Why The Gospel Frees Us To Put Others First

What if the biggest barrier to unity isn’t doctrine but our need to win? Walking through Romans 15, we explore why the cross frees us to receive one another, how the Old Testament fuels New Testament hope, and what it looks like when Jews and Gentiles rejoice with one voice. Pastor Carl paints a vivid picture of a church that chooses people over preferences and mission over minor victories, anchored by the God of patience and encouragement who makes us like-minded in Christ.

We dig into the heart-level shift that happens when reproach falls on Jesus and not on us: guilt and shame lose their grip, and hope, joy, and peace take root through believing. That inner freedom translates into outward love. We talk about generosity as worship, as Gentile churches support Jerusalem, and about practical restraint that refuses to trip a brother for the sake of flaunting liberty. Unity becomes credible when it costs us something—and it becomes compelling when it sings the same gospel in many voices.

Paul’s calling to pioneer new ground comes alive here. He refuses to boast in what Christ did not do through him, relying on the Spirit’s power rather than polish or pressure. From Jerusalem to Illyricum and onward to Spain, the pattern is clear: God works, we participate, and the pressure is off. We share Paul’s plans to visit Rome, his request for prayer amid real danger, and a blessing that lands with weight: may the God of hope fill you with joy and peace so you abound in hope by the Holy Spirit. 

Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs courage, and leave a review telling us where you’re trusting God to build unity and open new doors.

Come On Up is the radio ministry of The Mountain Cross in Waynesville North Carolina. To learn more about us please visit: TheMountainCross.com. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, and we shall walk in his paths.

SPEAKER_02 0:13

Welcome to Come On Up, the radio ministry of the Mountain Cross in Waynesville, North Carolina.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

We can proclaim the truth of the gospel to those who don't know the Lord yet, but those that the Lord wants to use us to touch. And it's not by how hard we work, it's not by us just trying our best to memorize verses and going out and declaring the truth of the gospel, but it's the power of the Holy Spirit that lives within us. It's God working in and through us. He's allowing us to participate in what He is doing.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

There are so many people who don't know Christ, and it is our mission as Christians to share the gospel. Simplified, the gospel can be an easy thing to talk about, but it can also be overwhelming to remember every verse or even the rules to live by. In today's message, Pastor Carl teaches that you don't have to feel defeated or like you can't do it all, because in all reality, you can. But you aren't defeated because you aren't alone. You have God with you always, and that is the gospel. And now, here's Pastor Carl.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Don't put others down because they have weird reasons of doing things. Do they love the Lord? Are they living for him? Well, praise God, encourage them in it, and say, our God is good, isn't he? Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification. For even Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who have reproached you fell on me. He's quoting from Psalm 69. It was uh David read writing this, but it's it's also messianic in a way. David serving the Lord, because of the Lord, had the reproaches of man come upon him. Our Lord, when he came and became one of us, you saw how he related with the Sadducees and the Pharisees, the religious leaders, the representatives of God, they hated him. They reproached him. They sent him to the cross. And Jesus could have stood up and said, Oh, you, you, y'all are the ones that need the reproach, not me. But because of his great love for us, even while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. When we had no idea we needed his redemption, he took care of the task of taking on the sin of the world. And so if he could deny himself for our sake, can we not in Christ deny ourselves for the sakes of others, for the sake of others? For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that through patience and comforts of the Spirit we might have hope. The things that the Jews bring into the body of Christ, the whole history of the word. We at Calvary Chapel Churches, we teach through the whole word of God, Old Testament and New Testament. We don't just pick and choose New Testament verses. The Old Testament leads to the New Testament. It's all the story of God's grace. And it's been given to us that we might have hope. And now, giving a great blessing, now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another according to Christ Jesus, that you might be one mind and of one mouth to glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Old Testament God, the New Testament God, He's the same God. And we worship Him together. We focus on Him together. We pray to Him together. We listen to Him together. We glorify Him together. This is what the Lord has given us to do as the church. And as we do that, we grow in the comfort of God and in the patience of God, not only toward us, because I think part of the problem is we don't realize how we stand with the Lord. We still have guilt, we still have shame that the enemy many times brings to us to get us off track, to trip us off. But when we realize that the Lord has accepted us because of the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross, we're free in him. And we have that peace. We have that comfort. We sense the patience of the Lord as he does this beautiful work of conforming us to his image. As we grow in realization of who we are in Christ, it affects how we treat our brothers and sisters in the Lord. Verse 7. Therefore, receive one another, just as Christ also received us to the glory of God. Who are you to reject someone who has called on the name of Jesus Christ? Now, of course, Paul talks about wolves and false teachers and different things like this, and this is where you know you use discernment, but he's talking about people that have come to faith in Jesus Christ, that have had their lives changed. Who are we to reject them? Because the Lord has accepted me. And as Paul says, Paul would say, I'm the chief of sinners. Oh wretched man that I am, who's going to save me from this body of death? Have you felt the same way? I know what my heart thinks and does and has done. I know, left to my own devices, how how evil a person I really am. But God has changed me and He's brought me near. And if He's brought me near, He's brought others near as well. Receive one another. Now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God, to conform the promises made to the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy, as it is written, for this reason I will confess to you among the Gentiles, and sing your name. Again, he's talking to this church, which is the melding between the Old Testament Jewish nation who has come to faith in their Messiah, and their lives have been fulfilled. They're fulfilled Jews. The completed Jews. That's the word I'm looking for. They're completed Jews. And because they have come to faith, Paul has been called to go out to the Gentiles and declare, tear, declare the good news to the Gentiles because Jesus didn't just die for the Jewish nation. He died for the whole world through the Jewish nation. And now he's bringing it all together. And it's all because Jesus laid down his life. He didn't demand the things that he could have demanded. Instead, he humbled himself and he became a servant so that we could be reconciled to him, Jews and Gentiles together, and praise his name for his goodness. He goes on and quotes more from the Old Testament. Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people. Let's not nitpick about little things. Let's rejoice in the Lord together and the salvation that he's brought us. Jews and Gentiles together. Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles. Laud him, all you peoples. And again, Isaiah says, There shall be a root of Jesse, and he who shall rise to reign over the Gentiles, in him the Gentiles shall hope. He's the root of Jesse. He's come from the line of David. His name is Jesus Christ. He came not only to save the Jews, but to reign over the Gentiles. And in him the Gentiles shall hope. They wouldn't fear this God that's coming to judge them and destroy them because they've recognized the righteous. They've recognized the grace of God, the mercy of God that has come. And we together as a church celebrate this together. And another great blessing here. Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you might abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. If you're eating a pork sandwich or not, it's about the Lord. He's the God of hope, not hopelessness, because he's made a way where there is no way. He fills us with joy because my past is in the past, and even my sinful present is forgiven and is being changed because of the grace of God and the love of Jesus Christ that He showed on the cross. And we have peace with God. We're no longer enemies with God, but but we're friends of God as we believe. That's the key. We access his grace through faith. And even that is a gift of God. So let's use it that we might abound in hope. And why do we want to abound? So we can splash over onto others, that we can encourage one another. And that's in the church. So we can go out to the highways and byways, and we can proclaim the truth of the gospel to those who don't know the Lord yet. But those that the Lord wants to use us to touch. And it's not by how hard we work, it's not by us just trying our best to memorize verses and going out and declaring the truth of the gospel, but it's the power of the Holy Spirit that lives within us. It's God working in and through us. He's allowing us to participate in what He is doing. And the pressure is off. All we need to do is go forward and let the Lord work in and through us. What a great blessing, huh? Meditate on verse 13 this week. Verse 14. Now I myself am confident concerning you, my brethren, that you also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able to admonish one another. You know, at the very beginning, he was he told them how excited he was about how they grabbed hold of the gospel and how they were growing in the Lord and being used by him in mighty ways, and he was encouraging that. He said, Yes. Nevertheless, verse 15, brethren, I have written more boldly to you on some points as reminding you, because of the grace given to me by God, that I might be a minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel, that the offering of the Gentiles might be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. I guess there was something going on between the Jews and the Greeks in the Church of Rome, where the Jews were getting tired of the Greeks pushing their liberties, where they just again were questioning whether they really were saved. And Paul, you know, many, many chapters in Rome addressed these issues. You know, we're closer to God because we're Jews. No, we're closer to God because we're Gentiles. And Paul breaking it down, it's because of the Christ, the cross of Christ that we're part of the body of Christ. It's not about your background, it's not about uh the things that you do or you don't do, it's about Jesus. And part of my heart is that I am called to the Gentiles. So, Jewish believers, please don't be so hard on the Gentiles. Gentiles, please don't trip up your Jewish brothers because the word has got to go out. The gospel's got to go out, and my burden is to go out and to proclaim it to the Gentiles. Therefore, verse 17, I have reason to glory in Jesus Christ and the things which pertain to God, for I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ has not accomplished through me in word or deed to make the Gentiles obedient. I'm speaking boldly, but you need to understand that I'm speaking because of the grace of God that's in me. This is not my agenda, this is God's agenda. This is the heart that God has given me to share with you. And I could have come to you with lofty words and much, much, because he was a smart guy. He he had doctorates and all these things, and um he could he could argue with the best of them, but that that's not what he was about. He was about proclaiming the truth of God's word through the grace of God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, in mighty signs and wonders by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and around to Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. God has changed my life. I'm a new person. And he's called me to go to the Gentiles, out into areas that haven't heard it yet, to declare the gospel. And people have come to faith because it's the Lord at work. Verse 20, and so I have made it my aim to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build on another man's foundation, not that he was uh avoiding trying to compete with people, although that's probably part of it, but more because um he's going out to the frontier where nobody has gone before, and to proclaim the gospel there. For, but as it is written, to whom he was not announced, they shall see, and those who have not heard, they shall understand. What I am doing, what God has called me to do, is something that has been prophesied in the Old Testament. So I'm called to go out and to do that as well. And it's my heart that you in Rome would not fight over the fact that the gospel is for the Jews and the gospel is for the Gentiles, it's for both of you. But you need to understand, I'm coming from the perspective that I am called to go minister to the Gentiles. And for this reason, verse 22, I also have been much hindered from coming to you. But now, no longer having a place in these parts and having a great desire these many years to come to you, where whenever I journey to Spain, I shall come to you. I have heard about what you were doing, I've heard about what God was doing in your midst. And you remember this was one church that Paul did not plant. Many believe that uh there were some folks from Rome, some Jewish folks that were coming back to Jerusalem for the feast. And at Pentecost, they heard that sermon that Paul that Peter preached, and they were saved. They were part of that 3,000. And they went back to Rome and they shared the good news with their Jewish brethren and with other folks that they did life with, with the Greeks, and they came to faith. And Paul was always excited about what he heard, about what was going on in Rome, and he's always had a desire to go back and well, to go for the first time and to fellowship with them and meet them in person and see what God was doing. But he's explaining to them, it's not because I don't care about you, but I've been called in this direction, and and and the area that I've been called to preach in is pretty much full now. So I'm planning to come and to visit with you, to fellowship with you, to praise the Lord together, that I might enjoy your company for a while. But now I'm going to Jerusalem to minister to the saints. For it pleased those in Macedonia and Acacia to make a certain contribution for the poor among the saints who are in Jerusalem. It pleased them indeed, and they are their debtors. For the Gentiles have been partakers of the spiritual things. Their duty is also to minister to them in material things. The churches in these areas of Macedonia and Acacia realized that the gospel was built on the Old Testament, on Israel. It was built on the whole story of the Bible. As Paul said earlier, the whole scriptures were designed to bring us hope and to point us to the Lord who had come through that line. And now that the church in Jerusalem is that they have come to faith in Jesus Christ and the gospel has gone forth, these Gentiles in these areas have benefited from it and they recognize it. And they see them as brothers and sisters in the Lord, which they are. And because they were having a hard time, they wanted to send them a gift because they felt obligated. And we looked at that verse a few chapters ago about not being indebted to anyone. You know, give honor to whom honor is due, and give taxes to whom taxes are due. But there's one debt that you can never fulfill, and that is to love one another. Or to continually love one another. You can never say, I'm done loving, I've done it, and I don't have to do it anymore. We continue to do it. And because that love is not something that is coerced, it's something that has sprouted from their hearts, and they realize, you know, the role that Jerusalem played in their faith in Jesus Christ, they wanted to encourage their brothers and sisters and send them some material blessings to encourage them during this time that they're having a hard time. Therefore, when I performed this and have sealed them to its fruit, in other words, when I'm done fulfilling what they wanted to do, when I'm done delivering the offering and ministering with them for a while, I shall go by way of you to Spain. I'm gonna go to Spain, but I'm gonna stop by and visit you first. But I know that when I come to you, I shall come in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ. You know, I'm coming because of what Jesus has done in my life. I'm coming because of and for the gospel. And yeah, it's great. I benefit from it, Paul is saying. It's a great blessing to me to see the work of God in your lives, and I want to see it. But I'm not coming because of me, I'm coming because Because of the gospel. Now I beg you, brethren, through the Lord Jesus Christ and through the love of his Spirit, that you strive together with me in prayers to God for me, that I might be delivered from those in Judea who do not believe, and that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, that I might come to you with the joy and the will of God and may be refreshed together with you. He's kind of sharing a little bit into his heart and life as well. You know, I'm I'm going, and it sounds so good. I'm I'm bringing an offering to the church in Jerusalem, but to be honest with you guys, there are still people in Jerusalem that hate me, that are not believers, that are not open to the gospel, and in fact, uh would love to see me dead. And if you wouldn't mind just praying for me that the Lord would protect me as I go down there, and that I wouldn't be motivated by fear, but I would be motivated by the gospel, and that the Lord would protect me, that I can come to you and uh celebrate with with what God is doing in your lives as well. Now may the God of peace be with you all. Amen. It's the God of peace that we need in our everyday walking through this world. It's the God of peace that brings us joy. It's the God of peace that helps us to deny ourselves, pick up our crosses and follow after Jesus. It's the grace of God that allows us to consider others more important than ourselves. That we can make a theological point on why I can do what I want to do in the Lord, and other people just need to accept it. Or just say, yeah, I can do that, but but they're more important to me than my freedoms, than my liberties. May the Lord give us a vision for what that means. And this is not something that we grasp a hold of in just one hour of a Sunday morning sermon. This is something that we need to grow in, to meditate upon, to allow the Lord to change us from the inside out, to actually grab a hold of who we are in the Lord and what that means in our relationship with Him and in our relationship with others. Amen. Lord, we thank you for the boldness of Paul. And uh Lord, I can imagine what it was like for the Romans to read this letter and to go, wow, there's a lot of powerful stuff in here. I'm not exactly sure what it all means. And I think for us, in a lot of ways, that applies as well. But you make one thing clear, Lord, that we are right with you not because of what we have done, not because of our background, not because of how we point out the sins of others to make ourselves look better, but we're right with you because of your sacrifice for us on the cross. And that's everything. In Corinthians, Paul says Christ died for sinners according to the scriptures, and was dead and buried, and on the third day he rose again according to the scriptures. That's the gospel message. It's all about what you have done on our behalf, and now it's about what we do with that message. Lord help us to walk in faith, believing. Give us boldness, give us great love for one another and for a lost and dying world. We thank you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 24:07

That's Pastor Carl of the Mountain Cross. We are a group of believers located in Waynesville, North Carolina. We simply teach through the Bible verse by verse, chapter by chapter. If something you heard today in the book of Romans has you asking some questions, would you get in touch with us? On our website, we have a contact and prayer form that you can fill out. Just go to themountaincross.com and fill out the form. Someone will get in touch with you soon. If this ministry has been a blessing to you and you'd like to find a way to partner with us in the ministry, there's a donate tab on our website where you can give a financial contribution. It's safe and secure for you to give online. We appreciate any donations. Once again, the website to go to is themountaincross.com. The Mountain Cross meets every Sunday morning at 10 a.m. at Smoky Mountain Cinema. We'd be delighted for you to join us there this weekend. In addition to Sunday mornings, we host a Faith Film Night every first Monday of the month. This is a great way to connect with others in the community and to be immersed in content that is spiritually encouraging. To learn more, just search for Faith Film Night on Facebook, and we'll see you at the movies. Thanks for listening today. That brings us to the close of our program, but we look forward to the next time. Come on up to the mountain with us again tomorrow as we seek to learn more from the Lord through His Word. Come On Up is sponsored by the Mountain Cross, a Calvary Chapel fellowship.