Human Mirrors
Romans 15:1-6
May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
- Romans 15:5-6
To get some context for Paul’s exhortation to the Romans, we need to take a walk. Strolling through the Kidron Valley and up the incline to the Mount of Olives, with the Temple Mount in the background, we enter the garden of Gethsemane. As we walk stealthily under the cloak of night, we pass by Peter slumped against a tree, James curled over a large boulder and John lying on his side, all three heavily slumbering. Walking just a stone’s throw more, we come upon the figure of Jesus lying prostrate, elbows on the ground and hands reaching heavenward. Deepest anguish paints his whole being as he desperately pleads for the Father to take away this cup of wrath that Jesus knows will await him in just a few hours time.
Anticipating a horrific death and separation from the Father, Jesus’ anguish is understandable, but his words just prior to entering the garden are perhaps as noteworthy. John 17 records Jesus’ Final Discourse, as it’s come to be known, and it’s a series of fervent prayers that he offers right before his time alone in Gethsemane. It is these prayers that hauntingly flavor Paul’s words in Romans 15. With his impending arrest and crucifixion, Jesus’ mind is on his followers and what their experience is going to be when he leaves. Multiple times as he prays for all believers, Jesus asks the Father that they might be one. “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one.” (vs. 20-21). Later on he says, “I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
It’s clear that Jesus’ dying wish, his last request, if you will, is that his followers be united in the bond of his love. It is with this truth in mind that Paul exhorts the Romans to a course of unity in chapter 15, verses 5-6.
Normally such a passage might be a real feel-good shot-in-the-collective arm. We’re all fans of encouragement. We all fancy a nice tale of a distance runner enduring hours of pavement before triumphantly marching across the finish line. This unity thing though? Of course it sounds good, but in the shadow of a global pandemic in which fierce opinion bitterly divided even the most devout of believers with each side championing their perspective and fist-slamming the table with righteous indignation, embracing the group hug proves challenging.
How then do we move forward in this spirit of unity? Acknowledging two realities might help. Reality #1: There’s no scoreboard on Death Row. An inmate who tries to scratch out his place in the pecking order fails to grasp the bigger picture that everyone faces the same fate. In language from Romans that we can understand, it means “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) We’re united in our utter depravity and helplessness.
Reality #2: The Titanic Survivors Reunion didn’t feature a head table reserved for those who got off the boat first. The bond for survivors is simply that they’re all saved. Focusing on anything other than that is a prescription for misery. As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, our ultimate unity lies in the fact that we’re all recipients of sweet rich glorious grace. Paul puts it this way: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
Maybe the key to moving forward and embracing this sweet unity Paul calls us to is simply look across the church aisle and not see someone with a diametrically opposing viewpoint, but rather to use that glance as a mirror, to see in others what we need to see in ourselves: someone, by the grace of God, who’s forgiven and free.