Romans 1:13 “Hindrances”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

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.”

Romans 1: 11,12 “Together”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹¹for I am longing to see you that I might give to you some spiritual gift into your establishing, ¹²but this is [for the purpose] to be encouraged together with you through the mutual faith both of you and me.

Here again, we get to see the mind and heart of the Apostle. In verse 11, he expresses his desire to come and see them so he can give them some spiritual gift, but in verse 12 he pauses to clarify his thoughts. As much as he is looking forward to giving something to them, he also realizes that he will gain from his communion with them. Herein we see one of the great principles of faith and even of life itself – that we all benefit from being together.  We find throughout the Bible that life, as God created it, is inherently reciprocal.

We have before us a seriously “together” verse! The Greek of verse 12 actually expresses “togetherness” in five ways in a matter of only fifteen words – including six of those words being articles, prepositions or particles! Paul’s word which I have translated “to be encouraged together” is all one single word in Greek and means just that – that we should together be encouraged. He adds it would be “together with you.” Then he says it will be through our “mutual faith.” In this case, a prepositional phrase “in one another” serves as an adjective modifying the word “faith,” so that it literally reads something like “through the ‘in one another’ faith” or “through the ‘with one another’ faith.” Then he expresses that mutual faith belongs to “both you and me.” It is literally something “both/and.”

Clearly, Paul did not see himself “above” the Roman Christians. Rather, he saw them as people from whom he would derive great benefit. Yes, he was an Apostle, a man amazingly gifted by God, a man who could literally raise the dead, heal people, and lead masses to salvation. But he did not then see himself as “better” than these simple Christians, many of whom were slaves. Paul seriously saw all believers as fellow laborers with him in the faith. He could see that he needed them as much as they needed him, that while he could bestow apostolic, even miraculous gifts on them, they in turn could bless him in many ways, and that together they formed the body of Christ.

What a profoundly important principle this is for us to live by! God created us social beings. He created us all to be “together” people. He Himself said, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen 2:18), which tells us that even in Paradise and with God Himself for a companion (3:8), yet Adam needed a special kind of companion – another human being with skin just like him. He needed someone to be “together” with. Even in Paradise, an Adam needed an Eve. The single most fundamental institution of human life is marriage – the companionship of two people who live out life together!

Then notice that God Himself exists as a Trinity – a mysterious co-existence of three infinite beings who together form one God. We see this in even the very opening verse of the Bible, Gen 1:1, when it says “In the beginning, God created...” The word translated “God” is actually plural, while the verb “created” is singular. That seems grammatically illogical. Yet that is in fact how it reads – a plural subject acting as a singular verb. In the very opening verse of the Bible, the Lord is “together” creating.

When Jesus sent His disciples out into ministry, He sent them “two by two.” Today, someone would argue that was “inefficient” – that they could have covered twice the territory had He sent them out as individuals; but, somehow in His wisdom and understanding of how He made us to begin with, Jesus knew that two together could accomplish more than twice what the same two could have done alone. Note also that even though He was the Son of God, He valued the presence of His friends. In the Garden He asked, “Could you not have watched with Me one hour?” When He returns from Heaven, riding on a white horse, He comes “with the armies of Heaven following Him” (Rev 19:14).  On that day, He certainly won’t “need” our help, yet we’ll come together.

This “together” thing is to be seen all through life. As a teenage boy, a man showed me how two logs side by side will burn together, while you cannot keep a single log burning. I’ve also learned that in gardening there are things called “companion” plants which, when grown together actually help each other. I’ve heard that with pepper plants, they’ll bear more fruit if you plant them so their leaves touch. When we purchased our home in the country there was a cherry tree growing there. The wife of the couple selling us the house urged me to plant another since, she said, “Cherry trees need a companion.” I’m not particularly crazy about cherries so I just never got around to planting another, and suddenly one day all its leaves died. I thought it might somehow recover but later I pushed on it and it simply fell over. It was completely dead and rotten. Just as she warned me, it had needed a companion!

Another thing I noticed in life was how much more work I got done when my kids helped me. While they were at home growing up, I of course had many projects I needed to undertake to keep up the house, correct faults, improve things, etc. Often they had places to go and I would simply work alone. It would always amaze when one of them was able to help me, how much more I would get done. I decided then that somehow companionship is an exponential function – that, if you have twice as many people, you don’t get twice as much done, you get something more like four times as much done. With three you don’t get three times as much, you get more like nine!

In my career, I’ve have had the privilege of participating in many projects where we accomplished the amazing, even sometimes the impossible. As I think back on that work, it gives me great pleasure to know that they literally could not have done it without me. Yet at the same time it also gives me even greater pleasure to realize I couldn’t have done it without them. It took us working together.

It’s true in the church. It’s true in nature. It’s true in work. Everywhere we go, everything we do, it simply “is not good that the man should be alone.” Paul understood this and we should too.

Of course, it is of value to pause and consider why we don’t. Why wouldn’t we embrace this “together” idea? Obviously, the first huge reason will be pride – way down deep I really do think I’m “better” than them and I simply don’t value their contribution. “I can do it myself.” Or perhaps it’s because I can’t bear the thought of sharing glory with someone else – that if I embrace the help of others, somehow I won’t gain the acclaim I imagine awaits me. Perhaps it is selfishness, that I simply can’t “let go” of what my heart tells me is “mine,” or it could be fear of something, fear that others will fail me or perhaps hurt me if I let them get close.

Obviously none of the above has any place in a Christian’s heart. Our very existence starts with needing a Savior, then, as the saying goes, “The ground is level at the foot of the Cross.” We all come into faith totally by grace and join the company of others who arrived the same way. Whatever gifts I may have, I received from the same Lord who gifted everyone else. Even outside of faith it is still true – as I would go to work, I go to my job every day to stand beside people who have many, many talents, abilities, experiences, etc., which I simply do not have. I need them. They need me. Together, we can accomplish amazing things. Individually, we’ll be lucky to just putter along.

Would that we all could just put away our pride and selfishness and fear and embrace the wonders of the “together” life the Lord created us to live. For myself, I can’t change anyone else. I can’t make anyone else grasp this simple truth that Paul understood – but I can certainly pray and ask the Lord to help me see anywhere I am not embracing it now. Lord, help us all – together!

Romans 1: 9-11 “A Christian Mind”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁹for God is my witness, whom I serve in my spirit in the Gospel of His Son, how unceasingly I am making remembrance of you upon my prayers, ¹⁰praying always if somehow now at last I will be granted a successful journey in the desire of God to come to you, ¹¹for I am longing to see you that I might give to you some spiritual gift into your establishing.

Here we go again. This is exactly why I study the Bible. On the one hand, Paul may be saying something important, and we need to understand his point. We need to understand exactly what he is saying – and, by the way, what he is not saying. Thus the importance of digging as deeply as we can into the text – to be sure we know those things to the best of our ability; but, it is also true, “He who walks with the wise will be wise.”  There is enormous benefit to simply sitting at Paul’s feet and watching what he does, listening to what he says and learning all we can from his example. He is wise, we are not. He has the mind of Christ. We want more of it.

Pardon me if I belabor this point, but, if Paul were alive today and if he came to our church, even stayed in our home, would we not learn from his life as much as from his preaching? What I mean is, as great as it would be to listen to him teach and preach, wouldn’t it be great to just observe what he does? We could learn so much just by watching how he responds to people, how he deals with situations, listening to how he thinks, what is important to him and what is not. Yes?

Well, he has come to our church and he does stay in our house – it’s called the Bible. Here in this book, we not only get his “points,” we also can do exactly that – watch how he responds to people, how he deals with situations, listen to how he thinks, what is important to him and what is not, and learn from him. The Bible itself allows you and me to “walk with the wise” and thus become wise(r). Yes, it is a book of exegetically defensible “points” but I believe it is more than anything else, a book of discipleship – a book that opens to us the very heart of God and allows us to live all day every day like Mary – sitting at Jesus’ feet and learning from Him.

What strikes me most about the verses before us in Romans is that they draw back the curtain of Paul’s heart and show us his mind, show us how the mind of Christ plays out in the mind of a true Christian – and give us tons and tons of food to grow on. This is also the main reason I type these silly blogs. When I feel like the Lord has taught me something, I want to record it somehow, so I can come back later and be reminded. Hopefully He seals these things to my heart and allows me to weave them into the very fabric of who I am, but, on the other hand, I am a forgetful sinner, so it helps me to be reminded later of what He has taught me.

And so, without further ado, what do I see?

I love that Paul can say, “God is my witness.” The plain simple fact is that no one really knows what goes on behind those eyes of yours. We can talk to each other, listen to each other, watch each other, but we’re all very aware that no one really knows what is going on behind our eyes, in our mind, in our heart – except the Lord. Man, of course, can only look on the outside; it is the Lord who looks on the heart. When, then, we can say, “God is my witness, that I …,” what we’re saying is, “This is the truth. You may or may not be able to see it. You may be wondering what I’m really thinking…but, with God as my witness, here’s the truth.” Paul can say, “I really do pray for you. I really do long to see you. I really do want to do you good,” and it’s true. Lord help us all to be more real from our hearts, so that what we too say, who we say we are, is true. God knows. May what God knows be the “truth” about ourselves we try to communicate!

This is further supported by Paul’s explanation of who he is – he is someone who serves God literally “in my spirit.” His service was not something external, like it had been all those years of being a Pharisee. He’s put behind himself the service only “to be seen by men.” I love when he says, “I care not at all if I am judged by men. In fact, I don’t even judge myself – but God is my judge.” Then he says that what it is he does is “in the Gospel of God’s Son.” In particular, Paul has been called to be an Apostle. That is his “job” that God has given him.

Many translations insert the word “preaching,” so it reads, “In preaching the Gospel of His Son,” but actually it is literally just “In the Gospel of His Son.”  I want to elaborate on this later, but, in a sense, all Christians live their lives “in the Gospel of His Son.” For each of us, we have to insert the “–ing” of whatever it is God has given us to do. As I’ve often said, whether you or I are a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker, as Christians, it is our task to do it all “in the Gospel of His Son” – living out Jesus wherever the Lord has placed us, doing whatever He’s given us to do.

And what does Paul do? He prays for people. What a blessed privilege we have as believers to pray for people, to take their problems, their needs, their very lives, their very souls, before the Throne of the Universe, and plead for them. And how very often is it true that is all we can do? Literally. There is much we can do and should do for others around us, but it is also seemingly too often true that what they really need is utterly beyond us…but we can pray for them! Paul did. We should.

And what is on Paul’s mind? He wants very much to come and see these people and for what reason? To give them a gift, to help them be “established.” This is another place where the “Christian mind” really jumps off the page at me. We live in a world of politicians who feign great concern for us just to get our votes so they can go Washington and get rich. We are barraged by advertisements and salespeople who feign great interest in us but only because they want to sell us something and get our money. It seems everyone “wants” something. Even churches can really be about recruiting people to fill all their volunteer spots. But into that world of lies and pretense comes the genuine Christian mind. “I really want to give you a gift. I want to help you be more established.”

This is a wonderful thing for Paul and we should pause and not take it for granted. He really did. He really did want to give them something. He really did want to help them. And it wasn’t about his bank account or anything else. That is a Christian mind – the mind of Christ, who came “not to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many,” who came “that the world might be saved through Him.” Like Jesus, one of the wonderful things about being a Christian is knowing that God will take care of us. We of course have to be responsible and certainly should expect to have to work for our living, but we have the privilege to do that in a sort of reckless abandon, sincerely seeking to do good to others.

Paul was doing good to others in his full-time ministry, but you and I have the privilege of doing the same at our jobs and, in fact, all day every day everywhere we go, everything we do. Every person’s “job” is in some way “doing good” to others. In some way, others are counting on me. They need me to do my job and they need me to do it well. For myself, I’m an engineer. My villages and small cities need me to help them figure out the problems with their infrastructure and then help them choose good solutions. Someone needs to care about them and actually try to help them. Too many engineers use those situations as a chance to “sell” them something and to run up their own fees. They don’t really care whether what they do actually helps the community, as long as when it’s over they’ve got more money in their account.

I’ve been following those guys around my whole life, coming into communities where they’ve been sold junk, and often the community’s biggest problem is all the trouble caused by the last guy who they thought was helping them. That is so sad, but it of course isn’t just engineers. It’s lawyers and mechanics and doctors and furnace repairmen and butchers and bakers and candle-stick makers. We’ve all felt the pain. We all know how hard it is to find someone we feel we can trust. We need them to do us good, but all too often we find that apparently wasn’t their intentions.

Into that world the Lord has placed His people. We have the privilege of going there with the mind of Christ, with a sincere desire to do good for others, to do our job faithfully and skillfully and to the best of our ability because others around me are counting on me to do it. And in that world Christians really can shine like lights in the world. Other people may not want to hear about your faith but they’ll see when you sincerely care about them. And then perhaps the Lord might even light a spark in their hearts that perhaps, just maybe, you have something they want, something that makes you different!

As we would listen to Paul here in Romans chapter 1 and pause to ponder his words, he reminds us that, no matter what we do, we can do it with the mind of Christ, to sincerely seek to do good to others. It will make you and me different, very different, but may that difference be one way the Lord can open people’s hearts, soften hard hearts, and make a way for the Gospel.

Paul may still be "just" introducing himself and this letter to these people he's never met, but you and I can learn tons just by listening to what he says. His very words are teaching us what it is to live the mind of Christ – to have a Christian mind.