Some of us are more outgoing than others. Some of us can talk in groups better than one-on-one. But all of us have a responsibility to welcome others into the church God has called us to. There are countless ways to do this, but for those who find it hard to know where to start, here are six ways to greet new people on Sunday.
When the gospel comes first in our message, obedience flows from it. When obedience comes first in our message, the gospel becomes a side dish rather than the entire meal.
We have a problem, and what we need is not a simple removal of guilt. We don’t need our guilty slate wiped clean. We need a new slate altogether. Our problem is not one of degree, with some being more guilty than others. Our problem is one of kind. We have the wrong kind of heart. We need a new one. But how do we get one?
We look at our lives and, if we’re honest, we see very little glory. We see struggle and hardship and failure. We wonder what happened to the dreams we once had. We have been beaten up and cast aside. But the gospel offers us something new
f we're not resting in God's free gift of grace, we will hold others to a different standard, and it will a standard that we ourselves set but that we attribute to God.
Paul’s Judaism led him to persecute the church of God. What Paul was doing was an attack on the people he thought he was protecting: God’s elect. His desire for the purity of God’s word drove him to approve the killing of God’s people because he believed they were redefining the boundaries of Israel by following Jesus. He had no idea that Jesus had redefined the boundaries for them. It wasn’t their message. It was God’s. Paul just hadn’t heard it yet. When Paul did hear the gospel, he experienced a complete life change.
Paul closes his letter to the Romans with a list of greetings. In our Bible study with my brothers of Refuge Church a few weeks ago, we looked at this passage and fought to mine some usefulness out of it. What do you make of a list of names, most of which we know very little about outside of Paul's brief comments?
Paul puts the burden of building and maintaining gospel culture on the shoulders of the strong. He is not excusing the weak. He’s simply telling the strong that they set the tone.
As J.B. Lightfoot says, “The gospel is a rescue, and emancipation from a state of bondage.”
