Today we come to the end of our journey through Saint Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome. It is not the very end of the letter, but it addresses the final themes Paul has been building towards throughout. And the journey we have been on has proven to be nothing short of amazing. The great teaching, that we are saved by grace through faith and not on account of our works, has been drilled into us. This gets to the uniqueness of our faith, where salvation is not about our effort, not founded on our morality or ethics, but rooted completely in what Christ has done for us. Paul has left no stone unturned. Early on, he highlighted the inability of man to save themselves, that we have been turned over to the desires of our hearts and are bound to do the sinful things which lurk deep within. Even the Law of God, His holy and just commands, could not save us. In fact, they only made the sin more pronounced, more egregious. It is faith alone that saves, and such faith is not our doing but a gift of God through the working of the Holy Spirit as we hear the Word of Christ.

This powerful letter sits very much at the heart of our confession. The truths given here shape our understanding of who we are before our Lord, as they define and give structure to the reality of the Church. In fact, when we make judgments on Christian doctrine, what is good, right, and salutary, and what is to be rejected, the teachings from Romans will quite often sit prominently in the discussion. There is a reason why, when Luther would speak about Paul, he would often just call him the Apostle; similar to the way people would call Aristotle the philosopher. There were many others, to be sure, but his work stands out from the rest as something more fundamental, something more crucial to the discussion.

Yet, with all the great theology that has been discussed and all those crucial teachings which have been laid out, in many ways this final section is, perhaps, more important. Or maybe we should say this section should not be left out or skipped over in the discussion of our faith and life together. The confession of faith leads to a peculiar sort of life. For all the great teachings and all the doctrinal distinctions Paul has asserted, the time has now come to live together as the people of God. What does such a community look like? If we do indeed believe these truths, then how are we to live? If your salvation does not come by your works, if the assurance of eternal life comes from outside your deeds, then it will impact the whole life of the Church. We are, quite simply, to live in this faith.

However, this is easier said than done. When you read the Gospel accounts, we are accustomed to Jesus’ mercy, His unlimited compassion. Those with moral failings, those in public sin, are not rejected but invited and embraced by Him. He eats with tax collectors and sinners. He protects the woman caught in adultery. He has compassion on the sheep without a shepherd. Nevertheless, our Lord is not always so meek and welcoming. To those who teach against the truth, to the one who would cause the little ones to stumble, He has harsh words of judgment and condemnation. He says to them, among other things, that they are whitewashed tombs full of dead men’s bones. But our tendency is the exact opposite. We have compassion and tolerance for false teaching while reserving our judgment for moral failings and public sin. And it does not stop with judging the outward sins of others. We judge their habits, their peculiarities, and their personal acts of piety, if they happen to be different than ours.

What Paul is addressing in our text today are what theologians call matters of adiaphora. That is, the practices of people which are neither commanded nor forbidden in Scripture. It has to do with personal diet choices and festival days. Such things are not nothing. They are often deeply held convictions by the one practicing them. Perhaps, today we might think simply of what one chooses to wear to church, the practice of making the sign of the cross, whether they raise their hands when they sing, or whether they practice some form of fasting. To this Paul says, “The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord, and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”

What Paul is calling out is the ugly reality of the Church. Instead of reserving our judgment for false teachings, we judge one another on the basis of things that have nothing to do with our salvation or the promises of Christ. Such judgments cause divisions, and these divisions can drive our brothers and sisters away from the very promises which called them into the fellowship to begin with. And if we have been following Paul up to this point and we have joyfully confessed our salvation as a work of God, that faith in Christ alone is our assurance of eternal life, then how dare we make divisions on such low and silly things? We all stand equally before the judgment seat of God, and our only hope is in the grace and mercy of Christ alone. Is that not enough to stifle our judgment of things which do not matter in the end?

My wife has this great saying. Well, I do not know if she thinks it is a great saying, but I do. We will be discussing things about church and our life together, and she will simply say, “It’s all Ecclesiastes.” Now, the book of Ecclesiastes is a grand, almost philosophical quest to search for the meaning of life. King Solomon, with all his wealth and power, takes a deep dive into man’s search for a greater purpose. The opening lines are famous: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!” But later on in chapter 5, he makes an observation. He says, “Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot.” It is sort of a freeing way to live. Our lot is what we eat and drink and to enjoy our labor, for the big things, the eternal things, they are in the hands of your God.

Is this not what Paul has been laying out before us? Salvation is in the hands of God. Salvation is the working of Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Salvation is received as a gift through faith alone. As a result, you are free to simply live in this gift, free to love and care for one another, free from having to judge and cause division over things that bear no weight on eternal things. For in the end, my brothers and sisters, we are the Lord’s.