⁸ For I say that Christ has become a servant to the circumcision on behalf of the truth of God to confirm the promises given to the fathers, ⁹ and for the Gentiles to glorify God for His mercy…

With Christ as the supreme example, Paul further elucidates our motivation to respond to Christian disagreements in the “gray” areas with an attitude of humble service to our fellow believers. We are called to serve one another, not our own interests or preferences in lifestyle choices. Jesus Christ is our model (see Rom 15:3, 5). We are to serve one another because He served us.

First, the purpose of Christ’s life and mission in coming into God’s salvation history was to serve the Jewish people, “the circumcision.” How? His life and death confirmed the promises given to the fathers. The term “confirm” carries in the original wording the sense “to establish beyond doubt,” “to establish” or “verify.” We know from other Scripture that Jesus was God’s fulfillment of the promises to the patriarchs, but here the emphasis is that His serving the Jews through His life and death shows the promises to be true and effective. God could have secured the His promises without anyone really putting it all together to understand what He did. But Jesus, besides bringing about the fulfillment of the promises, also modeled this truth by His service and thus confirmed it to be true. Second, since the promises to the patriarchs were to extend beyond the Jews to include “all the families of the earth” (Gen 12:3), Jesus’ example of service had a second purpose, namely that the Gentiles would “glorify God for His mercy.” This means that all people would not only come to know the God of the Jews (that is, the God of all creation, as opposed to false depictions of deity through pagan religions), but also cause others to better understand and magnify the Lord in His character and actions. More simply put, Christ came with the express purpose to bring us all to a greater understanding and appreciation of God. This is God’s glory.

In particular, as Gentiles we glory in God’s mercy, knowing that we do not deserve any good thing from God, for in our sin we were without “excuse” (Rom 2:1), we were unrighteous (Rom 3:10-11), sinners having fallen short of God’s glory (Rom 3:23) and deserving of death (Rom 6:23). God extended His mercy towards us through the servant life and death of Christ. With this as our example, then we should approach our disagreements with our fellow “vessels of mercy” (Rom 9:23) humbly embracing the same servant heart of Jesus, desiring for others that they would glorify Him for His mercy.

Lord, help me serve others so that they would see more clearly Your mercy.