Receiving One Another with Understanding, Part 2
Romans 14:1‑12
We want to spend some time tonight in the Word of God as always. And what a happy privilege it is to return to Romans chapter 14. We began last Lord's day evening an examination of this great, great section from chapter 14 verse 1 through chapter 15 verse 13, a section which we've entitled "The unity of strong and weak believers...the unity of strong and weak believers."
Let me say by way of introduction that we're very much aware as we study the Bible that the Lord is concerned how Christians treat one another. He's very concerned about that. In fact, if we go back to Matthew 18 we might find a good starting point even for our message tonight. In Matthew 18, Jesus said this to His disciples, "Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones who believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."
Now Jesus is not talking about babies. He's not talking about infants. He's not even talking about little children in a physical sense. He tells us who He's talking about when He says, "Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones who believe in Me." He's talking about believers. And He likens believers to little children. And He says, "Before you would ever offend a believer, you would be better off drowned." It's a very serious thing with the Lord how we treat one another as Christians.
Now in verse 7 He follows up by saying, "Woe unto the world because of offenses." In other words, we expect the unregenerate world to offend believers. But we certainly don't expect believers to offend believers. In fact, in verses 8 and 9, our Lord uses some rather familiar sort of proverbial statements to emphasize His point. He says if your right eye offends you, pluck it out. If your hand offends you, cut it off. The idea being that if you're offensive in any sense, if you're led into sin by any of those members, you'd be better off to cut them off. The issue is to deal with sin drastically. So we must be careful not to offend another believer. We would be better off dead. We expect it from the world. And if we find ourselves offending, we should take drastic measures to cease from doing that.
And then in verse 10 He wraps up the thought by saying, "You had better not look down on one of these little ones, the same little ones, believers who believe in Him, because the Father in heaven and the angels in heaven are very concerned about them." And you don't want to be at odds with the holy angels and God the Father Himself.
So, our Lord established there a very important truth, and that is that we must take great care not to offend or look down on any other believer. Now I believe that Paul picks this theme up and it brings us now to Romans chapter 14. And Paul's great concern here is that we learn as believers in the church how to get along. Now last Lord's day evening, I mentioned to you that we're all aware of the fact that sin causes a rift in the fellowship. Sin fractures the fellowship of the church. But there is another area that can create great chaos and confusion and struggle and strife and conflict in the church and that's not so much in the area of overt sin as it is in the area of strong and weak believers being in conflict over preferential issues. Not issues that are moral issues or biblical issues that are clear cut, but preferential issues. And we talked about the fact that in the church you have people who prefer certain things and other people who prefer different things. And the potential for clashing is very great. The church is a mixture of Christians at all levels of spiritual growth, from brand new babies to very, very mature men and women in Christ. People from all kinds of backgrounds, people who come from a wild kind of licentious lawless background and people who come from a very traditional, very rigid, very ritualistic legalistic background, and we all come to Christ and we all wind up in the church and there's a potential clash when our preferences for say external forms of worship, preferential styles of life vary and can create some problems. And we went into that in detail last time.
So, what Paul is bringing to our attention here in this matter of Christian living which he began in chapter 12 is the need to develop a loving compatibility among all believers in the church.
Now let me just remind you that there are two believers that he sort of focuses on: the weak and the strong. And we define a weak Christian as a believer who because of some preference, maybe because of his past experience or orientation, but a believer who because of some preference cannot understand and fully enjoy his freedom in Christ. He tends to be narrow. He tends to be somewhat legalistic. He tends to be rather intolerant of spiritual liberty. He's confined because of some preferences that have been bound to him through some past experience.
On the other hand, a strong believer is one who does understand his freedom. Does enjoy his freedom, is not constrained by ceremonies or traditions or rituals, or any kind of non‑moral externals. And so, the strong believer tends to just live his liberty to the fullest. And the weak believer tends to be extremely confined. And the potential problem comes when the weak believer looks at the strong believer and accuses him of being abusive of freedom. And the strong believer looks at the weak believer and accuses him of being too narrow and not understanding what Christ has really provided. And so there is conflict potentiated. The disharmony then comes when the strong despise the weak as being small minded, untaught and narrow. And the weak condemn the strong for abusing their liberty.
Now the church at Rome obviously faced this problem because it had in it many Jews. The Jews who had come out of a very tight, very strict Judaistic background with laws that touched on every area of life, what you ate, how you cooked it, what you wore, the kind of clothing, the days you celebrated certain festivals and feasts, myriads of rules and laws and rituals and routines had been built into their culture to the extent that they were almost an involuntary behavior. And they came to Christ, and of course, in Christ all of those external ceremonies, rituals from the Old Testament and tradition were wiped away. And it may not have been a problem for the Gentiles so they might have celebrated their liberty and greatly offended the Jews who though having faith in Christ were unable to understand their freedom from the laws of ceremony that were so much a part of their heritage. And after all, as we said last week, those laws were ordained originally by God.
And so, it was very common. In fact, it was the norm for converted Jews to hold on to Mosaic tradition. And in some cases to want to bind that externalism to the Gentiles as well.
On the other hand, there were some Gentiles who came out of a wild pagan religious background and there were certain things that were a part of their background such as feasts and festivals to the various gods and idols. And we said that in those feasts they would offer food to their idol. What food wasn't consumed in a feast or eaten by the priests would show up in a marketplace and be sold for money to support the temple operation. So it is possible that you might buy meat that had once been offered to an idol. And if you served that to a Gentile who used to worship that idol, it would offend him greatly because he would see it as having been desecrated. And so it's possible that even Gentiles were very narrow in some areas of their Christian experience and unable to enjoy the fullness of their liberty in Christ. An idol is nothing, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8, don't worry about it. But at the same time, we don't want to be offensive to one another.
Now remember, the issues Paul is dealing with are not sin issues, they're preference issues. Issues of tradition, non‑ moral issues. In order to help us to understand how strong and weak are to get along, he gives us four main thrusts from verse 1 of 14 through 13 in chapter 15. I mentioned those to you last time, I'll just briefly mention them now. First, in verses 1 to 12 he says you have to receive each other. You have to receive each other, open your arms and take each other in.
Secondly, from verse 13 through 23 he says you must build up each other without offending. Be concerned to build up each other without offending.
In chapter 15 verses 1 to 7 he says please each other as Christ set the example by pleasing the Father. Please each other.
And finally, from verse 8 to 13 in chapter 15, rejoice with each other in the plan of God. So, receive, build up, please and rejoice with each other.
Now, we're looking at that first category of truth that Paul teaches, the matter of receiving each other. The strong are to receive the weak and the weak are to receive the strong. Now let's go back to verse 1 and pick up where we left off. Him, that is a fellow believer, that is weak, that is not weak in saving faith but weak in the sense that he's unable to believe that he really has the freedoms he has, the one that is weak in the faith, that is who is holding on to some old religious taboos, who is holding on to some external behavior patterns from a former religious experience, that one you are to receive, proslambano, a strong word, a preposition added to the front to make it even stronger. And in the middle imperative, it's reflexive, take to yourself, embrace intimately into your own love and communion and fellowship, embrace the unemancipated, Paul says, into your fellowship, into your communion, into your love.
Now remember, these are not Judaizers, these are not people who are making Mosaic ritual and ceremony a matter of salvation, these are people who know salvation is by grace through faith in Christ. But they're just hanging on to some old patterns that are external. And that's why he doesn't condemn them here as he does in Galatians and Colossians where they make the Mosaic ceremony the means of salvation. They're not doing that here, they're just holding on to some old tradition.
So, the Apostle says you that are strong, implied obviously, receive the weak. And then he says, "Not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions, not to doubtful disputations, not to receive him just so you can argue with him, just so you can condemn him for what he believes or look down on him." In fact, in Galatians chapter 5 verses 13 to 16 where Paul deals with some of the same things, he says whatever we do in dealing with each other, we never want to do anything that in any way would injure one another or offend one another. And that certainly is implied here. We embrace the weak not for the sake of arguing with them, not for the sake of passing judgment on them, but for the sake of unity and love within the fellowship.
Now why are we to do this? Paul in his typical wonderful systematic way gives us four reasons. Four reasons we are to receive one another. And this is marvelous, so clear, so practical, follow along.
Reason number one, reason number one for the strong to receive the weak and for that matter for the weak to receive the strong is that God receives them. Did you get that? The Lord receives them. That's reason number one. Let's follow it in verse 2. "For one believes that he may eat all things." Who would that be? That would be the what? The strong, he believes he can eat all things. Another, for example, and he's not necessarily describing every strong or every weak person by these particular issues but this is an illustration. One person, for example, believes he can eat anything. He doesn't have any dietary constraints. He's not bound by the old Mosaic ceremony, dietary laws. On the other hand, there are others who being weak eat only vegetables. They're vegetarian.
Now the one who believes he can eat everything is strong. Is he right? Is that right? Can he eat everything? Yes, he's right. First Timothy 4 says, "For every creature," verse 4, "of God is good and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer." And that's in response to those who are forbidding people from eating certain foods. No, everything is to be received with thanksgiving. And in Acts 10 the Lord cleansed all things and said to Peter, "Don't you call unclean what I have cleansed." So the strong is right. You can eat anything...anything, of course, that is not injurious to your body. But there are no dietary restrictions. We are not under the laws of Moses. And every once in a while I hear this being propounded around in churches saying you shouldn't eat pork and you shouldn't eat anything that is considered unclean in the old covenant. That is not so. The one who believes he may eat anything right here is right, you can eat anything. There are no ceremonial dietary restraints in the new covenant.
And this particular person may be a Jew. He may be a Jew who is not burdened by eating pork. He may be a Jew who's not concerned that it be cooked a certain way. He's free. He understands his liberty. On the other hand, it could refer to a Gentile. It could refer to a Gentile who doesn't think an idol is anything, who now understands that things that ought...that are offered to idols are offered to nothing because an idol is a nothing. And he's not hung up by that either. So it could be a Jew, it could be a Gentile.
Then you look at the weak one. He's weak and he eats only vegetables. Now this is kind of an interesting illustration because it is reasonable to believe because of what we know in history that neither Jews were particularly circumscribed to vegetables or Gentiles. Vegetables, by the way, could just as well be offered to idols as meat could be and vegetables were offered to idols. So just eating vegetables didn't necessarily mean that you wouldn't be eating something offered to an idol. Vegetables could be offered to idols. So it seems that this might best be seen as a sort of a Jewish perspective. Although some say that those who were known as the Pethagarians(?) were vegetarian and had some kind of unique twist. But I think perhaps this is best seen as some Jewish group who were fearful of eating either meat offered to idols or meat that was unclean by their Jewish standards and so they opted out for nothing but vegetables. They have good company among the Essenes and some segments of the Essenes in Judaism appear to be vegetarian.
In verse 17, would you notice, it talks about food and drink. Apparently, there may have been some as well who abstained from drink all together. And abstaining from drink would not be a Jewish issue because the Jews drank a wine diluted with water as a part of their culture and may well have reflected a Gentile who had been converted out of a Baachanalian orientation where he was in a drunken stupor throughout his worship. And because of that wanted to abstain. It is true again, and I mention this from historical viewpoint, that some of the Essenes practiced total abstinence as well.
But Paul isn't even trying to identify every label here and tell us exactly who everybody is. All he's saying is whether they're Gentile or Jew and for whatever reason in their tradition, there are those who aren't hung up on what they eat and there are those who are. And they don't need to be but they are. They don't need to be restrained by some old dietary law. So in that sense his...his description in verse 2 is generic. It's just a general perspective on the fact that some are free to enjoy their liberty and some are bound and cannot enjoy it.
Then comes the injunction of verse 3 that I want you to see. "Let not him that eats," that's the strong, "despise him that doesn't eat." Don't despise the one who doesn't eat. The word "despise" here is a very interesting word. It means to treat someone as nothing, to treat someone as nothing, to belittle them, to disregard them, to scorn them, to look at them with contempt, disdainful contempt might be the summation of it. Don't have contempt for one who doesn't fully understand his freedom just because you do. This is so important in the church because there are always those liberated brethren who want to condemn the people who are much more confined in their thinking. And there's always that danger. "Well, look at those legalists over there." I mean, I see that tendency in the church. I sense that tendency in myself. When you see someone who wants to lay a whole pile of rules on you that are really not moral at all, they're just extraneous external rules that have come out of their own orientation and tradition and your tendency is to look at them with a certain sense of contempt because they don't understand their true liberty in Christ.
But on the other hand, he says in verse 3, "And let not him who eats not," that's the weak who won't eat because he's afraid he'll violate some tradition, "let him not judge, krino," means to condemn, "the one that eats." So don't you strong look with contempt on the weak and don't you weak look with condemnation on the strong. It's a tendency on the part of the weak to condemn the liberty of the strong because they do not understand that freedom.
There are people, for example, who are so afraid to get outside the bounds of legalism, they're so afraid not to have...not to operate in an economy of rigid rules for fear everybody will go amuck. I mean, I was in an environment in college for a while where I heard that all the time. You have to be confined. I remember a man who was in charge of the school saying to us, "If we let you alone, you dogs would go back and lick up your own vomit." See. Well, he was under the idea that if you ever let anybody have any freedom, they'll go completely off their...off their rocker and off the deep end. And so you've got to build huge walls around everybody and close them all in. And when they would look at someone who had liberty and wasn't confined by that, even though they couldn't locate sin in their life they assumed it was there because they didn't abide by the external principles that they saw as true spirituality. And so it is a factor that within the church of Jesus Christ, there are those who do not understand their freedom in Christ and they condemn those who do and they're are those who do understand and they tend to despise those who don't. And that is the potential problem with which Paul wants to deal for the sake of unity in the church which is such a burden to him. That's why in chapter 15 verse 6 he says, "I want you to have one mind and one mouth glorifying God."
Now here's the reason. Reason number one why we're to receive each other at the end of verse 3, "For God has received him." I mean, who are you not to receive them, God received them? That's pretty straightforward stuff, isn't it? Now though the word "him" obviously in the verse is nearer to the final phrase where the weak condemns the strong and some commentators would say "him" refers to the strong, I don't think you need to limit it to that. It may refer to the strong in a primary sense in the order of the way the verse is laid out. But it seems very unnecessary to limit the antecedent of "him" simply to the strong when it is true that God receives them both. So in a sense what he is saying is let not him that eats despise him that eats not for God has received him and let not him who eats not judge him that eats for God has received him. Certainly each is received by the Lord, not just the strong. There's no need to restrict the pronoun just to the strong.
So, remember this, beloved. When you tend, if you're free and you understand your liberty in Christ, when you tend to condemn someone else for being narrow minded and legalistic and rigid and ritualistic and ceremonial oriented and hung up on some tradition and overly preoccupied with the way they cut their hair and wear their clothes and how they carry out their little religious routine, remember this, that in spite of all of that God has received him by faith in Christ. And you that may be are a little bit like that and you see someone who doesn't have all those rules and all those bindings on his life, don't condemn that person because God has received him, too. You see, we're dealing with non‑moral issues. These aren't even matters of sin.
Now if God has not made this a point of communion, if God has not made this a point of fellowship, should we? Well, of course not. If the Lord receives the weak, then we ought to receive the weak. And if the Lord receives the strong, then we ought to receive the strong. And we have to learn to work together.
There's a second reason, marvelous...a second reason why we are to receive one another. Reason number one is God receives each of us. Reason number two, and I love this, is the Lord sustains each believer...the Lord sustains each believer. Now let me tell you how this point works. It's really a tremendous truth here in verse 4, follow this thinking, now listen. The strong tend to despise the weak. The weak tend to condemn the strong. And in order to justify our concern, this would be sort of a typical scenario. We sort of feel that the other person is in danger of falling away. Boy, we that are strong say look at that poor legalistic narrow‑minded person, poor person can't enjoy freedom in Christ, they're going to sour up, they're going to despair of the Christian life with all of its rigidity. They just may fall away because of the lack of joy, and a lack of freedom and a lack of ability to enter into all the things that God has provided. They're constrained by all this stuff. And so we may say, you know, they're just...they might just fall away. They're going to drift off and they're going to be useless to God and they'll never make it.
On the other hand, the weak person looks at the strong and says, boy, they're going right out the other end. They're going so far away from what God wants. They don't have any rules in their life. They're breaking all the ceremonies. Boy, they're going to fall. I can see it, big sin coming, they're going to hit hard when they fall. They're going to fall because of license and liberty. And the strong are saying they're going to fall because of unbelief and weak faith and narrow‑mindedness. And they're not going to really discover the riches in the power of God. And so the tendency is to want to justify our concern because we're afraid that it's going to lead to a spiritual disaster.
And we often say that...I've caught myself saying that. Well, you know, those legalists, if they stay in that long enough they'll shrivel up to a prune. They'll dry up. They're no good to God. Da‑dit‑da‑dit...you know the lines. And I've heard the opposite as well. But notice what verse 4 says, this is pretty straight stuff. "Who are you that judges another man's servant?" Which being interpreted means "mind your own business." Who do you think you are? This isn't your problem. Who are you to evaluate another man's servant...oiketes, a household slave? I mean, to his own master he what? He stands or falls. No, who are you to sit in evaluation and say, "Ohh, that brother, look at that liberated brother, I can see it coming...big sin, big fall, it's coming." Or, "Look at that narrow‑minded bigoted person, boy, they're going to shrivel up, no use to God...big sin, big fall." Who do you think you are? What right do you have to evaluate somebody else's servant? You...you have no right to evaluate someone else's servant. Your opinion of someone else's servant doesn't improve or impair that servant's position before his own master. You're not in the position to make the evaluation, neither am I.
Judgment by an outsider is utterly irrelevant. That's why Paul in 1 Corinthians 4 says, "When you consider me, consider me a servant, a steward of the mysteries of God, a huperetes, an underrower, a servant of Christ." And he says it's a small thing to me that men may judge me. Remember that? It's a small thing to me. It is even inconsequential to me that I judge myself because I...when I know nothing against myself am not thereby justified but it is the Lord who will judge me when the day comes when He searches the heart. So we can't judge somebody else.