Romans 15:14

Paul is nearing the end of his letter to Christians in Rome — a city he had never personally visited. He has spent fifteen chapters walking through complex theology and addressing serious conflicts between Jewish and non-Jewish believers. Then he pauses and does something surprising: he expresses genuine trust in the people he's writing to. He's convinced that this community is full of goodness, grounded in knowledge, and capable of guiding each other — without his direct oversight. 'Gentiles' refers to non-Jewish people; Paul himself was Jewish, and much of his ministry was specifically directed at bringing the gospel to the non-Jewish world. This verse is a remarkable expression of trust in ordinary believers.

Thank you, God, for the ordinary people you've placed around me who carry more goodness than I give them credit for. Help me see them the way Paul saw the Romans — with trust and genuine belief in what you're building in them. And help me believe that about myself, too, even on the days it feels like a stretch. Amen.

After fifteen chapters of rigorous argument, theological tension, and community conflict, Paul stops and says something almost breathtaking: I believe in you. Not in the elders. Not in the scholars. 'You yourselves,' he writes — the actual people in the room, the ones who'd been fighting about food restrictions and debating whose religious background gave them more standing — they are full of goodness. Complete in knowledge. Capable of teaching each other. This is Paul, the most credentialed Christian thinker of his generation, telling a church he'd never met that they had what it takes. It makes you ask: do you believe that about the people around you? It's easy to assume spiritual depth lives somewhere else — in the pastor's study, in someone with a seminary degree, in the person who seems to have it more together than you. But Paul believed that ordinary, imperfect, still-growing believers filled with genuine goodness could actually help each other. Who in your life needs to hear that you trust what God is building in them? And do you believe enough in what he's built in you to offer it to someone else — not as an expert, but as a fellow traveler who's learned something worth sharing?