INTRODUCTION:

In this last chapter of Romans, Paul says his farewells, gives various greetings, and does so in a way as to teach us many invaluable things. Some might wonder what kind of message we might get out of a passage in which Paul basically says hi to everyone the Roman church phone directory, but we have to remember that all Scripture is profitable.

THE TEXT:

“I commend unto you Phebe our sister, which is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea: 2 That ye receive her in the Lord, as becometh saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever business she hath need of you: for she hath been a succourer of many, and of myself also . . . (Rom. 16:1-16).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT:

Paul commends to the Romans a woman named Phoebe, who was probably the messenger who carried the letter to the Romans. As valuable trusts go, this was probably one of the most important missions in the history of the church. She is called a sister, and is identified as a “servant” of the church at Cenchrea (v. 1). In the next verse, Paul urges them to give her a saints’ welcome, and to assist her in whatever business she might need to use them. She had been a great help to many, Paul included (v. 2). Greet Priscilla and Aquila, Paul’s helpers in Christ (v. 3), who risked their lives for Paul (v. 4). Greet their house church (v. 5), along with Epaenetus, the first convert in Achaia (v. 5). The greetings are then extended to Mary (v. 6), Andronicus and Junia (v. 7), Amplias (v. 8), Urbane and Stachys (v. 9), Apelles and the household of Aristobulus (v. 10), Herodian and the household of Narcissus (v. 11), Tryphena, Tryphosa and Persis (v. 12), Rufus and his mother (v. 13), Ayncritus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrobas, Hermes and the brothers with  them (v. 14), Philogus and Julia, Hereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints with them (v. 15). Paul then tells them to greet one another with a holy kiss (v. 16), and says that the churches of Christ salute them (v. 16).

When we gather at this Table, we are partaking of Christ and we are partaking with Christ. The thing that makes this an efficacious blessing is of course faith, but this faith does not work apart from what it was told to do. We were told to eat and drink, and so believing faith eats and drinks in faith. Believing faith does not jettison the bread and wine, and try to gin up the same results by means of naked faith. Naked faith is not what the Reformers meant by sola fide, faith alone.

Flattery is deadly, and before you start flattering others, you must first flatter yourself. The reason it is such a deadly sin is that it is the sin that hides from you your clear need to repent. Flattery rushes up to you as soon as the Holy Spirit has convicted you of something, and hastens to assure you that it “is not that bad.”

“Only human,” “faults on both sides,” and my “motives were good” are all ways we tend to flatter ourselves. It is true that some practitioners of worm theology in the history of the church have tried to make themselves out to be worse than they actually are—and yet, even here, there is a hidden source of secret pride. But most of us like our self-flattery straight up. We take ordinary sin, sin as ugly as a mutant chimpanzee, and instead of killing it, we put earring and lipstick on it. We tell ourselves soothing lies instead of the hard truth.

Our Father and God, You have established Your Church as a royal priesthood in this world, and so we intercede for the nations of men now, confessing on their behalf so that the grace of Your forgiveness will soon be extended to them all.

We acknowledge that we are nation of flatterers, and that we mostly flatter ourselves. We confess this sin on behalf of our people and ask that You would give us a spirit of true humility, not an aw shucks false humility. Father, we acknowledge that we are too concerned for the good opinions of others, and we know that this is inescapable so long as we are not consumed with what it means to have Your good opinion. We know that a good opinion of sinners is impossible outside of Christ, and we lament and confess the fact that our people want to have a public identity outside of Christ. We confess this as a grievous sin.

There was a conservative and Dutchy denom
That passed a report with indignant aplomb.
But we never bleed,
If our critics can't read,
And so here's to a missing-the-point pheenom.

. . . I don't believe I have ever footnoted a limerick before, so here you go.

One trap that parents fall into is the trap of not wanting sin around their kids. But I suppose this requres some explanation.

The mistake arises because there are a bunch of sins that parents should keep away from their kids -- kidnappers, for starters, and cocaine dealers, and pornographers, and seducers, and Cartesian dualists. One of the accusations leveled against private Christian education is that conservative parents are sheltering their kids. What next?! Parents sheltering children! We feed them too.

But here is where the mistake come in. There is a question of degree here. We are not supposed to keep our children away from the presence of all sin whatever. And that's a good thing, too, because it is impossible. There is a type of sin, common to the human condition, that your children will encounter (on a daily basis) on the playground of the finest Christian school imaginable. If you don't send your kids to that school (because of all the sin there), they will encounter even more of it at church, in their relationships with their siblings, in their bedroom all alone, and in the midst of all the dirty thoughts between their ears. The task of parents in this is not to avoid this kind of sin, but rather to teach their children how to battle it. You cannot learn to battle something if you are constantly endeavoring to stay away from it.

"Before the discussion gets sidetracked on the basis of caricature, lett us grant that the arbiter of long and short ought not to be a particularly strict dorm monitor at a fundamentalist Bible college. Paul says short, not 'less than a quarter inch, with pink sidewalls around the ears.' He says long, not 'over a foot and a half.' Long and short are relative, comparative terms. A short walk could be five hundred yards, and a long drive could be three thousand miles, but if they are comparative terms, what do they compare to? The obvious answer is that they compare to one another . . .  Just as Christian women ought not to wear jewelry in an ostentatious way because they are following the apostolic rule, so also modern Christian women ought not to cut their hair like a boy. And men must not wear their hair long, in that languid soccer-player way that makes other men start looking for the garden shears" (Why Ministers Must be Men, p. 27).

"Gravitas can also be inherited from relatively healthy families who simply tell their stories well. The southern novelists Flannery O'Connor once claimed that anyone who pays attention to his or her childhood could write novels for the rest of his or her life" (Barnes, The Pastor as Minor Poet, p. 50).

Suits and Haircuts from Canon Wired on Vimeo.

"A common evangelical saying is that many miss heaven by eighteen inches . . . the distance between the head and the heart. We also need to remember that many others miss heaven by thirty-four inches" (Why Ministers Must Be Men, p. 23).