Unity in Christ: Embracing Our Gospel-Centered Fellowship

The relevance, though, of the Lord of the Rings to our excursion into Romans today, Romans chapter 15, verses 1 through 13, is this. It deals with a fellowship of the ring that was made up of people that had a lot of differences, but they united in a higher calling to achieve that. And that reminds me of the fellowship of the faith, which is the fellowship of the saints or the church. We are united. We have differences, but we are united by a higher cause being the gospel. and we are together for the gospel. and the faithful to the gospel. [00:01:17] (44 seconds)  #UnitedForTheGospel

This text brings us a theme which we've seen before, which we don't, we're not to, you know, beat people up whose faith we perceive to be weaker than it ought to be, or weaker than our own, but to build them up, to support them, to edify them, to engage with them in such a way that we actually grow closer in Christ as a result of the differences we have. I mean, what a difference it would have made in the last 2 ,000 years of the church if we've taken every opportunity where we disagreed about something to, let's dig into this and grow closer. [00:06:57] (35 seconds)  #BuildUpInFaith

Jesus in fact was a perfect, he was in perfect balance between humility and strength, between boldness and meekness and how do we achieve this? Well, the only answer, and we're going back to something that we've already said, that it is the mission of the fellowship of the faith to build one another up onto Christ -likeness in the context of the church.And if we're trying to do it on our own, we're probably going to end up being too mean or too nice, or we'll probably end up being too mean one day and too nice the next. [00:11:08] (46 seconds)  #BalancedChristlikeness

One voice, one people, informed by one word, led by one spirit, worshiping one God. That's the vision that Paul has here.He's weaving together the old covenant and the new into a garment that the church can wear that says that it's all one story for one people. [00:13:54] (23 seconds)  #OnePeopleOneStory

Grace is the most wonderful thing going my only point here is that it's not necessarily news because it's an old story so it's not newsy that's an old story friend that's not news. [00:22:53] (16 seconds)  #GraceIsTimelessTruth

The gospel is the person and work of Jesus Christ the person and work and that's good because it starts with Jesus and then it gives you an opportunity to talk about his work what did he do who is he and then you can elaborate as required and you know that Jesus has many there's many things said of him and many offices that he holds he's prophet priest king he's the redeemer he's the victor he's the savior he's the lamb of God he's all of these things and the question is you know what part of this is the gospel it's all gospel it's the whole thing every office every work everything associated with the person of Jesus Christ that is the gospel. [00:23:22] (44 seconds)  #JesusPersonAndWork

How could anyone with the Spirit of Christ attempt to presume upon his grace by manipulating in some way like this to try and take an insincere advantage of it? Are you crazy? That doesn't work. No one with the Spirit of God indwelling them has this perspective. And if you have it, look carefully to your claim to be regenerate. It may rest on sand. [00:30:02] (29 seconds)  #SpiritRejectsManipulation

Their source of their strength was their common purpose to destroy the power of Soren, and it overcame their diversity and created something positive out of it.Now, by contrast, our fellowship of the faith.It is formed after Satan is defeated, it's a little different.The empty tomb, the cross, Satan's power is defeated, but he's still prowling. He's still accusing, he's still deceiving, he's still looking around for seeing anyone he might destroy.And it is the role of this fellowship that we're a part of to maintain and sustain God's people in the midst of this in -between time, in this church age, in this mopping up operation. We proclaim the gospel, we proclaim the fact that the war is over. [00:32:43] (63 seconds)  #VictoryOverDiversity

But beyond this, as I said earlier, we build one another up into Christlikeness. That's job two.That's making disciples, in other words.We intervene in prayer, as we do every week.And we persevere in holiness, because be holy because I am holy. We don't presume upon anything to assume that we don't need to pursue holiness. We pursue holiness.And that is the fellowship of the faith, that's what we do, that's who we are, and we do it in response to the gospel. [00:34:02] (42 seconds)  #BuildIntoChristlikeness

Let's go brothers and sisters let's go into the this race of the fellowship of the faith this mission of the fellowship of the faith let's go higher up and further in in our experience of God in Christ led by the Holy Spirit we don't know if we got another 50 years here or 500 or five but as long as we've got a light on the path in front of us and the Holy Spirit leading us let's go [00:39:38] (34 seconds)  #RaceOfFaithLedBySpirit