Theology Blog

In our church, we are preaching through the book of Romans and today we came to Romans 14. My colleague, Dan Bellinger did a fantastic job with this passage. As I have reflected on his message, the old hymn, Just Give Me Jesus comes to mind. The chorus, ‘you can have the whole world, just give me Jesus’ was fitting for his sermon and Romans 14. It seems so obvious and so cliche that we forget easily, especially when applying to our daily life. The world and the life we lead is more often complex than not, yet the only thing that matters is Jesus. Jesus should be first, center and all in our life and our faith. So often our desires, traditions, doctrine and practice get in the way of what really matters, Jesus. So often these things replace or are put in front of Jesus. Romans 14 admonishes that as they argued about meat and sabbath, pointing out that what matters is not the observance, but the spirit, heart and focus of the observance. Is it really about Jesus or is it about something else.

It often turns out that when it comes to life, faith and theology, the answers are quite simple and obvious. Living those things out on the other hand is the hard work and even harder prayer of the whole journey we know as life.