Whose Terms?
Maybe you have heard it said by an individual that “they want to live life on their own terms.” Maybe you have even said that your self? If you don’t live on your terms, whose terms do you live by? Your family, your boss, and the culture around you all have something to say about how we live. However, for the Jesus follower it is His word and His Spirit that sets the terms for our life.
Living by Jesus’ terms is the theme that Paul continues to expound in Romans 13:8-14, our passage for this week. Here he continues to press home the shape of life for the individual believer, both within the community of believers and the life surrounded by the empire. Here he lays the groundwork for the kind of counter cultural life that brings joy to our neighbors and seditiously challenges the very foundations of the empire.
Dallas Willard in his classic Renovation of the Heart puts it like this, “the rare individual who exemplifies ... – genuine purity and humility, death to selfishness, freedom from rage and depression, and so on – will stand out in the group with all the obtrusiveness of a sore thumb. He or she will be a constant hindrance in group processes and will be personally conflicted by those processes, for he or she will not be living on the same terms as others.”
In many ways living a life that stands out from the crowd is scary. But frankly, it is more exhausting to try to live life on our own terms. What a relief to have Jesus enfold his followers and give us the strength to carry on!
Photo by Andrej Nihil on Unsplash