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Apr 22, 2024
Included | Romans 13:8-14
Love Others; Reject Darkness
How do we live with Jesus in a society that opposes him? Paul tells us to wake up to our resurrection hope. When we do that, loving others and rejecting sin in our own lives makes sense.
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- When have you seen someone love their neighbours well without compromising their commitment to Jesus?
- What would it look like to live as if you were in the future kingdom of light while still in our current time of darkness?
- How does love “fulfill the law?”
- How can you show love to a neighbour this week? And: how can your small group show love to your community?
- Is there an area of darkness in your life that needs to be rejected? What next step can you take to do that?
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Recent Sermons
Paul never recovered from God including the Gentiles in the salvation invitation.
Like some of us, perhaps, he felt like some people should be excluded by virtue of where they were born or how badly they have behaved.
More than included, Paul instructs that former ‘outsiders’ should be treated as precious insiders, treated even better than we would treat ourselves. What would it look like if love came to town?
Human beings need reminders about how to get along, and Christians are no exception. We especially need reminders about how to love each other while we disagree. Paul draws the believers' hearts and minds back to what Jesus has done, and that paves the way for loving each other well through conflict.
Romans 12 is the description of what happens when God’s mercy overflows in a church’s life. Lifelong attitudes change, love becomes genuine, mocking enemies are not met with equal and opposite force but, quite the opposite, with peace and gentleness. Be praying even now for how God will speak uniquely to your small group.
All along, we’ve been saying that God’s heart is to see us INCLUDED. That’s why Jesus came, and that’s the subject of Paul’s letter to the Romans. At times, Christians forget God’s radical inclusion of them and go back to the old patterns of competing and comparing. Sadly, that was happening in the Roman Church. Paul has one powerful dose for that sickness.
The resurrection changed everything! The story includes an invitation, a blessing, and a commission for the first witnesses … and for us today.
I love it when people have the gift of communicating clearly. Paul, following Moses in the second half of Deuteronomy 30, does exactly that: communicates clearly. Here’s what it means to become and be a Christian: it means believing the Resurrection and not keeping that good news to yourself! Clear, but not easy! This is something you’ll do for the rest of your life!
