Romans 15:4-7

For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that through patience and through encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. Now the God of patience and of encouragement grant you to be of the same mind one with another according to Christ Jesus, that with one accord you may with one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore accept one another, even as Christ also accepted you, to the glory of God.

For some reason we get the wrong idea about God. Even though we read here that He is a God
“of patience and of
encouragement”
and many other things like this in the Bible, we are prone to think of God as an intolerant, angry person. God hates sin and loves justice, but that doesn’t mean that He is not patient and hoping and hoping that we will come to Him and avoid punishment. For example, He has allowed over 2,000 years to pass since Jesus died on the cross to allow people to come to Him.

There are a lot of rules in the Bible, but those rules were intended to encourage us by bringing us to Jesus, and He is the only one who is able to follow them all. The fact is, the Bible pointed to Jesus all along. Jesus is the one that the Bible is all about and this is a very encouraging thing.

Paul has been talking about how to get along when we have disagreements and here he tells us to learn to be like God, filled with patience and encouragement. This is exactly the kind of thing that people who are still learning about God need. We should be of the same mind in that we all should have in our minds the desire to give out patience and encouragement.

Jesus accepted us when we were less than perfect and He did it “to the glory of God.” That’s what we should do too.