Philippians 2:2 Make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.”

You see the emphasis on oneness, unity, sameness here, right? “…like-minded…same love…one in spirit and purpose.” The emphasis on unity is even stronger in the Greek behind this translation. This is an important quality for a faithful and functioning Christian congregation.

It is true that God gathers his people from diverse backgrounds. When Jesus gathered the Twelve, he chose a number of working-class men. Almost half of them made their living fishing. But there was also a wealthy government bureaucrat, and a member of an anti-government fringe group. Later he added a prominent Pharisee. These people were as different as my conservative and liberal friends on Facebook who post their strongly held and strongly worded political convictions. If there was an evening that Jesus wasn’t doing most the talking, I’m sure they could have had some interesting discussions.

So Christians don’t roll off an assembly line with completely interchangeable brains. Jesus does not produce us by cookie-cutter. And the different gifts, and different insights, each of us brings to the table is part of his plan to build a multi-talented church with all the resources it needs to reach the world with the gospel.

And yet, there is an important sameness God’s church requires. Paul introduces us to three areas where unity is important. Up first is “like-minded.” The church is an organization whose mission is to share a message. If we don’t have one mind about the content of that message, if we don’t share a common set of beliefs, then what are we going to share? We can easily end up working at cross purposes. What good does it do for one man to teach something, and then another one comes along and contradicts it all?

Have you ever told your kids to pick up the toys, and as fast as one is picking them up, another one who didn’t hear the order, or who is too young to understand, is dumping them all out again? What does that accomplish? It’s frustrating. You make my joy complete by being a like-minded congregation, united in your faith.

Another feature of this united faith is “having the same love.” This can include agreement about what is a loving thing to do, and what is not. That is not always easy for Christians to discern, you know. Sometimes we confuse making people happy with loving them. We can mix up giving them what they need, and giving them what they want. It’s helpful to agree on the loving thing to do.

But more than that, living faith gives birth to a selflessness, a genuine concern for other people that loves them without conditions. That colors all our interactions with all the other members of our church, and everyone outside as well. It gives a pastor no greater joy than to see his people practicing this same love with each other, love born of faith.

Altogether, a united faith produces a congregation that is “one in spirit and purpose.” Today, Christian churches involve themselves in all kinds of activities. They may collect food for the hungry, build homes, operate nursing centers for the elderly, host support groups of various kinds, operate Christian schools, run daycare centers, organize dinners and fund-raisers and trips. These are all noble projects. None of them, in and of itself, is the mission of the church.

“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Jesus reason for leaving us here is clear. We are here to reach the lost, preach the gospel, win souls to faith in Christ. When our meetings, our conversations, our priorities, and our participation reveal that we are united in that faith and purpose, like Paul we have found another reason for joy.

Philippians 2:1-2 “If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete…”

Sometimes the smallest words in Scripture deliver big messages. Are you struck by Paul’s repeated use of the word “if” here? He lists these gifts and blessings of faith. But he seems to cast a shadow over their enjoyment with the word “if.” He almost seems to be questioning whether we have experienced these things.

I think the apostle is on to something. Sometimes our faith and our practice, or our faith and our experiences, don’t line up with each other. We believe the things God promises, but then we fail to make the connection with our lives. We really mean it when we say we believe God forgives us. But then we carry our guilt around anyway. Maybe we even act as if we have to pay for our sins ourselves. We sincerely believe God when he tells us he will make everything work for our good and provide everything we truly need. But then something goes wrong, and we worry just like the people who don’t believe they have a great big God to take care of them.

This is why repentance, the transforming change of heart and mind over our ungodly way of thinking and acting, isn’t a one-time event from our conversion. It is a daily way of life for the child of God. I need God to change my heart every day.

Then we will know the comforts Paul describes here. “If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ…” “You remember,” Paul is reminding us, “that when Jesus lived his perfect life of love, that was your perfect life of love. God gives you credit for his spotless record. When Jesus died on the cross, you died there with him. Justice was served on all your crimes and sins. When Jesus rose from the dead, you were raised with him. You have a glorious new life in God’s eyes, and someday you will leave your grave or tomb just like Jesus did.”

“But where? How?” we might ask. “You have been united with Christ,” is Paul’s reply. “All he is and all he did is yours.” That’s more than a cold, hard fact of history. If you listen, if you consider the things it changes for you and me, it is a word of supreme encouragement.

It also speaks volumes about the way Jesus feels about us: “…if any comfort from his love.” “No greater love has anyone than this, that he lay down his life for his friends,” Jesus told the Twelve the night before he died. So that is what we have from Jesus. He laid down his life for us. You and I could not be loved more than the love we have from him. My wife gave up the life she loved as a stay-home mom and went back to work so that her children could get a Christian education in high school and not be saddled with debt in college. It is a sacrifice of love. But it is not greater than the love we have from Jesus.

I know a man who sold his Ferrari and his Rolex watch to help build a church. It was a great act of love for his Lord, but it was not greater than his Lord’s love for him. There is no more basic and dear message of the Christian faith than this: “Jesus loves you.” You know, the very first thing a faithful Muslim parent whispers in his child’s ear is “Allahu akbar,” “God is great.” But practically the first thing a Christian parent teaches his child to sing is “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Jesus loves me. Can you believe that, and not find some comfort from this love?

In order that we might realize these encouragements and comforts, God has given us his Holy Spirit. If we have “any fellowship with the Spirit,” if he is our friend, and teacher, and guide, then all of this becomes life-changing. Our own hearts turn toward Jesus’ own heart. More and more “tenderness and compassion” become features of our own lives.

“In view of Christ’s comforts,” these blessings of faith, Paul says, “Make my joy complete.” Let your life, transformed by this gospel, bring joy to others, too.

Romans 9:10-12 Rebekah’s children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. Yet before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad–in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls–she was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’”

Isaac and his wife Rebekah had a set of twins, Esau and Jacob. Scientists often find studies of twins useful because they are so much the same. They are useful for Paul here because there is nothing to distinguish Esau and Jacob, humanly speaking. Obviously they have the same parents. They come from the same family. They are born the same day. Even if you look at the lives of Jacob and Esau, you would have to say that neither one comes across as a particularly good man.

Then Paul backs up to a time before they are born. In the womb, neither one had the opportunity to establish a pattern of behavior. There is no performance on which to judge them. You can’t say, “This one is clearly better, kinder, or more godly.” And yet, before they are born, God makes a distinction between them. “The older will serve the younger.” The younger one enjoys God’s special favor. The younger one will serve God’s special purpose. The younger one receives God’s promise and will be God’s child.

This is the way God’s election works, the way he chooses people for himself: “…not by works but by him who calls…” The difference doesn’t lie in the works, the behavior, the performance of one person over another. All human beings look alike to God on that score. “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

The distinction lies somewhere in God himself. He chooses and calls people just because he decides to do so. And at this point he doesn’t lay all his cards on the table. He doesn’t tip his hand and let us see the cards he is playing. “This is just my business, why I call the ones I do,” he is saying to us. “You have to trust me on this.” But it is not because he saw something different or better in us.

If you find this a little troubling, you are not alone. Even Paul felt the tension: “What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion’” (Romans 9:14-15). It is a little hard to argue with the Almighty when he chooses to do something. He is the only being in the universe who is absolutely independent, and absolutely free to do as he chooses.

But Paul also wants us to know that it is not an issue of God being less than just. It is an issue of him being more than just. If God were merely just, then everyone would pay for their own sins and no one would get to be one of his children.

But God is more than just. He is also merciful. And his mercy makes all the difference. “It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy” (Romans 9:16). In his mercy, God promised to save people. In his mercy he sent his Son and died for the sins of the whole world. In his mercy he has given us his promises, and sends people to preach them to us. In his mercy his promises work the faith that makes us the children of God.

Thank God for the mercy he has shown to you and me!

Romans 9:8-9 “It is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring. For this was how the promise was stated: ‘At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son.’”

We become God’s children by the power of God’s promise. This is how it was in Abraham’s own family. You may know that Abraham and Sarah had difficulty having children, but Abraham had a number of sons. Without any miraculous help, Abraham fathered a son Ishmael with the family servant Hagar. Ishmael was a “natural son.” But he and his descendants were not children of God.

After Abraham’s wife Sarah died, he married another woman, Keturah. Together they had six sons. We don’t know much about the men themselves, but later on their descendants, too, were not genuine children of God.

Abraham and Sarah had one son, Isaac. Isaac’s very existence was owed to the power of God’s promise. Isaac was a “miracle baby,” because Sarah was naturally unable to conceive. At the time she became pregnant with Isaac she was well past menopause. It was only the power of God’s word, God’s promise, that enabled Sarah to conceive. Isaac came from God’s promise as much as he came from his physical parents.

Paul is using this story as an illustration and example of what makes a person a true child of God. There is a miracle of God’s promise involved. God’s promises create another miracle birth. They give birth to faith, a living trust and hope in God. That is what made Abraham different.

Five chapters earlier Paul quoted this description of Abraham from Genesis 15, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” This is what made Abraham a forgiven child of God. It works the same for us. In his first letter the Apostle Peter tells us, “You have been born again… through the living and enduring word of God.”

God comes to us with a promise: “Your sins are all forgiven for the sake of Jesus’ death on the cross.” And faith stirs inside us. Like Abraham, we believe the God who forgives our sins and credits us sinners as righteous people. Like Abraham, we are God’s children because we are children of the promise.

Romans 9:8 “It is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.”

One day a man came up to Jesus and asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?” As he did so often, Jesus didn’t answer the man’s question directly. He answered as if to say, “That’s an interesting question. But here’s the question you really should have asked…”

The relative number of people who are going to be saved is something of an abstract, theoretical question. It’s more of a theological football to toss around than a truth you desperately need to know. It’s poking your nose into God’s business.

So Jesus personalized his answer and answered the man this way: “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.” “Before you are concerned about the percentages,” Jesus is telling the man, “You should be concerned about yourself. Will YOU be saved? Make every effort to enter through the narrow door…” And then, without going into detail about the ratio of lost to saved, Jesus does tell him that the number of people who don’t make it will be a large one.

God is not obligated to answer every question we might have about why some are saved and some are lost. Attempts to figure this out often lead to even bigger problems for our faith. But in Romans 9, the Apostle Paul’s words about the Jewish people reveal that ethnic heritage and personal pedigree are not contributing factors on either side.

Pedigree, family heritage, racial descent was a very important concern to the Jews. They took pride in being Abraham’s “natural children.” The “natural children” are literally “the children of the flesh,” physical, biological descendants of Abraham.

This direct family connection did not mean a free pass to heaven. Some of the rabbis of Jesus day had the idea that if you were born a Jew, then you had won the spiritual lottery. They wrote things like, “The worst Israelite is not profane like the heathen,” and “No Israelite can go into hell.”

You may remember a little exchange between Jesus and his fellow countrymen in John’s gospel: Jesus offers that his teachings will set these people free. He has in mind setting them free from their sins. But they shot right back, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone.” “We don’t need you,” they were saying. “We have the right pedigree.”

To the best of my knowledge, I have no Jewish pedigree in me. My family tree is northern European. Chances are, you don’t trace your ancestry to Abraham, either. But this idea of special pedigree, being God’s child because you have the right background, still spooks around with Christians. Years ago I met a neighbor whose yard backed up to my church. After a little conversation I learned that he was not attending any church. I hinted that he might try ours. “No thanks,” he said. “My grandfather was a missionary to the Congo, and my father was a pastor, so I think I’m good.” As if his family’s Christian activity somehow counted for him.

We are citizens of a nation that seems to have played an exceptional role in world history. In the past we have often been described as a “Christian nation.” It is true that most of America’s founding fathers were Christian men. But American citizenship and being a true child of God are not remotely related things.

Our ethnicity, our nationality, won’t count against us at heaven’s door. Jesus came to save the world, all of it. “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…” (John 3:16). There is nothing wrong with appreciating your family’s ethnic heritage, whatever it might be. But don’t think that pedigree provides any advantage for winning God’s favor.

Matthew 18:15-18 “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”

Here Jesus lays out the process he wants us to follow when confronting sin. There are three things to note. First, when the Christian family confronts sin, he wants to involve as few people as possible. If there is a confession and apology, you can forgive your friend and the process ends. There is nothing else to say about it, no need to go the pastor about the issue, no one more to tell.

If a guilty brother or sister continues to defend the sin, then you bring more people to the conversation, but no more than needed. Maybe additional voices will help convince a sinner of his guilt. But at first we keep it to one or two. We don’t go to the press about what has happened. We don’t start a campaign against the guilty with a whole team of people we have recruited for our side. One or two may be all that is needed to show the issue is not just a matter of your personal opinion.

If that does not work, eventually we may have to involve the whole church. The intent is not to shame, or pressure, or intimidate. We are trying to keep this person as a cherished member of the family. All those voices are meant to communicate and convince. And if we can convince this member of the Christian family who has strayed off the path, then we forgive, reclaim, and restore.

The second thing to note about this process is that it is not a legal process. We aren’t following a set of policies, going through the motions, checking all the boxes so that we don’t get into legal trouble. This is an evangelical, gospel process intended to win people. It’s okay if we talk to the person who has sinned against us a number of times alone, or if we go with one or two other people more than once, or if the whole church takes some time as it puts together its appeal to repent. Patience, gentleness, and love are always acceptable when we are seeking to rescue someone’s soul.

Third, Jesus is not giving us permission to be mean when he says, “If he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.” In the past, some people have objected to this whole process of church discipline and excommunication because it seemed at odds with the great commandment to love your neighbor. Some thought treating someone like a pagan or tax collector meant pretending like you didn’t see him if you met him in the store, or acting as though he was sick with Ebola, and you might catch it from him if you got too close.

No, pagans and tax collectors were two classes of people who were clearly faithless for the Jews of Jesus’ day. They were outside the family of God. They needed to be saved. On the one hand, then, Jesus is saying that you can’t treat people who have persistently refused to repent of their sins as though they were members of the church in good standing. You wouldn’t make them your leaders, or have them teaching your children, or let them have a part in the decision making process of the congregation. You wouldn’t invite atheists to do those things, either. Such people lack the spiritual qualifications and capacity for this.

But you don’t tell such people that they can’t attend, that they can’t come and learn. That is exactly what they need. To the end, everything is meant to win them back if possible. When the process works the way we want, even if it goes all the way to excommunication, and we terminate the rights and privileges of membership, the person comes to his senses, comes back, and asks for forgiveness, like the prodigal son. I could tell you stories about people I know who got that far in the process before waking up and repenting. Those stories end with happy endings. There would be no happy ending, however, if Christ’s family had not confronted the sin.

Matthew 18:15 “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.”

Standards are a good thing. They can be misused. Sometimes they can even be misguided. But in general we need them. I live in a neighborhood with “covenants” that govern many of the things you can or can’t do with your property. They are much more restrictive than the ordinances the city has and enforces.

The board elected by our home owner’s association faced a crisis recently. Past boards failed to enforce many of the standards. As a result, more and more people were ignoring them. This resulted in more complaints from other neighbors. Some neighbors became quite cross with each other. It negatively affected relationships.

Many of the standards in our neighborhood covenants are matters of personal chosen by the developers many years ago. I personally don’t care if my neighbor’s shingles are brown instead of gray. The Church also has a set of standards governing member behaviors. They are a reflection of God’s personal opinions. But these are not arbitrary. In each case he has chosen his standards to prevent real harm and suffering to his people. Ignore his standards, and relationships, families, health, civilization, and most of all, faith, all start to fall apart.

Christians have often had mistaken ideas about why a Christian would dare to point out a fellow Christian’s sin. It is not about the external appearances. “What would people think if they found out this family of faith has sinners in it?” I guarantee you, they already know. If a visitor to our church had any questions, we let the cat out of the bag when we confess our sins together at the beginning of the service. “I am by nature sinful and have disobeyed you in my thoughts, words, and actions.” We aren’t trying to preserve some sort of spiritual “property value” for our group, keep up the appearances of this “neighborhood” of faith. Where you have sinners gathered, you always have something of a spiritual slum.

It is not about getting “justice” when I have been hurt. Christ’s family doesn’t confront sin because I get the satisfaction of watching a brother or sister grovel in front of me for a few moments. Jesus does not want this to become a sick and twisted way to feel better about myself.

This is about a restored relationship. “If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.” By “winning your brother or sister over” Jesus isn’t saying, “You win the debate.” He is saying, “You keep them as a member of your family. You have preserved or added to the people who love you as Christian family, and that you love in return.”

There is a sense of two people who will go on together happy, trusting, full of respect and genuine concern. There is forgiveness, just as Christ has forgiven us. Unless we keep in mind this purpose, there will be something wrong about the way Christ’s family confronts sin.

Romans 8:20-21 “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”

The whole world around us is broken, just like we are, and it doesn’t like it. It is a kind of slavery, a kind of bondage, in which it has been forced to live. The storm clouds don’t want to dump a foot of rain on some unsuspecting town and destroy thousands of homes with flooding. They don’t want to keep running over Moore, Oklahoma with tornadoes and wiping out the place. The earth’s mantle, its crust, doesn’t want to scrape and grind against itself until the earth quakes, homes collapse, and hundreds of people die in the rubble. It’s not what the created world was made to do.

All of this has been imposed upon the world and the people who live in it by our Creator in response to our sin. It is a severe mercy. Once we became estranged from him by our sin, separated by our self-willed rebellion, he couldn’t let us go on thinking everything was okay in this new state of affairs, not if he loved us. He couldn’t let us comfortably walk down the wide road of life as though our selfish choices and godless habits were just a happy alternative, until we were so far down that road that there was no coming home, and hell was the final destination.

So he messed with the universe. He tinkered with his creation. The story of the fall in Genesis 3 warns of painful childbirth, loveless marriages, and frustrated farming, but you know that it goes far beyond that. Literally nothing in all the universe works the way it is supposed to. It may work well enough to get buy. Sometimes it may perform admirably by our current standards. But it all fails eventually, much of it sooner than later. It is all subject to decay.

And God is saying, “Hello! Something is wrong! Something should be telling you this is not the way it is supposed to be! You’re having a hard time getting through all this by yourself, aren’t you? You are having to see that your way isn’t working. This mess is bigger than you can fix yourselves. Why don’t you turn around and come home? Why don’t you come back to me?”

And once he has gotten his last son or daughter home, then his purpose for having a broken world held together by celestial duct tape and bailor twine will be over. Things like pain and tragedy, failure and frustration, decay and death will have completed their work. Then our Lord will be able to release the universe from its bondage.

A new era of freedom will begin. An eternal age of liberty, an endless day of love will be all we know. We will serve, not like slaves, but like free men and women: unafraid of death, untempted by sin, fully living out the gifts and purpose for which we were made.

And the creation in which we live will serve us, not like a slave, but like an artist finally given brushes and a canvas, like craftsmen finally given tools, set free to do what they are able to do, because they have been “brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”

This world in which we live is broken. We are living among the ruins of a once great universe. But still hope for freedom, because Christ is the hope of a broken world.

Romans 8:18 “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.”

This isn’t a wishful thought. Paul has done the spiritual math. The word behind “I consider” is a word often used with ancient balance sheets. It could be translated “reckon,” as in “day of reckoning.” They didn’t have the computerized spread sheets we have today, but they still had to track income and expenses, debits and credits, to run a successful business. In Paul’s picture, suffering stands in the expenses or debits column. Glory stands in the income or credits column. He does some reckoning to see how they compare, to see if you can balance the budget.

Both Paul and his audience understood that the entries in the “sufferings” column were real and severe. In a later verse he reminds us that “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth.” He may have been an unmarried, childless male, but he understood that the pain of labor and delivery ranks extremely high on the scale of human suffering. And he knew that suffering was personal for each of us. Our bodies are broken. Our relationships don’t work right. Strained friendships, stressed marriages, unruly children and pushy parents–do you know anyone who gets along with everyone all the time? Our jobs are a pain–too much work, too little pay, unreasonable expectations, office politics. The suffering column on the human balance sheet goes on for pages with these and 10,000 more liabilities I haven’t mentioned.

Now here is the astounding part. Paul tells us, “Take all of this together, add it up, and the sum total is a tiny decimal point so insignificant that there is nothing to compare with the riches of glory that our lives are destined to become.” We have so much more to look forward to than just a “better place.” A “better place” could be the subdivision just to the east of mine where the homes are bigger and better built; or it could be a private island in the tropics with a multi-million-dollar mansion and a place to dock my yacht. But is “better” good enough–a place with less sickness, less stress, less confrontation, and less frustration?

We are destined for glory, not just a beautiful and light filled place with good neighbors and the perfect climate all year round. This is glory “that will be revealed in us.” This glory marks a change in you and me. Paul goes on to explain, “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.” Today you and I look relatively ordinary. We aren’t glowing. Stick me in a police line-up because some male committed a crime, and the victim isn’t automatically going to say of me, “Well, obviously it can’t be him, all shiny and holy like that.” I look pretty much like other 60 year-old, five feet ten inch men. We don’t behave so differently. Put us under stress and we just might show our darker sides, short temper, not very nice things to say. Ask my wife sometime how I am when a home improvement project isn’t going my way.

But we are more than we appear. What you can’t see now is that we are sons of God. Even if you are a woman you are son of God in this sense. He has adopted us as full-fledged members of his family with all the rights and privileges of ancient sonship. He did it when he called us to faith and baptized us as his own. Adoptions can be expensive. Our adoption as God’s sons cost the life of the one and only Son who had been a member of the family from eternity. Jesus’ blood paid to remove every sin that disqualified us from a place in the family of God. This makes us so much more than we appear.            

And the day is coming when God will strip away the shell that hides our glory as the sons of God. He is planning a big reveal: “Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever,” (Daniel 12:3). This body that is planted in the ground perishable, like the rotting fruits and vegetables in my compost pile, will be raised in power and glory: imperishable, immortal, and spiritual. “He (Jesus) will transform our lowly bodies, so that they will be like his glorious body,” Paul writes the Philippians. And why shouldn’t he? He is the Son of God, and by his death and sacrifice that is what he has made us, too: the very sons and daughters of God. That is glory for those who suffer in our broken world.