To Encourage You

Romans 15:4-5 “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus.”

Have you heard the saying “You are what you eat?” It’s a simple principle that reminds us that what we take into our bodies affects us. Typically, good, wholesome food eaten in moderation has good and wholesome effects on our entire body. And if we eat a constant diet of junk food and excess sugar, all manner of health problems can result. The same is very true for what we take into our lives spiritually, as the verses above proclaim.

The written words from “former days” that Paul is talking about in this passage are a reference to the Old Testament Scriptures. He tells the Roman believers that these Scriptures were written to give them endurance, encouragement, and hope as they filled their minds with them and followed the commands contained in them. And why did they produce these effects? Because the source of those Scriptures, here called “the God of endurance and encouragement,” had imbued the words He had given us with His very nature. The Word of God is the very means that God uses to show us how He thinks and Who He is so that we, as God’s Holy Spirit opens our hearts to understand these words, might have the knowledge to be imitators of God. We are told much the same thing in Ephesians with these words: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1-2).

Do you hear that? Imitators of God. But how, ultimately, do we become such people? By becoming imitators of His Son, Jesus Christ, Who loved us so much that He gave Himself up for us on the cross. We know all this because it has been written down for us in the Word of God.

God has revealed His very nature to us as He reveals His great love for us in the words of the Scriptures. As we read these precious words and take them into our minds and spirits, faith grows, for “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). And with that faith comes growth in our desire for and ability to become imitators of Christ. As we realize more and more Who He is and what He is like, we want to be like Him, for there has never been so great an expression of the love of God. Indeed “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19), and we know this only because of the precious words God has given us.

So, “you are what you eat.” May God help us to feed daily on the Word of God, the Bread of Life from the Bread of Life. There is no other way to be like Him.