Paul takes us into the goings on of a local NT church. Just like your body, the local church is made up of many moving parts. Some are strong parts like your thigh muscles, and others are weaker like the eye or the pinky toe, and yet, all are needed, and all serve a purpose. We need all of them to operate.

A local church will be made up of the seasoned older folks who have been through life with Jesus. They have weathered some storms with Him. You will hopefully have the new people; those who are recently saved and still finding their spiritual legs, so to speak, and then all of the in-betweens. A church needs aged, grey-haired people as much as they need the newborn toddlers that make lots of noise during church; all are important.

Verse 1-2: No need for arguments, but man – God’s people argue. We can get into a split over what brand of toilet paper to have in the washrooms. All too often, there are dogmatic people, often about preferences, who use them as doctrinal measures of salvation. I will give you one that is close to many Baptists: the KJV. I grew up using the KJV; I have nothing against the KJV, but there are those who make the KJV out to be the language that Jesus and the apostles spoke, and if you use anything other than the KJV, then you are a heretic. They will not invite you to preach in their pulpits and tend to look down on us as inferior Christians.

We can insert all kinds of things into the hole: Halloween, Christian rock music, movies of any kind, should women wear pants, and on and on we can go. No Bible verses, just preferences and judgment. Thereby are most of the disputes in our churches. Now recently, the SBC churches had a vote about female preachers, and that has caused a split; this is a doctrinal issue, not a preference.

Verse 3-4: You are not your brother and sister’s master; they will answer to God, and so will you. We all too often misuse the “judge not,” but the context is that we are to judge ourselves harshly first, and then we will be able to truly help our spiritual siblings. But that seems to rarely happen. We come to the conclusion that someone is not serving Jesus the way I do; they are not saved, or for sure that they are not serving Jesus the right way.

Verse 5-6: Matters of conscience are just that and nothing else. There are many saved people who smoke, many who enjoy a private glass of wine or a beer, and yet they are saved and can be used of God. The seminary I attended had a thing against beards; no one, not even the professors, could wear a beard. Yet, Bible characters we studied were bearded and served the Lord faithfully. Jesus was bearded, and He is the standard of being righteous. Let people live freely in Jesus. If there are no verses calling a thing sinful, let them answer to God; you may be surprised.

Verse 7-8: None of us are an island. We need each other, and we are connected in Christ to each other. We can either help and serve each other, or we hinder and harm each other, but there truly is no neutral ground.

Verses 12-14: Stop judging your brothers and sisters for things that are not sinful, and stop being a stumbling block in your local church. Learn to accommodate the weirdness of others, and they learn to accommodate yours. If you know someone hates loud Christian rock, don’t play it in your car when they are there. If a brother or sister has issues with alcohol or smoking and is trying to quit, don’t tempt them. As the stronger sibling, abstain for their benefit.

Yes, we are called to love sacrificially at all times and to take responsibility for another. Your siblings in the Lord are precious; Jesus died for them. Yes, even with the weird hair, the ladies in pants, and the guy that only has stained jeans as his best Sunday clothes; Jesus died for them too.

Verse 16-18: Love like Jesus (Micah 6:8); this is the whole duty of man. The last one is to walk humbly with God; if we did this, all the other parts would fall into place, and we would elevate our sibling in the Lord. The Devil already has us in his sights to hurt and bring down; we do not need to help him by piling on our siblings as well. We just make Satan’s job easier as he seeks to steal the weaker, newer converts. God help us to love each other more and to be humble towards each other.

seangooding@yahoo.ca

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario

Let us consider the context of this chapter. Jesus had been killed under the Roman government; Pilate was one of the more ruthless governors sent out by Rome. Paul suffered under Nero, as did other Christians and Jews. Unlike what we are like now, the people did not get to vote for another leader every 4 or 5 years; they just had to suffer under cruel ones until they died.

In Chapter 12, Paul tells us to be renewed in the mind, and one of these renewals is that of our relationship to earthly governments. We are allowed to oppose the current government. If it is one that openly defies God and promotes evil, as we see often in modern governments, then we are to respectfully oppose them.

Christians should be wary not to begin a resistance towards a government. If your government attacks you, it is okay to defend yourselves, but we should not be instigating anything. It is okay in our systems here in North America to promote or build an alternative party to run for power. Sadly, too many Christians have opted out of politics, and the void has been filled with Jesus-hating liberals.

Paul tells us that God puts government in place. Sometimes governments are there to bless people, and often they are there to punish people for their rebellion to God. You often get the government that you asked for. Sometimes, people have been ruled by evil people for so long, they no longer know how to accept a good government. Often, some governments have lied to their people for so long that the truth is painful to them. They rebel against a good government and vote in a bad one to be comfortable.

Jesus, Paul, and others engaged in debate with many government leaders. The last few chapters of Acts show Paul using his citizenship power to demand to be seen by Caesar. In the course of his journey to Rome from Jerusalem, he debates about Jesus, religion, and a bit of politics with several powerful Roman leaders. Jesus often debated with the Pharisees, the religious ruling sect of the Jews. He had other discussions with tax collectors and others.

This is encouraged, but in 2026, debate is being silenced. Only one viewpoint is being offered, and it is the wrong one. If one engages in debate contrary to the common line of thinking, then one is labeled and, recently, arrested and put through the court system. This is happening a lot in Europe, but it is making its way to Canada, and were it not for the Trump leadership, it would be rampant under the Democratic leadership in the USA.

Paul tells us that the government is there to protect those who do good works and punish evil doers (verse 3). Sadly, the opposite is more often true in our current governments. Right now, the government in Canada and most of the ones in Europe are actively trying to destroy their nations that they swore to protect and care for.

In the UK, rape gangs led by mostly Pakistani men are allowed to run rampant and rape hundreds of thousands of British young women. The government and the police do nothing; the courts either dismiss cases or give out lenient sentences for heinous crimes, leaving the victims with no resolution and no closure.

The US government, for now, is not that way totally. Their current administration is trying to actually revoke the power of these liberal judges and to right the many wrongs. But as I mentioned before, there are many in the US that reject this kind of law and order, and there may be enough of them to vote in a liberal government that will continue the decline that started under President Biden.

Paul tells us in verse 7 that we are to render taxes to whom they are due. The government has the right, from God, to tax us. In Exodus 30:11-16, God instituted a Temple Tax, and that was in place up until Jesus’s day. We see him sending Peter to catch a fish and pay the tax for them both. At the end of the day, Peter sums up how we are to live under evil, God-hating governments: we are to obey God rather than man (Acts 4:19).

Verses 8-10: No matter how the government treats us, we are to love our neighbors. Deal with them honestly, and obey the Ten Commandments when dealing with them. Take good care of them; look out for them. This is how we are to live no matter who is in power.

Verse 11-14: Jesus is coming soon. Live knowing that we will meet him soon; we will answer to Him soon for how we lived and not for our government leaders. They will have their day in Jesus’s court. In the meantime, we are to love and pray for our enemies, show them the love of Jesus, and speak the truth. Always seek to love in peace with ALL men; do not seek to avenge yourself. God knows, and He will deal with things.

Verse 21: In a world of evil, we are called to live out the good. We are called to be light in the midst of the darkness, and yes, that may mean suffering under tyrannical governments. Here in Canada, for sure, we have had our freedom of speech abruptly curtailed by our current government, and they are working on becoming a surveillance state with access to all of our social media. It is sad when the government becomes the enemy of the people they are supposed to serve and protect.

Lord, please help us! Jesus, please come soon!!

seangooding@yahoo.ca

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario