The Point Is To Build
Pleasing Others, Not Ourselves
From Paul’s letter to the Romans
Now we who are strong have an obligation to bear the weaknesses of those without strength, and not to please ourselves. Each one of us is to please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For even Christ did not please himself. On the contrary, as it is written, The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me. For whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that we may have hope through endurance and through the encouragement from the Scriptures. Now may the God who gives endurance and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, according to Christ Jesus, so that you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ with one mind and one voice. (Romans 15:1-6)
From N.T. Wright’s commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans
…the discussion from Romans 14.1 onwards has been to address the situation of how Christians are to live alongside people who do not think like them, and how they must not try to force others into the position they themselves have taken up. But Paul is urging a different point. He is insisting that all Christians should learn to think the same about mutual submission in accordance with the Messiah.
That is the way to the goal he has in mind, which he will spell out more fully in the next passage, where the theological argument of the letter comes to its great conclusion.
The point of it all is not simply being able to live in peace and quiet without squabbling. That would be, so to speak, simply clearing the ground of rubble. The point is to build: and what needs to be built is the common life of praise and worship.
“With one mind” and “with one mouth” go closely together, describing that glad unanimity of praise and worship which indicates both to the watching world and to the Christians themselves that they are not worshipping a merely local deity, the projection of their own culture, but the One True God of all the world, the God now known as the father of Jesus the Messiah.
