I’ve read the Bible through a few times, and each time I get to the New Testament I’ll come across those verses that I think really capture what it means to be a Christian. I’ll read the passages about loving one’s neighbor and treating others with respect and dignity, and I’ll think to myself, “I should write these all down somewhere. I think they’d be a great help to someone who’s wondering what a Christian does.”
I’m sure doing this would also be a great help to those who struggle with their faith. In my time teaching I’d often have students ask me, “I really want to know the will of God. What is it?” I must admit that these passages seem to be a pretty good start.
But there’s a danger in this. We don’t want people taking the very same verses that define the Christian life and turning them into a checklist for Christian living. We don’t want anyone thinking “OK, so I’ve loved my neighbor. Check. I’ve got this Christian thing down.” Face it: there are plenty of people who love their neighbors who would otherwise have absolutely nothing to do with Jesus.
But I really got to thinking about this as I was reading through Romans this morning. One of those “here’s how to live” passages showed up in the twelfth chapter:
“9Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. 10 Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. 13 Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.
14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. 17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ 20 To the contrary, ‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.’ 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
One must admit, if you were to write a book called What Christians Should Do, this would be a goldmine of material.
“Let love be genuine.” Check.
“Abhor what is evil.” Check.
“Hold fast to what is good.” Check.
“Love one another with brotherly affection.” Check…
But there’s no way this should be a checklist. If it were, we might find ourselves in a bit of trouble. I mean, how about “Honor your father and mother.” “Do not commit adultery.” “Do not steal.” “Do not lie.” Recognize these? They’re just four of the ten commandments. And it’s our inability to do even these that should give us a hint as to what our Romans 12 checklist can do for us. It makes us no better than the legalists of Jesus’s time – the very Pharisees that he condemned for heaping requirements upon the people without lifting a finger to help them.
But of course, there’s hope. I wouldn’t be here without it. None of us would. The whole point behind passages like the one in Romans and others in the New Testament is that you don’t do what you’re reading is in these words to be saved, you do them because you are saved. It ties in with another passage in the second chapter of James – and this is a hard thing for us to follow sometimes – that a faith without works is a dead faith. But what we really must see here is that it is not in the doing that makes our faith live [check], but that the fruit of our faith is the evidence that it is alive. It springs from something that is already there in us – the salvation of Jesus Christ through our faith; but to be clear, a faith that is wholly of the grace of God.
And that grace is the key. Paul starts out the second chapter of his letter to the Ephesians like this: “1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” Like it or not, this describes those who are not in Christ (it certainly describes me before I knew him). And it’s absolutely crucial that we are in Christ. Because if we aren’t, we’re dead. If we aren’t, there are no works to be done. Dead men Don’t. Do. Works. To get right to the heart of the matter, one of my favorite pastors, Tom Shrader, would ask, “what does a dead man need?” If the answer is anything but “life,” then the rest is meaningless.
And life is what God gives us. More from Ephesians 2: “4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…” [emphasis mine].
Again: what does a dead man need? Life. How so? Through a gift that is given to him by God. The fifth verse of Ephesians two ends quite simply like this: “by grace you have been saved.” This is repeated and defined more clearly in verse 8: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”
And then we get the money quote: “9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” [emphasis mine].
And this brings us back around to our checklist…and why it cannot be a checklist. What we read in Romans 12 and elsewhere in the New Testament are signs of our salvation. They’re where we go in the natural course of our lives – not as a line by line list of tasks that we are to run through every day, but as a willing outgrowing of our Christian faith. Will we do it perfectly? Of course not. We war with our own natures. We stumble. Paul himself says in the seventh chapter of Romans that “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” Yet, he knows him in whom his hope lies when he cries out at the end of that chapter, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
It is there, in that hope – yet even in our failings – that we live the life of Romans 12. Not as a checklist, but as a reality of our lives in Christ. It is there that we can truly have peace with God, not as a people desperate to fill in the boxes to make him happy, but as a people comfortable doing those things that a life in him brings.