{Friends of Radius} The Romance of Romans-Part 103

[Michael]

Romans Chapter 15 cont'd

Even the most powerful man of all, Jesus Christ, didn't use his power
to create for himself a pain-free and pleasure-filled earthly life. As
scripture says, "I have personally identified with and embraced the
rejection they have shown you O God." All the scriptures have been
written to impart knowledge, patience and comfort to us so that we can
live in hope- a confident expectation of a glorious future.

Comments:

I have been very blessed through many years to learn from Dr. Larry
Crabb--both through his ground-breaking books and in person. (I have
had the unusual and joyful opportunity to get to know most of the
authors of our generation whose books have impacted me the most.) For
decades now, Larry has studied, pondered, wrestled with, prayed
through, reconsidered and written about the doctrines, instructions,
poetry and narratives of Scripture and applied them specifically to
the conditions and situations of our individual lives and
relationships with God and people. I have great admiration and respect
for this dear friend in Christ and will say more about his teaching in
the next few blogs.

I think of Larry's body of work when I read again the final sentence
of this paragraph from my devotional paraphrase of Romans 15: "All the
scriptures have been written to impart knowledge, patience and comfort
to us so that we can live in hope- a confident expectation of a
glorious future."--wow, what a lineup.

Let's ponder briefly the quote above.

First, God has given us the amazing gift of the holy Scriptures. They
are meant to be meditated upon and applied by us throughout our whole
lives and are an inexhaustible supply of reliable truths that are
divinely inspired, or "God-breathed". Are we doing this kind of study
in both our personal and communal lives? So much more could be said
about the power of the written and spoken word of God in this world
and in our lives!

Second, and I'll start at the end point, to live in an atmosphere of
hope is a present tense experience whose power lies in a certainty
about a marvelous future because of something absolutely revolutionary
that happened in the past...the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
dead. Followers of Jesus Christ are empowered by the Holy Spirit to
live as "prophetic" (i.e. future reality) witnesses to the kingdom of
God that is truly here and present now, but not fully revealed or
demonstrated, as it will surely be. Jesus is risen from the dead and,
because of this, all the other effects of the fall of both angels and
humanity into rebellion against God and it's countless negative
consequences will surely be undone.

Then, the Scriptures are filled with the knowledge we need to live
lives of integrity (i.e. wholeness) and true success. At one point God
laments through the prophet Hosea, "...my people are destroyed from
lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject
you as my priests...." Hos 4:6 Followers of Jesus are called to live
as "royal priests" in our fallen world who embody and radiate the
wisdom, beauty and knowledge of the living God to all the earth. "But
you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people
belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called
you out of darkness into his wonderful light." 1 Pet 2:9

Next, Paul refers to how the Scriptures inspire the cultivation of the
virtue of patience in our lives. Without holding before us the
perpetual example of the heroes of faith in the Bible, who loved and
served God and people (and who also recovered from failing to do so!),
we can easily lose heart in the saga of our struggles with injustice,
rejection, abandonment, illness, material need, tragedy, seemingly
unanswered prayer and personal failure...to name just a few trials of
life. But again and again, the Bible provides for us divine
perspectives that equip us with the kind of "shock absorbers" for our
life's "vehicle" that our hope does not bounce out of the car. One of
these primary perspectives is how patience (like the kind that God
possesses) can only be worked into our souls through enduring and
surmounting trials...and another...that there will be a more than
commensurate, but eternal, reward for the temporary sufferings we
experience, if we do not give up.

Finally, there is the comfort that God gives us through our engagement
with holy Scripture. I think that comfort is the most mysterious of
the elements here in view. (Why do scrapes feel better when kissed by
our amazing mothers?) We all long for comfort in our lives and we too
often settle for false ones that do not go deep enough or last long
enough to satisfy our aching hearts. So much could be said here, but
it is sufficient to say that the most exquisite comfort possible comes
to us by experiencing the genuine presence of the Trinity in the midst
of a life in which, assuredly, not everything is going well and
nothing is going perfectly. This, most often and most promisingly,
happens for us as God interacts with us through his written word. The
Holy Spirit...who is called "the Comforter"...who originally inspired
the writings and has watched over their accurate transmission through
the centuries is the very same Spirit who draws near to us, rises
within us, kisses our hearts and whispers the truth we need to hear
into our spirits. There is no comfort in this hurting earth greater
than this.

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