Keeping the Promises (Romans 15: 1-13)

It’s one thing to be excluded from a pick up basketball game. It’s another to be excluded when you come to church. Tragically, Sunday morning groups of believers can become one of the hardest games in town to crack. In the 1st Century Roman believers still keeping the Jewish law condemned those who didn’t, and the “liberated” distained the “legalists.” Why not simply divide the Church into a Jewish service where they played Jewish music and ate kosher and a Gentile service where they sang Roman praise songs to Jesus and ate ham? Why should believers in Christ welcome each other as family? The Apostle Paul in Romans 15:8-13 did not solve the problem of disunity by creating two homogeneous groups. Instead, he challenged them to think deeply about their true unity factor.