Living As One

 DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

LIVING AS ONE

Rom 14:9-12

9 For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. 10 You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat. 11 It is written: "'As surely as I live,' says the Lord, 'every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.'"   12 So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.

NIV

Every Knee will bow before God, which means both the righteous and the unrighteous. We are given this same picture from the revelation that was given to John when he explains seeing the sheep and the goats standing before God and the goats are put on his left and the sheep on his right.  The goats are cast away while the sheep are invited into his rest. However, the point Paul is making is still about the tension, stress and division, dissension, and judgmental attitudes over how some eat and drink in the freedom of Christ while others live bound by rules. But this is not going to end with each going their separate ways, but somehow living in love. Still, for now, we should consider that all of us will bow before God. What is that going to look like? What does it mean that we will give an account to God. Are we going to have to bow before him and have him review our lives, like in the Albert Brooks movie, Defending your life, where he has to watch videos in a courtroom setting of the good, bad, and ugly moments of his life? What we know is that because of Christ dying on the cross, taking our sins upon himself, and paying the price for our sins, therefore we have been forgiven. That means God will not hold or judge us according to our sin, but he will judge all men according to whether they are in Christ or not in Christ, again the sheep and the goats. Therefore, because we are in Christ, God has already declared us holy and righteous in his sight. However, Paul is once again saying that God is the only righteous judge, so then we have absolutely no business, or authority to sit in judgment of each other. That means we cannot judge our fellow believers as to how they live out their faith, no matter if is it strong or weak, and we cannot judge those who have yet to use their faith to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. God will judge everyone on that basis. Still, as we will see, each of us believers has a responsibility to each other, to live in love, which we will see means we should not be a stumbling block to each other. So no matter how much we exercise our faith, we are still all people of the faith, living in harmony, singing the same tune of praise to our Lord. Let us not worry about bowing before God, as we should already be doing that, but let us be concerned about how we live out our faith toward each other. Will we fail at times? Sure, we are all humans with the frailties that accompany our humanity, but we should try, as much as it depends on us to live in peace with each other. And when we all stand before God, we will all be bowing together as one flock of our Great Shepard. Therefore, let us live as one now.