In Romans 14:1-13 Paul exhorts the Roman Church to focus on offering their lives to God through Christ, not on judging one another’s actions and practices. They were not to spend their time judging themselves as strong in the faith and their brothers and sisters as weak, their eating and Sabbath practices as righteous and others’ as below the mark.
There were in the church those whom Paul describes as “weak in the faith.” By this he means that there were areas of immaturity in their relationship to Christ and His church. This was particularly evident in those who felt it necessary to maintain certain rules and regulations in their Christian lives that were neither taught nor encouraged by the Lord Jesus. For instance, those who came from a Jewish background were fastidious about their eating habits. This was undoubtedly related to the dietary laws that had been part of their religious heritage from time immemorial. They would never eat certain animals and would not eat others unless they were sure that they had been killed in the correct way. Believers saved out of Judaism were in the church at Rome. Rather than running the risk of eating non-kosher meals, they did not eat meat at all.
Apparently, some in the church who felt free to eat meat passed judgment on those who did not. When Paul suggests vegetarians also judged those who ate meat, he is saying the sin of despising and disgracing brothers and sisters can work both ways. Neither behaviour is acceptable to the Lord, both must be avoided in the body of Christ.
The same kind of conflict swirled around the issue of the commemoration of certain days in the calendar. The Jewish reverence for the sabbath was so profound that they had hedged it around with many rules lest they contravene the sabbath laws by chance. The result of their attention to minute detail was a kind of tyranny which they applied to all and sundry, including the Lord Jesus, whose more relaxed approach they deeply resented.
The threat to unity Paul addresses in this passage arises when mature believers—both Jews and Gentiles—conflict with immature believers. The strong Jewish believers understood their freedom in Christ and realized the ceremonial requirements of the Mosaic law were no longer binding. The mature Gentiles understood that idols are not gods and, therefore, that they could eat meat that had been offered to them. But in both cases the weaker brothers’ consciences were troubled, and they were even tempted to violate their consciences. Knowing that the mature Jews and Gentiles would be able to understand these struggles, Paul addresses most of his comments to them.
The weak Jewish believer had difficulty abandoning the rites and prohibitions of the Old Covenant; he felt compelled to adhere to dietary laws, observe the Sabbath, and offer sacrifices in the temple. The strong hold the weak in contempt as legalistic and self-righteous; the weak judge the strong to be irresponsible at best and perhaps depraved. The weak Gentile believer had been steeped in pagan idolatry and its rituals; he felt that any contact with anything remotely related to his past, including eating meat that had been offered to a pagan deity and then sold in the marketplace, tainted him with sin. Both had very sensitive consciences in these areas and were not yet mature enough to be free of those convictions.
There is a message here for us 21st-century Christians as well. When we judge others, we place our authority above God’s. We are all only servants of God in God’s household. We are to focus on God, not our supposed superiority to others. All conduct must take its reference from our service to Jesus whose claim to lordship over all comes from his death and resurrection. We will not have to justify to God the conduct of others, but only our own.
Differences in how we follow our consciences always have the potential to threaten our fellowship as believers in Christ. A story about Ruth Graham, wife of the famous evangelist, illustrates how differences can threaten our unity. Mrs. Graham, dressed and made up as would seem fitting for any American woman in the 1970s, attended a luncheon with wives of conservative pastors in Germany. These German Christians had more conservative ideas regarding how women should look. They did not believe that married Christian women should wear makeup or clothing that made them look too much like the world. As a result, a German pastor’s wife, sitting across from Ruth Graham, became very upset. She thought it was shameful that the wife of this famous evangelist looked so worldly. Why, Ruth Graham was even wearing mascara! The German pastor’s wife became so angry that she started crying right into her beer. Meanwhile Ruth Graham couldn’t understand why the woman was crying, although it bothered her that a self-respecting pastor’s wife was drinking beer at a meeting to prepare for an evangelistic crusade where Christians come together as the unified body of Christ.
There is a major difference between doing things out of a sense of convention and doing them from a sense of conviction. The former approach is often a capitulation to the pressures of external factors while the latter should be the product of deep thought and careful evaluation. Paul wants the believers to deal with their controversial issues on the solid base of commitment to Christ rather than surrender to pressure. God wants us to learn how to live by faith, and that means He doesn’t give us a thick rulebook that answers all our questions. He wants us to develop personal convictions based on our ongoing relationship with Him.
Each Christian must follow the dictates of his own conscience in matters not specifically commanded or prohibited in Scripture. Since conscience is a God-given mechanism to warn and respond to the highest standard of moral law in the mind, it is not sensible to train yourself to ignore it. Rather, respond to its compunctions and as you mature, by learning more, your mind will not alert it to those things which are not essential.
God is pleased with the individual Christian because of Christ, not because of his or her views on peripheral matters. Christians are to have the same attitude, striving toward unity, not unnecessary dissention. Love and fellowship in Christ should be the basis for Christian acceptance of one another.
Christians will stand one day before Christ’s judgment seat, not to determine their salvation, but to have their works examined for the purpose of rewards. How Christ evaluates each believer is what matters, and His judgment does not take into account religious tradition or personal preference. Paul’s point is that every Christian is ultimately responsible to the Lord, and while we do have the responsibility to encourage, correct, and edify each other, we do not have the freedom to take over the work of evaluation. This only the One who will eventually sit on the Judgment Seat is qualified to do.
Every believer should make sure their conscience does not condemn them and then act on what they believe, being responsible for making judgments about things not specifically covered in Scripture. The centre of the Christian life is faithfulness and love toward God-whether in obeying Scripture or seeking to apply scriptural principles to.
What sort of account would you have to give to Jesus of the way you lived this past week? What would you tell Him about the way you lived today? Would He be happy about your plans for tomorrow?
(An audio version of the message can be found by clicking this link: Romans 14 versees 1-13 Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff)
Bibliography
- Jeremiah, David: The Jeremiah Study Bible: New King James Version (Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013; p. 1564)
- Briscoe, D.S., & Ogilvie, L.J.: The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Vol. 29: Romans (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.; 1982; pp. 244-247)
- Stanley, C.F.: The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Bible: New King James Version (Nashville, TN: Nelson Bibles; 2005)
- MacArthur, J.F., Jr.: The MacArthur Study Bible: New American Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers)
- Alyce McKenzie, “You Be the Judge (Not!): Reflections on Romans 14 verses 1-12.” Retrieved from www.patheos.com/about-patheos/alyce-makenzie
- Mark Reasoner, “Commentary on Romans 14:1-12.” Retrieved from www.workingpreacher.org
