“Accept one another, then, for the glory of God, as Christ has accepted you.” (Romans 15:7)
Here’s another interesting insight I picked up at the Pepperdine Lectureship (which, Laymond, I won’t call glorious; that does seem like a silly use of that adjective). If you’re not familiar with Jay Guin’s writings, you should visit his blog at oneinjesus.info. I attended his class at Pepperdine. (If you look around a bit, you can find the software presentation he used there)
He pointed out this verse, Romans 15:7. Notice the second verb, “accepted.” It’s in the past in English, the aorist in Greek, which denotes a one-time action. Christ accepted us. When would that be? At the moment of our salvation. That’s when we were accepted by Jesus.
Jay went on to ask how many doctrinal issues we had to be “right” about when we were saved. When someone wants to be baptized, do we ask them about marriage and divorce? Instrumental music? Clapping in worship? Do we want their views on the role of elders or the role of women? No. We ask them to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
His point was that someone “gets saved” and stays saved unless they do something to get “unsaved.” That is done through loss of faith in Jesus or through a deliberately sinful lifestyle. Romans 15:7 would relegate all other doctrinal differences to “disputable matters.”
My explanation is not as good as Jay’s, but I find the verse to be very interesting and worthy of further study. Obviously, you need to examine it in the context of Romans, specifically the section beginning with Romans 13:8. Give it a study and share your thoughts with us.
I’ll be out of pocket for about a week, so you should have plenty of time to study and comment.