Shortly after I became a Christian in the summer of 1990, I was flipping through the new, green, bonded leather Bible my grandmother had given me and I came across Romans 12:9-21, which reads as follows:

9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. 11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13 Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. 18If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

These words stunned me. What a radically different portrait of life and community than what I was seeing in the world and even in the church.

It was at that moment I realized that this thing we call “the gospel” — the good news that Jesus died for our sins and conquered death by rising from the grave– was not simply a message that gave me joy as an individual. It was also a transforming power that enabled all who believe it to make a positive impact in the culture together.

The passage is bracketed by the same exhortation in different wording: Conquer evil with good. (verses 9 and 21). In other words, have a positive impact on a negative world.

So, this obviously raises the question for us as a church:

How does the gospel enable us to have a positive impact on our culture?

These verses tell us the gospel enables us by transforming our attitude toward people, problems, possessions, and peacemaking. Let’s explore these four areas one at a time.

The gospel transforms our attitude toward people.

In the second part of verse 10 Paul exhorts his congregants to: “Honor one another above yourselves.” And then in verses 14 and 16, “Bless those who persecute you. Bless, and do not curse. . . Be willing to associate with people of low position.”

In the first instance he is clearly referring to people inside the church (hence the “one another” phrase), and in the second instance he is clearly be referring to people who are not only outside the church, but those who oppose what the church believes and does (“those who persecute you”). But in both cases, Paul insists that we must deal with people in a loving way.

Why? Is it because the Christian message is wimpy and fails to acknowledge the differences people have with one another? Not at all. It’s because the gospel teaches us that everyone is on level ground. Earlier in Paul’s letter to the Roman church, he wrote, “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:22-25)On the one hand, all are created in God’s image to reflect his goodness.  On the other hand, all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory and are therefore overcome with badness. Everyone is simultaneously beautiful and broken.

Now, let’s explore a few practical, if not uncomfortable, implications of this belief:

Our attitude toward small children: In Matthew 18 Jesus says to a group of adults, “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”  Most of us would respond to that with an “Amen.” Yet we often give our children the impression that if they want to receive communion they need to behave like responsible adults. Do we really believe they are just as beautiful and broken as we are?

Our attitude toward sinful adults: One of the strongest accusations ever leveled at Jesus was, “This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them.” Yet he never responded with anything even remotely close to a “That’s not true” statement. On the contrary, he told stories to illustrate the shocking reality that everyone is our neighbor and needs to be loved. One such story, known as the parable of The Good Samaritan challenged the religious community to be more welcoming of those viewed as “unclean.”

Tim Keller summarizes the story of the Good Samaritan this way:

“What Jesus is trying to say is that everybody is your neighbor. Gay people are your neighbors, people of other faiths are your neighbors, people of other races are your neighbors. And it is the job of the Christian to do what Jesus did, which is to give himself for people who not only opposed him but didn’t even believe in him. And so a Christian is supposed to say, ‘I serve the needs and interests of all my neighbors in my community whether they are gay or straight, Hindu or Muslim.’ Hindus, for example, don’t believe in the Trinity. That’s a different view of what the Bible says. Gay people have a different view of sexuality than generally what you see in the New Testament. But I’m supposed to love my neighbors.”

If you believe that everyone is equally sinful and equally in need of God’s amazing grace, then you are going to have to wrestle with the implications of that belief. And when you do you will find that the implications are not only uncomfortable but somewhat shocking and offensive.

Some of my readers may think this borders on universalism, which teaches that because everyone is on level ground in God’s eyes, everyone is therefore going to heaven regardless of what they believe or how they live. In reality, however, universalism renders the death and resurrection of Jesus irrelevant, whereas in Christianity, showing love to others regardless of who they are and how they live is possible only because of the death and resurrection of Jesus. And it is this reality that transforms our attitude toward people.

If you’re still reading, let’s move on to the next way the gospel enables us to have a positive impact on our culture.

The gospel transforms our attitude toward problems.

In verse 12 Paul writes: “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer.”

Let’s be honest. The world, and even the church, is filled with problems. Pain, suffering, and dysfunctional relationships. The New Testament never denies the reality and difficulty of these problems that sometimes seem to plague our lives.

Some people dismiss the gospel on this basis, arguing that if God is really good, he wouldn’t permit such problems. Paul, this verse, however, challenges us to look at problems not as evidence that God is absent, but as one of the means God uses to shape us into the kind of people he wants us to be. And in the midst of such “affliction”, we can be joyful, patient, and prayerful.

With such a belief as this, we discover that, ironically, wanting a church without problems is the very attitude that often fills a church with problems.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his marvelous book on Christian community, Life Together, put it this way:

“Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try and realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. . . By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. . . If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, the we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.”

So Paul is able to say that in the midst of problems we must be joyful, hopeful, patient, and prayerful, because the gospel itself proves that good things can and do come out of painful problems.  Jesus rose from death, and one day we will too!

The gospel transforms our attitude toward possessions.

Continuing in verse 13, Paul writes: “Share with God’s people who are in need, and practice hospitality.”

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this one because I am going to devote an entire sermon to this topic in a couple of months.  But for now, let me simply say this: We live in a consumer culture, and it’s killing us. Furthermore, our churches are becoming infected by consumer mindset and we don’t even realize, much less feel bad about it. What does this church offer my family and me? Will I get a lot out of the music and worship? Are the sermons short enough that I’ll be home in time to watch the Nascar race? Will people invite me over for dinner without me having to reciprocate?

Paul’s challenge to the church is not to take and consume and absorb, but to give– to open our pocket books and as well as our homes. And I’m so thankful for the Christians in my church who have lived this way over the years, demonstrating the transforming power of the gospel in our midst.

They are among those who realize that such generous hospitality only makes sense within the belief that Jesus, the Creator and King of all that exists, gave up the riches of heaven for people who were needy and helpless.

So, the gospel enables us to make a positive impact on our culture by transforming our attitude toward people, problems, and possessions. But, there’s a fourth and final way the gospel transforms us:

The gospel transforms our attitude toward peacemaking.

Verse 18: “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath.”

This is an attractive statement.  What’s shocking, however, is the way in which Paul says peace is to be attained– namely, by not only refusing to repay our enemies, but by loving our enemies. This is where love proves to be a difficult thing, more than just the sappy and sentimental “can’t we all just hold hands and get along” view that often dominates music, movies and, dare I say, liberal blog articles these days.

Rather than jump to a discussion on whether or not Christians should be pacifists in a militaristic sense, let’s simply ask ourselves how our day-to-day relationships would be different if we obeyed these verses. We all have enemies one one degree or another, and the way in which we respond to them, even in our seemingly harmless efforts to get the last word in, usually reveals a revenge-oriented mindset that lurks within all of us and is contrary to the attitude that has been transformed by the gospel.

True, Paul says, “if it is possible.” This is very realistic. There are some people with whom it is impossible to live at peace. Sadly, even in churches some people are divisive, always against something, always disgruntled, always discontent, always afraid we might be permitting sin if we don’t take a hard line approach on every issue existent. But even then, Paul simply tells us to avoid such people, not punish them or get back at them in any way (Titus 3).

With Jesus, on the other hand, we see someone who operates in a most radical way toward his enemies:

23 When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. (1st Peter 2)

So, how does the gospel enable us to maker a positive impact on our culture? By transforming our attitude toward people, problems, possessions, and peacemaking.

Last week my wife and I spent the evening with a dear couple in Harrisburg. As we sat in their cozy living room sipping Chianti and discussing the current joys and struggles of our lives, one of them posed the question: “Why are so many Christians so uptight about the world?”

I confess that, while I chuckled, I also couldn’t help but admit that I am often among the uptight frozen chosen myself, worrying about whether or not something is a sin, worrying about whether or not I will have to pay more taxes or help someone I don’t like.  And while I didn’t offer an answer to my friend’s question, I thought to myself, “I wonder if it’s because we haven’t really understood the gospel as deeply as we’d like to think. I wonder if it’s because we haven’t let it penetrate our hearts to the point that our attitudes and not simply our external behaviors are being transformed. And I wonder how it might affect the culture we live in if our attitudes toward people, problems, possessions, and peacemaking were transformed in the radical way Paul illustrates for us in Romans 12.”

I wonder. But regardless, I’m thrilled that even when I fail to live the way Romans 12 commands, and even when my attitude stinks and my supposed love for others is more reflective of Ebenezer Scrooge than Jesus, God’s love for me remains the same. This is why I need to receive communion every week, because it gives me a tangible reminder that when I was doing stupid stuff, Jesus didn’t strike me, but was struck for me, didn’t pour his wrath on me, but took God’s wrath upon himself.  This reveals a Savior who insisted on feeding my soul with the bread of life, and slaking my thirst with the blood of his love– thus offering me, who was once his enemy, something to eat and drink, just as he offered communion to Judas on the night of his betrayal.

If that’s not good news that has the power to transform our attitudes and thus change the world, I’m not sure what is.

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