13but
I am not desiring you to be being ignorant, brothers, that I have intended many
times to come to you, in order that I might also have some fruit among you,
just as also among the other Gentiles, and I was hindered until the present
time.
Here again we get to ponder the mind of the Apostle. These
opening words are familiar, “I don’t want you to be ignorant,” “I don’t want
you to be uninformed.” Paul says this a number of times throughout the New
Testament and what’s important is he really means it. He does not want the
believers to be unaware of many things. My first thought is to note how important
this is to anyone who would be in a leadership role. How often does one hear
the complaint at work, “They don’t tell us anything.” Now, there may, in fact,
be many things your people don’t need to know, but there may be much they do
need to know too. And do they?
I worked at one company that only called Thanksgiving Day a
holiday and the work schedule indicated we’d all have to work that Friday. Every
year they’d end up giving us Friday off too, which was very nice, but they
wouldn’t tell us ahead of time whether they would or wouldn’t. I think one year
they actually told us on Tuesday of that week. It was very frustrating. Are we
working or not? We are making plans with friends and family and need to know. I’m
sure the bosses knew. They just didn’t concern themselves with what their
employees did or didn’t know and whether they needed to or not. Of course that
was only the tip of the iceberg. The leadership just didn’t communicate and
placed no value at all on maintaining an informed work force.
Paul wasn’t like that with his people. Are you? What about
your wife/husband? Children? Do you make a deliberate effort to be aware of what
they know, what they need to know? What don’t you tell them? And why not? Is it
really for their good, or for yours? A Christian mind like Paul’s would remind
us that love is our standard. Here we see that love play out in how well we
communicate with those under us, in whether our heart takes the time to think
about them, about their needs. Lord, help us not to be those who keep their
people “in the dark.”
Then pause and consider what specifically he doesn’t want them
to be ignorant about. It’s basically the question of why Paul hasn’t ever been
to their city. Obviously Paul has long been travelling all over the Roman Empire.
Why hasn’t he ever been to Rome? I want to insert here something I believe I
learned long ago and it applies here – it is invariably a maxim to live by: “If
people don’t know, they will assume the worst.” This is one reason why it is so
important to keep people informed. If not, they won’t just be ignorant, they’ll
actually be assuming all sorts of horrible things that simply aren’t true. Why
hasn’t Paul been to Rome? Apparently he just doesn’t think it’s important. Right?
Maybe he doesn’t think we’re
important! Maybe it’s because he’s afraid of the leaders. Maybe, maybe, maybe…”
They don’t know, so they can easily assume the worst, and I find it all too
common that is exactly what people will do. It’s what I tend to do.
It is another subject to ponder, but I would suggest this
discussion would lead us to consider love from the opposite direction. I find it
takes a deliberate effort on our part as Christians not to assume the worst of other people, to actually choose to believe
the best about them and go on believing the best until they would prove
otherwise. I know that calls for some wisdom and can be misapplied, but I would
suggest it’s worth pondering.
But back to our passage, Paul doesn’t want these believers
to be unaware that he has in fact many times purposed to go to Rome but actually found himself hindered.
That statement blows open a door to all sorts of discussions! I’ll try to pick
only a few.
Paul is an Apostle. Wherever he goes he is gifted to
accomplish great things for God, to lead multitudes to Christ, to do great
good. How can it be right for a man like that to be hindered at all???? Well,
the first reason is that he only has one body. He specifically tells them later
in the book,
“It has always been my
ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not
be building on someone else’s foundation. Rather, as it is
written: ‘Those who were not told about Him will see, and those who have
not heard will understand.’ This is why I have often been
hindered from coming to you. But now that there is no more place for me to work
in these regions, and since I have been longing for many years to visit you, I
plan to do so when I go to Spain” (15:20-23).
No matter how gifted Paul was, he could only be in one place
at a time. Having made it his goal to go where others had not meant Rome simply
had to wait. Obviously others had been working in Rome and obviously too they
had done a great job. We’ve already seen in the opening verses that the faith of
these Roman believers was spoken of throughout the world. In a sense, Rome
simply hadn’t been a priority for Paul. For any of us who truly want to “do
good” to others, we have to deal with the same problem. The reality is that we
only have one body. We can only be in one place at a time. And to be in one
place means we’re not in others. We each have to recognize the priorities which
the Lord has given us and then simply always be working off the “top” of the
list, so to speak.
Several years ago, the Lord showed me that, in the Bible, we
all basically find addressed seven relationships which are our priorities:
1. God
2. Husband/Wife
3. Children
4. Parents
5.Workplace (bosses, clients,
workmates)
6. Church (pastor, fellow
believers)
7. Our “neighbors” whoever they may
be.
It is notable that, in the Bible, these are not in any
order. They simply all are our priorities. I would suggest it isn’t even
correct to say, “The Lord comes first.” It is true I absolutely must cultivate
that relationship, but if He tells me to love my wife, then part of my
relationship with Him is to cultivate my relationship with her. It is not
either/or. It is both/and. It is liberating to me to see life as a matter of
living love in these seven relationships according to the guidance He’s given
me in the Word. “Planning” becomes a matter that, at any given time, I need to
be making sure I am treating each of these relationships as a priority. Which I
might be specifically addressing at any given moment brings us back to our
passage and this reality that I can only be in one place at a time.
Like Paul, our ability to do good to others becomes its own
hindrance, since, while I’m “doing good” in one place, I cannot be in others.
In a sense, the more “gifted” someone is, the more of a problem this becomes…and
the more we risk resentment from those “others” who may feel slighted. Back to
our passage again, Paul was determined not to let people feel that way, to
communicate his reasons for his one body not being “there.”
In the Bible, we find other legitimate reasons why we
might be “hindered,” even when we’re determined to be doing good. In I Thes.
2:18, we find Paul saying, “For we wanted to come to you – I, Paul, more than once – and yet
Satan hindered us.” We have an adversary. Sometimes the obstacles we face are
actually satanic. Even angels have to deal with this problem! In Daniel 10:12-14,
we read:
“Then
he continued, ‘Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your
mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words
were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted
me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me,
because I was detained there with the king of Persia. Now I have come to explain to you what will
happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come.’”
Then, of course, the hindrances we face may come from the
Lord Himself. In Acts 16:7, Paul and his companions found themselves hindered
and we are clearly told, “When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to
enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.”
Personally, I usually don’t know if the hindrances I face
are satanic or from the Lord. Probably a wiser person could discern the
difference. What I have to do is to entrust everything into the Lord’s hand,
all the while allowing hindrances to remind me that I do have an enemy. For me
it is very comforting to know, “The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps” (Prov. 16:9). The Bible
specifically condemns people who think they can plan their lives and ignore the
Lord: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and
such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.’…Instead,
you ought to say, ‘If the Lord
wills, we will live and also do this or that.’ But as it is, you boast in your arrogance;
all such boasting is evil’ (James 4:13-16).
Paul was a man who wanted to do good, but found himself
hindered. Hopefully you and I also sincerely want to do good. We too will find ourselves hindered. Sometimes it will be loving
to communicate to people those hindrances, so they are assured of our love and
of our sincere desire to do them good. At minimum, we all have to deal with the
reality that we can only be in one place at a time. To do good in one place
means we cannot be in another. On the other hand, we also have to realize there
is a spiritual war raging around us. We can’t necessarily see it but it is
always there. We just have to accept the fact that that battle may explain the
hindrances we face. But above it all, we simply have to leave the days of our
lives in the Lord’s hands and say, “Thy will be done.”
Hindrances. Paul had to live with them, and so do you and I.
Lord help us not “to grow weary in well-doing.”
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