“Now may the God who gives endurance and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, according to Christ Jesus, so that you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ with one mind and one voice. Therefore welcome one another, just as Christ also welcomed you, to the glory of God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I have an awesome church. It’s filled with great people. They are not perfect people, but they love each other and bear with each other with graciousness and a pretty remarkable spirit of unity. Not every church is like that. But when they are, they bring glory to God in a way that falls right in line with a blessing Paul spoke (well…wrote) over the church in Rome. Let’s take a look at the church’s purpose and one significant way Paul pointed us to be able to fulfill it.

Paul’s whole punting through this section of the letter had been to encourage the church in the church of unity with a particular issue threatening their unity in mind. In other words, he was speaking both specifically and also generally. All of the principles he has introduced for dealing with this one, specific issues are transferable to just about any issue plaguing the unity of the church. Just cut and paste your preferred issue for this one.

Now, as he prepares to wrap up this section and move into a final one, Paul offers a benediction. And, like all of his benedictions are, this one is fully informed by the context it is sitting in.

Referring back to the verse immediately preceding this one, where he pointed to the importance of the Scriptures understood properly, Paul opens by calling them to the authority of the Scriptures and the unity they promote. Look how he does this.

Yesterday we talked about the fact that two of the major purposes of the Old Testament (what Paul would have referred to as “the Scriptures”) are to give us endurance in our faith and encouragement to keep pressing on toward God’s kingdom in spite of the challenges arrayed before us. Look at what Paul does here. “Now may the God who gives endurance and encouragement…” Those are the very two things the Scriptures do for us.

If the Scriptures do those for us, and if God is the one who gives them, then God does His work through the Scriptures. The Scriptures are the means by which God accomplishes these things in us. When we are engaging with the Scriptures, we aren’t merely reading words on a page, we are interacting with the God who inspired them. These are God’s words we are dealing with, and they are powerful. More specifically, they connect us with His power. Paul’s blessing here is a call to be regularly and consistently engaging with the Scriptures. Paul could have said, “May you be deeply rooted in God’s word.”

But this engagement with the Scriptures so that God can do the work of increasing their endurance and giving them encouragement wasn’t for its own sake. The specific purpose of this work was to help the people “live in harmony with one another.” The Scriptures provide the church their foundation. This is not because the Scriptures themselves are the foundation, but in that they point the church to Jesus who is the foundation and the cornerstone. If the church’s foundation is anything other than the inerrant, infallible word of God, living in harmony with one another is not going to be possible to achieve. Unity will be nothing but a failed dream.

And again, this unity through the Scriptures is ultimately and finally rooted in Jesus. Paul’s blessing is that God may do this for them “according to Christ Jesus, so that you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ with one mind and one voice.” When we are united as a people around God’s word which points us to Jesus as Lord, we will bring glory to God which is our ultimate purpose as the church. That Jesus’ body would bring glory to God is only natural. It is what we were made for. And this should be done in perfect unity with one another in spite of the great diversity of our membership. Such a unity is only possible when we are committed together to something bigger than we are, namely, the Jesus revealed through the Scriptures.

At the end here, look at how Paul instructs us to accomplish this greater mission. He could have pointed to a number of different things here, but he says this, “Therefore…” In other words, in light of this unity you have as a blessing from God because of your commitment to the Scriptures pointing you to the Lordship of Jesus to the glory of God, here’s what you need to do. “Therefore, welcome one another, just as Christ also welcomed you, to the glory of God.”

What does that mean? We are to be one body as the church. No single member exists on his own or for her own sake. We belong to one another. We are to take others into our body just as graciously as Jesus shared Himself with others. This unity we have in Jesus, promoted and propelled by the Scriptures should not lead us to close ourselves off from the world. Rather, it should lead us to embrace a radical hospitality wherein we actively seek out others to share it with; others who can share in it with us. We do this in harmony with the welcome Jesus Himself extended to us. In other words, we are to love like He did. And all of this is to the glory of God, which, again, is our foundational purpose.

In other words, Paul’s blessing here at the end of this lengthy section giving instructions for how the church can stand together as a united body in spite of a diversity of people and opinions on a variety of matters is for them to experience that very thing. We are to be committed to the Scriptures with the hospitality of Christ. We insist on a single foundation that does not waver or change with the ebbs and flows of the culture around us, but we do so with the gentleness and humility and openness to others that Jesus had throughout His ministry. We are always on the lookout for how we can draw others in to share in this unity with us. To put that yet another way, we are always looking to share the Gospel with those who have not yet received it.

The church that will stand strongest, united together as a body, is the church that is most active in proclaiming and advancing the Gospel together with the Scriptures as their guide, all to the glory of God. Let us be that church. It’s who God made us to be.