Romans: Theology for Everybody (12-16)Sample

When Jesus came to the earth, He came as a Jewish man, speaking Hebrew, celebrating Jewish holidays, eating Jewish food, and singing Jewish songs. Jesus’ first disciples and followers were Jewish and shared the same culture as He did. Following Jesus’ resurrection from death and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, many non-Jewish Gentiles became Christian followers of Jesus which led to a long list of questions about what things were cultural and which things were biblical. Examples of these questions being asked include the book of Galatians where the Gentiles were told they did not need to be circumcised, and 1 Corinthians where the Gentiles were told they could not long get drunk, attend pagan religious services in addition to church ,and commit sexual sins. The Gentiles are instead encouraged to live in loving unity with one another, pray for one another, and to love each other with brotherly affection at all times.

This same thing happens every time the gospel of Jesus Christ goes from one culture to another, or from one subculture to another. Missiologists call this “contextualizing” where the Christian church lives in the context of a culture and has to determine what to keep and reject in that culture. This is precisely what Paul, an apostolic missionary leader who has planted churches and been used by God to reach peoples across a variety of cultures, is teaching.

Too often, Christians from one dominant culture impose their entire culture along with the Bible on a newly reached culture. The result is something called colonialism and is not what God wants as there is no culture on earth that is perfect and worthy of complete emulation. For this reason, in 14:17, Paul has the only reference to the Kingdom of God in the entire book of Romans. All Christians are to look up to the Kingdom of God to see how Jesus’ rule and reign is today in the unseen realm and will be forever when He returns to rule Earth by connecting the seen and unseen realms. This is what it means to live Kingdom Down, having King Jesus as our highest authority and His Kingdom as the culture we seek to emulate, so that His Kingdom will come and His will be done on earth as it is in Heaven just as He prayed. To help God’s people navigate various cultural issues, Paul reminds us that our conscience (a concept he introduced in Romans 2:12-16) must be considered so that every believer is living within their personal convictions. On various issues, people are strong enough to use their full freedom in Christ without sinning, whereas in other areas people are weak and unable to use their full freedom in Christ without sinning. We are all weak and strong in different areas. For example, when it comes to drinking alcohol, I am strong and enjoy my freedom in Christ, but when it comes to movies or other programming with demonic themes or the harm of women and children, I cannot handle any of it as it troubles me at the level of the soul. For the sake of loving Christian unity that allows liberty, Paul’s exhortation would be for me to never drink in the presence of someone who is a recovering alcoholic, or to go out on a double date with friends that demanded my wife and I watch a movie I could not, in good conscience, endure. On secondary issues, people matter more than the issue and the relationship is what matters in the end.

The kinds of cultural issues to which Paul refers are constantly debated among Christians. Examples include celebrating Christmas, Halloween, and Easter which all have their origins in paganism. Various entertainment from movies to songs and video games along with books and television shows. Fashion trends from styles of clothing to jewelry and makeup for women. Gender issues regarding how men and women dress and present themselves to others. The list is seemingly endless.

To help Christians think through various issues on these kinds of issues, I have used a simple taxonomy for many years that seems to be helpful:

1. Receive – there are some things in the culture that Christians can simply use which explains why most churches have a sound system along with air conditioning made by unbelievers; have a website hosted by unbelievers on the Internet which is run by unbelievers; sing, pray, and preach in the language of their nation which is predominantly unbelievers; and receive all these technological advancements to try and further the cause of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

2. Reject – there are some things in the culture that Christians simply must reject, which explains why we do not have Christian pornography, Christian drug cartels, transgender Sunday school classes, same-sex marriage, or prayer meetings with cults and other religions.

3. Redeem – there are some things in the culture that can be used against God, but can also be redeemed for God. One example is Santa. Since Christmas and Santa are a big point of debate and disagreement between Christian parents, the following is a bit of a summary of how Christians have redeemed both. Since Santa is so pervasive in our culture, it is nearly impossible to simply reject Santa as part of our annual cultural landscape. Still, as parents raising our five kids we didn’t feel we could simply receive the entire story of Santa because there is a lot of myth built on top of a true story.

As our kids grew up, we told our kids that Santa was a real person who did live a long time ago. We also explain how people dress up as Santa and pretend to be him for fun, kind of like how young children like to dress up as pirates, princesses, superheroes, and a host of other people, real and imaginary. We explain how, in addition to the actual story of Santa, a lot of other stories have been added (e.g., flying reindeer, living in the North Pole, delivering presents to every child in one night) so that Santa is a combination of true and make-believe stories.

We do not, however, demonize Santa. Dressing up, having fun, and using the imagination God gave can be an act of holy worship and is something that, frankly, a lot of adults need to learn from children.

What we are concerned about, though, is lying to our children. We teach them that they can always trust us because we will tell them the truth and not lie to them. Conversely, we ask that they be honest with us and never lie. Since we also teach our children that Jesus is a real person who did perform real miracles, our fear is that if we teach them fanciful, make-believe stories as truth, it could erode confidence in our truthfulness where it really matters. So, we distinguish between lies, secrets, surprises, and pretend for our kids. We ask them not to tell lies or keep secrets, but do teach them that some surprises (like gift-giving) and pretending (like dressing up) can be fun and should be encouraged. We tell them the truth and encourage them to have fun watching Christmas shows on television and even sitting on Santa’s lap for a holiday photo if they so desire.

So, our kids thank us for being both honest and fun, which we think is what Jesus wants as we tried to redeem Santa.

Questions: 

1. Is there anything you are participating in that you need to reject because it is ungodly, violates your conscience, or does not grow your faith in relationship to God? How will those changes happen?

2. Are there any people who you are causing to stumble into sin by your actions or the pressure you put on them? How can you apologize to them and start helping rather than hindering them?