>> Jen: Hello there, faith listener. You've tuned in to season seven of the Bible explained podcast. So make sure to grab your cup of coffee because today we are going to be discussing the book of Romans. Hello faith listener. Welcome to the Bible explain podcast. We're in a new chapter of Romans today, Romans chapter 15, and we only have this chapter and the next chapter left before we are in the book of first Corinthians. So
that's very exciting. I think we're going to move into first Corinthians in two weeks from my understanding. So yeah, if you've been following along with me this whole time, that means you'll have listened to the entire book of Romans. And also if you've been listening along since the very beginning, that means that you'll have listened to, let's see here, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, acts, Romans.
That's six books in the New Testament. And if you've been listening to the Old Testament side of stuff with me, that means you've listened to Genesis, exodus, Leviticus, numbers, deuteronomy, Joshua, judges, Ruth first, and almost the rest of two, Samuel. There'll be ten books in the Old Testament. That means you've been listening to 16 books of the Bible. If you've followed along this
entire that is amazing. So good job. You can, pat yourselves on the back for that because most people don't get past the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament. So that is amazing. All right, let's read Romans 15 one through 13, as I always do. I'll be reading from the web. Grab your cup of coffee this morning, or your cup of tea. I have been still not drinking a lot of coffee recently, but, I am back to
drinking coffee on occasion. So I don't have any in front of me right now, but I am kind of craving it now that I mentioned it. So maybe I'll, maybe I'll make myself a cup of coffee before I start the podcast. But anyway, guys, let's go ahead and read this. This is Romans 15 113. Now, we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of the weak and not to please ourselves. Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good to be building him up, for even Christ didn't please
himself. But as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me for whatever things were written before were written for our learning that through perseverance and through encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. Now, the God of perseverance and of encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus, that with one accord you may with one mouth glorify the God and father of
our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore accept one another, even as Christ also accepted you to the glory of God. Now I say that Christ has been made a servant of the circumcision for the truth of God, that he might confirm the promises given to the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, therefore, I will give praise to you among the gentiles and sing to your name. Again he says, rejoice, you gentiles, with his people. Again, praise the Lord, all you
gentiles. Let all the peoples praise him again. Isaiah says, there will be the root of Jesse, who arises to rule over the Gentiles. In him the Gentiles will hope. Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope in the power of the Holy Spirit. Today's portion of scripture is in direct correlation
with romans 14, the last chapter. And what we talked about in romans 14 was how christians need to be treating other christians, how christians need to unify with each other, instead of divine dividing over silly little arguments that are morally insignificant. For example, Paul gave one. He said, some Christians choose not to drink wine or not eat pork. And some Christians have no problem drinking wine or eating pork. Those are morally insignificant things, and we shouldn't be
divided over them. And Paul continues with this theme into Romans chapter 15. He says, we who are strong ought, to bear the weakness of the weak and not to please ourselves. So Paul was obviously considering himself a stronger Christian, which I would. And anybody who reads through Paul's letters would agree that Paul was a very strong Christian. The stronger christians should be bearing the weaknesses of the weak. And what does
this mean? Paul uses a similar phrase in Galatians chapter six, verses one through five. So I'm going over there and I'm reading it real quick. This is, the ESV version. It says, brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted, bear one anothers burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks that he has something or he is something, rather, when he is nothing,
he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each will have to bear his own load. So these verses in Galatians six are kind of mirroring what Romans 15 says, that we should be making sure to bear each other's burdens. Romans 15 says, to bear the weakness of the weak. This means that we are supposed to lovingly guide christians who are weaker than us to the truth.
We are to lovingly guide them there. Now, this does not mean, though, that the church lowers itself to every whim that the weaker Christian has. That is not what this means at all. Instead, this means that the stronger christians who should be leading the church because they are the stronger christians, they should be lovingly mentoring and guiding christians who are newer in the faith who
are weaker christians. And these stronger christians shouldn't be doing this just to please themselves, just to make themselves like, feel better, like they're the morally superior Christian either. That's what Paul says here, don't bear the weaknesses of the weak just to please yourselves. Instead, let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good to be building him up. So we're supposed to build each other up. We aren't supposed to tear down or discourage other christians.
We are supposed to be encouraging and building them up. This might mean telling them when they're wrong. This might mean guiding them on a better path. This means that we edify, we build up our churches. And sometimes edification includes church
discipline. If there is a Christian, a supposed Christian, coming to a church that is doing nothing but causing all sorts of problems, or they're living in just this very blatant sin and tearing down a lot of other people, we don't allow that to continue in the church. And there is definite rules listed out in scripture of how we handle people like that. The first thing that we do is we go to them directly and we say, hey, you're wrong. You need to stop doing
this. And if they don't listen, then we take it to the elders and the pastor and the rest of the church, and the church then says, hey, you need to stop doing this. And then if that person is like, nah, you know what? I don't care if the church is saying I shouldn't do this, I'm going to keep on doing it, then you kick the person out of your congregation. Now, church discipline should not be something that is
done. Often in my entire time that I've been at my church, I don't think we've ever had a case of church discipline. But I do know that there was church discipline that happened many years before I started coming because there was a man in the congregation who was, actively involved in some pretty nasty things that the church found out about. So there was church discipline that was involved for that. And I think also the cops got involved with that one.
So sometimes church discipline has to happen for the edification of the church. Now, unfortunately, the church will take passages like this in romans 15 and be like, oh, we need to only edify and encourage. We can never say anything wrong to anybody ever. We need to love our neighbor, but that is not truly loving our neighbor if we are allowing terrible things to go on in our churches. Sometimes I feel like the term love your
neighborhood. Christians often coin that phrase as an excuse to just do nothing or to push agendas that they want everybody to follow. Like the big one I remember was during 2020 with COVID I remember all of these churches in my area being like, we need to shut down our churches because that is loving our neighbors. We have to shut that down. And I remember thinking, how is it loving to shut down the church so that people
can't go? How is that loving? Like, the church itself is supposed to be a place where everybody can come and have fellowship and community and receive love from other people. So how is shutting down the church loving to somebody? I remember thinking that, and I was pretty active on my blog at the time with talking about how I was very upset with the church shutting its doors during COVID I'm still very upset about that. It should never have happened.
But Christians will use that blanket term love your neighbor to either push a specific agenda or as an excuse to sit passively, bye and do nothing and not enact church discipline when it's necessary. And Paul himself was a clear advocate of keeping our churches healthy with healthy people involved. I mean, Paul himself went and told Peter very publicly that Peter was wrong and that Peter needed to stop doing what he was doing and that Peter was being a hypocrite, like Paul himself said
that to Peter. So when Paul is saying here that we need to, you know, bear the weaknesses of the weak, this does not mean what a lot of people think it means. It just means that we need to encourage and guide people on the right path. For even Christ didn't please himself. But as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me. And this is absolutely true. Jesus didn't live to please himself. There is no passage that shows Jesus living for
himself at any point in time. He was always going out and serving and healing people and preaching the gospel and, correcting the Pharisees and correcting not just the Pharisees, but even the people of Israel from time to time, who were, you know, being hypocritical or just believing something false. He was always going out and not living for himself. And he didn't care what people thought of him. He was just going to spread the truth and he was going to
spread the gospel message. And if that made certain people angry, well, Jesus didn't care because he wasn't living in this world to please himself. And that is how we are supposed to live. We aren't supposed to live in this world to please ourselves. We are to live to please God. And you might be like, well, Jen, what's in it for us? Well, I mean, salvation is in it for us. That's the big thing. There is a funny verse that I really like once again,
a, Paul verse. And it actually says, if the hope of Jesus were only for the here and now, then christians should be more pitied than any person on the planet. The christian life is not glamorous. It's often very stressful. And even Paul himself recognized that by saying, if Christianity was only a here and now thing, and we didn't have, like, the hope of eternity or the hope of Jesus raising from the dead,
christians should be the most pitied. Out of everybody on earth, we have the hope of something greater than, than this life here on earth. We have the hope of eternal security. And that is why we live the christian life. Not because it's fun, not because it's glamorous, but because we believe in something greater than us. For whatever things were written before were written for our learning that through perseverance and through encouragement of the scriptures, we
might have hope. This is another reason why the Old Testament is so important. Every part of the Bible that we have is good for us. It was written for us to learn from it. This passage of the Bible is affirming the Old Testament scriptures and is affirming that christians should go back and read and study the Old Testament scriptures. And they're there because they give us encouragement so that we might have hope, hope
in eternal salvation. But now Paul switches his tune a little bit in verse five, and he starts praying a prayer almost, and he says, now the God of perseverance and of encouragement grants you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus. Now this is a prayer for unity among all of the different, uh, christian members of the church. We should be striving and focusing toward unity, because if we are divided, we can't stand.
That's what Jesus said. He said a house divided against itself cannot stand. Satan really, really wants to get in there and to drive a wedge between christians. That is his goal actually is to have the church fall in any way that it possibly can. So Paul is praying for unity with the church. This is something that Jesus was really stressing just before he went to the cross. Jesus himself in the book of John was praying for unity for the church and he prayed for each of
us. He prayed for every single person that would follow him after he died and rose again. That means Jesus prayed specifically for you listening to this podcast right now. And he prayed for me as well. And he prayed that we would stand and that we would have unity under God. So unity is very important. And that's what Paul is getting at here, that strong christians need to accept the weak christians because we need
to all be unified under Christ. And where else are those weak christians going to go? They need to go to the strong christians to really learn about the Bible. Because if they go anywhere else they might fall away from the faith. That's why Paul is saying except the weaker christians. So Paul continues on this prayer. He says that with one accord you may with one mouth glorify the God and father of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Obviously that is what us christians do is we spread the gospel to everybody and the church has to be unified in order to successfully do that. Therefore accept one another, even as Christ also accepted you to the glory of God. Now once again, this does not mean that we accept people and never expect them to change, right? This means that yes, we do accept people. Come as you are is a theme throughout much of the gospel. Come as you are, but you don't stay as you are.
You get changed into what God calls you to be. So you come as you are, however that might look and you find acceptance. But ultimately you shouldn't stay where you are. And any church that claims that you should stay as you are is not truly preaching the gospel message. Verse eight. Now I say that Christ has been made a servant of the circumcision for the truth of God, that he might confirm the promises given to the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his
mercy. Now what does that mean? That Christ has been made a servant of the circumcision for the truth of God. This just means that Jesus came to earth as a human being and he was circumcised on the 8th day and he preached to those who were also circumcised meaning the Jews. So Jesus came as a servant to the Jews, specifically so that he can spread the truth of God and confirm the promises given to the fathers, so that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.
And ultimately all of this would result in the Gentiles also being included into the family of God. So even though Jesus came as a jew and he ministered to the Jews and served the Jews, this ultimately gave the Gentiles a chance for salvation as well. Now, Paul goes on to list several scriptural passages from the Old Testament that talk about this very thing, about how the Gentiles are now accepted into God's kingdom.
So he describes two Samuel 22, verse 50, which says, therefore, I give praise to you among the Gentiles and sing to your name. Then he references deuteronomy 32 43, which says, rejoice, you Gentiles, with his people. Then he references psalm 117, verse one, which says, praise the Lord, all you Gentiles. Let all the people praise him. And then lastly, he references Isaiah 1110, which says, there will be a root of Jesse, he who arises to rule over the Gentiles. In him, the gentiles will
hope. And why does Paul reference these verses from the Old Testament? Well, uh, because he literally just said that the Old Testament is there for us to teach us and to encourage us and to give us hope. And that is why Paul mentions these verses in his prayer that he gives. And now he ends his prayer by saying, now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Well, faith listeners, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I'll let you all go with a happy listening. And God bless. Um.