When “Us Versus Them” Becomes “We”
Before We Gather by Zach Hicks
| Scripture
Read Romans 3:9-18
| Devotion
This section of Romans isn’t at all the kind of pick-me-up passage we associate with warm devotions. We’re jumping, midstream, into the deepest and darkest part of the river of Paul’s careful articulation of the gospel to the church in Rome. The brilliance of the good news of Jesus will always shine brightest against the dark backdrop of our sin. And we just read the darkest part.
What in the world does this darkness have to do with worship? Sometimes paying attention to those little footnotes in our Bibles pays off, and this is one of those times. As Paul is laying out this bleak picture of sin, our footnotes tell us that he’s stringing together quotations largely from the Psalms. He’s playing clips from God’s worship songs.
- “None is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). That’s from Psalms 14, and 53.
- “Their throat is an open grave” (v. 13). That’s from Psalm 5.
- “The venom of asps is under their lips” (v. 13). That’s from Psalm 14,0.
- “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness” (v. 14). That’s from Psalm 10.
- “There is no fear of God before their eyes” (v. 18). That’s from Psalm 36.
But Paul is doing a strange thing that would have surprised any devout believer familiar with those psalms. If you go back to those psalms, all those statements paint a stark us-versus-them picture. Those statements are prayed about and against the song- writer’s enemies people who are wicked, godless, completely bad. Some of those psalms, like Psalm 5. go so far as to create parallel contrasts, ping-ponging between what those wicked people do and what I do.
This is why Paul’s argument comes as a shock. He uses these very psalms-these worship songs that tend to be sung to express and mourn moments that foster an us-versus-them mindset-and he shoves every last one of us into the “them” category. We thought “none is righteous” means “none of those people over there.” And Paul increases the boundaries of inclusion: all are unrighteous. We’re all in the same boat. We all need Jesus. “Us versus them” becomes “we,”
This has some important implications for worshiping and worshipers. It means that not even sanctified Christians can claim any sort of high ground when they gather to exalt the name of Jesus and encounter the Holy Spirit. It means that in worship there are no special seats or privileged positions (James 2:1-4). It means that even the most well-behaved and godliest of Christians should approach God with as much fear and trembling as the uneasy, probably uncomfortable non-Christians who just might find themselves among us today.
It gives us an incredible compassion, patience, and humility before people who are different from us. And it levels the playing field of worship: we all come to the gathering with the same basic posture: needing Jesus.
Needing Jesus is the principal thing that Christians and non- Christians have in common. And if our worshipers wore that desperate dependence on their sleeves every week, I daresay we just might have the most attractive and beautiful worship culture out there. So let’s join our hearts in prayer as we head into worship, asking God to elevate an atmosphere of dependence among us and obliterate any us-versus-them deception that could stifle that sweet air.
| Prayer
Aim your prayers in this direction:
- Pray that God would destroy any feeling or thought of “us versus them” among your people today.
- Pray that the Holy Spirit would use the elements of the worship service to oppose the proud but give grace to the humble (Prov. 3:34; James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5).
- Pray for non-Christians, that God would bring them to worship, that God would prepare the hearts and actions of your people to be hospitable, and that God would awaken their hearts to the good news of Jesus as he continues to do in our hearts.