Let me say first that I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith in him is being talked about all over the world. God knows how often I pray for you. Day and night I bring you and your needs in prayer to God, whom I serve with all my heart by spread­ing the Good News about his Son.

Do Peo­ple Talk About You?

I know. If we only do two verses at a time, we’ll be in Romans until 2011. So be it. I had to stop after these two verses because of how pow­er­ful they are. Think about it. In a time with­out TV, Inter­net, Email, Youtube, Tele­phones, the faith of the Roman Christ fol­low­ers was being talked about all over the world! That’s pretty remark­able. Even if you argue that Paul’s world was lim­ited to one area of the Earth, it’s still incredible.

Rome was a pow­er­ful city. In that day, it was THE CITY. No place held as much power than Rome. No place had the pres­tige that Rome did. It wasn’t just Chris­tians who were noticed in Rome, it was every­one. It would be dif­fi­cult to find a city today to use as a com­par­i­son to Rome. It was just that kind of place.

The believ­ers in Rome had the abil­ity to affect the entire rep­u­ta­tion of the Early Church. And, as we’ve pointed out over the past few days, that rep­u­ta­tion was begin­ning to be tar­nished. The divi­sion within the church was start­ing to become evi­dent to oth­ers. And yet, at this point, Paul seems to sug­gest that the rep­u­ta­tion was still intact. He thanked God that the faith of the Roman church was being talked about all over the world, which seems to indi­cate that what was being said was positive.

Jump ahead to today. The Church is often talked about in many places around the world. Unfor­tu­nately, it’s not good talk. It’s not that nice. In fact, it’s fairly neg­a­tive. Every sig­nif­i­cant study done in the past ten years would seem to sug­gest that the aver­age per­son has a lot of good to say about Jesus, but very lit­tle that’s pos­i­tive regard­ing Jesus’ fol­low­ers — the Church.

I’m crazy enough to believe that we can change that rep­u­ta­tion. It wont hap­pen because a bunch of church lead­ers speak up nation­ally or even glob­ally. It will hap­pen one per­son at a time. I can change the per­cep­tion my neigh­bours have of the Church. You can do the same where you live, work, and play.

So, what do you say? Peo­ple are talk­ing about us, so let’s give them some­thing good to talk about.

My prayer: Lord, help me to rep­re­sent you to those I con­nect with. May how I live demon­strate to them what a Christ fol­lower should be, rather than what they think we are. Help me to change the per­cep­tion of one per­son today. Amen.

Until tomor­row.

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This let­ter is from Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, cho­sen by God to be an apos­tle and sent out to preach his Good News. God promised this Good News long ago through his prophets in the holy Scrip­tures. The Good News is about his Son. In his earthly life he was born into King David’s fam­ily line, and he was shown to be the Son of God when he was raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit. He is Jesus Christ our Lord. Through Christ, God has given us the priv­i­lege and author­ity as apos­tles to tell Gen­tiles every­where what God has done for them, so that they will believe and obey him, bring­ing glory to his name.

And you are included among those Gen­tiles who have been called to belong to Jesus Christ. I am writ­ing to all of you in Rome who are loved by God and are called to be his own holy people.

May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.

Con­nect­ing

I love how Paul begins this let­ter. As I men­tioned yes­ter­day, the Roman church was clearly divided. Jew­ish and Gen­tile fol­low­ers were at odds over how one should live out their faith in Christ. If this divi­sion con­tin­ued, the church would be in dan­ger of break­ing apart. Paul, who had yet to meet these Christ fol­low­ers, needed to find com­mon ground in order to speak to both groups.

I think he hits that com­mon ground per­fectly. The very first thing he does is con­nect Jesus to the Old Tes­ta­ment. Remem­ber, First Cen­tury believ­ers didn’t have the New Tes­ta­ment. Their Bible was the Old Tes­ta­ment. Yes, some of the Apostle’s let­ters were likely start­ing to be passed around, but as of yet, they had not formed the New Tes­ta­ment Canon.

And so, Paul launches a very deep the­o­log­i­cal let­ter by con­nect­ing it to the Bible the Jew­ish fol­low­ers would be famil­iar with. And then, he sug­gests that it is a priv­i­lege to share that con­nec­tion with non-Jews. In the first five verses, Paul hon­ours both groups. Then, in the next two verses, he brings them together by rec­og­niz­ing that both groups are loved by God and called to be God’s people.

I read this pas­sage and I imme­di­ately con­sider my own life. How do I resolve con­flict? Do I take the time to under­stand both views? Christ fol­low­ers are called to be peace­mak­ers. Do I bring peace to sit­u­a­tions or do I cause greater con­flict? Do you?

When I am in con­flict with some­one else, my first reac­tion is to get defen­sive. I want to focus on why I’m right and they are wrong. When I’m called to be a medi­a­tor between two par­ties who are in con­flict, my first reac­tion is to smack them both on the side of the head and tell them to grow up! Nei­ther approach is usu­ally all that effec­tive. How­ever, some of you can relate to those reactions.

Per­haps the chal­lenge for us today is to make more of an effort to under­stand those who may dis­agree with us. To find com­mon ground so that peace may be found. Just a thought.

A sim­ple prayer for today: Lord, help me bring peace to what­ever sit­u­a­tions I face today. Show me com­mon ground when I met those in con­flict so that I may be an agent of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. Amen.

Until tomor­row.

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There­fore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. (Romans 5:1)

Romans

First, let me wel­come you to the new for­mat of The Oil Change. As I’ve explained in the dif­fer­ent emails over the past week, I do believe this new for­mat will allow these daily thoughts to con­nect with even more peo­ple. I encour­age you to pass the web­site on to friends and family.

As most of you know, I am cur­rently enjoy­ing a sab­bat­i­cal from my pri­mary duties at Bik­ers’ Church. The first month of my break was spent trav­el­ling the U.S. on my Harley. I shared the jour­ney on my per­sonal blog, so I wont go into much detail here. Although I’m sure some of my expe­ri­ences will leak out on the pages of these devotionals.

I’ve also enjoyed a break from writ­ing The Oil Change. Dur­ing the past cou­ple of months, we’ve repeated older posts. Some of you read them for the first time, while oth­ers had a chance to revisit a cou­ple of Bible books. I trust it was ben­e­fi­cial for both groups.

Now, we are back to “writ­ing live.” And we’re jump­ing in with both feet. Rather than start­ing back with a light book, we’re going to focus in on what many con­sider to be the most the­o­log­i­cally deep book in the Bible — cer­tainly in the New Tes­ta­ment. Too be hon­est, I’m a lit­tle ner­vous, because it will be a chal­lenge to sim­plify some of the excerpts from Romans in a short, con­cise, daily thought. But, we’ll give it a shot!

Romans was writ­ten by Paul some­where around A.D. 57. At this point, he had not vis­ited Rome, and most of the peo­ple to whom he was writ­ing this let­ter he had yet to meet. In fact, it’s pos­si­ble that none of the Apos­tles had met the Christ fol­low­ers in Rome.

How this church started is a mys­tery. Some believe that there would have been Jews from Rome who were con­verted dur­ing Peter’s mes­sage in Acts 2. Those Jews then trav­elled home to Rome where they began the church. Oth­ers believe that Peter may have had a role in start­ing the church. The fact is, we don’t really know.

What his­to­ri­ans are fairly con­fi­dent about is that the church’s found­ing mem­bers were mostly Jews. As it grew, Gen­tiles were added to the mix. Then, in A.D. 49, the Roman emperor Claudius expelled the Jews. It would be a few years before they would slowly begin to trickle back into Rome. Dur­ing their absence, the church grew under Gen­tile lead­er­ship. When the Jews came back, ten­sion built between the two groups. Debates about the­ol­ogy, the role of the Old Tes­ta­ment laws, and tra­di­tions were commonplace.

It would seem that Paul’s goal in writ­ing this let­ter was to try to bring unity to the two groups. As you will see, he spends a great deal of time walk­ing through the neces­sity of the Law in order to fully grasp the value of Grace. He is skill­ful in tak­ing his read­ers on a jour­ney from legal­ism to free­dom in Christ. At times the jour­ney isn’t an easy one, but in the end, it shines a beau­ti­ful light on why God’s grace is truly amazing.

A lot of peo­ple today see lit­tle value in the Old Tes­ta­ment. They fig­ure that as long as you have a decent grasp of the New Tes­ta­ment, that noth­ing else mat­ters. While it is true that the New Tes­ta­ment focuses on the life we have as fol­low­ers of Christ, I believe — and Paul explains in this let­ter — that with­out a grasp of the Old Tes­ta­ment, you will never truly grasp the neces­sity of the Cross.

My chal­lenge for you today is to take a minute and look at your life. Do you hold so strongly to your “the­ol­ogy” that it causes divi­sions with oth­ers? Are you open to hear­ing another per­spec­tive on things? The rea­son the Jews and Gen­tiles of Rome were so divided was because both groups wanted to impose their views on the oth­ers. It’s a prob­lem that many of us must guard against.

Until tomor­row.

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