Romans 15:14...............
"
And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another."
CONTINUATION OF PAUL'S PERSONAL TESTIMONY.
This is a lovely passage of Scripture. Paul is actually offering a gentle apology for his frankness and boldness in speaking to the Romans in the doctrinal section we just went through.
My dear friends......Bible Doctrine can be very hard to grasp and understand. When a man tries to "soft peddle" doctrine so as to make it acceptable, it waters down the meaning that God wants us to know.
A "lot" of people just refuse to accept Bible doctrine as it is written and many, many preachers refuse to preach it and as a result, we have a bunch of CHRISTIANITTES as a result of SERMONITTES!
In my personal opinion.........that is why the USA is in the tragic situation it is in today. The USA was in real time history, a CHURCH RELOCATION FROM ENGLAND called "PURITAINS!. The Puritans were a group of people living in England in the late 16thcentury. Like many of us, they cared deeply about obeying God and living according to the Bible. A group of Puritans left the church and declared themselves “Separatists.” This group became the Pilgrims, who left Europe and landed on Plymouth Rock in what is now known as
New England.
They valued preaching and highlighted the Supremacy of God. They held to a literal belief of Scripture and were minimalistic in worship and sanctuary style. Many Puritans were well-educated, articulate, and skilled at writing.
The church still experiences conflict over adherence to Biblical teachings today, especially over socially divisive issues. And again, some try to make changes from within denominations while others decide to separate and create new ones.
We can still learn from Puritan writings and sermons. Some of the more famous Puritans who continue to be read and inspire faith in our times are John Bunyan (Pilgrim’s Progress), Jonathan Edwards (Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God), and Thomas Goodwin (The Heart of Christ). One penchant of Puritan writers was to take a single verse of Scripture and write an entire volume on the implications of its truth.
The Puritans remind us that conflict and disagreement within the Body of Christ isn’t a new dilemma, and it still has no simple solution. But, we can study this period of church history and learn from their experience.
A strong lesson from the Puritans is the power of not only reading and studying God’s Word but being willing to sacrifice every comfort to live it out. The Puritans exercised a faith that had hands and feet. They maintained that faith even when they suffered harsh conditions, losses, and unexpected challenges in the New World.
Now, Paul does know Priscilla and Aquila, who host a house church in Rome (
Romans 16:3–5). He knows other people in Rome, as well
(Romans 16:5–15), so he likely has received several reports about what's going on among the believers in that city.
Based on this knowledge, Paul can both praise and express his concern for them. Here, he calls them brothers and sisters and tells them that he is satisfied in two things about them.
First, he believes the Roman Christians to be full of goodness, meaning they have a reputation for doing the right things and being kind and generous.
Second, Paul understands them to have good knowledge and to have the ability to teach that knowledge to each other. By this, Paul means that he believes they have learned well from their teachers about Christian truths to the point that many of them are even able to teach those truths to each other.
Likely, these two ideas are connected. Paul believes the Romans Christians to be full of goodness in their behavior because they are full of knowledge about God and His grace to them in Christ.