By Pastor Greg
There is a joke that has been around for years about the wealthy man who begged to take his money with him when he died. God agreed, and when the man did die, he appeared at the Pearly Gates with a suitcase. St. Peter said that there were no carry-on’s allowed, but the man insisted he had permission. Peter opened the suitcase, looked at the bricks of gold the man had brought along, and exclaimed, “Seriously, you brought paving material”? Of course, a person would need to be familiar with the description of Heaven found in Revelation 21:21 to fully appreciate this story. But the truth remains: what we might consider to be precious here on earth is not the most valuable treasure in Heaven.
Too often Christians will build the Kingdom of God with piles of hay or dry grass. Too often Christians will make the little things the important things. As I shared last week, too often we forget that the Kingdom of God is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. And just like some within the early Church, some Christian’s today demand that Grace is not entirely sufficient; they claim that there is more to Salvation than merely faith in Christ.
We read in the book of Acts that the early Church faced constant insistence by some that the Grace of God given to a person who confesses Jesus as Lord was not entirely sufficient for Salvation. They constantly insisted that non-Jewish Christians begin practicing certain Jewish traditions in order to really be saved. As Paul and Barnabas were preaching among the Gentile people, some Jewish Christians demanded that these Gentile believers needed to adopt some of the practices of the Jewish faith. Yet, as Paul often argued, if these practices and customs were unable to save the Jew, why impose them upon a Gentile? The Jew who followed the requirements of the Law still needed the Grace of Jesus. Why force Gentiles to follow these rules if they didn’t work in the first place? So a division arose within the early Church, especially among those congregations where Jew and Gentile were worshiping together.
This is the problem Paul has been addressing all along in Romans; stressing that neither Jew nor Gentile is without excuse. Neither group is better or worse than the other. Both groups were marked by sin. Both groups needed Jesus. And in Romans 14 Paul is attempting to draw the two groups away from divisiveness and into unity. Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross was sufficient. We need not add anything to this message, especially a demand that all Christians have the same convictions. Yes, all Christians must be convicted that they are sinners in need of a Savior, but any other conviction a Christian might face is one of obedience; obedience to the Holy Spirit who is calling each individual into holiness and righteousness (Read Romans 14:14-23).
Lest we become judgmental against the Christians who insisted everyone share the same convictions, let me remind you that we struggle with the same thing today. Say that the Holy Spirit begins to convict you about something in your life. You are already a believer. You’ve already become a Christian. But He begins to prick your heart about something you should not be doing or about something you should start doing. Being an obedient Christian, you do as the Spirit has directed. For example, you stop watching certain television shows and instead spend your time praying. When you obey the Spirit’s conviction, you will find great peace and joy; for what you have done pleases the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Naturally we want others to experience the same joy. So we go to our brother and sister telling them about the joy we have found. But don’t we expect them to then feel the same conviction? Don’t we expect them to walk the same path we are on? Don’t we expect them to do just as we have done? And of course when they don’t, we have a tendency to think less of them and their faith, and more highly of our own. And when we do this we are no different that the Christians we read about here in Romans.
We are not all going to share the same convictions. We are not all going to live out our faith identically. My walk with Christ is going to be different than your walk with Christ. The Spirit is going to convict me in ways different than you. The Spirit is going to gift me differently than He gifts you. The point here is that rather than criticizing another believer for not sharing our same convictions, we should be encouraging them to submit to the convictions the Spirit has placed within them. After all, it is the Holy Spirit that convicts. And the last time I checked there are no openings in the Trinity. God is not looking for Christians to join the Junior Holy Spirit club. He is looking for Christians who are in fellowship with one another, who encourage one another, and who build up one another. The Holy Spirit does His work of convicting us of sin. It is the Spirit who says, “This is the way, walk in it” whenever we turn to the right or the left (Isaiah 30:21). Therefore, as Warren Wiersbe has said, “The mature Christian must exercise love and patience and be careful to not cause a less mature Christian to stumble or fall. And a less mature Christian must “grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). The weak must learn from the strong, and the strong must love the weak. The result will be peace and maturity to the glory of God”.
If we allow the Spirit to do His full work in our life, we will not just be convicted about our relationship with God. We will also be convicted about how our life as a Christian affects those around us. It is the mature Christian who thinks not just vertically, but horizontally as well. We are to submit to the Spirit’s conviction in our relationship with the Father and in our relationship with one another. Both are important.
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