Glorify God Together

Excerpts from Welcome One Another to the Glory of God by John Piper

[Romans 15:1-7]

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Now how does he help us get there? This is not a question of church programs or relational mechanics or external technique. Paul’s question is: How do we become the kind of people who are of one mind in denying ourselves, sacrificing legitimate freedoms to please others, and being able with one voice (in spite of all the differences between weak and strong) to glorify God together? The root issue is how we become that kind of people.

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There are at least five things Paul does here to help us become the kind of people who can joyfully not please ourselves for the sake of building up others and making God look glorious. I’ll just mention them briefly and then close by focusing on the last one. Any of them could be a whole book. So take them and go deeper.

First, Paul draws our attention to Christ. He mentions his example, but the very example he chooses to mention is more than an example: it is the act by which he saves us from the wrath of God. Verse 3: “For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, ‘The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.’” In other words, to become the kind of person who joyfully serves others rather than using them, consider Christ. Look at Christ. Especially look at his sin-bearing, substitutionary work on the cross. This is how we change: “Beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Look to Christ.

Second, Paul reminds us how essential the Scriptures are in becoming self-denying servants of love. Verse 3 quoted Psalm 69:9, and so Paul says in verse 4: “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction.” The picture of Christ that he just gave us came from the Scriptures. Now the gospels and the portraits of Christ we have available are powerful to change us. If we would only give ourselves to the Scriptures.

Third, Paul pinpoints what it is about the Scriptures that is so helpful in making us into self-denying servants of other people’s upbuilding. It’s their power to produce endurance and encouragement. Verse 4: “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures . . .” God has designed the Bible so that when you follow the meaning from story to story and book to book the effect is “endurance and encouragement”—if that’s not happening, you’re not reading it right. This is what it will take if are going to be the kind of self-denying people who give glory to God with one unified voice in spite of all our differences.

Fourth, Paul reminds us that we will never survive in the path of self-denying, sacrificial love if we don’t have hope. Verse 4 again: “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope”—hope that all will work together for our good and we will inherit eternal life with God. How did Jesus endure through Gethsemane and Golgotha? Hebrews 12:2 says it was the power of hope: “. . . who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross.” That is the only way we will endure in love. Paul said it plainly in Colossians 1:4-5, “We heard . . . the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.” Christ-exalting hope is the great power to endure in self-denying, sacrificial love that pleases others for their good.

There is one final way that Paul shows us how to become this kind of persons. He shows by example that we must pray for all this to happen, because it is all God’s work in us. Verses 5-6 Paul shifts from teaching and exhorting to praying, “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, 6 that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He is still speaking to them. But not mainly to them. Paul has reached the end of his ability to persuade. His longings for this church are beyond the reach of man. God must do it, or it won’t be done.

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