romans 12 : the true christian
There's a lot of tension within the Evangelical church. Some between Evangelicals themselves, but mostly just the tensions Christians experience as a people not of this world, caught between the death of this world and the eternal life of the next. We are constantly searching for a balance between living in a broken world and resting in the peace of the saved and perfect one that we trust is coming and catch glimpses of every once in a while. Our culture makes accepting the tension that much harder; we want to produce, to move forward, to straighten out the kinks of pain and discomfort. That leaves a lot of us flipping through our Bibles looking for lists and outlines of exactly how to behave so we can just follows the rules and get on with it already. But since the Christian faith is based on relationship before the responsibility, those checklists can be hard to come by.
My home church, Medway Community Church in Mass. has been going through the Ten Commandments and the very real and profound implications they have on our daily walks with the Lord. Take a listen to our sermon podcast here on your commute to work or during your morning coffee routine.
I decided to take my own look at another Biblical checklist, this one found in one of my favorite passages, Romans 12:9-21, which some Bible translations (like my ESV) label as "The Marks of the True Christian." I wrote out each of the commands and characteristics that Paul lays out for us, and there are 26 of them. Some of them pair well together, showing us the two sides of every command (what's required and what's forbidden). As I study each of these characteristics, I'll share a few thoughts on each one. Follow along with me here, and maybe we can take a step closer to Jesus together.
