You're Not Crazy (eBook)

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Open the Doors, Open Your Heart

A Culture of Gospel Welcome

Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

Romans 15:7

There’s a scene in the political drama The West Wing where a new White House adviser disagrees with colleagues about an issue the administration is reviewing. A short time later, her opinion has become the new official policy, and it will be reflected in an address the president is soon to give. She’s horrified. Words she’d said in passing now determined what would be broadcast from the Oval Office. One of her more experienced colleagues explains, “Well, we play with live ammo around here. It’s a short day and a big country; we have to move fast.”1 An off-the-cuff conversation in the corridors of the White House becomes official policy and highly consequential for millions of people.

Sometimes the seemingly innocuous can be life changing. This can happen in a church too. The casual becomes consequential, with repercussions not only for the health of that church but also for its influence on the world.

For example, we might take the word welcome for granted. Such a common word doesn’t strike us as filled with life-shaping significance. Maybe we associate it with a pastor’s opening words at the start of a church service, words so taken for granted they’re often not prepared. Or maybe we think of our initial contact with an unfamiliar face after the service, that awkward moment when we try to strike up a conversation. These moments of welcome—from the pastor and among the people—might feel peripheral to the real work of the church. They don’t seem filled with potential.

But in fact, welcome is one of the most consequential words in our gospel vocabulary. Paul concludes two lengthy and profound chapters in his letter to the Romans that address church tensions by urging, of all things, welcome. In fact, the net impact of all of Paul’s great theology in Romans comes down to this practical outcome: “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God” (Rom. 15:7).

There it is. Welcome really does matter. The glory of God is bound up in it. We’re called to welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us. There’s the gospel in four words: “Christ has welcomed us.” Okay then, now we know how much welcome matters. When gospel doctrine starts to create gospel culture in a church, our mutual welcome comes alive!

Of course, a good-natured welcome is baked into the ground rules of any group or club. When I (Sam) was at college, I was involved in the university’s student Thai Society, whose aim was to promote Thai culture within the university. (It was also an easy way for a broke student like me to regularly access cheap Thai food.) We’d meet once a month, and part of the agenda was looking for new people to draw into the group. It’s how all groups work: we welcome people. But, as Ray has often said, the church isn’t just meant to be a new community (there are plenty of those constantly springing up); it’s meant to be a new kind of community. This entails a different kind of welcome—one that’s ultimate origin isn’t earth but heaven. We don’t just welcome one another; we welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us.

Divine Welcome

The gospel, it turns out, is divine hospitality. We don’t always think of it that way. We often think in more transactional terms: the gospel is how I’m made right with God, and faith in Christ’s death is the hoop I must jump through to secure my place in heaven. But the gospel isn’t simply God managing to problem solve our sin. It’s God embracing us and welcoming us. The finished work of Christ on the cross is not God’s way of saying to us, “You’re free to go now” but “You’re free to come now.” He’s not sending us off but inviting us in.

Another way to put this is that the gospel is both mercy and grace. Mercy is not getting what we deserve (in this case, God’s judgment). Grace is getting what we don’t deserve (in this case, adoption into God’s family).

Many years passed before this distinction became apparent to me. Much of the preaching I had heard (and, I now shudder to think, delivered) focused on what we’re saved from. Talks explained how Christ’s death meant we no longer had to face hell and judgment. Now, this is obviously a weighty part of gospel preaching. Paul talks of being delivered “from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10). Elsewhere, concerning that future wrath, Paul writes about “that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus” (Rom. 2:16).

For Paul, the second coming of Jesus to judge each one of us is “according to my gospel.” In other words, the gospel includes the future judgment of humanity by Jesus. We must never drop this from our gospel preaching. It is vital.

But it isn’t total. The gospel is also about what we’re saved for. Which is where divine hospitality comes in. Jesus has not just transacted us out of our doom; he has brought us into his home. Christ has welcomed you is the gospel summed up super briefly.

We see this throughout the Bible. Consider just one Old Testament example:

You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. (Lev. 19:34)

God was calling his people to do something radical: to treat the foreigner living in their land as though they were native. The outsider is to be treated as an insider. This was unheard of in the ancient world and goes against many cultural instincts today. But the rationale is clear: God’s people had themselves been strangers. They’d been oppressed in Egypt because they were outsiders. And yet God had rescued them and brought them into a new land. He’d brought them in from the outside and given them a home within his land of promise. This was no incidental part of their national story. It was meant to define them and redefine how they would now treat others. What God had done for them they were now to do for others. God had welcomed them; they were to welcome the strangers around them. However radical it may seem compared with cultural norms then and now, it is obvious in the light of the welcome they and we have received from God. To fail to show hospitality to foreigners and outsiders would betray our identity and our history.

The New Testament also speaks of our salvation in these terms. Spiritually, we were distant and homeless:

Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. (Eph. 2:12–13)

Look how dramatically God welcomed us in: We were far away from God; now we have been brought into his presence. We were strangers to God, oblivious to his grace; now we are part of his family, seated at his table. We see the same kind of before-and-after contrast in Romans:

Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Rom. 5:9–10)

The difference is stunning: we deserved the wrath of God, but now we are fully justified; we were naturally enemies of God, but now we are fully reconciled to him. Paul is arguing from what God has already done to assure us of what God will yet do in completing our salvation. God has done the “hard” work of justifying and reconciling us, at no less a cost than the shedding of Christ’s precious blood. We can be sure he’ll do the remaining “easy” work of bringing us safely to journey’s end in his presence above.

Paul puts it bluntly. We were not away from God in some unfortunate, neutral sense. We were against God. We were his enemies, determined to keep our distance. Yet look where we are. We’re now brothers of Jesus, seated around the Father’s table as full, permanent members of his household. That’s divine hospitality for sure!

So, when Paul asks us to welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us, he’s not asking us to do something easy. Christ’s welcome was anything but easy. It wasn’t a wink and a smile as he passed by. He came to us when we were far from him. He bled for us, laying down his life in humble service. He welcomed us by experiencing divine unwelcome himself, being forsaken by God (Matt. 27:46). He brought us in by being thrust out himself, suffering outside the city gate (Heb. 13:12). We’ve been included because he was excluded. He welcomed us at the cost of all he had. He held nothing back. His welcome is no small matter. No true welcome ever is.

This welcome of Christ can and should so captivate us that it changes how we “do church.”...