My wife and I spend a decent amount
of time on the road. Our busiest time of
the year tends to be in November and early December as we travel for district
quizzes, tournaments in Kalamazoo, St. Louis and whenever possible Kansas
City. Throw in a trip to see my parents
in Tennessee for Thanksgiving and you’ve got a lot of miles logged. This past weekend we returned from a weeklong
trip to Tennessee where we visited with my parents and officiated for the big
end of the year tournament for teen bible quizzing. I do a majority of the driving while Lori
sleeps or crochets and so I’m the one having to navigate through traffic and
construction zones. Since I have a
tendency to speed I usually have to change lanes as I pass slower traffic and in
order to do that safely I need my rearview mirror. I consistently use my rearview mirror well in
advance of actually changing lanes because I pay attention to traffic that is
catching up to me (which rarely happens) or I check to see if that cop I didn’t
see early enough is going to let me continue on my way (which always
happens). My rearview mirror is a part
of how I navigate my way down the road and around obstacles.
What I read in Romans reminds me of
my driving experiences. As I transition from
a quiz year focused on Romans and James to a year focusing on Acts I want to
close out the year with some thoughts on a popular passage in Romans.
Therefore,
I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies
as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper
worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but
be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and
approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.—Romans 12:1-2
The first eleven chapters of Romans
paint a pretty clear picture of our human situation. We are sinners, each and every one of us, and
the penalty of that sin is death. Our part of the picture doesn’t look good at
all but despite our ugliness it isn’t the whole picture. The rest of the picture involves God the
Father’s work in and through his Son on our behalf. Our lives (our part of the picture) get
united with Christ’s death, burial and resurrection in such a way that we ourselves
experience death, burial and resurrection.
It is with this picture in mind that Paul wants us to keep ‘God’s mercy
in view’.
What does it mean to keep ‘God’s
mercy in view’? It’s much like what we
experience with our rearview mirror. Our
rearview mirror takes what is behind us and places it before us as a helpful
guide. When Paul writes his letters to
various churches there are many times that he is reminding them of very
important things. In this passage, Paul
is in essence trying to be their rearview mirror. He wants to remind them of what God did in
Christ on their behalf and that what God did was merciful. Full of mercy. And by keeping this past act of mercy in
view, Paul is confident that it will have a direct impact on the way in which
his readers will live in their present.
God’s offering of his Son and the Son’s offering of his life lead to our
offering of ourselves.
What have you got in your rearview
mirror? Maybe you have some regrets,
missed opportunities or burned bridges. One
thing to note about rearview mirrors is that it’s never healthy to solely look
at them. You need to be looking ahead a
majority of time. Imagine the kind of
destruction that would be caused by driving a vehicle while looking only in the
rearview mirror! Nothing good would come
from that. Rearview mirrors are intended
to help you as you move forward and make decisions in the here and now. Spending an inordinate amount of time looking into the negative experiences of the past is not going to help you as you move forward. There are definitely lessons to be learned from our past but we should be careful about how we approach those sorts of things in our rearview mirror. Paul wants the work of Christ and the mercy of God the Father in our past to be front and center in our lives today.
When it comes to our Christian walk,
how can mercy in our rearview mirror help us?
When we forget that we have been recipients of mercy we forget to be merciful. Along those same lines, when we forget that
we have been forgiven we forget to forgive.
When we forget that we are loved as God’s beloved children we forget to love
other’s as God’s beloved children. What
if we looked in our spiritual rearview mirror before we approached our spouse?
Our children? Our co-workers? Our enemies? My bet is that if we consciously
and consistently remembered the mercy of God when we were at our worst then we
would love others with the kind of love lavished on us. That kind of love will always stand out in
this world because it goes against the way our world operates. Who loves their enemies? Who shows mercy to the rightfully
convicted? Who dies for the ungodly? God
does. That’s who. And you should too.
