Rom. 13:14; 14:1 Turning A New Page

SPEAKER 02 : 0:05

So Paul is near to concluding his theme on the coming of Jesus and how we live in the presence of that doorway to the end of history and to the beginning of history and the beginning of eternal life in this history. And he is telling us that because of the coming of Jesus, we set new priorities. And that is that we put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lusts. In other words, we change our priorities. We have a world to serve. We have a community that is in darkness. We have people that are confused. They don’t know the truth. They don’t know what to believe. And there seems to be a sense of meaningless throughout the planet and throughout this country. And Paul is telling us to put on the light, to put on Jesus Christ, to recognize that we are the salt of the earth, to recognize that we are the light that must not be put under a bushel, under a bed, but let to shine forth. We need to speak without fear of consequences, or even if we do fear consequences, let’s leave the consequences to God and simply talk and speak the simple truth, the good news. It’s not bad news, it’s good news. Why should we hold back on good news? We have something wonderful to say to the world. And let’s say it. So there’s a truth here that I just want to dwell on for a moment before we move into chapter 14, and that is, make no provision for the flesh. Now, we need to understand what the flesh is. The flesh is not the skin that you are contained in. The flesh is not what is physical. The flesh is not simply what is below the belt. The flesh is all our humanity, body, soul, and spirit, outside of fellowship with God. And the spirit is body, soul, and spirit in fellowship with God. you can eat a meal in the flesh or in the spirit. You can be a glutton, you can just gobble it all up without any gratitude and thankfulness, and you can ruin your health. That’s eating in the flesh. Or you can have a meal in the spirit in which you are thankful and where you’ve carefully prepared it, where it’s good healthy food, and it blesses you. That’s the same with everything. You can have a glass of wine in the flesh or in the spirit. You can experience sexual joy or pleasure in the flesh or in the spirit. All of these realities need to be understood because we’re not talking about people who artificially deny the body as if it were intrinsically evil. The body is fallen, it is broken, it is full of sin, but it is not intrinsically, naturally, innately evil. We are not these gnostics of the first century who believed that everything physical was unnatural and sinful. and therefore they needed to deny the flesh, the physical, by living in caves, by doing things that were almost deadly to them. Certain Christians in the Middle Ages went into monasteries, slept only four hours a night, slept on boards, ate only two meals a day, as if this were a holiness because they were denying the physical. This is not what the Christian life is. The Christian life is not Gnosticism. People used to think that, or certain philosophers and theologians thought maybe Jesus was a Gnostic, because he seemed at certain times to suggest that the physical nature was innately evil. But it was a mistake. He did not teach that. And Jesus sharing the community life of ordinary individuals, eating and sleeping in their homes, and communing with sinners, showed very clearly, and drinking wine, showed very clearly that he was not a Gnostic. It’s important to know this, because there are many people, many Christians, who struggle with addiction and become so frightened and so alarmed by their loss of control that instead of, by faith, finding freedom from guilt and shame and fear and gradual victory over their struggle, they become so frightened that they actually try to deny their physical humanity. And in the process, they become religious neurotics. Every slight pleasure of the body becomes a threat. They try to suppress it and slowly become crazy. I tell you, there is more emotional sickness among Christians than one would care to think. And it’s not because Christianity is at fault. It’s because of a misunderstanding of the faith life in Christ. Without faith in what Christ has done for us, in that he has removed our guilt and removed our shame and the identity of ourselves as sinners, without that, we will simply be religious neurotics trying to suppress our humanity. So, in making no provision for the flesh, it doesn’t mean killing every simple desire. It means do not identify yourself as a fallen, broken human being anymore. But by faith in Christ, identify yourself as in him. Count it as if you were righteous. No, you’re not actually righteous, but count it in him as righteous. Count it in him as no longer under the judgment of the law. Count it as if we were reconciled fully to the heart of God, even though we’ve got a long, long way to go. And in doing the faith life this way, we stay healthy. our minds counting ourselves as in Christ’s kingdom, but knowing that physically we are still members of the fallen human race, but we don’t let it panic us. These are realities that are lost so many times in fanatical Christianity, in Christianity that has become cultic and utterly lost in crazy ideas, spooky ideas that belong to Platonism, to ancient Greek philosophies, and to those incorporation of those philosophies into the Christian faith in a way that that makes us utterly aberrant to the Christian faith. So, put on the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s how you make no provision for the flesh. Making no provision for the flesh does not mean killing every single desire, but rather putting on Christ and beginning to appreciate our physical human nature in a godly, spiritual way. in a way that enables us to function, even though we may fail at times, we function and we keep going forward. So, this is what Paul is concluding with in chapter 13. You see, we must remember that We’re not closeted Christians. We’re not protecting ourselves from the world because if the world gets to us, my goodness, it will kill us and destroy every bit of faith within us. We must believe and know that we are being transformed from inwardly to outwardly. And that transformation enables our minds to stay stable, and it also enables us to serve humanity. If you’re preoccupied with yourself and killing every single desire of the human nature, you will be preoccupied with the self, and there’ll be no room for to care for other people. But if you know that Christ has become your righteousness, that his crucifixion is your judgment so that you are freed from condemnation, and therefore you have joy in your heart towards God because he has reconciled himself to you to his heart, if you have that faith, then you have room in your heart for other people. You are more concerned about them. You are more eager to pray for their needs. You are willing to help where you can. You are not hiding away. You are exposing yourself to the world without being worldly. That’s the key. So that’s sort of the conclusion that we come to in Romans chapter 13. Now, I want to say to you something about chapter 14. Chapter 14 is one of the most neglected chapters in the New Testament. It is certainly one of the most neglected chapters in the book of Romans, but it has surprising insights. It has wonderful theology, wonderful truth that we may have missed because we just saw the gospel in chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8, and then when we grew more, we realized there was a lot of gospel in chapters 9, 10, and 11, which I’ve pointed out to you in the last few months. But now we’re beginning to realize, my goodness, we almost flew over or missed Romans 14. What a beautiful lot of truth there is here.

SPEAKER 01 : 10:58

He says, receive one who is weak in the faith, but not to dispute over doubtful things. Now just ponder that.

SPEAKER 02 : 11:14

Paul is about to launch into the issue of fellowship in Christ that doesn’t split us apart. if you have not discovered the atoning sacrifice of Christ and the centrality of the sacrifice made for us that removes all guilt and shame and fear from the human race, And if you have not discovered that Christ is your righteousness, then I want to tell you this, you will have missed the main point of Christianity and you will start majoring on minors. majoring on minors, little trivial beliefs that each denomination hold. How much makeup a woman may wear, whether a person, a Christian, can drink a glass of wine, how to keep a Sabbath day, can we go swimming, can we go bike riding, or must we sit at home, can we watch a movie or not? and on and on. In fact, even which Sabbath day is the day? All of these issues become majors when, in the presence of Christ’s atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world, the second Adam, who has relieved the judgment from all humanity so that humanity may come to believe in him, that central truth, when it is lost, Then we don’t know where we are, and we start separating ourselves from other Christians by little trivial doctrinal positions. It’s not to say that doctrine is not important, but it is to be put in the right priority. Our goal as Christians is to love the world, but first love one another in the Christian faith so that the world may see that we practice what we preach. and that we show what a beautiful harmony there is in Christian fellowship, what a joy, what a peace, what a praising the Lord altogether is, so that we have a fellowship that uplifts, and so that the world becomes jealous and wants what we have. That’s the whole point. Well, it’s part of the whole point, let’s put it that way, because we love one another because Christ has loved us, because God the Father has loved us. So receive one who is weak. Well, let’s explore that next time. Thank you for joining me today. Colin Cook here and how it happens. You can hear the broadcast on your smartphone day or night. Simply download a free app, soundcloud.com or pudbean.com and key in how it happens with Colin Cook when you get there. And would you consider a donation? I’m going to give up asking you to commit to $50 a month for a year. It’s too big a commitment, I guess, for all of us, really. So send your donation to FaithQuest, P.O. Box 366, Littleton, Colorado, 80160. Thank you so much. See you next time. Cheerio and God bless.