Impact of Grace #6 - Unified Voice
Description
In this message of Orchard Hill's Impact of Grace series, Bryce Vaught opens Romans 15:1–7 to show that real unity is a fruit of grace, not gritted-teeth tolerance. Discover four practical ways to stop people-pleasing and start living — and loving — with one voice.
Summary and Application
We're nearing the end of our Impact of Grace series through Romans this week, and Bryce ended his message with a question worth sitting with: if grace really has taken hold of us, what does it actually do to the way we live with other people?
Paul's answer, in Romans 15:1–7, is that grace produces unity — not the forced, teeth-gritted kind, but a genuine desire to build others up, even at a cost to ourselves.
The Backstory: A Church Already Fractured
Bryce opened with some history. The church in Rome had been planted by Jewish believers, but when Emperor Claudius expelled Jewish people from the city for about five years, the church that remained became almost entirely Gentile. When Jewish believers were finally allowed back, they returned to a community that looked nothing like the one they'd left. Jewish and Gentile Christians didn't quite know how to live together — and that tension is exactly what Paul is addressing in Romans 15.
Unity has never been the church's default setting. It has always had to be pursued.
Bearing With the Weak, Not Just Tolerating Them
Romans 15:1–2 — "We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up."
Bryce pointed out that it's tempting to read this as a call to simple tolerance — put up with people you don't really like, and do your best. But the vision here is higher than that. Paul is describing a community whose members actively want to see one another grow, mature, and flourish, so that God's own character is put on display through how they treat each other. As Bryce put it, that's really what it means to glorify God "with one voice" — living together in a way that shows the world what God is like.
The Difference Between Pleasing Others and People-Pleasing
Romans 15:3–4 — "For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: 'The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.' For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope."
Bryce was careful to draw a line here that matters: Paul isn't commanding us to become people-pleasers. People-pleasing is an over-desire for someone's approval — living to keep a boss, spouse, or friend happy even to your own detriment. Pleasing others, in Paul's sense, is different: it's a settled compassion for what people actually need, even when that's not what they're asking for.
Bryce referenced a pastor's reflection questions on people-pleasing — peer pressure, overcommitment, the fear of being "found out" as unqualified for what you've said yes to. Even Paul, before his conversion, admitted he'd struggled with people-pleasing — and he was anything but timid. What freed him wasn't more willpower; it was the gospel.
Jesus is the clearest picture of pleasing others without being controlled by them. When the crowd came back the day after he fed the multitude, they wanted more bread. Jesus didn't give them what they demanded — he told them their deeper need was for something only he could give. That's the tension Paul is calling the Roman church, and us, into: caring enough about people to give them what they actually need, not just what will keep them happy with us.
Four Ways to Practice Unity
Bryce closed with four practical handles for actually living this out:
Put the flesh to death. The self-focused, self-preserving instinct in all of us has to be actively resisted — not through sheer effort, but by walking in step with the Spirit.
Prioritize community engagement. Real unity requires being genuinely part of a community, not just attending it — showing up, growing, and serving alongside others who share the same direction.
Practice hospitality. In a world where we no longer live near the people we do life with, hospitality means intentionally using what we have to refresh the people around us.
Pursue the good of others. Not just their physical needs, but their spiritual ones — helping people know and follow Jesus.
Bryce tied this back to a moment in 2 Chronicles, when Solomon dedicated the first temple and the people worshiped "with one voice" — language strikingly similar to Romans 15. God's glory filled that temple visibly. The writer of Chronicles was recording that story generations later, for a discouraged people living in the ruins of what the temple used to be — not to say "look what you lost," but to point them toward what God still promised to do. That's the same hope Paul holds out to a divided church in Rome, and to us: unity like this is impossible in our own strength, but it's exactly the kind of thing grace makes possible.
Questions for Relfection
Where in your life do you notice an over-desire for someone's approval — and what might it be costing you to keep chasing it?
Who is God putting in front of you this week who needs you to bear with them, build them up, or simply be welcomed into your life — and what's one real step you could take toward that?
This post was developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence based on the sermon "Christian Unity" by Dr. Kurt Bjorklund (Romans 14:1-23, August 8-9, 2026). While every effort has been made to faithfully represent the content and intent of the original message, readers are encouraged to engage the full sermon audio or transcript for the complete teaching.
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Robin Williams (Quote often attributed to him, not confirmed)
“The saddest feeling in the world is being alone in a room filled with people who only love you on your good days.”
Richard Lovelace (from Dynamics of Spiritual Life)
"[Those] who are not secure in Christ cast about for spiritual life preservers with which to shore up their confidence. In their frantic search, they cling not only to shreds of ability and righteousness they find in themselves, but they fix upon their race, their membership in a party, their familiar social and ecclesiastical patterns and culture as a means of self-recommendation."
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Let's pray. Father, thank you for this opportunity to gather, to be in community together, and to look to you, to see you at work in our lives and in our community. We thank you for the chance to gather and to sit under your word. We know that your word is life; it is a lamp unto our feet. We ask that you would lead us through your text, through this scripture, to know you, to love you, and to follow you faithfully in all we do. In Jesus' name, Amen.
We are officially approaching the end of our series in Romans. We are in chapter 15 of 16 total chapters in the book of Romans that Paul writes to this church. When you think about the original context of this writing—the fact that the Apostle Paul is writing to a church in Rome—it's pretty miraculous. It's miraculous that within twenty to thirty years after Jesus' life, death, burial, and resurrection, the gospel had made its way from Jerusalem to planting a church in Rome. It was able to do that because this was a time of relative stability and peace in the Roman Empire, which meant that people were able to travel freely and safely, and messages and ideas were able to spread far and wide. Paul is writing to a church that he had never even planted. Many people think that some who were present in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost heard the gospel, received it, and planted this church in Rome—Jewish believers who established the church there. Paul is writing to this church because he wants to come visit them, to be encouraged by them, and hopefully that they would partner with him in bringing the gospel beyond Rome.
We see that the gospel was able to reach this place and plant a church there because it was a time of peace. But that was not always the case in Rome. Just a hundred years earlier, before Rome became an empire, it existed as the Roman Republic, where it wasn't under the rule of a single emperor who was above the law and whose word was final. It was under the rule of groups of people who held power. About a hundred years before this letter was written, there were three such people: Julius Caesar, Pompey the Great, and a man named Marcus Crassus. This system was fairly corrupt. Julius Caesar held political power, Pompey was a Roman general with military power, and Crassus was one of the wealthiest people in all of Rome. They recognized they had common goals, and that if they worked together, they could manipulate the powers that be for their own good. For about ten years they wielded power in Rome to get what they wanted.
Eventually Crassus died, leaving only Pompey and Julius Caesar. Tension grew between them, and it escalated quickly into a devastating civil war—a power struggle in which both of them could not exist. Pompey was eventually killed, and over time the Roman Republic developed into the Roman Empire, which led to a season of peace.
Yet a hundred years later, we see another power struggle beginning to emerge in Rome. This time, though, it's no longer part of the government—it's beginning to surface in the life of the church that Paul is writing to. When the church in Rome was planted, it was planted by Jewish Christians. Eventually the Roman Emperor Claudius began to suspect that the Jewish people were a threat to his rule, so he expelled them from Rome for a time. That left Gentile Christians in Rome. For five years, the Jewish Christians could not be with the church; they couldn't see how it was doing. When they were finally allowed back into Rome, they had concerns—they expected the church would be a mess. It had survived, but now the church looked very Gentile. So you had Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians who didn't know how to fit together or work with one another. There was a power struggle, a tension, that Paul was aware of and was writing to address.
Part of what Paul brings out in Romans is an attempt to restore peace, because division would create havoc in this community. The answer to our need for power, control, or demanding respect is found in experiencing grace and then expressing that grace to those around us. The whole book of Romans is really the gospel—the good news of God's grace to us. Romans 1 through 4 establishes that we are sinners, not because we eventually sin, but because we are born with a nature that is rebellious and antagonistic toward God, and that we deserve God's wrath. Yet in God's grace and mercy, instead of punishing us as we deserve, he sends his Son to take on that punishment himself, so that those who trust in that substitution—that gift—now receive his righteousness in our place. We are justified; we have right standing with God that allows us to enjoy relationship with him. As we experience that grace, we come to see more and more what it means to be in Christ and to be free from sin and free from having to rely on the law to earn God's favor. We can live with no condemnation, trusting that nothing can separate us from God's love or his good work toward us.
As we experience that grace, this last part of our series in Romans is about seeing how grace begins to impact the way we live—that it changes the way we live in society and the way we relate with one another. In chapter 15, the Apostle Paul addresses how we love one another and live together. He writes:
We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. For even Christ did not please himself. But as it is written: 'The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.' For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.
Paul says the strong and the weak ought to live together. This builds off what he taught in chapter 14, where the strong are those who have a deep understanding of God's grace. They understand the depth to which they've been forgiven, they recognize their security in Christ, and they live with a sense of freedom, joy, and delight in who God is. It's not that they're living just for themselves—they're living for the purpose and vision God has for humanity. The weak are those who struggle with that concept a little, who have a hard time believing they can be right with God by grace alone, and so they try to bolster their confidence by adding works, responsibilities, or regulations they feel they need to keep in order to maintain God's favor.
Paul says right away that those who are strong ought to bear with those who are weak, with those who struggle to understand the gospel. At first you might read that and think he's simply telling us to tolerate people—that you might be in community with people you don't particularly like, so just bear with them and do your best. But it's a much higher vision than that. It teaches that the mark of understanding grace, the mark of what it looks like to follow Jesus, is having a deep desire to live with others in such a way that you promote their growth, their good, and their maturity—living together in such a way that God's goodness, glory, character, and attributes are on display for the world to see. That's what Paul means when he says that with one voice and one mind we might glorify God. It's another way of saying we are to live together so that when people look at our lives, they come to know what God is like.
That's important for each of us individually to own, but it's really impossible outside the context of community. Jesus said the world will know that we are his disciples by the way we love one another—it's impossible for God to be understood in our world except through community: owning what it looks like to follow Jesus together, to build one another up, and then to invite others in to experience that. That's the vision of the church, and it's also the vision of those who helped start Orchard Hill. There was a group of people so committed to creating a space where God's glory would be seen and where they would build one another up—people who even took out second mortgages to make sure the mission could move forward financially. But they weren't committed only to themselves; they were committed to creating a space for others to experience that goodness. Over time, we've seen the fruit of that pursuit and vision.
But Orchard Hill, like humanity throughout history, is not immune to the danger of letting power struggles or disunity disrupt the vision and mission God has for us. Disunity can corrupt an environment and a mission. It hurts the internal health of a community, and it also hurts the community's mission.
I recently saw an article about a man who had been struggling with weight loss and eventually began having intense digestive and stomach pain. He went to the doctor and discovered that, from eating undercooked beef, he had a fifty-nine-foot tapeworm living inside him—a world record. Tapeworms don't have mouths to eat; instead, they position themselves in the body of their host and absorb nutrients before the host's body can digest them, so the host never gets the benefit and the tapeworm continues to grow. This man lived with it for ten years. When a power struggle or disunity forms within a community, it acts like a tapeworm. You may not even realize it's there, but it slowly drains the nutrients. Instead of receiving truth and growing in a healthy way, the body loses it and becomes unhealthy and sick, until eventually it becomes life-threatening. Disunity harms the health of a community and derails its mission.
I've always been a big basketball fan and played in high school. I remember around 2003 and 2004, the Los Angeles Lakers—already a dominant team because of Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant—picked up Gary Payton, who was about to become a Hall of Fame point guard, and Karl Malone, another future Hall of Famer. I remember thinking, that's basically cheating—though now every team does that, bringing in the best available players. I kept thinking that in the off-season, this team wasn't going to lose a game. How was that even fair? I began to root against them a little. They had a good year, but they got to the finals and were blown out by a team with far less talent. What plagued them, especially late in the season, was that the players could not get along. Shaq and Kobe had a very public feud, saying things about one another to the media, and the other role players, sensing the tension, tried to overcompensate for the issues on the court. The coach couldn't get everyone to get along, and it ended in a mess. When disunity is present in a community, it derails the mission. There might be some good moments, but you end up falling short of the ultimate goal.
The unity Paul calls us to—living with grace and kindness—is not the easy way, but it is Jesus' way. Paul points us to Jesus, calling this community to look to him and see how he lived as the perfect example of this life we're called to. Jesus is the model of what it looks like to pursue unity, to build a community that is outward-facing and inviting while also building one another up. Jesus is the one reconciling humanity to God. When Paul writes to the Ephesians, another church struggling with division between Jewish and Gentile believers, he says Jesus came and preached peace to those who were far off and peace to those who were near, so that he could build one body. Jesus did this not by living to please himself, but by living to please others.
I have to stop right there, because it's easy to think Paul is simply commanding us to be people-pleasers. That's not what he's saying. There's a difference between living to please others and living as a people-pleaser. People-pleasing is an over-desire to have the approval of a person, a group of people, or people in general—notice I said over-desire. It's natural to want approval, respect, and appreciation, but when we take a good desire and make it the ultimate thing, it becomes a problem. People-pleasing is the over-desire to always have the approval of a specific person—a boss, a co-worker, a romantic partner, a spouse, or your family—so that you will do anything to earn or maintain their approval, even to your own detriment. We all tend to fall into this without even realizing it.
I came across an article by a pastor in Florida who shared reflection questions to help us understand whether we are people-pleasers. He asked: Have you ever struggled with peer pressure—do you often succumb to the pressure of those around you? Are you overcommitted—do you find it hard to say no when wisdom indicates you should? Do you ever feel as if you might be exposed as an impostor—that when we try to please people, we sometimes say yes to things we have no ability to live up to, and we're always afraid someone will find us out? Are you always second-guessing decisions because of what other people might think? Are you afraid of making mistakes, of looking bad in other people's eyes? Do you get easily embarrassed—being embarrassed is normal, but are you always embarrassed? Do you ever lie, especially white lies, or cover up your imperfections without technically lying? Are you jealous of other people? Do other people make you angry, depressed, or feel like they're making you crazy? If so, they are probably controlling the center of your life.
People-pleasing has a way of derailing our ability to live out this mission well. We often think of people-pleasing as an issue for people who are shy or weak-willed. But consider the life of Paul: he says in Galatians that before he became a Christian, he struggled with people-pleasing—and at that time in his life, Paul was anything but shy or reserved. He was aggressive and assertive; he sought out the opportunity to persecute those who followed Jesus. Yet he lived with a need for the approval of the religious leaders in his life. What freed him from that was the gospel. Some of us may not think of ourselves as people-pleasers, but the deep need to succeed and achieve so that we have the respect of people we don't even know is a sign of a fear of man that controls our lives.
Jesus is the perfect example of living with a desire to please and serve others without being controlled by their demands. One of my favorite examples is when Jesus feeds the multitude. He had been teaching all day, and a great crowd surrounded him, far from food. Scripture says he had compassion on them, so he took bread, multiplied it, and fed them until they were all satisfied. The very next day, after Jesus had moved on, the crowd sought him out. He realized they had the wrong idea—they were only there for the bread. But they needed more than bread. So instead of giving them what they demanded, he told them they were seeking something that could only be found in knowing him: "I am the bread of life." His teaching was so hard to hear that many of his disciples left. That's what Paul is calling us to—to live with deep compassion for the needs of those around us, realizing that our greatest need is trust in and understanding of what God has done for us through Jesus, and to live in such a way that we don't want people to miss it. We want people to experience that grace and freedom.
Honestly, this is a difficult task. Jesus' prayer the night before he was crucified included the request that his followers would be one, just as he and the Father are one. It doesn't take long studying church history to see that the church has struggled in this area. The reality is that this is impossible in our own strength, which is why Paul prays: "May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had." Paul recognizes that what he is asking and calling the church in Rome to—what he's calling us to—is impossible on our own. So he prays that God would give us this gift, and he gives it to us by showing us in Scripture what he has done for us in Jesus.
The reality is that we often end up in these power struggles in our lives. We may not think of them as power struggles, but we demand respect and don't want to be underappreciated, undervalued, or underestimated. We live with a fear of loss, and the gospel shows us that we have nothing to lose at all. Often we struggle to live the way Paul calls us to because we're afraid of what we might lose. What if we lose time in serving others? In Christ we have all eternity—how much time could we possibly lose? What if we lose resources? God graciously gives us and meets all our needs in Christ Jesus—what resources could we lose in living this way? In God we have all that we need to live the life he calls us to.
So now we can practice this unity, on a daily basis. There are four ways we can practice this unity based on this section in Romans.
The first is that we can practice unity by putting the flesh to death. This comes from the end of chapter 13, where Paul says, "Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh." The flesh, as Paul uses the term, is not merely our physical desires—it's the part of ourselves interested only in self-gratification, the part that is always pursuing self-exaltation or self-preservation, and that will use anything in its power to put self first. This is what derails us most in pursuing this kind of life, and Paul says elsewhere that we need to put it to death.
There's a saying—I don't know where it originated—that everyone has two wolves living inside them, and the one you feed the most is the one that wins. That's partially true. All of us have at least one wolf: an evil wolf that is always hungry, aggressive, and violent by nature. The only way there becomes a second is through the new birth, the new creation that comes from trusting Jesus—and it becomes more than a wolf; it becomes a lion, though it starts as a cub that needs to be nourished, trained, and raised. The way we overcome our fleshly nature—Paul says elsewhere in Galatians, "Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh." For those of us following Jesus, the answer is not greater willpower; it's living in submission to the Spirit of God, being part of a community that allows him to strengthen our inner being and wage war against what is deathly and selfish in us.
The second way we practice this unity is by prioritizing community engagement—not just being social, but being part of a community that lives by the same values and mindset, moving in the same direction. It's essential to be part of a community that can challenge, encourage, correct, and build one another up. Here at Orchard Hill, we use the phrase that being a member means having a commitment to show up, grow up, and step up: to consistently participate in weekend services and events and engage in community, not just by attending but by being involved in community groups and study groups as a way of deepening our understanding of God's Word and what it means to live it out in obedience—and to step up, to serve the community in whatever capacity that looks like. All three are essential to growing in our identity in Christ and to pursuing the unity Paul calls us to.
If you're like me, growing up I was not a social person—I'd much rather be by myself, away from people. Yet when God began to do a work in my life in college, I recognized that being part of a church wasn't something I merely should or could do; it became something I must do. God puts it on our hearts to be involved in community, and one of the best places to start is simply to start. I saw a study recently that noted that for a long time, people thought that what you desire is what you focus on. A recent study shows it also works the other way: if you focus on something, your desire or affection for it increases, or at least your aversion to it decreases. One small example—Jonathan's hair is fairly long, and when he first started growing it out, I wasn't sure I liked it. But recently I saw a clip of him with short hair, and I realized I'm not sure I like that either. The more I've focused on his long hair, the more I've come to like it. It works the same way with being part of a community. Maybe you don't like being part of a community—my encouragement is simply to commit to trying it, to commit to a seasonal study or a study group, to begin making it a priority, and see what God does in your heart for those around you as you experience that kind of commitment.
Another way we practice this unity is by practicing hospitality—not just consuming and building ourselves up, but having a desire to bring others in. Hospitality, as Kurt mentioned a couple of weeks ago, is really the idea of using your resources to refresh those around you. It used to be that people lived, worked, and went to church within a close geographical area. That's not the case anymore. People drive many miles to commute to work and are willing to travel far from home to be part of a community or social group they find interesting or worthwhile—we're not really living life with the people around us anymore. Dr. Barry Jones, who wrote the book Abide, says we need to rediscover the value of our neighborhoods, that we're called to be good neighbors and to know those who live around us. He advises that part of being a good neighbor is finding ways to stay home—and while many of us would gladly get behind that, he argues that we've become so busy we can't be good neighbors anymore, because we're no longer there. We don't know anyone; we're not offering our lives to serve the people around us. We're rushing through life without inviting anyone in. We need to rediscover the value of being a neighbor, practicing hospitality, and inviting people into our lives to experience what life with God looks like.
The last way we practice this unity is to pursue the good of others—not just their physical needs, but their spiritual needs. We pursue what is good and right and what will build others up, helping them know what it looks like to experience, know, and follow Jesus. I was recently reading in 2 Chronicles, in the moment when Solomon completes the building of the first temple. The people had been making sacrifices; Solomon invited the whole community to celebrate the completion, knowing that God's dwelling would be with them in the temple. As they offered sacrifices, the worship team struck up the instruments and the people worshiped. Interestingly, the writer of Chronicles uses almost the same phrasing Paul uses in Romans: that with one voice they united themselves in worship to glorify God. In that moment, the glory of God fell on the temple in a visible, powerful way—like a cloud overshadowing it—so that everyone fell on their knees in response.
What I love about that passage in Chronicles is that its author was writing to a group of people far removed from that event. The building of the temple had happened hundreds of years earlier. The people the writer addressed had been in exile because of their disobedience; they had returned to Jerusalem and finally rebuilt a temple, but it was a shell of what it had been. They were discouraged and lacking hope in what God had promised to achieve. The writer of Chronicles isn't saying, "Look what you had and lost." He's saying, "Remember what God did—that was a small picture of what he promises to do in the future." I don't know about you, but when I look at the state of humanity, the church, and life in this age, I feel like we're far removed from what we're supposed to be. Yet the hope of Scripture is that this isn't just an idea we dream about—it will be the reality. One day Jesus will return and make his home, his dwelling, with humanity, so that we will no longer live for ourselves but will continually and perfectly live for the glory of God and the good of those around us.
Let's pray. Father, thank you again for your word and this call on our lives—this call to pursue a community that shows others what you are like. I pray that we, as a community here at Orchard Hill, would be faithful to this call, that we would continue to create a space for more people to come to know you and to learn what it means to follow you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.================================
This transcript was cleaned up (filler words removed, grammar lightly edited) with the assistance of AI. It has not been reviewed word-for-word against the original audio for full accuracy and should be treated as a close approximation of the spoken message rather than an official verbatim record.
