So, if we drill into all this, we find out what we’re being invited to consider is, can a person who believes and who loves Jesus, who believes but differs from me on my theology or does things and behaves in a way that I think is wrong or isn't representing Jesus or is sin, can that person still be a Christian? And what we realize from Paul is, we're not the judge of that, we will all stand before God individually. But the underlying issue of who gets to be included is still with us and it comes out in the ways that Paul was discussing in yesterday's reading in the ways that we judge each other. So, today, like we’re not wrestling with this, this issue that was a massive issue because at this point in the world, the Christian faith is almost entirely Gentile. He also came, so that the Gentiles might give glory to God for His mercies to them. “Remember that Christ came as a servant to the Jews to show that God is true to the promises He made to their ancestors. But after Paul met Jesus, he realized something way bigger was going on, and that Jesus was not only the Savior of the Jews but the Savior of the world. And we know he was extraordinarily committed to that way of thinking because he was trying to stamp out the name of Jesus from the earth. Which is not something that Paul wouldn't of understood, as a trained Pharisee he would've understood it very well. And so, yes, people can come into that camp, but they would need to convert to Judaism and lead a Hebrew lifestyle and live inside that culture and follow Jesus within that context, to be included, as a God-fearing Gentile. This is not a new story, Jesus is the Savior of the Jews, a continuation of the story of God's chosen people. For Jewish believers Jesus was the Messiah. But that's not how it was then, this is a major issue and not everybody was on board. And in the letter to the Romans, Paul's laying out an argument that anybody who believes, even if they're not Jews, are included. One of the dominating questions being who gets to be in, who’s included. In Paul's time all of this infrastructure hadn’t been established yet and it's a bit more of the wild frontier. We’re 2000 years into the future, right now we have like a plethora of choices for worship style, music style, teaching style as well as like doctrinal and theological camps, that we would call denominations. In Paul's time, the church era that we are in right now, was just beginning. And when it comes to the early church, that was an issue. Today, he talks about people, Gentile people, because really, what we’re talking about here from yesterday and today and judging one another and dividing ourselves up into camps, is a discussion about who gets to be in. But whereas yesterday, the examples were, you know what, which food can you, or can you not eat, which days should you, should you not fast, which days are holy and should be observed as such, which days are not. And since each day we pick up where we left off, we’re continuing with that discussion today. Okay, so, yesterday in the book of Romans, we we’re discussing unity, uniformity, harmony, and judging each other.
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