Romans 15: True Unity

What immediately comes to mind when you hear the word tolerance? You may be indifferent, but more likely than not you fall into a spectrum between crusading for it and crusading against it. Regardless of our initial reactions, if we take an honest look at the contemporary idea of tolerance, then we can see that it actually raises a few good questions. How do we treat our neighbor? How do we treat each other?

Foundational to loving our neighbor is having a servant’s heart. Our focus should be for the benefit of others not ourselves (v. 1-2). Christ’s life and death gives us our greatest example of true servant love. Even more, Christ’s love for us and for other empowers us to love as he loves. We can talk about behavior modification changing our hidden biases but that ultimately leaves us powerless to true heart-felt change. My suspicion is that those who attempt being tolerant that way only really change who they are tolerant towards. As Christians we should examine ourselves to see how we love our neighbors who are different from us.

Secondly, we are to accept one another as Christ as accepted us (v. 7). The church should be a place of acceptance and love. For those we like and love to be around this is easy and energizing, but for those to whom extra grace is required, extra grace is required. How we love those we do not like or who annoy us is the measuring stick by which we truly accept one another. Sometimes loving another includes confronting sin in them (Matthew 18:15-20, James 5:20), but admonition only works if it is done with a history of true godly love and acceptance towards them. This is true unity and we can live in it only as we trust in God who fills us with joy and peace leading to an overflowing hope (v. 13). This is what the world longs for in tolerance but is always just out of reach.

Posted by Aaron Miner