The Hospitable Leader DevotionalSample

Many of us find it difficult to be truly happy and satisfied in our lives. As driven leaders, we tend to focus on the things that aren’t happening, the things that shouldn’t be happening, and so on. However, this is not the way Scripture encourages us to live: We are to “boast,” or be “happy,” because we are at peace with Christ and have hope in the glory of the Lord.

As the apostle Paul says in today’s passage from his letter to the church in Rome, we now have a new status because of our relationship to God and his plan. The word justified (verse 1) carries what theologians call a “forensic” connotation, meaning that there is a law-court metaphor being worked out. When we are not in relationship with God, we are outside of his family (even though he was welcoming us in all along!), and therefore are convicted as “guilty.” Our rebellion against God and his ways causes us to be judged as separate from God. This is, in fact, the correct verdict (the one we deserve), considering we rejected the vocation and life that God intended for us. However, when we put our faith in Christ, we receive a different verdict in the “court of law”: that of innocence, even though we don’t deserve it by our deeds. Thus, when we have faith, we stand in front of the judge, and the judge graciously gives us the status of innocence, allowing us to have peace with God and enter into his family, his work, and his plan for the world. This is what it means to be “justified,” as the first part of today’s passage highlights.

However, being “justified” because of our trusting faith in God isn’t a static status; it’s not something we hold close to our chest and revel in it until we go to heaven one day. We are to be so joyful that we have salvation to the extent that we use our salvation for its purpose. The question shouldn’t primarily be how we are saved, but what we are saved for. And in the verses we’ve referenced today, it tells us one of the results of our salvation: “we boast in the hope of the glory of God.” The result of our salvation, the affect, is that we hope for the glory, or some would translate it that “we are happy because of the hope we have of sharing in God’s glory.” 

So if we are justified and brought into relationship with God, and as a result of that we can be happy in sharing in God’s glory, the question we must ask is, “What is God’s glory?” God’s glory has to do with the manifestation of who he is, and his presence, throughout the world.  Therefore, tying the whole Scripture together, being in relationship with Christ, gives us happiness in the hope that, now and forevermore, we experience the glory of God, and are participating in his glory as it is manifested in this world more fully. How can we be solemn in light of this happy, hopeful glory? When we are in relationship with God, we’re mandated a certain level of happiness (no matter how hard what we’re doing is!) because we’re joined in the glory of the Lord!

As followers of Christ and hospitable leaders, we should exude, in all God-honoring areas of our lives, a happy hopefulness that transcends all understanding that bleeds out onto those around us.