“Therefore, accept each other just as Christ has accepted you so that God will be given glory.” –Romans 15: 7
Through the last few months, our devotionals have focused on “one another-ing,” based on Bible passages that instruct how we should treat each other. The subject matter has been diverse. Yet each devotional has contained the catalyst for readjusting our ways of doing and thinking.
That catalyst is Jesus and how He viewed things and acted upon them. To me, it is an amazing thing to see the divergence of Jesus’ way from the way we generally do things. For example, I may think I know how to love someone. And, from a human standpoint, it would appear that I’m doing pretty well. The problem is my well-doing is based on the human definition of love.
Jesus’ love takes us into the heights of love that comes from the heart of God. That is something that I have never experienced from another human, but it teaches me and compels me to follow His lead and love like Him.
Today’s passage of scripture does the same thing. Instead of talking about how to love one another, the passage calls me to accept others. Acceptance is not always an easy endeavor! Oh, it’s not very difficult if the person we are accepting is like us. It’s definitely easy to accept someone we admire and aspire to be like.
What about when that person is different from me and the way I live and view life? As a matter of fact, the greater the number of differences that separate me from the other person, the greater the difficulty in my accepting them. We look at the “different” person with their “different” look or “different” actions and ways, and we think, “If only they were more normal.” Which means: “If only they were more like me!”
It has been said that the dominant culture of any society does not view itself as a culture. It views itself as the norm. And therein lies the problem in accepting. Our human tendency toward acceptance comes in proportion to how the “other” reflects and acts like me. Yet the words of Romans 15:7 not only compel us to accept each other, they tell us to accept in the same manner as Jesus accepted us.
How did Jesus accept people? In Galatians 3:28, Paul (who also wrote our passage for today) gives us the answer:
“There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
All the filters and walls that humans construct to separate, Jesus tears down. Jew or Gentile means that there are no racial, ethnic or national separations. Slave or free means there are no separations based on socioeconomic metrics. Male or female means gender does not determine if you are in or out.
Our one-ness comes from our same-ness. We are all loved the same by God. We are all linked together in God through Jesus. And how does Jesus accept us? Once again, we turn to Paul who, in Romans 8:38-39, says:
“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow — not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below — indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
As you go about your job or your duties at Loma Linda University Health, it becomes easier to accept people you work with, meet or serve as you realize we are all one and the same — greatly loved and accepted by Jesus.
–Terry Swenson, DMin, is the campus chaplain for Loma Linda University.