THE CHURCH IN THIS CITY           

   Chapter 10                                 ROMANS 14

                  Then let us no more pass judgment on one another, but rather

                   decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother....

                   Let us then pursue what makes for peace and

                   for mutual up building.

As long as we think of the church of Jesus Christ as a religious society that makes only minor demands of us, we don’t have too many problems. We join, pay our dues, go to meetings, help recruit new members. And we have that comfortable feeling inside that we belong to something good. But when the church of Jesus Christ becomes for us the Kingdom of God, when we find ourselves set by God in a Body of saints that is called to fulfill his redemptive purpose on this earth, when we start getting a vision of the work that is to be accomplished and begin to realize that we don’t belong to ourselves any more, but to the Body, and that our lives are now at the complete disposal of the Head, who is Jesus....this can be frightening.

Believers near and far are beginning to receive from the Spirit of God a sense of what the church of Jesus Christ really is, what it means that God has set them in the Body. When we see this vision of the church, every one of us experiences fear. “You mean I have to function with these people?” “Lord, why can’t I just keep going the way I have been? Why can’t I withdraw from all this and just commune with you here in the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses?”

 Escape Routes

Because we’re afraid to fit in, we’re dreaming up all kinds of escape routes. Some of us are trying to back away from the church and keep our relationship with brothers and sisters as superficial as possible. We’ll go to meetings. We’ll share. We’ll pray. We’ll give everybody a nice hug. But we’re going to remain in charge of our lives.

“Don’t be trying to shove responsibility on me....Don’t expect me to commit myself to anything definite...Don’t ask me to give up my Monday evenings...And don’t think I’m going to account to anybody for anything!”

And with that we dig our spurs into good old Silver and gallop off into the desert where spiritual death waits for us with open arms.

On the other hand, some of us dread having to make any serious decisions alone before God. We want somebody to take this burden of freedom from our shoulders. We want somebody to tell us what to do and when to do it. So we escape the call of Jesus to fit into his Body as responsible men and women by submitting to the arbitrary authority of a man or a small group of men who have usurped the place of Christ. They tell us where to go and what to do. They relieve us of our guilt by digging every vile thing from our troubled consciences. They lay down the rules. For a while we think we've found the answer in this tightly run community. We think we've learned how to submit to authority. We're all in step together like a mighty army, and when we praise God it sounds like a roar of Niagara Falls.

But one day it hits us: Are these things we’re being told to do really the word of Christ? Are these rules truly from heaven? And suddenly we discover that this is not Jesus Christ. This is the tyranny of man. Man’s doctrine. Man’s ingenuity. Man’s thirst for power. This isn’t spiritual life, this is death! This is the kingdom of the anti-Christ.

But perhaps the most popular escape from fitting into the Body is the old treadmill where we spend fifty percent of our time judging other believers and the other fifty percent defending ourselves against their judgments of us. You cannot spend all your time judging others.   Be­cause when you judge others, people who have the same critical spirit come out of the woodwork and start judging you. And the person who judges others cannot stand to be judged. He cannot be wrong. He must be right. He will go to ridiculous extremes to defend himself. Now when you get a whole assembly of people who are going round and round judging others and defending themselves, you have a place where people are very busy and where absolutely nothing redemptive ever gets done. We’re too busy checking everybody’s fruit, investigating everyone’s motives, testing everyone’s sincerity, sowing seeds of doubt and de­fending ourselves. We don’t have any strength left to bring men to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. We‘re too busy being right to lead any one to the blood that justifies.

Fitting In

The Spirit of God is calling us to get off that judging treadmill and fit into our place in the Body. He is not calling us to submit to

the tyranny of some man or some elite elders or some new set of rules. He is calling us to submit to the Lord of the church who is Jesus himself.

“You call me Teacher and Lord, you are right,

for so I am.”

We all agree that Jesus is Lord of the earth, yet we seem to think he’s out to lunch when it comes to ruling his church day by day. We think we have to get in there and take things into our own hands and straighten out everybody else’s life. Or else we think we have to run away from our brothers and sisters before they dominate us to death. But my friend, even before Jesus is Lord over this world, (which he is), Jesus is Lord over his church. And he knows what he’s doing. He knows how to straighten things out, how to cleanse and how to guide. And he is in our midst.

When the firemen arrive at the burning hotel, the fire chief is the boss.  And the firemen had better cut the chatter and forget their opinions and quit trying to boss each other around and submit to whatever the chief says.

We’re not back at the station chewing the fat around the coffee urn. We’re at the fire, and the Lord is in charge. This is the hour of Romans 14. There is no time to argue, free lance, or build our own kingdoms. Each of us is called to fit into the Body by submitting to the lordship of Jesus Christ.  And this means three specific things that will have to be done among us before we will ever see his power more freely in our ministry to this city.

Let us no more pass judgment on one another in matters of eating, observing days, doctrinal position, etc. Does the man love Jesus Christ? Then he is your brother. Is that woman seeking to follow the Master? She is your sister. That man does not stand or fall before us. He stands or falls before his Master, who is just as able to make him stand as to make us stand.  We are not the fire chief, Jesus is. And if we concentrate on the job he gave us to do we’re going to have our hands full. Jesus knows what’s going on with the saints on the other side of the fire. Jesus knows who’s having trouble up on the ladder. And unless he sends us up the ladder we keep on where we are. And if the Lord assigned you to work in partnership with a brother who is mean and ugly, stick with it. That’s just what you need.

We are to decide  to never put a stumbling block or hindrance  in the way of a brother. If a certain exercise of my Christian liberty is confusing some hassled brother, then it’s no longer my liberty, it’s his stumbling block. My eating habit, or my sense of humor, or my small talk...God accepts me with it. That’s fine. But I’m making problems for my brother, and this is inexcusable.

“Lord, show me the things in my daily living that are mis­leading and confusing my brothers. Show me the things I do that are turning off my own children! Show me, Lord,  how my concern for myself is driving souls clear away from the door of the kingdom!”

Let us pursue the things that make for peace and mutual up building instead of pursuing things to criticize. What a change comes over a home where a man and woman who have picked at each other for ten years reverse their attitude and, deliberately begin to appreciate each other, accept each other, thank God for each other, honor each other, edify and love each other. And what heavenly things start happening in the church of the Lord when his disciples pursue the things that make for peace and mutual up building.

But  what about brothers and sisters who are going off the track? Don’t they have to be rebuked? Of course. But how much more helpful is the correction that we give when the bent of our mind is in harmony with the mind of Christ.  When we are pursuing the things that make for peace.

In the church of Jesus Christ that is now emerging there will be order. There will be elders and people with authority.  But the people with authority in the Body will not be those with the biggest mouths or the sharpest  tongues or the heaviest rap. Rather those who, like Moses, yea like the Lord himself, are truly meek. If our hearts are submissive to Jesus Christ we will know how and when and where to submit to authority in the Body. The elders won’t have to wear badges or arm bands or a special kind of hat.

Meanwhile, let’s learn to submit to Jesus in these areas:     

1.      Let’s submit to Jesus by no more  passing judgment on one another.

2.      Let’s submit to Jesus by never putting a stumbling block in the way of a brother.

 3.      Let’ s submit to Jesus by pursuing what makes for peace and mutual up building.

We will then find ourselves working and living in supernatural harmony and the power of God will anoint our labors as never before.