welcome him back in? That is the question on his mind.

The father replies “My son, you are always with me and all that I have is yours, but we had to celebrate your brother’s return because he was dead but now, he is alive; he was lost and now is found.”

Let’s be clear. The Father in the story is God. The inheritance is the loving provision, protection, and salvation that God provides. All of us are in some way the younger brother who rejects God and seeks to live life on our own terms, until we experience the revelation that we need God in our lives. The tragedy is that many of us after experiencing the salvation of God found in Jesus Christ become the older brother.

Content in the love of God and his forgiveness, too many Christians become judgmental. We no longer look at others with eyes of mercy. We are quick to count faults, remember past misdeeds, and think that God should lead with judgment instead of mercy towards those who wish to return. Somehow, the people of faith, who have experienced mercy, are quick to withhold the same grace from others. In their hearts they believe that they are maintaining the sanctity of the faith, but in reality, they have missed the truth of God’s grace from the beginning. If God has forgiven you of your sins, then he will forgive anyone of their sins.

“The mercies of the LORD are new every morning,” Jeremiah says. If that is true (and it is!) then those mercies are fresh and new each day for everyone. Those who have been transformed know this. Not only do they know this, but they join in the celebration when those who were lost are found. They do not sit outside and go “tsk, tsk”. They do not say “yeah, but what about…”. Instead, they say “Praise the LORD, for his mercy is from everlasting to everlasting!”

In Hebrews 9:11-28, we are told how the blood of Jesus on the cross is so much more effectual than the blood of the bulls and goats that were sacrificed on the altar in the temple. You can read the whole passage following the link above, but the point is driven home with these words: “how much more then will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our conscienses from the acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! For this reason, Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised inheritance — now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.“

This is the mercy that Paul is referring to when he writes “I urge you therefore because of the mercies of God to present yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, this is your true and proper worship.“

True Christians have experienced the forgiveness effected by the cross of Christ. True Christians are committed to extending this same mercy to everyone. Not conformed (the world seeks to judge and lessen) but rather transformed (the spirit person is merciful and edifies) by the renewal of the mind. True Christians know that God has forgiven them, and they should then forgive others. Be merciful because your Father in Heaven is merciful.

Why do so many Christians get this wrong? I suspect that it is pride. Once forgiven it is easy enough for a person to think they somehow earned or deserved that forgiveness. Pride tells us God loves us because we deserved that love. Pride tells us that we are more deserving than others. These thoughts are not the mindset of those living as the transformed.

There is an Aerosmith song entitled Take Me to the Other Side. It is not a gospel tune. Small surprise there, right? It does however contain this lyric. “Forget about your foolish pride. Take me to the other side.” Perhaps that should be our prayer. “Lord help me to forget my foolish pride and take me to the other side.” The other side is where Christ is waiting.

Peace to you on your own journey. Vaya con Dios!

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Mercy, Mercy Me

The previous post began our journey through Romans. You can read it here. If you are up to date, you know that we ended that post by saying that “it all begins with mercy.”

“Therefore, I urge all of you because of the mercies of God” Paul writes in Romans 12:1. The therefore at the start of 12 is the culmination of all that Paul has written to the church in Rome up to that point; so, if this is the culmination of his argument, then mercy is a key thing to understand.

Mercy is everywhere in the scriptures. These posts on Romans are an effort to synthesize a three-year bible study that I led. The first year we walked through the Gospel of Luke. We encountered mercy over and over again. For Example: when Mary begins to prophesize after the angel Gabriel has come, she recites Psalm 103: “His mercy is upon generation after generation toward those who fear Him.” Likewise, Zacharias says “because of the tender mercy of our God with which the Sunrise from on high will visit us” referring to the promised messiah. Perhaps most importantly though Jesus himself highlights mercy to his followers.

Jesus in the midst of the beatitudes and preaching in Luke says “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” This is not just a suggestion; it is something that is to be true of those who follow God. We are to be merciful. The parallel passage in Matthew expresses the same point differently. There the word is perfect. “Study to be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.” Now that can cause a lot of grief for a person, because I don’t know about you, but I fail at perfection usually in the first hour of my day. Perfection is an ideal. But Luke helps us to understand that being perfect like God means being merciful!

We will come back to that thought in a minute but first we need to consider another place where Jesus highlights mercy. One day, a lawyer challenges Jesus to explain what it means to love your neighbor by asking “who is my neighbor?”. Jesus replies with a parable (the story of the good Samaritan) that culminates in this question, “Whom do you suppose was the neighbor to the man who was left for dead?”; the answer given “the one who showed mercy to him” is met with the response “go and do the same.”

The underlying Greek word for mercy is eleos. It is a word with a rich and deep meaning. In the New Testament the word means more than forgiveness, although it does mean forgiving a debt or providing pardon. Eleos also means compassion, generosity, and provision. The Samaritan did all of this in the story. In that manner he acted like his Father, God.

In Exodus 34, God offers a self-description to Moses: “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness (hesed) and truth…“. Mercy is so important to the character of YHWH that it is the first adjective used in his self-description!

Hebrew scholars note that the word for mercy and the word for womb have the same trilateral root. In Biblical Hebrew, all words are built outward from three core consonants. These “roots” provide insight into the meaning behind the word. We do something similar in English. You can understand the English word enlightenment if you know the meaning of light as to illumine or make something easier to see. The womb is a place of love, safety, and provision for the baby. It is in the womb that the strong bonds of love are first formed between mother and child. The womb is a place where the growing child is kept safe and where all that is needed is provided.

Saying God is merciful is to say that he loves unconditionally, that God forms us, and we grow when connected to him. Saying God is merciful means that he provides everything that we need. We see aspects of this mercy throughout Luke, not only with the Samaritan, but also when Jesus feeds the 5000, heals the demoniacs, and when he promises the thief on the cross that that very day, he would join him in Paradise. Mercy all around!

The writer of Hebrews shares “we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God… therefore lets us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.“

What does this have to do with Paul and his Letter to the Romans?

Paul grew up learning all that we know as the Old Testament. Early in his life, he felt that he understood all of who God was, what it meant that he was merciful and gracious; righteous and just. Paul was so certain of his understanding he persecuted the Christians in Jerusalem and other places because he was certain that they were heretics sharing falsehoods about God. Then it all changed. After encountering Jesus in a vision, he rededicated his understanding of those scriptures to comprehend what it meant for someone to have risen from the dead. By the time Paul is writing to Rome, and by the grace of God to us as well, he is able to say because of the mercies of God (his provision, his protection, his transforming spirit, and his salvation) we are to provide ourselves as living sacrifices.

Our forgiveness and justification in Christ Jesus are just the starting point. Now we are to live out mercy-filled lives in response to what God has done for us. This is our “rightful worship”. The path of your transformation follows opportunities of mercy, and it means so much more than just being more forgiving.

Some will recognize a Marvin Gaye song from the title of this post. Not particularly theological, but the song begins “oh mercy, mercy me, things aren’t what they seem to be, no.” In our next post we will start at the beginning of Romans and start seeing that the world isn’t what it seems. Until then the title of this post is a prayer you can live this week.

In Exodus when God describes himself it is written that he descended from the cloud and proclaimed the Name of the Lord. “YHWH, YHWH ELOHIM, a god of Mercy…” mercy is not just what God does but it is who God is! So, the title is a prayer best read this way: “MERCY, mercy me.”

Thank you for reading. If this post blessed you, please share it with someone else. As always it is freely given. You are welcome to use it although it would be nice if you credited where it came from.

Peace to you on your own journey, Vaya con Dios!

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Be Transformed: a Journey through Romans

Have you ever wanted to know the will of God? Sure. Really everyone has at one time or another. Christians ask questions such as “Why is God allowing this to happen to me?” “What is God trying to teach me in this moment?” Even atheists, before the hard-shell of disbelief fully solidifies, struggle with the idea of knowing the will of God. When they make the statement “I cannot believe in a god that would allow children to suffer” or “Why doesn’t God stop all suffering if He is all-powerful and loving?” In all these instances there is a desire to understand the will of God.

The 12th Chapter of the Book of Romans begins with this:

“Therefore, I urge you, in light of the mercy of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but rather be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may discern what is the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God.“

Herein is scripture’s answer to the question “How do I know what God’s will is?” Want to be able to determine the will of God? Then present your whole self as a living sacrifice and arrange your mind and heart on the proper trajectory. As often is the case with the best questions the answer opens up to something deeper to understand. Let us work backwards for a bit so that we can then plunge deeper.

If we want to know the will of God, that which Paul describes as good, acceptable, and perfect, then we must first learn to think rightly. There is a focus, a mindset, a worldview, a direction (whatever you want to call it) that will enable any of us to discern God’s will. Some well-versed students of scripture may respond, “does it not say that the Lord says that ‘my ways are not your ways; my thoughts are not your thoughts'”? IT does! This may seem contradictory. To be sure, I am not suggesting that we can fully know the mind of God nor ever completely understand all there is to know about him. But I am saying that there is a way for us to discern God’s will in our lives and in the world around us. These truths can exist side by side. Furthermore, the very fact that God’s ways and thoughts are not our ways and thoughts reenforces the idea that we have to change our own thinking in order to discern. The thought process we are going to be discovering together is not natural to a person.

Do not to be conformed to this world but rather be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

There are four words in the passage that we need to briefly touch on. First is mind. Here Paul is referring to more than simply our brains and intellect. Paul didn’t use the other normal words for mind found in Greek. He used nous. This comes from the Greek verb for perception and understanding. So, this is more than just thoughts, but intentionality. It is both how we think and what we do. This intentionality derives from the way that we see and perceive things.

Imagine that you are walking and see a man grabbing at an elderly woman on a street corner. You may think to yourself that he is assaulting the woman. You may think he is robbing her. Then you realize he is preventing her from stepping in front of traffic. The difference in the three is perception. Once you have all the inputs the intentionality of the action is clear.

Another example. If you were reading in your home and suddenly hear loud popping sounds and explosions, you might be afraid that something horrible was happening outside. If you remember that it is New Year’s Eve, you will be less afraid for your life and more afraid for your roof because you will have discerned that those sounds are from fireworks and a celebration is happening.

Paul says that we can discern God’s will by the renewal of our nous through transformation, the second of the four words. The Greek is a word that we are all familiar with metamorphosis, the changing of one thing into another thing. The most common example is of course the caterpillar that enters the cocoon and exits a butterfly. Once common and green with lots of feet and strange bendy locomotion now with beautiful wings and flight! I was at a funeral once when the preacher shared that the caterpillar actually becomes a soupy mixture inside the cocoon. All that the caterpillar was is gone. The butterfly is literally something new.

Something that can be lost in the English translations is how the transformation is taking place. Without getting into the weeds of verb tenses and grammar, the simple point is this transformation is happening to you it is not of your own doing. Like the caterpillar the metamorphosis is outside of our control. How can this be? It is the work of the Holy Spirit. While this is not self-evident in these verses, as we journey through Romans together it will become more obvious.

A quick note about the trajectory that we are on. Over the past three years I conducted a weekly Bible Study where we studied in this order Luke, Hebrews, Philippians, and Romans. This Bible Study was part of the reason that it took so long for me to complete the blog post series on Mark. This post is the first in a series on Romans wherein I am going to try and integrate and convey all that I learned over those three years. While Romans will serve as the roadmap, we will take rest stops and side trips into those other books I mentioned along the way. The overall journey I pray will be mutually beneficial.

While the transformation is not something that we “make happen” there is a way in which we can allow the transformation to flow more easily in our lives. There is something that we can do to get out of our own way to what the Holy Spirit is trying to accomplish in us. We can experience the transformation more readily only if we are not conformed to this world.

Conformed is the third word. Conformity is often poorly spoken of because it presents the image of being like everyone else. Young people are often masters of conformity, but truth be told so are adults. One 18th century theologian wrote “all men are born original and die copies.”

When I was in boot camp we went through a structured regimen of conformity. We were issued the same clothes, given the same hair cut (shaved), and went through the same daily routine at the same time. We were being made to conform so that we could act as a team and think collectively and not as individuals. Conformity by itself is not a bad thing. As believers we are to conform to the image of Christ. As I type this the Summer Olympics are happening. I can assure you that the swimmers are more successful conforming to the strokes that they were taught than to conform to the things that I do when I am in the pool. The problem with conformity is not the action itself but the object of the conformity. Which leads us to the fourth word.

Do not be conformed to this world.

We live in a post-modern world where facts are “fluid,” and all things are only true in so far as they are believed to be true. That is not the world of God. We also live in a world that teaches that we must put ourselves first. We live in a world that suggests that coming out on top and survival are the only things that matter. I could go on and on, but it would belabor the point, and I suspect that most people who have read this far understand that there is a disconnect between most of what we call culture (no matter where you live) and the ways of God.

I do want to clarify that when Paul uses the term world here, he is not trying to denounce the actual physical creation. World here is a way of saying the current Age. For Paul there is the current Age and the Age to come. We will see as we go through Romans together that Paul typically refers to the current age as the flesh and the age to come as the spirit. This may seem confusing. No matter what words are used for the distinction, the concept is what will shape you and how you live. I prefer to think of them as spheres of influence on your mind and soul.

There is a focus, a mindset, a worldview, a direction (whatever you want to call it) of the world that shapes our thoughts and actions. Paul is telling us that if we want to understand the will of God then we have to have eyes to see the distinctions between the two spheres that influence us. We develop those eyes by resisting conformity and allowing transformation.

Let’s reconsider the verses again, this time with a more paraphrased translation:

“Therefore, I urge yall, because of God’s mercy to present your bodies as a living sacrifice set-apart from the world around you and striving to embody God’s ways. This is the sort of worship that a person with the Holy Spirit offers. Resist conforming to this world by embracing the Spirit’s transformation of your every thought and intentions so that you can come to understand the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God.“

In order to learn how to embrace this other way of thinking, doing, and being we will need to begin our journey through Romans. We need to unpack and understand all that Paul has written up to the “therefore” that begins chapter 12. As I mentioned above, to do so we will be drawing on other parts of scripture emphasizing Luke, Hebrews, and Philippians specifically. Our journey into how to be transformed begins with the first highlighted word above: mercy.

But that is for next time. Thank you for reading. If this post blessed you, please share it with a someone else. As always it is freely given. You are welcome to use it although it would be nice if you credited where it came from.

Peace to you on your own journey, vaya con Dios!

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