Attitudes – Part two

Let us turn back to the epistle of Romans and discover a wonderful lesson. We turn to the first chapter and we’re going to see not the great argument of the Apostle but look beyond at the brother who is exhorting. I don’t know whether you find this so, and it relates to facts and attitudes, doesn’t it, but we can listen to exhortations from our exhorting brethren and what they say is wonderful and fine, yet if you detect in the attitude of the exhorting brother an arrogance doesn’t it damage the message that is coming over? I don’t mean to draw attention or put the spot light on myself, but I’m making a point. If a policeman comes up to you and he wields his big stick at you, you react to that don’t you? But if he comes up smiling and helpful, you react quite differently. If a school teacher at school, similarly, is being cynical and hard in his presentation, there is a resistance to what he is saying. His lesson may be absolutely fine, but his attitude is off footing.

Paul Thanks God for Us …

Have we ever looked behind the epistle to the Romans and beheld the attitude and the spirit of the man who is writing to us his exhortation? In Romans 1:8, “First,” says the Apostle Paul after his introduction, “I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all.” Here is a brother who is grateful for all his brethren and sisters. That seems a very appropriate thing to say when some of you reading these words might be in a small ecclesia or even in isolation. How we have rejoiced in the strength and the fellowship and the love of all our brothers and sisters. That’s the first step, that’s the fact. But the attitude is, if you are grateful to our Heavenly Father for all our brothers and sisters, let’s tell one another and show one another how grateful we are. This is what the Apostle Paul is doing. He is showing how grateful he is for all the brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. But obviously something else. Look at the end of verse 8, he is not only grateful for you all but that “your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world! Can you imagine what effect that has on the church in Rome? The Lord Himself has shown great love, and the Apostle Paul is pleased with us; he respects our faith in Christ Jesus. He’s not looking down on us as young in the faith and people to be talked down to, he respects your faith.

Verse 9. “For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers;” I wonder how many of us pray for each other and don’t tell each other that we’re doing it. We actually pray for one another and we never impart to each other that we are praying and why we are praying. The Apostle Paul is showing us the love of fellowship and how we should use it that we should pray for one another being deeply grateful to our Heavenly Father that He has given us our brothers and sisters.

Verse 10. “Making request (of our Father) if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you.” Do you see the spirit in which the Apostle Paul would break bread and keep the passover of the Lord Jesus Christ? He was actually praying for this meeting and praying to come to this meeting: praying for the welfare of this meeting and the unity of the fellowship of this meeting and he’s been praying that he might be given a journey to come. Do we always arrive at the meeting with that kind of spirit or have some of us got other things pressing on our minds and really this is eating into the day rather badly. We’re not stating any of the facts of fellowship, what the Apostle Paul is showing us is the attitude towards our Lord and to the brethren and sisters and to the coming together of the meeting.

Verse 11. “I long to see you.” Remember, brethren and sisters, the tenderheartedness of the Apostle Paul in “I long to see you.” Perhaps American brothers and sisters are more open about their feelings than English brothers and sisters. In England, you know, brothers and sisters are a little bit nervous about showing their feelings. It’s possible that you are, too. It sounds, coming from a man, a little bit slushy to say it, doesn’t it? We have been really longing to be with you again. The Apostle Paul can say a tender thing like that. What a way in which to greet our brethren and sisters if genuinely this is the attitude of our Lord Jesus Christ and the transformation that’s taken place in us. At the end of verse 11, he longed to see you “that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established.” We love to give one another presents. The Apostle Paul really longed to be with his brethren and sisters; he had spiritual gifts he wanted to impart to them. Is this the way we come to the meeting? Have last week’s readings told us anything we’d like to share with our brothers and sisters? Do we come to the meeting ready to receive because it so happens this Sunday we’re not presiding or exhorting, or have we all come to enrich one another at this meeting. Is the spirit of hospitality and fellowship that we know to be so strong among us broadened with a spiritual counterpart that, when you come together, you’ve not just brought your own bread, your own food that you might feast yourself and others might go hungry? Have you brought spiritual gifts to talk to the young and feed the aged, to comfort one another, to impart some spiritual gift? The Apostle Paul desired that.

But listen to verse 12. “That is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.” I don’t think, if I hadn’t heard the Apostle Paul say that, I would ever have believed it. Who would have thought that the young church in Rome could have added anything to the faith of the Apostle Paul? Who would have believed, unless he told us, that the Apostle Paul needed our fellowship? But he confesses that he does. He comes with spiritual gifts to impart, but he needs the mutual faith both of you and me together. What a wonderful spirit then the Apostle Paul shows to the church. And if the attitude of scripture is really working on us, then we are being transformed from the natural man to the spiritual man.

I would ask you please to look at Phil. 1:3 where again the language of love is seen. “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you,” his association with the brothers and sisters of Philippi is one of total thankfulness. Remembering what happened at Philippi, his memories of Philippi could have been very much the reverse. Was it not there that he had had his back lacerated, where unjustly he had been thrown into an inner prison because of the cowardice of the jailer, now a brother. And yet his memory of the brothers and sisters of Philippi is one of total thankfulness. It’s wonder­ful, isn’t it?

Can We Say “I Have you in my Heart?”

Verse 4. “Always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy.” How, brethren and sisters, our prayers are going to be filled up as a result of the memories and thanks for times such as our Bible schools, but I wonder whether you have the tenderness of heart and the spirit of Christ to the extent that you could say then—verse 7— “Even as it is meet for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart;”. Is that the affect of fellowship upon you; can you bring yourself to say that of your brothers and sisters? I have you in my heart. Don’t forget, brothers and sisters, this was Saul of Tarsus a few years ago who, breathing out threatening and slaughter, had no compunction but out of women he would exact a confession, hailing men, women and children to prison. Here was the hard-bitten man who thought in persecuting you he did God justice: who by nature was ambitious and ruthless and nobody and nothing would stand in his way. It was the nature of the man.

But here is the comfort of our exhortation. You might say it’s well for us to talk about attitudes, but some of us are not given to being emotional. I protest that Saul of Tarsus was not either. He was a dangerous man to know, but what we see is the operation of God and the man of Christ, and he submitted not only to the teaching of Christ but his whole attitude of life and his whole behavior was transformed. So can ours be. I be­lieve that what shocked Saul of Tarsus more than anything on the road to Damascus was when he saw in that vision, not only the Lord speaking to him, “who art thou Lord?” “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest,” what he saw, I believe, was how much the church meant to Christ. It’s ME you are persecuting, Saul, that is what stuck in the gullet of Saul of Tarsus; there was the goad of conscience that now had salt in the wound. Paul saw how much the church meant to the Lord, and Paul was marked by that and that is what has changed the whole attitude of the Apostle Paul and why he so now

Our Love Should Condition our Attitude

loves and cherishes those who once he despised. That is how a hunter is changed into a shepherd, and throughout scripture the Lord loves the shepherd and hates the hunter. Let, then, our love and our understanding of scripture so condition our attitude from now on that our hardness and bitterness, all pursuit of our brothers and sisters is going to be marked not by the Apostle Paul’s love of the brethren and sisters: that was only the example. Remove that now. The real exhortation is the Lord’s love of His church, and don’t let the Lord have to say of this house, “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.”

Romans 12:1. Here the Apostle Paul builds upon the attitude and the facts that he has given, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable (and well pleasing) unto God,” because this is your spiritual worship. When you bring the passover lamb, you are bringing the Lord; but you are not only bringing the Lord, you are bringing yourself. It is not just that you are going to sacrifice somebody else, it’s a sacrifice in which you, too, are going to take part. And he calls in verse 2 that “ye be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,” not only to the new understanding of scripture but to the new attitude which scripture brings that we respond to the love of our Lord.

So we read in verses 12-14, “Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing necessity of saints; given to hospitality. Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.” He speaks of being “kindly affectioned one to another” in verse 10. This attitude of the spirit of those who are kindred; it is kindred love, the love of the family. And if Paul’s attitude has been demonstrated, it is purely the example of our Lord Jesus Christ for it is His love that we remember. Having loved His own, He loved them unto the end. It’s not only the teaching of the Truth that the Lord has brought us, it is His very life! And in the attitude of His life laid down with thankfulness, we break this bread with love and with thankfulness and ask for fellowship with Him that when the angel of death passes we will go on our way and go on our journey in faith but with the attitude, with the love, that will cherish the family, that will revere the Word of the Lord. Being so marked by the spirit of scripture, we will rise up in the Lord’s service remembering it is Christ that died, yea rather is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God. Have you never heard how much the Lord loves you that we should lightly esteem His fellowship ? Have you never heard how proud the Lord is of all His church ? Have you never known the spirit with which now He groans and intercedes for us all?

Who separates us from the love of Christ? Only one thing; our lack of perception and the wrong attitude. We will not break bread like that. But in love, to our Heavenly Father, we will take this passover lamb and go in the strength of it many days. The Lord bless you and keep you. Amen.