Chasing the Wind

Romans 15:7 · “One Another” Series, Lesson 2

The Command

I. Love Comes to the Front Door

Let me begin by telling a story. Many years ago, when I was still in college, I attended my first church retreat; it was in the Hill Country of Texas. And… I wore shorts.

I didn’t know there was an unwritten rule against wearing shorts. Everyone wore long pants. I didn’t even notice I was the only one in shorts. Nobody explained it beforehand, and nobody took me aside when I arrived. People simply avoided me. They didn’t talk to me; they kept their distance. Eventually somebody told me my shorts were the problem.

I remember being shocked. I hadn’t set out to challenge anyone. I wasn’t making a bold theological statement about the Christian liberty of bare knees. It was a hot Texas summer and I wore shorts to be comfortable. But I had broken a rule I did not know existed – and I hadn’t packed any emergency jeans, so I couldn’t fix it. I felt confused and maybe a little embarrassed, but mostly I felt excluded.

Someone could have come alongside me and said, “You probably didn’t know this, but we have an expectation about clothing – let me explain why.” They didn’t have to pretend the expectation did not exist, and they didn’t have to approve of what I was wearing. The moment could have been used for teaching instead of judgment. Nobody used it that way. They kept their distance, and when I stopped attending church afterward, nobody called to ask where I had gone.

I stayed away from church for about ten years.

Years later, I had almost the opposite experience at an Asian church in Singapore. This time there was no question that I was the one who did not fit. I looked different, my background was different, and many of the customs were unfamiliar to me. But nobody treated my differences as a reason to keep their distance. Several people invited me to their church and Bible study. They became concerned that I was not “plugged in,” and so they brought it to the pastor’s attention. The pastor invited me personally to a bible study. Their message was unmistakable:

We want you to belong.

At the retreat, people noticed I was different and withdrew. At the Asian church, people noticed I was disconnected and drew near. One group expected me to figure out how to belong before they would receive me; the other took responsibility for helping me belong while I was still different. That is the difference between allowing someone into the room and actually accepting him.

Acceptance does not mean we ignore every difference, abandon every standard, or stop teaching what we believe is right. Acceptance means we care enough to cross the distance, speak truth inside a relationship, and keep a person from becoming the outsider standing alone. Acceptance says, “We want you to belong.”

In our last lesson, Jesus gave His disciples a new commandment: love one another, just as He had loved them. I keep coming back to that command because the others seem to grow out of it. I want to spend a few weeks watching what the love of Christ looks like when it leaves the dictionary and goes to work. Here are the seven I picked:

1. Love one another – the command behind all the others.
2. Accept one another – love at the front door.
3. Serve one another.
4. Bear one another’s burdens.
5. Encourage one another.
6. Forgive one another.
7. Pray for one another.

So we are not moving past love today. We are watching love take its first practical step toward another person, when love opens the door.

Discussion Question: Most of us have walked into a room – a church, a new job, a family gathering that wasn’t ours – and sensed within a minute whether we were truly welcome. What communicated that acceptance or rejection to us?

What specific things did people do, or not do – who spoke first, where they stood, what got explained and what got assumed?
What did those signals tell us about what that group believed belonging required?
Someone will walk into our room this month. What will they read in the first sixty seconds?

II. One Command, Two Chapters

Romans 15:7 is the only place in the New Testament where the command takes exactly this form: “accept one another.” “Love one another” appears over and over. So do commands to serve, encourage, forgive, bear with, and pray for one another. This one appears once.

That does not mean Paul considered it unimportant. He spends nearly two full chapters explaining it.

Romans 15:7 begins with “therefore.” When we see a “therefore,” we should ask what it is there for. Paul is drawing his conclusion from a discussion that began back in Romans 14:1, where he told the Roman believers to accept the one whose faith is weak without turning every difference into an argument. In Romans 14:3 he tells them why: “God has accepted him.” Then in 15:7 he closes the loop: God has accepted that believer, and Christ has accepted you – therefore, accept one another.

The Greek verb is proslambanō (G4355) – to accept someone, to welcome someone, to take someone to yourself. That is more than just tolerating someone on the other side of the room.

We tend to use “accept” in a fairly passive way. I accept that the weather is hot. I accept that the Astros lost. I accept that the air conditioner is making that funny noise again, though I may not accept it when the repair bill arrives. But biblical acceptance is not resigning ourselves to the fact that other people exist. Proslambanō carries the idea of welcoming someone into our company and fellowship. The word does not describe tolerating a person while continuing to avoid him. It describes welcoming him into relationship.

This is where we usually shrink the command to a size we can manage. “Accept one another” becomes “put up with people who get on our nerves.” Patience with irritating people is a real virtue, and most of us could use more of it. But it is not what Paul is asking, and it does not require this verse. Tolerance is a truce. It costs almost nothing, and it leaves everyone exactly where they were – still at a distance, only more polite about it. Paul did not spend eleven chapters establishing that God justifies the ungodly in order to arrive at “be patient with people who annoy you.”

Paul was writing to a church made up of believers with very different histories. Many were probably Jewish believers who had spent their lives observing dietary laws, honoring particular days, and separating themselves from pagan practices. Many others were probably Gentiles who came to Christ without generations of those customs shaping their consciences. Paul never sorts the two groups strictly by ancestry, but the fault line is not hard to see. Now they belonged to the same church. They worshiped the same Lord, read the same Scriptures, and confessed the same gospel – but they did not automatically agree on what Christian freedom should look like. Some ate anything set before them; others believed certain foods would dishonor God. Some treated particular days as spiritually significant; others regarded every day alike.

These were not disagreements about whether the church carpet should be blue or green. For the people involved, these practices touched faithfulness, identity, conscience, and obedience to God. Both sides believed they were honoring the Lord – and both sides were tempted to make their own conscience the entrance examination for everybody else.

Paul calls these disputable matters – matters of opinion. He is not talking about whether Jesus is Lord, whether the resurrection happened, or whether salvation is by grace. He is not saying doctrine does not matter. He is addressing the decisions where sincere believers can reach different conclusions while genuinely trying to honor God.

Not everything carries the same weight. Some issues are clear biblical commands. Some require wisdom. Some involve personal conscience. Some are inherited traditions, and some are simply preferences that have been around so long we have forgotten they are preferences. The trouble starts when we file them all under the same heading: “God says so.”

The church retreat was free to have a dress expectation. The expectation was not the mistake. The mistake was letting an unwritten cultural standard decide who deserved fellowship. A church can keep every one of its customs and still break the command to accept one another. Acceptance does not require us to erase our convictions. It requires us to stop using them as barriers against people whom Christ has received.

The Situation

III. The Weak and the Strong

In Romans 14, Paul calls the two groups the weak and the strong, and “weak” can sound insulting. Nobody wants a name tag at the church door that reads:

HELLO, MY NAME IS: Weak Christian

The weak believer is not the one taking liberties. He is the one who cannot take liberties. Paul is not saying one group is saved and the other is not, or that the weak believer is insincere or foolish. Romans 14:1 calls him weak in faith, which almost everyone hears as weak trust in Christ or weak character. It is neither. His faith has not yet stretched to cover this particular act. The weak believer has a conscience that restricts his freedom. Perhaps he spent his whole life believing certain foods were unclean, and now somebody tells him he is free in Christ to eat them. His theology may understand the words, but his conscience has not caught up, and he cannot eat with confidence that he is honoring God. Romans 14 teaches that if he violates his conscience – even in an area where the action itself is permissible – he sins, because he is not acting from faith.

The strong believer understands his liberty. He knows food does not make him spiritually clean or unclean, that every day belongs to the Lord, and that religious customs cannot add anything to the finished work of Christ. He is correct about his freedom. But being correct is not the same as being mature in how he uses it. Knowledge tells us we have the right to do something; love asks whether doing it helps the believer beside us.

These are positions, not people. Paul is describing where a believer stands on one disputed question, not ranking his maturity or sorting him into a permanent camp. The same person can be strong about food and weak about days. And Paul’s weak brother is one who would be led into violating his own conscience – not one who is merely annoyed by what somebody else does. Otherwise “I am the weaker brother” becomes a veto anybody can use on anything.

Thomas Constable summarizes the tension this way:

“The weak need knowledge, and the strong need love.”

The weak believer needs to grow in his understanding of grace and freedom. The strong believer needs to grow in patience, humility, and concern for someone else’s conscience. In practice, of course, most of us need both.

I did need knowledge that weekend, and someone could have supplied it. But if they considered themselves the mature Christians in the room, their maturity should have moved them toward me, not away from me. Knowledge without love left me standing alone.

Paul places the greater responsibility on the strong. Romans 15:1 says those who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength, and not merely please themselves. That is a different definition of strength than the one we usually carry around. We tend to define strength as independence: the strong person does what he wants, needs no permission, and refuses to let somebody else’s sensitivities slow him down. Paul says Christian strength is the ability to carry something for someone who cannot yet carry it himself.

Paul does not stop at bearing weaknesses. He adds “not merely please themselves” – which assumes the strong believer’s preference is legitimate. It is simply not the deciding factor.

Picture two people walking together, one of them with a cane. The stronger walker does not prove his strength by getting fifty yards ahead and shouting, “Try to keep up.” He slows his pace, opens the door, maybe carries something – not because walking slowly is morally superior, but because he wants them to arrive together. The two people in that photograph are my mother and me, walking to dinner, before her passing.

That does not mean the weaker person controls every decision forever. Paul’s goal is growth and edification. But until that growth comes, strength bends down to help.

Paul tells us why the strong should do this. Two verses later he writes, “For even Christ did not please Himself.” Christ did not use His strength to protect His comfort. He used it to bear our weakness. That is what makes Christian maturity visible – not how much truth we know, but whether the truth we know has taught us how to love.

IV. When Difference Creates Distance

Romans 14:3 names the two sinful responses to disagreement. The cautious, weaker believer judges the freer one: “You cannot be serious about following God if you do that.” The freer, stronger believer regards the cautious one with contempt: “How immature can you be?” Judgment says, “You are unfaithful.” Contempt says, “You are beneath me.”

“Who are you to judge the servant of another?” – Romans 14:4

That question has an answer, and the answer is not us. The believer we are grading answers to his own Master – and Paul does not leave it there. He says the believer will stand, because the Lord is able to make him stand.

William Barclay wrote:

“Of all attitudes towards our fellow man the most unchristian is contempt.”

Contempt is ugly because it stops seeing the other believer as someone worth understanding. We do not teach people we despise; we dismiss them. We do not listen to them; we roll our eyes. We do not walk with them; we talk about them.

But contempt is not the only reason Christians keep their distance. Sometimes we are shy, afraid of saying the wrong thing, or simply so comfortable with the people we already know that we never see the person standing alone. None of those motives sounds as hostile as contempt. But to the person left outside, the result feels exactly the same: nobody wants me here.

Crossing the distance is where acceptance becomes an act of love. Love does not wait until approaching someone feels natural and easy. Love notices, moves, and risks the awkward conversation. Love says, “I’m not entirely sure what to say, but I’m going to say hello.”

There is a real difference between saying, “I have nothing against him,” and saying, “We want him to belong.” “I have nothing against him” costs us almost nothing – we can have nothing against someone from clear across the room. Acceptance takes initiative. It approaches, learns a name, offers a seat, extends an invitation, introduces the person to someone else. It notices when the person returns, and it notices when he disappears.

Paul does not set the bar at a truce. He sets it at “as Christ also accepted us.” Christ did not merely tolerate us. He did not weigh our faults, decide they were minor enough to overlook, and agree to share a room with us. Acceptance is not good manners with a verse attached to it. It is the gospel showing up in person.

If Christ came all the way from heaven to receive sinners, surely we can cross the church foyer to receive a lonely believer. The distance may be only twenty feet. For someone who already feels like an outsider, it can feel like twenty miles.

And this does not apply only to visitors. A person can attend the same church for years and still feel disconnected. A widow whose social life revolved around her husband may discover the invitations have stopped coming. An older believer can feel invisible in a younger church; a younger believer can feel that every question exposes how little he knows. Someone may speak with an accent, dress differently, vote differently, or simply have a personality that does not blend easily with the room.

The command is not merely “Do not be hostile.” The command is “Accept one another.” We may feel awkward. But awkward love is still better than comfortable distance.

Discussion Question: What most often keeps us from approaching someone who appears disconnected – judgment, shyness, uncertainty, fear of awkwardness, or simply being absorbed in the people we already know?

In the two stories, what did each group notice about the newcomer – and what did each group do next?
Both groups saw a difference. Why did one read it as a reason to withdraw and the other as a reason to move?
What is the smallest step we could take toward someone standing at the edge before next Sunday?

V. Acceptance Is Not Approval

At this point somebody may reasonably ask: does accepting another person mean I have to approve of everything that person believes and does? No. Acceptance and approval are not the same thing.

Jesus never confused welcome with moral indifference. He welcomed sinners and called them to repentance. His acceptance is not “You are perfect exactly as you are, and nothing should ever change.” It is “Come to Me. Receive grace. Follow Me. I will make you new.” The gospel is not approval of our sin. The gospel is God’s answer to our sin.

That means Romans 15:7, “Accept One Another,” cannot be used to erase biblical boundaries. Paul is discussing disputable matters, not open rebellion against God. The church must still teach sound doctrine, confront sin, protect victims, and refuse to enable dangerous behavior. There are situations where distance is appropriate – where someone is manipulative, abusive, divisive, or dangerous – and acceptance does not mean granting unlimited access to our homes, families, emotions, or finances. Paul himself warned churches about false teachers and divisive people.

Jude wrote to believers among whom false teachers had crept in, and he has hard words for those teachers. His instruction toward the people they had unsettled runs the other way:

“And have mercy on some, who are doubting; save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh” (Jude 22–23).

Mercy, rescue, and mercy again. Fear is in that same sentence, and so is a warning about contamination, so Jude is not naive about the danger. Even where the stakes are as high as they get, his instinct toward the wavering is rescue rather than distance.

But we should be careful not to use those exceptional circumstances as an excuse for rejecting ordinary people who are merely different, immature, cautious, or difficult to understand. Some Christians say, “I am exercising discernment,” when they are actually exercising preference. Discernment asks whether something is true, righteous, and safe. Preference asks whether something is familiar and comfortable. Those are not the same question.

Acceptance also runs in both directions. The strong must accept the weak, and the weak must accept the strong. The traditional believer cannot make his tradition the law of God; the freer believer cannot use his freedom as permission to mock someone else’s conscience. The older believer should not assume every new method is compromise, and the younger believer should not assume every old custom is meaningless. We are not required to agree about everything. We are required to remember whose family this is.

The church does not belong to the strong or to the weak. It does not belong to the people who arrived first, donated the most, know the most Bible, or know where everything is stored in the church kitchen. The church belongs to Christ – and Christ decides whom He receives.

The Standard

VI. “As Christ Accepted Us”

Paul does not say, “Accept one another because everyone is pleasant,” or “because differences are unimportant,” or “because both sides are equally correct.” He gives us a far more demanding standard: as Christ accepted us. The gospel is both the reason for Christian acceptance and the measure of it. The question is simple: how did Christ receive me?

Christ did not wait until we were spiritually polished. He did not wait until we understood every doctrine, cleaned up our habits, purified our motives, or became easy to live with. Romans 5 says Christ died for us while we were still sinners. We were not standing outside heaven dressed incorrectly. We were enemies of God, spiritually dead. We had not innocently misunderstood an unwritten rule – we had broken the clearly revealed commands of God. Yet Christ moved toward us.

The cross is what acceptance cost Him. Jesus did not stand at a safe distance and shout directions to sinners. He entered our world, took on flesh, lived among us, bore our sins, and died in our place. Then He rose again and opened the way into the family of God.

We were not accepted because we were naturally compatible with Christ. He is holy and we were sinful; He is truth and we were deceived; He is life and we were dead. Christ did not receive us because we were His kind of people. He received us by grace.

Salvation changes us. When Christ accepts us, He gives us His Spirit, teaches us His Word, disciplines us as children, and conforms us to His image. He welcomes us into a transforming relationship. That gives us a helpful pair of guardrails. “You must become like us before you may come near” is not Christian acceptance. But neither is “Come near, and nothing in any of us should ever change.” Christian acceptance says, “Christ has received us both. Let us walk together while He keeps changing both of us.”

Acceptance is not the end of discipleship. Acceptance is the relationship in which discipleship can begin.

Jesus saw us far away and came near. Now, having been received by Him, we are called to move toward one another, which goes back to our overall theme: Jesus said we are to love one another as He loved us; Paul says we are to accept one another as Christ accepted us. The pattern is the same. We do not manufacture Christian love by searching inside ourselves for warmer feelings. We look at Christ – how He loved, how He received, how He used His strength, how He treated the person at the edge – and we ask the Holy Spirit to reproduce that life in us.

Discussion Question: How would our treatment of a difficult or unfamiliar believer change if we consciously remembered how patiently and graciously Christ received us?

What moral repair did we accomplish that made us worthy of Christ’s welcome?
If acceptance is the relationship in which discipleship begins, what have we had backwards?
Picture one specific person. What changes on Sunday?

VII. The Church Is Not a Closed Club

Christ received us when we were nothing like Him. Then we walk into church and sit beside the people most like us. In The Screwtape Letters, the senior demon coaches his nephew to send his man shopping for “the church that suits him,” and to let a congregation settle into a “kind of club” of people with similar preferences and personalities. Screwtape recommends it because it works.

A club is built around affinity. We naturally gather with people who resemble us – we choose restaurants with food we like, neighborhoods that feel familiar, and friends who understand our jokes. There is nothing necessarily sinful about affinity. But Nicholas Batzig makes the needed distinction:

“That’s not acceptance – it’s affinity.”

Welcoming only the people we naturally enjoy does not require the supernatural love of Christ. Affinity says, “You are my kind of person.” Acceptance says, “Christ has received you, so I will make room for you.”

A club asks, “Does this person fit us?” The church asks, “Has Christ received this person, and how can we help him become part of the body?”

That is one of God’s purposes for the church. God does not simply surround us with people who reinforce everything we already prefer. He gives us brothers and sisters – and nobody chooses siblings based on compatibility. They arrive through birth. Christians become family the same way, through the new birth. The world can build communities around similar ages, incomes, education, politics, culture, hobbies, and tastes. Only Christ can create a family where people who would never have chosen one another receive one another, because Christ has received them.

Which means the person we find hardest to accept is not an exception to the command. That person may be the reason we need the command. It may be the person who talks too much, or the one who barely talks at all. The one whose political opinions arrive before the appetizer. The one who asks questions we think everyone should already know, the one with stricter convictions, the one with more freedom, the one who sings loudly and slightly off-key – or the one who stands alone because nobody quite knows what to do with him.

In The Weight of Glory, Lewis wrote:

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”

The person we ignore is not merely an unfamiliar face. The person we dismiss is not merely an irritating personality or a political opinion. That person is an eternal soul made in the image of God – and if that person belongs to Christ, Christ has already received him. It is inconsistent for us to reject someone whom God has accepted.

The Purpose

VIII. From the Front Door to the Throne

Paul’s goal is larger than friendliness. He does not merely want the Roman church to have a pleasant atmosphere or a better visitor-retention program. Romans 15:5–6 asks God to grant them to be of the same mind with one another, according to Christ Jesus, so that with one purpose and one voice they may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Not uniformity – the same mind, and according to Christ Jesus rather than according to us. That is where acceptance is headed. It begins at the front door, but it ends in worship.

“So then we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.” – Romans 14:19

The Jewish believer and the Gentile believer did not have to erase their histories, and the strong and the weak did not have to pretend their convictions were identical. But they had to learn to stand together before the same Lord. The church is not unified because everyone becomes the same. The church is unified because everyone belongs to Christ.

That is the biblical story from beginning to end. In the Old Testament, God repeatedly commanded Israel to care for the foreigner, because Israel had once been foreigners in Egypt – God wanted His people to remember what it felt like to stand outside. At the cross, Christ broke down the dividing wall and created one people of God from Jews and Gentiles. And in Revelation, John sees people from every tribe, language, people, and nation before the throne. They do not lose every distinction. They worship one Savior.

So acceptance is not merely about making people feel better. Acceptance displays the gospel. Anyone can form a group of people who already agree, already understand the rules, and already know what to wear. Christ forms a church.

Paul ends Romans 15:7 with the purpose: for the glory of God. When the strong bear with the weak, God is glorified. When the person who knows the customs explains them gently to the person who does not, God is glorified. When a church notices someone who is not plugged in and says, “We want you to belong” – God is glorified.

Acceptance turns a collection of different people into a choir. They come from different backgrounds, carry different experiences, and may never agree on every disputable matter. But together, with one voice, they praise the God who received them through Jesus Christ. That is where acceptance leads – all the way to the throne.

Discussion Question: How does a church made up of genuinely different people glorify God more clearly than a church where everyone shares the same culture, preferences, and background?

According to Romans 15:5–6, what is the stated purpose of harmony among believers?
Why would one voice raised by different people say more about God than one voice raised by similar people?
What would we have to give up for that to become true of us?

IX. Who Is Standing at Our Door?

We shouldn’t wrap up today thinking only about what those people did at that retreat so many years ago. It is easy for me to remember that retreat and think, “They should have done better.” Because they should have. But Romans 15:7 is not addressed only to them. It is addressed to us.

So the question becomes personal. Whom do we tolerate without truly receiving? Whom have we reduced to one opinion, one failure, one habit? Who stands alone while we talk to the same people every week? Who disappeared without our noticing? Have we called something discernment when it was really discomfort? Have we hung an unwritten rule at the entrance to Christian fellowship?

The person at the edge probably does not need a dramatic gesture. Acceptance may look like learning a name, making room at the table, or saying, “Sit with us.” It may mean explaining something without making a person feel foolish for not knowing it, listening without preparing a rebuttal, refusing to join a dismissive conversation about another believer, or following up when someone disappears. It may simply mean saying, “We do not agree about everything, but I am not withdrawing from you.”

Somewhere in our church, our workplace, or our family, one specific person is standing at the edge. It is worth naming that person this week – not a category of people, but a name – and asking what accepting that person as Christ accepted us would require.

But perhaps the simplest question is this: what did Christ do for us?

He did not wait for us to find our way inside. He came for us. He did not keep His distance; He drew near. He did not merely tolerate our existence; He took us to Himself. He did not say, “Become acceptable, and then I will receive you.” He received us by grace and began the work of making us like Him.

Now He says, “Love one another.” And Paul shows us what love does first: “Accept one another.”

Acceptance is love at the front door. It sees the person standing at the edge and crosses the distance. It tells the truth without using truth as a weapon. It makes room without abandoning conviction. It remembers that the church is Christ’s family, not our private club – and that every believer standing in front of us has already been received by the same Savior who received us.

That is the road we walked today. A door where I was not received. A cross where Christ received me. A room where we decide whether to receive one another. And a throne where every kind of person praises Him with one voice.

We do not open the door because everyone outside is easy to welcome. We open it because Christ opened it for us.

Accept one another – not as people who have solved every difference, but as sinners who have been received by the same Savior. And when we do, the message should be unmistakable: