For Their Good
Scripture:
“We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: ‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.’
For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.
May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
—Romans 15:1–6 (NIV)
There is a kind of strength that looks nothing like what the world expects. Paul describes it here and it is the strength of bearing with others rather than insisting on your own way. Those who are strong in faith, he says, are not called to assert their freedom or use it as leverage. They are called to set it aside for the sake of their neighbor. Not because the neighbor is always right, but because love moves in the direction of the other person’s good rather than its own satisfaction. This is the shape of Christian community.
And Jesus is the pattern. He did not please Himself. He could have insisted on every right He possessed. He could have stood on the dignity that was rightly His. Instead He entered into our weakness, absorbed our insults, and bore what we could not bear ourselves. If that is the example Paul points us toward, then spiritual maturity is not measured by how much freedom we can claim, but by how readily we lay it down for someone else. The strong are not meant to look down on the weak. They are meant to carry them.
“The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”¹ — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
Bonhoeffer understood what Paul is describing. It is easy to love an idea of the church, a vision of what Christian community should look like, and grow frustrated when the actual people in front of you don’t match it. But the church was never meant to be a collection of people who have it all together. It is a community of people being transformed together, bearing one another’s burdens, speaking life into one another’s struggles, and moving toward God with one mind and one voice. That is not a dream to be protected. It is a people to be loved. Bear with them. Build them up. That is not a small thing. It is the work of the Kingdom, and it is how the world begins to see what Jesus looks like in the flesh.
Reflection:
- Where in your life is God inviting you to lay down your rights for the sake of unity?
- Are there any relationships where you have been more focused on being right than being loving?
- How can you practically build someone up in your church or circle today?
Prayer: Thank God for the patience and grace He has shown you. Ask Him to give you the same mind toward others that Christ had toward you, and pray for a heart that builds rather than demands.
Footnote: ¹ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: Harper & Row, 1954).