Have you ever gotten offended by someone treating you rudely or being upset with you for no apparent reason? Have you ever had someone act entirely contrary to their personality? Of course, you have, we all have had treatment like this at one time or another. Typically, people prefer to be kind rather than rude, but when it happens Paul reminds us of this....
Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God. Romans 15:7
Have you ever been misunderstood? You believe you are communicating in a specific way and that you are coming across with the correct attitude only to find people are entirely misconstruing your attitude, heart, and words. In this age of mega-communication that is very easy to do. Text, e-mails, and facebook post do not contain "tone" because of that an inside joke or comment, a perfectly peaceful thought, even a compliment can be taken the wrong way. What a surreal surprise it is to find you have been misunderstood entirely or someone has been offended deeply. It can happen to any of us.
We know misunderstood communication can all too easy to happen in our everyday lives. It is because of this; when others offend us, they are rude, they act contrary to what we know of them, we need to give grace. Grace is something we can easily share with each other, knowing that sometime we will need it also.
The word choice Paul uses is guiding for our communication. The word "received" means to welcome with open arms. Paul is saying, be gracious toward one another, knowing that you too can be a jerk. Christ has received each one of us in our "jerky" state and we ought to sow grace toward one another so we too might receive grace when needed.
Next time someone treats you like a jerk, pour out grace. Be merciful to each other as we all can have a bad attitude or a bad day and share that with others. Don't be a jerk, "welcome everyone with open arms" expecting when you do that you will reap grace when you need it too!
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