Word of Encouragement (4/13/2021)
When we sit down to pray, it is easy for us to pray for the urgent needs of ours and others. When we do that, we run the risk of allowing the tyranny of the urgent to take over our prayer life, too. That would be most unfortunate. If anything, our time of prayer should help us to break away from the tyranny of the urgent and reorient ourselves around what is important as we direct our eyes to God and His will for our lives. So, we have been thinking about what we should be praying for by looking at Jesus’ teaching on what we should pray for (in the Lord’s Prayer) and His example (in His Highly Priestly Prayer). Starting today, we want to reflect on some of Paul’s prayers, which appear in His letters. The first one we would like to reflect on is in Rom. 15:5-6: “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
In this prayer, Paul addresses God as “the God of endurance and encouragement.” This is not a familiar expression to us. Why is Paul addressing God in this way here? We can see why when we read the previous verse: “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” The Bible is the story of God’s redemption through Jesus Christ (“what we are to believe concerning God). But the Bible also contains instructions regarding how we are to live as God’s people (“what duty God requires of man”). It is not easy to meet God’s holy standard; it is, in fact, impossible. That is why Jesus had to come and meet it for us. This does not mean we don’t have to live by the standard and follow the instructions. Jesus did not get rid of the standard; He changed the reason for our obedience—not to earn our salvation but to demonstrate our (already won) salvation in Jesus Christ. Jesus also changed the motivation: not out of fear of God’s punishment but out of gratitude and love for God. Even so, we still need endurance and encouragement to properly receive and apply the instructions for the high standard of Christian living.
How wonderful it is that God is “the God of endurance and encouragement”! Our gracious God provides what we need. Not only did He provide a Savior, who met the high/perfect standard of holiness in our place; He also provides endurance and encouragement to all His people, who must live by the standard as God’s redeemed people. How does He provide these things? He cultivates endurance in us through various trials: “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance” (Rom. 5:3); “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness [or, endurance]” (James 1:2-3). But we must not forget what makes this happen so that we don’t buckle under the weight of these trials and give up: “the encouragement of the Scriptures” (Rom. 15:4). The Scriptures encourage us by the many promises of God’s help available to all those who take refuge in Him. The Scriptures encourage us by reminding us of our union with Christ, whose perfect righteousness and victory we share, who is at work in us to bring His salvation to its glorious completion.
In this petition, Paul is specifically praying for our unity: “to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus.” In the previous chapter (Rom. 14), Paul dealt with the issue of how we should treat those who have differing opinions from us (in non-essential matters of doctrine and Christian life). We all know how difficult it is to live in harmony with those who hold (quite passionately) different opinions from us. For this, we need much endurance and encouragement from the Lord. What Paul has in mind here is not just a “live and let live” mentality, which is hard enough. He says, “that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 6). In essential matters of our Christian life, we should “actively concur.” But in non-essential matters, we should be willing to “passively submit.” This doesn’t mean we have to change what we believe. But we should be willing to set it aside for the sake of harmony (because it is non-essential) in our church (and in our family)—not just for the sake of harmony but for the honor of Christ, of whose body we are all members. So, Paul prefaces this prayer with, “For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, ‘The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me’” (Rom. 15:3).
We are witnessing the world becoming more and more polarized, socially, culturally, politically, etc. We can also see how this mood is affecting the church of Jesus Christ. How important it is for us to pray this prayer for us!