These eight verses from the twelfth chapter of Paul's Letter to the Romans contain some helpful guidance for living the Christian life. Listen to some of Paul's directives. "Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds... ." "I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think... ." "...we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another." Good counsel, don't you think?
In fact, the entire chapter is something of a standard text for people who seek to live a spiritually motivated life, or a God-oriented life. I can say right up front that I take the Apostle Paul seriously when it comes to Christian teaching. He was a highly trained Jewish thinker, a scholar with impressive credentials. He is one of those persons who have had a dramatic, life-changing experience.
For Paul, whose name used to be Saul before that dramatic experience, everything changed when he was encountered by the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. People have that kind of experience. Read William James's classic The Varieties of Religious Experience for more on that subject. For now it is enough to say that something shifted inside the man called Saul, who took the new name Paul after experiencing the powerful presence of the risen Christ when he had no expectation of it.
Paul became an influential force in the development of the early Christian Church. He founded several congregations in towns and cities around the Mediterranean Sea. And he wrote letters to those churches after he had helped them get started. His letters were collected and read in worship services as the years and centuries passed. Christians still read Paul's letters, known as epistles, in worship, in theology classes, and in private meditation time.
Most Christians consider Paul to be authoritative, that is, worth paying attention to. He didn't always get it right. He certainly was wrong on homosexuality, and he was equally wrong on the place of women in the Christian community. But for me he is still worth reading and hearing.
Paul's Letter to the Romans begins with a systematic outline of the Christian gospel, our good news about God and about life. He says that in Jesus of Nazareth God self-disclosed in a powerful way. He says God self-disclosed in such a way that anyone who wants a life-nurturing relationship with God can trust that God wants such a relationship also. Paul says it's all a matter of trusting God, which he calls faith. It's not a matter of believing certain doctrines, nor is it a matter of obeying certain laws or rules. It's a matter of trusting, a matter of faith. Paul brings his statement of the gospel to a ringing climax when he says that nothing in life or in death can separate us from the love of God.
I sometimes find myself quoting that truth to people who are struggling with life—not as a panacea that will solve all their problems, but as an assurance they are not alone. When I speak with people who are wrestling with despair, disappointment, fear, loneliness, sickness, loss, and a lot of other things, I tell them that nothing can separate them from God's love. I tell them I can't promise them success, the fulfillment of their dream—whatever it may be. I can't assure them of a happy ending to all their scenarios. But I can tell them I believe God loves them and cares about them, and that there is a community of people who base their life on God's love. And that such a community will welcome people without judgment and offer support and comfort.
Paul begins his Letter to the Romans with an extensive exposition of God's amazing grace, which is a theological word for the fact that God loves us not because of what we are or what we do, but because that's the way God is. God is love. After he has said all that, Paul uses the little word therefore—oun in Greek. You know how we use the word therefore in common speech. "It's raining hard; therefore, the picnic is canceled." Or, "It's Sunday morning; therefore, I'm going to church." (Wishful thinking on my part, I know) But you get the point. What follows therefore, is a consequence of what went before.
What does all that mean for the twelfth chapter of Paul's Letter to the Romans? Just as the first part of the letter was about our good news, the truth of God's love, so the second part of the letter, chapters twelve through sixteen, is about how to live the Christian life. Paul writes such things as "Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good." "Be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer." "Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers." "Pay to all what is due them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due."
All of that is good advice. But it has to be viewed in context. We need to remember that all Paul's directives follow the word therefore. In other words Paul is not telling the Romans—or us—what we need to do in order to please God or to win God's approval or to escape eternal punishment, if there be such a thing. No! Paul is telling us how we can respond to the love God already gives us without our having to earn it: "God is love; therefore, this is how you can respond to God's love."
That's a very important point. I continue to run into people who carry in their minds and hearts a picture of an angry, vengeful God, waiting for people to make mistakes, punishable by pain and suffering, or by the proverbial fire and brimstone—in other words, hell. What I read about Jesus and what I read in the writings of Paul give me a very different picture of God. Clearly in Luke's Gospel, we hear Jesus likening God to a sheepherder who leaves the sheepfold to go after one stray lamb; to a householder who sweeps her house until she finds the one coin she has lost; and to a parent who rushes down the road at the first glimpse of a returning son or daughter who has become estranged and who embraces the child before a word of contrition has been spoken.
I believe that God is love. It's not always easy to fit that truth into the realities of life as you and I live it. It's certainly not easy to fit the truth of God's love into a world where there is so much poverty, hunger, sickness, addiction, and untimely death. The way it makes sense to me is to understand that God is with us in our times of trouble as well as in our times of joy. God watches over us and surrounds us with comfort and love often embodied in other people. Matthew's Gospel tells us God knows when a sparrow falls from the sky. God knows and cares. God knows and cares for each one of us.
A few years ago friends of ours took Nancy and me on a canal trip in the Haag, the capital city of Holland. It wasn't like the canal trips in Amsterdam on sleek cruisers with a microphone-holding tour guide on board. It was a small put-put kind of boat, holding about fifteen or twenty people, without commentary from the man steering the boat. The last people to get on the boat were a mother and father and their four young children, all six blond, blue-eyed and beautiful. The children were lively but well-behaved, keeping a watchful eye on their youngest brother, a Down syndrome child.
The family took the seats on the boat nearest the four of us who were speaking English—our Dutch friends, Nancy and me. About half an hour into the canal trip the father came and sat beside me. He must have overheard some talk about church, because he asked me, "Are you a Calvinist?" It was clear that he spoke good English, like most Dutch people.
I told him, "I'm not sure what you mean by a Calvinist. I know the theology of John Calvin, and his major theme is the sovereignty of God."
The man looked at his youngest child, the developmentally challenged boy, then looked at me and asked, "Do you believe God punishes us for our sins?" I could see his eyes filling up, and I knew mine were filling up also.
What I remember telling him was that I believe God is love and that God is with us in our joy and in our pain, that God weeps when we weep and smiles when we smile. I remember putting my arm around the young father's shoulders and leaving it there for several minutes while we sat together in silence. As the boat pulled up to the dock, the father looked at me and said simply, "Thank you."
I will always remember the sight of that young man as he shepherded his family off the boat. He was carrying his youngest son and covering the boy's face with kisses. And the father was smiling.
The Christian life is not about trying to please God so that trouble stays away from our door, nor is it about being good in order to get to heaven and escape the fires of hell. It is about knowing and experiencing God's love, God's love that is beyond any human deserving. It is about letting that love set us free to live life in all its fullness. It is about caring for others and for ourselves out of gratitude for God's unfailing presence.
Thanks be to God.