April 25, 2009 - The Vital Care Of Relationship

Meditation on Romans 16

Someone has said that Christian growth is the growth of one's relationship with God and with each other. We can observe whether we are growing as a Christian by measuring whether we love God and His people more or not.

How do we measure love? One of the ways is to see the way we greet one another. We can see that Paul really loved the Christians in Rome. Not only he mentioned that they were his beloved, he prayed for them constantly, and longed to meet them and share with them. (Romans 1:7-12) He greeted many of them by names with compliment and intimate terms at the end of his letter. (v. 3-16) Since he wrote this letter before he was even in Rome, how did he know all these people? How did he remember so many details about them? We can only conclude that Paul cared about those Christians and their church very much.

But there are some relationships we should take step to avoid. Paul warned the Roman Christians that they should have nothing to do with the so called Christians who caused division and offenses and taught false doctrine. (v. 17-20)

Then, besides greeting the people himself, he also brings them the greetings from other co-workers so they will all have good relationship with one another. (v. 21-24)

Finally, Paul gave glory to God for bringing everyone to be established in Him. We can have such wonderful relationship because of the revelation of the Gospel through Jesus Christ.

Let us learn from Paul to grow in our relationship with God and man by greeting one another with loving care.