Romans 15:8-13 (NIV)
For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs so that the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy, as it is written: “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles; I will sing hymns to your name.”
Again, it says, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.”
And again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and sing praises to him, all you peoples.”
And again, Isaiah says, “The Root of Jesse will spring up, one who will arise to rule over the nations; the Gentiles will hope in him.”
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Even though the majority in the Roman Church had come from gentile roots, the believing Jews had a hard time accepting them as true Christian brothers and sisters. There was a powerful and influential bloc in the Church that Paul refers to in other letters as “the circumcision group” (Galatians 2:12). These people believed that, since Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, the only way to become a Christian was first to become a Jew. This included being circumcised and obeying all the fine points of the Jewish law.
This belief was preventing the Jewish believers from accepting the gentiles as true believers as Paul commanded in Romans 15:7. This in turn damaged the Roman Church’s unity and, in turn, its witness and effectiveness.
Paul’s response was to show from a wide variety of the Old Testament Scriptures that bringing in the gentiles and making them part of His people was not a spur of the moment decision on God’s part. Instead, it was a central part of His plan from the beginning as revealed through His prophets. The plan was not that the gentiles would supplant and eliminate the Jews as God’s people, but that both Jews and gentiles would choose to believe in Jesus, and that both groups would unite to comprise His chosen people as His plan moved forward.
As Paul notes in his closing prayer at the end of this section, the end result of God’s desired unity between Jewish Christians and gentile Christians is joy, peace and hope as the Holy Spirit is freed up to work in and through ALL God’s people, unhindered by strife and divisions. And with that kind of Spirit-empowered unity, the work of the kingdom can move briskly forward.
Father, I would like to be able to say that this is a good historical lesson, but that we are fully unified now. But, tragically, that is not the case. The Church today is divided by lines of denomination, sectarianism, and theological emphases, as well as along political and racial lines. And those divisions clearly hamper us in accomplishing the work of Your kingdom by grieving the Spirit and cutting us off from His power, leaving us to try to do the work in our own strength. Father, we can’t fix these divisions on our own. We need Your miraculous power to flow through us all, raising us from the dead and uniting us into a fully-functioning, healthy body. Unite us, Lord, along the lines of your mission, Your vision for us, and our identity in You, so that Your soul-saving work can move forward powerfully through us. Amen.