Tag: Orthopraxy

What Now?: Acceptance and Belonging

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

The ethical portion of Paul’s Letter to the Romans centers this poignant entreaty: it is less about you and your religious purity and more about your neighbor and your impact on your neighbor. Too often Christian ethics and piety revolve around the self: all the things I do to be (read: feel) holy and good, the sacred acts I do and say to demonstrate my righteousness. In the end, this focus on the self exudes both self-righteousness and self-serving religiosity; as if—because one says all the right religious things and does all the right sacred acts—this one now has this God and religion thing on lock. Once one is here, in this space, both judgment and condemnation of others who “do not do as you do” seep in and infect relationships; then, in this space, hierarchies occur and there are those who are in and out, strong and weak, and those who “get it” and those who don’t.

However, according to the flow of Romans, this is the number one thing that cannot happen in the life of the Christian. In becoming those who have donned the armor of the light and doffed the acts of darkness, how we treat each other is paramount and this includes all infighting that happens in religious spaces over how to do this God and religion thing. For Paul here in Romans, one’s holiness, piety, righteousness, blessedness, saintliness comes not from what you do but from the one in whom you believe. This spiritual reality resists the human tendency to make this about me and my pursuit of holiness and righteousness for my own sake. I am liberated, by faith in Christ, from myself for the wellbeing of the neighbor. I am free, because of faith in Christ and the grace and righteousness given to me, to just love the neighbor as they are where they are without having to use them in my great plot to become good and righteous (because I am now both of those things in and by the declaration of beloved to me by God through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit). Thus, For Paul and Romans, the ethics of the Christian, Christian piety expressed into the world, is going to feature the neighbor; this applies to both the exhortations to align the outer person with the inner person and to consider the impact of our actions on others. Everything ethical, for Paul, revolves around the neighbor, the other, the one who (should) benefits from the deeds of the law of love evidencing and born of faith—both in and outside these walls.

Romans 14:1-12

Paul begins with one exhortation and two prohibitions for the Roman Christians,

Now accept and receive the ones who are “weak” in faith, not for passing judgments. Some believe in eating all things and the one who is “weak” eats vegetables. The one who eats [meat] must not treat the one who does not eat [meat] with contempt, and the one who does not eat [meat] must not judge the one who does eat [meat]; for God accepted and received them. (vv1-3)

Moving from the consistent refrain of ethnic diversity and divisions within the body of Christ in Rome to issues (further) disrupting[ii] the communion of believers therein,[iii] Paul picks up an issue that has been communicated to him from the Roman Christians—the label “weak” does not logically flow from what Paul has said thus far.[iv] Most likely, Paul has caught wind of one group considering the other group weak for eating or not eating all things (meat is in mind here). The group considered “weak” would not consider themselves as such[v] because what is at issue here is not food laws per se or one’s liberation in Christ but faithfulness to God and its proper expression.[vi] Refusing to eat meat as an expression of faith indicates that the one who abstains is not lacking in faith; these ones considered themselves to be obedient, and, thusly, faithful.[vii] While the “strong” did not have more faith than those deemed (shamefully) “weak” for only eating vegetables, they did have more power: [viii] power to exclude, power to “name,” and power (access) to eat whatever they wanted. (Weak meant powerless. [ix]) In other words (or the TL/DR of it all), Paul is simply addressing the human tendency to create hierarchies of superiority and inferiority with the intention to divide and disrupt good, Christ centered, faith grounded community.[x] So, Paul beseeches the Roman Christians[xi] to receive each other[xii] as equals[xiii] and make space[xiv] for true belonging[xv] and not include the other so to dispute (argue)[xvi] and thus to shame or judge[xvii] the other which is the categorical opposite of belonging.

Building his case against judging others, Paul goes on to say,

Are you the one who judges the servant belonging to another? They stand or fall for their own lord. And they will be made to stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand. One judges day compared with day, and one judges all days [the same]. Let each one be fully assured in their own mind. The one who regards the day, regards [it] to the Lord. Also, the one who eats [meat], eats [meat] to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and the one who does not eat [meat], does not eat [meat] to the Lord and gives thanks to God (vv4-6).

Paul disabuses the Roman Christians of their self-appointment as judge over what does and does not qualify as faithfulness to God. In doing so, via imagery of servant and lord, Paul reminds them who they are: creatures and not the Creator.[xviii] Also, Paul’s use of the word translated as “servants” is a Greek word for “house servant”; all the Roman Christians are equals and members of the same household with the same lord.[xix]  (They are all “house-servants.”) Both groups do and do not do for and to the Lord; both groups are fully dependent on the grace of God[xx] made known in Christ Jesus. No matter what it is (a day observed or food eaten or not) it should be done according to one’s conscience[xxi] and in a way that brings thanksgiving and honor to God (not to oneself[xxii]);[xxiii] therefore, if this is the basis, then coming together either to observe or not observe and to eat or not eat should not be a problem,[xxiv] each one supporting the other in and from divine love[xxv] (the very fabric and thread of Christian community and practice).[xxvi] The Roman Christians, through faith[xxvii] (Romans 1-8) find themselves not only new creations but living according to new (active and intentional) expectations[xxviii] for their new community based on the law of love[xxix] born of faith and established in Christ and God’s work in Christ.[xxx] This is why Paul can then remind them,

For none of us lives to/for themselves, and no one dies to/for themselves. For if we live, we live to/for the Lord; if we die, we die to/for the Lord. Therefore, if we live and if we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this [end] Christ died and he lived so that also he might rule the dead and living (vv7-9).

The Roman Christians are liberated by faith to live, really live without finding themselves trapped by either new laws around days and food or in despising and judging those who do not follow as they do. Recalling Chapter 13 of Romans, their only obligation is to and for love that seeks the well-being of the neighbor and brings glory to God.[xxxi] So Paul then adds,

But why do you, you judge your sibling? Or why do you, you treat your sibling with contempt? For we will all appear before the tribunal of God. For it has been written, “‘As I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bend and every tongue will confess to/for God.’” Therefore each one of us will give word about themself (vv10-12).

Conclusion

Nitpicking, in-fighting, slandering, shaming, ostracizing, criticizing, and judging will always help in making the Christian Church obsolete in the world. Why? Because those very tendencies are the way the kingdom of humanity operates; why would anyone want to add more of that to their own experience and existence? According to Romans and Paul, both the church that claims Christ as its Lord and those who call themselves “little Christs” (Christians) should be different from the kingdom of humanity—not just a little bit but a lotta bit. Whether we despise and judge within our own congregation, other churches, other denominations and even other religions, we are not expressing our righteousness found by faith in Christ but our self-righteousness based on our self-regard. In this way, we express not the glory of God but the glory of our own rightness that is nothing but dirt in the economy of God. Granted, we do these things because we feel threatened and scared—especially now as we experience the shrinking of religion and its place within society. However, what Paul tells us is that our livelihood as Christians and as part of the body of Christ and the Church is not dependent on our being right or doing church and Christianity a specific way but, rather, is dependent on the one who is the founder and legitimator of our faith and existence as Christians and the Church: Christ Jesus. He is the only thing that truly matters in our life of orthodoxy and orthopraxy as church and as individual Christians. It is the divine liberation, divine life, and divine love won for us through his death and resurrection that is the only hill we should ever die on; everything else—e👏ver👏ee👏thing👏else👏—is child’s play and, as Luther says.

“For all of these things are shadows and signs of the real thing and thus are childish. For every day is a feast, all food is permitted, every place is sacred, every time is a time of fasting, every kind of apparel is allowed, all things are free, only that we observe moderation in their use and that love … be practiced.”[xxxii]

Let us eat or not eat, worship thusly or not thusly, observe this day or not this day, do church like this or not like this in such a way that the only thing anyone ever feels is God’s love through us so that God is brought glory through our neighbor’s praise and well-being.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 230. “This change in terms minimizes attention to ethnic differences and allows him to focus on behavior and status.”

[iii] Lancaster, Romans, 229. “…Paul turns to addressing particular behaviors that have disrupted the ability of the Roman followers of Jesus to be in community together.”

[iv] Lancaster, Romans, 229. “Paul speaks of two groups: the weak and the strong. These labels may not be Paul’s own designation of the situation because the labels do not really arise from the ideas he is trying to convey to the Romans…He may be adopting labels already in use in the community.”

[v] Lancaster, Romans, 230. “…it would be unlikely that the person in the group designated as ‘weak’ would have called themselves weak. The group that considered itself to be strong, then, is probably the source of these epithets.”

[vi] Lancaster, Romans, 230. “Rather, the problem in the community may arise because of different understandings of what faithfulness to God means.”

[vii] Lancaster, Romans, 231. “Those who abstained from eating meat surely did not think they did so because of lack of faith, rather, they were trying to keep faithful to their God by being careful about what they ate. Whereas the ones who eat saw weakness, the abstainers understood themselves to be obedient.”

[viii] Lancaster, Romans, 231. “The ones who eat were ‘strong’ in part because they were a group that had the power to name and to exclude. They used a term of honor for themselves and a term of shame for the others.”

[ix] Lancaster, Romans, 230. “In the ancient world, the term ‘weak’ could refer to many ways of being inferior or powerless, such as economic, physical, political or social.”

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 231. “Even when sociocultural hierarchy is not as closely tied to honor and shame as it was in the ancient world, the inclination to measure and divide others into superior and inferior groups is a constant pressure on any community.”

[xi] LW 25:114fn5. “He is formulating a general rule on the basis of a particular case and opposes both groups, because each judges the other as falling and not standing firm in the true faith, and thus the presumptuousness of both groups must be subdued.”

[xii] Lancaster, Romans, 233. It is a lecture to both the “strong” and the “weak”

[xiii] Lancaster, Romans, 232. “In a situation where lines of demarcation have been drawn to indicate who is superior and who is inferior, Paul instructs welcoming those whom you consider to be inferior as those who share your cause as equals.”

[xiv] Lancaster, Romans, 232. “Welcoming should not bring others into coercive situation but rather create space for exchange in the context of mutual respect.”

[xv] Lancaster, Romans, 232. “To welcome someone socially means to extend hospitality to that person, often sharing food at the table.”

[xvi] Lancaster, Romans, 232. “…Paul goes on to specify that the purpose of welcoming them not be for disputation.”

[xvii] Lancaster, Romans, 232-233. “His explicit message (14:3-4) is mutual acceptance of each other—no despising, no passing judgment.”

[xviii] Lancaster, Romans, 233. “First, given the authority that a master had over a servant, Paul is reminding them of a point the has already made in this letter; the only one with authority to judge is God, who is the master they all serve.

[xix] Lancaster, Romans, 233. “Second, the word translated as ‘servant’ is oiketēn, which was the term used particularly for a house servant. The emphasis, then, is not simply on being a servant but on being a member of the household (oikos). This choice of words reminds them they are members of the same household.”

[xx] Lancaster, Romans, 234. “In their concern to honor a day to the Lord, they should hear this echo of the importance of mindset. They should not be proud but should rather remember their dependence on God’s grace.”

[xxi] LW 25:114fn7. “He is trying to say: ‘Let each be strong in his own conscience and not be disturbed at the action of another.’”

[xxii] LW 25:499 “The apostle is arguing from the greater, that if we do not live to ourselves or belong to ourselves (which is the greater), much less do we eat or drink to ourselves or do or suffer anything to ourselves, but rather all things are the Lord’s.”

[xxiii] Lancaster, Romans, 235. “The conviction he is talking about lies rather in the one’s understanding of what honors God (14:6), and it is expressed in giving thanks to God. Such honor and gratitude are not the property of any particular conviction; they may be present regardless of which day is observed and whether one eats or abstains.”

[xxiv] Lancaster, Romans, 235. “When Paul’s thoughts on the two problems of eating and observing sacred days are taken together, it seems Paul is trying to affirm openness to others without falling into an ‘anything goes’ consequence.”

[xxv] Lancaster, Romans, 235. “A certain generosity of spirit is required to recognize that others are also trying to honor God in what they do, even if what they do is different…In the face of painful disagreement with other Christians, Paul calls us to look beyond the problem itself to the God we all serve.”

[xxvi] Lancaster, Romans, 234. “The problem arises not because of what a person eats in private but rather in the context of eating together. The way these followers of Jesus figure out how to share food will reveal how well they really regard each other as brothers and sisters.”

[xxvii] LW 25:490 “But this must be done out of love and the faith that does not believe that he is doing these things as necessary for salvation but only of his own free will and out of a sense of freedom.”

[xxviii] LW 25:488. “The answer is that it is true on the basis of the new law that none of these things is necessary, but not in such a way that when one thing has been omitted it is permissible to do the opposite or something entirely different.”

[xxix] Lancaster, Romans, 236. “Because through Christ we are connected to each other, our living and dying to God is done together in community. Disruption of our life together tarnishes our living sacrifice to God.”

[xxx] Lancaster, Romans, 236. “He is calling us to see that our sacrifice is in the totality of who we are, so even how we address problems with relatively low stakes matters for what kind of offering we make to God. To take seriously that we have died to sin and entered into a new dominion means that the Lordship of Christ extends to everything that we are and do.”

[xxxi] LW 25:486. “Thus the meaning of the apostle is that in the new law all things are free and nothing is necessary for those who believe in Christ, but love is sufficient form them.”

[xxxii] LW 25:487.

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What Now?: One Faith, One Body, One Ethic

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Paul spends most of his letters to the Romans explaining—in stunning detail—the intricate theology weaving together the coming of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, the role of faith in the life of the believer (both Jewish and Gentile), the relationship of the believer to the law and God’s righteousness, and the unity in diversity of the body of Christ being comprised of the adopted Children of God, the ones who are foreknown and called, both the siblings of Paul according to the flesh and according to the Spirit. Now, in the last 1/3 of the letter, Paul turns to speak about the ethics and ethical posture of the body of Christ.[ii]

Christians are justified with God by faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit; all of this is (very much!) apart from any work and deed, both bad ones and good ones. However, that doesn’t mean they don’t now and as a consequence of this event of justification have a robust relationship with works and deeds. For Paul, and according to the logic, flow, and theology of Romans, Christians are liberated from attempts to self-justify so that they can be, in word and deed, the representatives of Christ in the world by the power of the Holy Spirit for the wellbeing of the neighbor to the glory of God.[iii] Tl/dr: Christians are called by God and justified so that they may participate (liberally and voluntarily) in God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation.[iv]

Romans 12:1-8

Paul begins chapter 12 with three exhortations,

I beseech you, therefore, siblings, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and well-pleasing to God, your rational service. And do not be conformed to this age; but be transformed by the renewal of the mind so that you can discern the good, pleasing, and mature will of God (vv1-2).

These three exhortations are strong urgings and neither commands nor polite requests.[v] Both polite requests and commands can be given without love; exhortations, on the other hand, come from the depths of love for the beloved, like a parent desiring their kids to remain safe in various and potentially precarious situations. An urgent pleading or a strong urging comes loaded with heavy love putting the beloved in an obligation to respond and (especially) to respond affirmatively. While there is an option for the beloved to resist the urging or pleading, the resisting won’t come easy because urging and pleading have a direct line to the conscience where they make their home in the heart and mind of the beloved. Thus, the Roman Christians—both Jewish and Gentile—is being verbally moved, by Paul, to begin to conform to the Spriit of God and cease conforming to the spirit of the kingdom of humanity that thrives in the toxicity of its antagonism to the reign of God.[vi] In this way the sinner—in becoming righteous (always and repeatedly[vii]) by faith alone—now becomes the one who moves from non-being to being and, thus, non-doing to doing.[viii] This being and doing means that Christians, according to Paul, no longer offer animal sacrifices to appease God; rather, they are offer themselves over to God, they hand themselves over to be molded and shaped by the Holy Spirit—through prayer and worship—to begin to be like Christ.[ix] The Roman Christians are to be and do in the world in a way that their persons and their being[x] are daily sacrifices to God, midwives and child-bearers bringing forth God’s will and reign,[xi] not concerning themselves with getting it perfect but with getting it aligned to God’s love made known in Christ.[xii] (“Not my will, but they will be done.” [xiii]) According to Paul, this is the only and right (logical/rational) service to God as a response to and out of faith,[xiv] for both individual Christians and the corporate Church, the body of Christ.[xv],[xvi]

How are the Roman Christians to do this? Paul begins,

For, I say by grace being given to me for all people who are among you not to be arrogantly minded beyond that which is necessary to think, but to think with the result of being of sound mind, each one according to the apportioned measure of faith/trust. For just as we have many members in one body, and the many members do not have the same function, in this way we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and members of one another (vv3-5).

The very first thing Paul mentions is the way the Roman Christians view themselves. First and foremost, the Roman Christians are not to think more of themselves than they should. How much should they think of themselves? An amount that accords with the gift of faith and God’s grace.[xvii] But what does this mean? Remember, Paul spent 11 chapters disabusing the Roman Christians of the hierarchies that decorate the kingdom of humanity; none of that is allowed in the body of Christ[xviii] because the playing field is leveled by faith and God’s grace given (by God!) to sinners.[xix] Christians must reject (repeatedly) the temptation to see themselves as better (or worse!) than other people. For the Christians in the church in Rome receiving this letter, it means that the neither the Jewish Christians nor the Gentile Christians can consider themselves to be better than the other.[xx] Concurrently, this means that Christians are not categorically better than those who are outside the church (thus, they are not better than Paul’s siblings according to the flesh (Romans 9-11) and not better than their fellow Roman (Gentile) citizens (Romans 1-3). Every day, and not just on the day of worship, these Christians are to be humble toward others and toward themselves, refusing to elevate oneself because of class, birth, wealth, religion, and occupation (etc.); there’s no better and well-pleasing sacrifice to God.[xxi]

Paul then, in a less organized way than elsewhere in his epistles, speaks of broad categories (not hierarchies) of specific giftings and how they should be performed individually for the corporate good,

Now having gifts that differ according to grace being given to us: if prophecy, then according to the proportion of faith; if service then in serving; if the one who teaches then in teaching, if the one who exhorts, then in exhorting; if the one who gives a share then in liberality; if the one who rules then in diligence; if the one who has mercy then in care and cheerfulness (vv6-8).

As the Roman Christians embrace their justification that is by faith alone and consider what this means for how they view themselves, then the way they perform their various calls will serve to edify and encourage the community of believers. The prophet will prophecy with words that align to faith and the declarations of God in Christ and will not be in opposition to the incarnate Word of God but may be in opposition to the kingdom of humanity (prophecy=proclamation).[xxii] The one who is gifted to serve will serve with their full being. The one who teaches is called and inspired by God[xxiii] to teach so that those who do not know Christ come to know Christ, while the one who exhorts is to help those who already know Christ to grow and mature in becoming more like Christ.[xxiv] The givers are to give with no strings attached, the rulers are to rule invested in the well-being of their citizens remembering that they are the God’s beloved,[xxv] and those who offer mercy should do so not in dourness but with cheer, bringing light where there is darkness.

Conclusion

Our faith, while it liberates us from slavishly trying to fulfill the law, puts us on the hook regarding the will of God in the world. This is the truth that Paul is communicating to the Roman Christians, thus to us all these years later. Faith in Jesus, faith that justifies us with God and ceases our selfish and self-consumed pursuits at self-righteousness that comes from self-justification, liberates us to be in the world in a real and fulfilled way. For Paul, faith is eager to manifest in loving deeds, just like Jesus’s faith manifested in the loving, liberating, and life-giving deeds while he walked the earth all those years ago. We, by faith, become a member of the body of Christ and are, thusly, exhorted and shaped by the power of the Holy Spriit to be as Christ in the World as Christ’s representatives, both individually and corporately. We get to be liberated from our selves by faith and liberated for the wellbeing of our neighbor—to bring love where there is indifference, liberation where there is captivity, and life where there is death. We get to walk, arm in arm, with Christ and with each other; one body serving God and serving those whom God loves, the beloved neighbor in here and out there. We get to stand up and be a person of substance in the world knowing who we are and what we stand for.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Lancaster, Romans, 202. “Being baptized into Jesus Christ brings us into life with this faithful and righteous God, so we must consider well how that life should be lived. Paul’s use of ‘therefore’ in this sentence is not merely a word to show a change of subject; rather, it indicates that he is drawing conclusions from all that he has said previously. To understand his reasons for drawing these conclusions, the reader must keep the scope of his previous argument about the faithfulness and righteousness of God in view.”

[iii] LW 25:104fn2. “Up to this point he has taught how to become a new man, and he has described the new birth which makes the new man (John 3:3ff). but now he is teaching concerning the works of the new birth which anyone who has not been made a new man does in vain and presumptuously. For being comes before doing, and suffering comes before being. Therefore the order is: becoming, being, and then working.”

[iv] LW 25:433. “The apostle is about to teach Christan ethics, and so no other concern is of such prime importance up tot eh end of the epistle as to eradicate our own wisdom and self-will.”

[v] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 2010-202. In re: Παρακαλέω, “Paul is not giving the Roman followers of Jesus a command or rule, but neither is he simply making a request. He is urging them to demonstrate in their lives their loyalty to the God he has been describing throughout the letter.”

[vi] Lancaster, Romans, 202. “If the followers of Jesus have obligations on the basis of their allegiance to God, it is on the basis of a faithful and merciful God, and it is only through that mercy that they may fulfill their obligations. The counsels that Paul will commend to them are not new laws, but rather they are his idea of the appropriate response to the mercy God has already shown.”

[vii] LW 25:434. “Thus it is most correct to say that man is always in privation, always in becoming or in potentiality, in matter, and always in action…Man is always in nonbeing, in becoming, in being, always in privation, in potentiality, in action, always in sin, in justification, in righteousness, that is, he is always a sinner, always a penitent, always righteous.”

[viii] LW 25:434. “…nonbeing is a thing without a name and a man in his sins; becoming is justification; being is righteousness; action is doing and living righteously; being acted upon is to be made perfect and complete. And these five stages in some way are always in motion in man. And whatever is found in the nature of man—except for the first stage of nonbeing and the last form of existence, for between these two, nonbeing and being acted upon, there are the three stages which are always in movement, namely, becoming, being and acting—through his new birth he moves from sin to righteousness, and thus from nonbeing through becoming to being.”

[ix] Lancaster, Romans, 203. “Although Paul uses common religious language, he suggests something different, though, than offering something representative (an animal or some other girt to stand in our place): Paul tells them to present their own bodies. That is, they. Must give their whole selves to God.”

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 206. “…[Paul] is pointing to the intimate connecting between them. Logikos worship must include the mind as well as the body. When our minds are renewed after the mind of Christ, we more clearly discern the will of God. Understanding the will of God is the first, necessary stoep toward enacting it with our bodies.”

[xi] Lancaster, Romans, 203-204. “To say that we should present our very selves to God as a living sacrifice is to say that our daily life ought to be a form of worship, an ongoing offering. Everything we do should not only be guided by God but also offered to God.”

[xii] Lancaster, Romans, 207. “Related to telos (end, goal), this fullness does not require that we enact God’s will without any mistake or flaw, but it does requires that we pursue the goal that God wills and not one determined by the present age or our own selfish desires. Discernment of that will is key.”

[xiii] LW 25:438. “For faith itself transforms the thinking and leads us to acknowledge the will of God.”

[xiv] Lancaster, Romans, 205. In re λογικός, “This worship is not carried out in a temple as one performs cultic duties, but rather it is carried out every day in one’s living. Both Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus would be challenged by this image to think in a new way about how best to honor God.”

[xv] Lancaster, Romans, 202. “Because they are loyal to this faithful and righteous God, they have obligations to one another.”

[xvi] Lancaster, Romans, 207. “The task of the community to be transformed by the renewing of its mind is every bit as necessary and ongoing as the task of any individual.”

[xvii] Lancaster, Romans, 208. “We see ourselves in a fair and sensible light when we judge ourselves according to the faith that God has given.”

[xviii] LW 25:438. “For whenever God gives us a new degree of grace, he gives in such a way that it conflicts with all our thinking and understanding.”

[xix] Lancaster, Romans, 208. “It is more likely that Paul means ‘measure’ not as amount but as criterion. In other words, we should measure our thinking against faith.”

[xx] Lancaster, Romans, 208. “If we allow faith to form our judgments, then we can see more clearly how we belong together in one body.”

[xxi] Lancaster, Romans, 205. “We show our allegiance to the dominion to which we belong through the way we carry out our lives, in all our daily actions. Because the followers of Jesus have left the dominion of sin and accepted the free gift of the dominion of grace, they are obliged to demonstrate their new allegiance daily.”

[xxii] LW 25:446. “in the same way he is trying to say here that prophecy must be in harmony with faith, so that it is concerned ‘with things not seen’ ….lest by change it become the wisdom of the world, which is concerned with things which are seen, either in causes or in effects.”

[xxiii] LW 25:447. “…for without the call of God neither the ministry nor teaching succeeds.”

[xxiv] LW 25:448. “The difference between teaching and exhortation is this, that teaching is directed to those who do not know, while exhortation applies to those who do know.”

[xxv] LW 25:450. “…although everyone who is exalted is exalted for the purpose that he seek nothing for himself nor seek to live for himself, but that he recognizes that he has been made a servant of his servants.”

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