Let's turn to Romans chapter 14. We've been going through Romans, so I'm not going to preach all of Romans 14. Some of it is a little bit redundant, but as you look at this passage of Scripture, what you see in the very first nine verses is really reflected in the remaining part of that chapter.
And it goes on and on and on in more detail, but it's a very rich passage. So let us read this verses 1 through 19 of the book of Romans. Now, except the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions. One person has faith that he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats vegetables only. The one who eats is not to regard with contempt the one who does not eat, and the one who does not eat is not to judge the one who does eat, for God has accepted him.
Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls, and he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person regards one day above another.
Another regards every day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day observes it for the Lord, and he who eats does it so for the Lord, for he gives thanks to God, and he who eats not for the Lord he does not eat, and gives thanks to God. For not one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself. If we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's.
For to this end, Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your grace. We pray now, Father, that you would open our hearts to your word, and that I pray, Father, that you'd help me speak and emphasize those things that are really crucial. Lord, may your Holy Spirit bless us as we think about the weak and the strong in the faith. We pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen. In this passage of Scripture, we know that as I read Paul more and more, I realize Paul sometimes has been attacked as being insensitive to certain things, but Paul really has a pastor's heart. He truly does, and he's a changed man. He's no longer that rebel who's throwing people in prison. No, he's bringing people out of the prison of darkness, and he has a heart for them. Just think about what would a pastor do in any church, even today, if he's got all kinds of differences, cultural differences, opinion differences.
How do you handle sometimes all the disparity in views about some very basic things? Well, Paul is dealing with some very unique cultural, religious topics here, and they give us some principles that help us maybe understand how to live out these problems. So he has these pastoral concerns, and Paul points out that the unifying work of Christ really builds up and strengthens the body of Christ. So the historical setting here in Romans 14 is that the Jewish people had been expelled from Rome because the Roman government was down on Jews. And so there were still Gentile Christians in Rome, but now some of these complaints from Rome, the Roman Empire leadership there, they were going away. And so these Jewish Christians, background Christians, they're coming back into the city of Rome. And so now we've got a problem with what's going on here because, well, the Jewish background Christians, that's their background.
So they want to eat certain things and not eat other things. They want to remember some of these holidays that are Jewish, but the Gentile Christians are saying, what? We're free in Christ. And so this is the struggle that's going on in the church, and Paul gives us some guidance here. And the basic idea is that we're to keep on loving the Christian who has a strong conscience, and we're to keep on loving the Christian who has a weak conscience, all for the glory of God.
That's what we do. So how do we love one another, and what attitude do we have? Well, actually, we're to have the attitude of Christ, how has Christ treated us.
And so if we have the right attitude for the weak and the strong, then that produces a very strong congregation, an amiable congregation. So the point here is Jesus' work on the cross binds us together as believers. In John 12, 14, it says, Jesus said this, this is my commandment that you love one another just as I have loved you.
Well, just as I have loved you. Well, we keep discovering how much he's loved us the more we realize what he's done for us. So that's a measure we can never fathom.
And then he says, by this all men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. That's another thing. How do we even measure that? And how do we? We can't. I'll never grow to what Christ had. I never will. He in heaven, he will get me there.
Okay? So, but our common faith in Jesus Christ unites us. It binds us together because we believe in the one Lord Jesus Christ. That's what he says in verse one. He says, now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on their opinions. You can imagine, oh, yeah, you can join our group, but we know you'll grow up one day in material to be like us. You don't have to pass judgments on people, even if you know that they have weak spots in their faith. So the attitude for each Christian must be similar to Christ's attitude. So we've got a lot of growing to do. I've got a lot of growing to do. So we're not to look down on a person because they have these scruples and this person has those scruples. But you think you're more mature. No. Paul wants the Gentile believers to be patient with the Jewish people who are struggling with their traditions, the things that they bag as they brought along, and they've got to grow through that.
And the issues of the most dietary laws and the festivals that were very common in the nation of Israel. So Scripture tells us whatever is not of faith is sin, so we need to respect people's faith and what they believe and what beliefs are being changed by the Gospel. So Scripture is warning us not to accept somebody with a superior attitude. You can come to our group, but one day you'll be like me.
No, you don't do that. He is saying no. He says, here's what's supposed to happen. He's giving us some principles here to guide us, and we believe that we are united.
Why? Because we are of one faith. If you believe in Christ, you're trusting in the same Lord as everyone else, every other believer. And actually, Galatians 6, 1 says we're to even bear one another's burdens. So whatever struggles this person has, or whatever scruples this person has, we're to pay attention and take regard for them and realize that they're growing in grace. So this is the takeaway that we are all trusting, who are believers, all trusting in the same Lord. We have faith in the same living God. As Ephesians puts it, our hope is in one calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.
Now, sometimes we can get kind of cocky. Maybe we don't realize it, but there's a story about a brother and a sister. The sister's maybe in the 70s, and this other brother, maybe early 60s. Anyway, so one day the sister says to the brother, well, I'm going to go up to the senior center.
They're having a big event up there. So she trucks off up the road and comes back about an hour later and says, oh, man, it was great. They had raw honey.
They had all kinds of kind of homemade crafts and gifts and homemade bread. It was just grateful. And, man, it was a crowd up there, but there sure were a lot of old people up there. And the brother turns to her and says, who do you think you are?
Well, she was 70, and he was 60. All right, so sometimes we think, well, I'm a strong Christian. I'm not a weak Christian.
Well, I'm going to say to you, and I'll say to myself, who do you think you are? What does Romans 6, 5, 6 say? For while we were still weak or helpless or lacking strength, at the right time, Christ died for us. We were all weak and in the dark at the very beginning. So we need to remember that we were hopeless, and we were without strength before Christ came and worked in our lives. You know, sometimes I think when you think about strong men, strong men of faith, you think about like Gideon, and he's got 300 men, and they go down, and they take over thousands of Midianites. Of course, obviously, God is in this thing.
But remember at the beginning, Gideon's not a warrior. He's a farmer, you know. And so he comes up, and God says, Sid, go. And he said, well, wait a minute now.
How do I know this is real? And so first he says, God, if you will make the dew this morning fall only on the fleece, on this sheepskin, only on this fur, will you do that? Then I'll know it's really what you want me to do. So the next morning, he gets up, and sure enough, that fleece is wet. Well, then he gets up and says, well, God, tomorrow morning, I want you to make everything else wet. The grass is wet, the ground is wet, but the fleece is dry. And sure enough, the next morning, he gets up, everything's soaking wet, the dew is heavy, and the fleece is as dry as it ever was. And what's going on here?
Here's a man who has a weakness. It's a weak faith. He didn't believe God's word at the beginning, but he said, do it again, do it again.
Reaffirm that this is what you want. So we can see that we need to pay attention and be kind toward those that are weak, even ourselves. Verse 2 gives some details on the issues that were there. The Gentile believers, they believe, well, we can just eat anything we want, even if we're not supposed to eat shrimp that eat off the bottom and are scavengers, or even catfish that have no scales, and they might scavenge a little bit.
We can eat that stuff. But the other people, the Jewish believers, background believers, they really had a heart. We want to be clean before God.
We want to honor Christ, but we remember that these foods make you unclean. And they had to get over that hump. But some of them were not there yet. They just couldn't in their minds. That was their family tradition. That was their cultural background. And in their minds, no, that food is unclean. They just couldn't touch it. And so you think, oh, they're weak. Because they don't understand what Christ has really done yet.
They don't understand that. But we know that Scripture has declared that Christ has cleansed us. He's washed us. He's made us clean.
And so, well, there were some vegetarians there, so whatever they were, you know. But you need to be, he's saying, Paul's saying you need to be careful and you need to love these who are different from you. Jesus said this, now you are clean through the words which I have spoken to you. He was talking about the gospel. The gospel changed you. You heard the good news of Christ and you believed.
He also says this in Titus. He says, he saved us not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to his mercy, by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. That's how we are made clean.
Okay. There's a second reason that we are to be considerate of others and to be loving toward our brothers and sisters in Christ because it is Christ's work. It is not our works in keeping dietary rules or traditions.
No, it's not that. That makes us acceptable to the Lord. We are made clean by Christ.
That's why we are acceptable. Verse 3 says, why this is. It says, to the one who eats is not to regard with contempt the one who does not eat, and the one who does not eat is not to judge the one who eats, for God has accepted him.
In other places of scripture in the first century, we know that other books in the New Testament, Colossians and others, they were struggling with a similar question. Can I eat this? And others would say, well, in that case, the issue wasn't just traditions or whatever. They were faced with the fact, well, that food was offered to idols. No, you can't eat that, even though it's better. You can beat the inflation.
You can go over and eat this meat. But others said, no, you can't because that recognizes that deity. And so there was a struggle with him with this. But the third lesson here is that the reason we accept that person who struggles with their faith in strength or weakness is because God has accepted them. So how are you going to reject somebody whom Christ has accepted? We remember that Christ came down out of heaven, out of glory just to touch us, to reach us, in order that we might be accepted into his kingdom. That was the purpose of his work, to carry out the sacrifice that was necessary for our sins. That's why Christ died. And so we have been mutually redeemed. Whether we are strong in faith or weak in faith, we have been redeemed by the same blood.
So we are all pardoned and accepted by one mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, Matthew Henry takes this thing about judging people, and he kind of turns it around a little bit, and he says this. I don't know if you ever caught yourself judging anybody or not. Maybe you're not judging.
You're just being analytical, right? But anyway, he says this. Let us exercise our judging on our own hearts. That's a good piece of advice. Before I go judging this person, let's let God take his word and judge my own heart. Now, I don't think I always take that. I'm glad he wrote that, so maybe I need to apply that to my own life.
But that's a really good point. Now, if you look at verse 4, it deals with the question of that Mosaic dietary law and the struggle to be free from that tradition. Now, we need to make some distinctions here. The moral law never changes. The Ten Commandments never changes. That's not something you can say, well, my conscience says I can steal. No, my conscience says I can lie.
No, that is off the charts. You cannot change that because that's based on the character of God. That is the moral law.
That is absolutely the standard that God is going to look at us and say, here's your sin, here's your sin, and it shows us our sin. That doesn't change. However, we know that the ceremonial law, the sacrificial system, was all fulfilled in Christ completely. And all the civil law of Moses, that ended with the end of the nation of Israel under the kings of Israel.
That ended. That civil law does not apply to the church anymore. Okay, so the traditional and the practical dietary laws, they are no longer binding. But some people have a struggle with that.
How do I get rid of that? They were having that struggle here in Rome. So Paul is warning us not to set ourselves up as judges over other people's food choices, what they're going to do.
Don't do that. So he asks this rhetorical question. Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands and falls. So who are you to judge the servant of another? Who are we judging if we're judging?
And whose servant is this? Well, this is a good check on our attitude of having a superior attitude. Are we judging the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ? That is kind of like an indictment on ourselves, as though we move ourselves up to that position. So we are to consider whether a person is weak or strong in their faith. We're not the final judge on that.
The only supreme judge is our Lord Jesus Christ. And we are not the Lord of other people's consciences. That's what Paul is dealing with here, because people were having struggles.
You may still have struggles with something. In Colossians 2 it speaks about this in a little bit different way. He says, He made you alive altogether with him, having forgiven us all of our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us, and he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. All those dietary laws were shadows of things of who Christ was. They were talking about being clean before the Lord, but they are no longer there anymore. So Christ is the judge, both of the weak and the strong.
Another lesson we can take from this is to say this. He has taken the judgment of our sin upon himself and given his servants, all of his servants, a complete pardon. Even if they still have conscious struggles, he's given each servant a complete pardon. So a rhetorical question is, well, who makes you stand? Well, the answer is a glorious answer.
We know the answer to that question. The faithfulness that we have in ourselves is in us because Christ has made us faithful. He keeps us faithful. We stand faithful because Christ makes sure that we stand faithful. Jesus said to his disciples, he says, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me, John 10. And then he goes on to say, he says, and I give eternal life to them and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. Very clear that it is Christ who causes you to stand, Christ who causes you to continue to be faithful. So who makes the strong and the weak to be faithful? It is our Lord Jesus Christ.
It's the same person who's going to make you and I strong. We know that the verse 4 says the Lord is able to make him stand. God's doing this and we don't have to do that. He's doing that if he's working in us. So that's why we quote Philippians 1.6, for I am confident of this very thing that he who began a good work and you will complete it until the day of Christ.
We know that's real. It's God's intent. And we know in Mark 13 it talks about, well, what if you get arrested? What are you going to say?
He says, don't worry about it. God will give you what to speak in because, but it is the Holy Spirit's going to do this. God is saying, I am going to support you and so the Lord is the one who makes the believer stand. And that is a real encouragement to us when we read this passage of Scripture. So our hope and our security is not based on our strength or degree of weakness.
It's not based on that at all. Our hope and strength is based and built on the power of God, not our power. 1 Peter puts it this way.
Christ has obtained an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Who is our judge? Who is our judge now? Who is our Savior?
The same one. Our judge and redeemer's power makes us stand. And that's so good. So as brothers and sisters in Christ, we stand not because we are more intelligent or more experienced than someone else. We stand simply by the grace and the power of the living God. That's the only way we can stand. Otherwise, I'll tell you, I'll crumble.
You will crumble. So we can give thanks to God for that. Now, when we get to verse 5, he hits another topic, but it's covering the same type of subject. Here he's talking about days that people are honored. First we talked about food and things like that, but now we're talking about the tradition of days.
Some people are not really sure. We're not really sure what days these Jewish background Christians were struggling with and what days they wanted the Gentile Christians to keep. Some guess it's probably more accurate is that it was probably days of fasting. Yes, there were festivals, and we know the festivals pointed to the coming of Christ, but if you're not a Jewish background believer, well, that's not my festival. I know that Jesus rose from the dead. I know that he was born, and that's about the end of it, and I show up every Sunday because he was resurrected on the Lord's Day, the first day of the week. That's the only day I need to be showing up for worship. Here we have believers in Rome. How do they handle the extra days that some people want them to keep?
How do they do that? What is Paul's instruction on that? Paul has a very pointed thing. He says that each person should be fully convinced in his own mind.
The issue of extra days is one left up to your own conscience. That's what Paul was saying. But the conviction never really needs to come from the Word of God. It needs to be based on what Christ has done. God illumines us. He guides us. He conditions our own conscience. He does that by the Scriptures. He does that by the very sacrifice of Christ. When you look at what Christ has done, what Christ has covered, okay, I've got that.
I see that. So we know that there's no further need for an animal sacrifice. There's no further need to take a pigeon or a dove or a lamb or a red heifer or whatever you people are talking about.
No, you don't have to do that. Christ has completed the sacrifice. It is finished.
We trust in his work, not our performance. And so it's a great thing. Our sins are forgiven and our consciences are cleansed. How are they cleansed? They're cleansed by the blood of Christ. Hebrews 9.14 says this, How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from the dead works to serve the living God. Christ guides and teaches and instructs our consciences by his own word. So Christ's sacrifice cleanses us, and nothing depends on our performance for salvation.
Nothing. Okay, what do the scriptures say about the cleansing by the word? Jesus was talking to the disciples in John 15.
He says, You were already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. In other words, all the teachings of Christ, the good news of the kingdom of God, being forgiven because he was going to be the lamb who took away your sins, all that has been spoken, and that's how you're cleansed. So we're not to impose holy days and special days and say you have to do this.
No, we know that there's one day in seven, from creation to now, and now it's the day of resurrection, which is today, the first day of the week, that we worship Christ. Now, do you remember Peter and John? They had been preaching and teaching.
People had come to faith in Christ in the book of Acts, verse a couple chapters there, and then all of a sudden you see, there's Peter and John. They healed this man, this lame man, but they were going to the temple. What are they doing going to the temple at 3 o'clock in the afternoon?
Jesus has already paid for their sins. They were going to the temple at 3 o'clock in the afternoon because that was the hour of prayer. And Jesus said, my house shall be called a house of prayer. And now our temples are a house of prayer. So that's why they were there.
They were not going there to offer any sacrifice at all. They were there as a witness to the one who had already sacrificed his life. So it's an interesting thing that we see in the book of Acts. So the point is that God accepts the honored day. Whatever day, you may say, I want to honor this day. God looks on the heart. If we keep a day holy to the Lord, maybe you do that because your family says, we set this time aside each Saturday and we prepare our hearts Saturday night before worship on Sunday.
Well, that's good. There's no requirement, but that may be your family, some people's family practice. Some people may have another practice. We always do this on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever. And that's your family time.
That's your special time. You may have a special time that is holy to you where you get alone with the Lord and everybody else is gone and you've got that special time. But there's no requirement beyond us being faithful and worshiping him on the Lord's day. So we worship. When we worship, we worship to glorify God and we should rejoice. We must rejoice when other believers meet extra times or their special times and they're praising and worshiping God.
We should rejoice in that. That's something left to our conscience, but we as believers rejoice with everybody who's taking that time to worship him and they're exercising that biblical bond that they have in Christ. Verse 6 further explains how we are to accept the various practices of other believers. And the factor highlighted here is that of thankfulness given to Christ. Christ has provided the food that you're going to eat.
Either you consider it kosher or just whatever you want to eat, you know, anything. But if you are giving thanks to God, he is glorified. He is honored. So another lesson is this, is that we should have thanksgiving for all of Christ's provisions and his gifts, everything. And be glad that that other brother and sister are giving thanks. Even if it's not the same time that you do, Hebrews says this, Through him, Christ then, let us offer up a sacrifice of praise. We give a sacrifice of thanksgiving. It's not, we don't kill animals, we give a sacrifice of praise. We give our bodies, as Romans 12, 1 says, as a living sacrifice, not a dead sacrifice, but we praise the Lord.
And so, limiting your diet is not going to earn you any credit in heaven, that's for sure. But you know, sometimes when a family or an individual or even a church says, well, let's have a special day of prayer. It's just that, okay, this congregation decided we have a need, or a number of people have needs, we need to meet and pray for them. And so, you meet and pray and people look, what are you doing on Saturday?
Why aren't you doing this? Oh, we have a special day of prayer. Well, the rest of the world is going to notice that. They're going to notice that about your family practice. They're going to notice that about your personal practice. And so, the world sees and observes. And so, if you're doing that to the glory of God, that's great, that's a great witness. And you know, there's another factor in this. You know, sometimes we think, well, if I do that, people are going to think I'm kind of odd.
I have these extra things that we do. But you know, if you deny yourself, oh, I'm not going to the games today, I'm going to give this day of prayer and fasting for a special need. That self-denial, that self-control that says I'm giving something up because I want to pray to the Lord. I want to have this day aside special to the Lord. That is a tremendous witness. That's a tremendous witness to the next generation, to your children, and to your grandchildren, and maybe to your parents or grandparents, that you think Christ is so special and so important in your life that you're willing to sacrifice these other things. You're teaching the principle of delayed gratification to another generation.
That's very important. So the way we live for Christ is important. And verses 7 through 9 kind of give us three major, I would call them motivations, but whatever. But it begins asking this question, what are you living for? And so it's the question I need to ask myself, and we need to each ask ourselves, what are we living for? Why are we here?
What purpose is there in our daily lives? Verse 7, for not one of us lives for himself, and not one of us dies for himself. Our motivation for living is to live for Christ. We are not to live for our traditions, nor for our pleasures or appetites, nor would we live because I'm apathetically, well, Mom gave me birth, and now here I am on this earth.
No, that's not it. No, we are to live for the glory of God. God's given us a purpose. He will give any person who comes to him a purpose to live for him, an exalted purpose, one that lasts forever. So the way we live to one another, we love this brother or we love this sister, is that we love God's people and we leave the flesh behind.
That's what it says right at the end of chapter 13, that that's how we live in this world. Philippians, we know what it says in Philippians 1.21, for me to live is Christ and die is gain. Paul said that over and over and over again in different churches.
He's not joking. He's not trying to say something just poetic. He's telling us the truth of what was really motivating his life and what should motivate my life and your life. In 1 Corinthians 6.20, he says, for you have been bought with a price, therefore glorify God with your body in every way, in our thoughts, and the way that we physically live. So Paul repeatedly makes these statements to the churches. He loves the churches.
He loves the people in those churches, and he wants them to walk in purity before the Lord. So we're not to live for our traditions. We're not to live for our preferences. Nor are we to live in the shadow of the holy days of Mosaic times. Nor are we to live for Gentile customs or for the pressures that people put on us. Oh, you need to join in this.
No, not at all. We're to center our lives on Christ. You know, the covenant love of Christ, the fact that Christ loves us and keeps us should motivate us because he shed his blood to own us, to give us eternal life, to give us his presence right now by the person of the Holy Spirit because he's redeeming us. We belong to him. So that brings us to the second point in verse 8, motivation. We should be motivated to serve and love other Christians and Christ because we belong to the Lord Jesus.
Verse 8 says, For if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. We do not belong to ourselves. Although, how do you not think about that? You always think about yourself.
You always think about, oh, me first, me first. But we are the Lord's. And this is similar to what Paul wrote to the church in Thessalonica.
He said this. He says, this is a really great verse. First Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 9 and 10. For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we will live together with him.
With him. We belong to him. So we are to love each other with our differences, with our struggles, with our scruples, because we all belong to him. We are the Lord's possession.
He owns us. So then there's another motivation in verse 9. We are motivated by the fact that we will always be with the Lord. Verse 9 says, for through this end, Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. Our Lord is risen. So he's Lord of the dead and the living. Christ is Lord over every believer on earth today, and he's Lord over every believer in heaven today.
So the end goal is for us to always be with Christ. He is Lord over us all. He is Lord over your conscience and my conscience. He is Lord over our progress in Christian growth. He is Lord over every brother and sister in Christ. So verses 1 through 9 declares that we, brothers and sisters, are grounded together in the sovereign grace of God.
We really are. Our Lord Jesus Christ keeps us. He keeps us so that we'll be living for him. He guides us. He guards our consciences by his Word and his Spirit. He keeps us loving believers, both strong and weak.
You notice in this text a couple of times it uses the word accepted, and it says that we stand. We are accepted by Christ. We stand because Christ makes us stand. So we need to rejoice in the power of God, the power that God uses to change us, the power to present us mature and blameless, faultless before the throne of God in heaven. He is the one who is the keeper of our conscience.
He keeps each believer strong or weak. Let us pray. God in heaven, we thank you for your grace. It's by your grace that we were born again, and it's by your grace that we're to live, and it's by your grace that we'll be in your presence in heaven. For, Father, we pray that you would adjust our consciences and our traditions and our scruples by your Word and Spirit and give us grace to be gracious to those who are strong and weak like us. Lord Jesus, come and speak to us. Use this Word in our lives today. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
