Building Up One Another Without Offending, Part 2
Romans 14:16‑23
It is the highlight of our times together on the Lord's day to open the Word of God and I want you to do that right now, opening your Bible to the fourteenth chapter of Romans, Romans chapter 14. We're continuing in our wonderful study of this great epistle. And in the section that we're involved with in chapters 14 and 15, we're looking at the subject of the unity of strong and weak Christians.
Just by way of introduction, for those of you who haven't been with us, the Apostle Paul in this great Roman epistle is concerned to deal with the matter of salvation by grace through faith. He's talking about redemption. He's talking about justification, being made right with God through the work of Christ. Having laid out all of the beautiful and marvelous and wondrous elements of salvation in the first eleven chapters, beginning in chapter 12 he starts to talk about some of the practical ramifications of that doctrine, some of the things that are true in life, some of the things that are to be part of our commitment as those who have received the gospel of saving grace.
One of the things that flows out of the doctrine of salvation is the life that exists within the fellowship of redeemed saints. Now we all know that sin can be a blight on that fellowship and he has treated that in chapter 12 and 13. But there's another potential problem within the assembly of redeemed saints and that's the conflict that can come between strong and weak Christians. Strong Christians are those who understand their liberty. They understand that they are free in Christ from any ceremonies, taboos, traditions. They're free from any religious rituals. They no longer have to observe the elements of the externalism of the old covenant. And they understand that. They're free to enjoy all the good things that God has provided for them.
But there also are weak brothers and sisters who can't quite understand that freedom, they can't enter into that freedom, they can't enjoy that freedom. They're still restricted by some non‑ moral taboos, some traditions, some habits, some things from their past life that hold on to them and make it very difficult for them to enjoy their freedom. They may be hung up on certain meats, certain foods that they don't feel they should eat, certain things they feel they can't drink. They may be sort of hung up on certain holy days and festivals and feasts and sabbaths. They may be in our own contemporary time coming out of a rather legalistic background. They may think it's wrong to eat meat. They may feel it's wrong to do anything that remotely relates to exercise on a Sunday. Some people might feel it's wrong to wear makeup, to go to a movie, to watch television, to listen to certain kind of music.
Now it is wrong to do wrong. And we've pointed this out. And sin is sin and we're not saying that sin is subjective and for the discretion of the one who sins. But there are many things in our world and in our life as Christians which we are free to enjoy, provided we do not use them or abuse them to excess. Some of us understand that. Some of us do not. And so there is a potential conflict in the church over these things. Paul sets out to help us have the information we need to resolve that conflict in chapter 14 verse 1 through the thirteenth verse of chapter 15. It is essential that we understand what it is that he is saying to us here.
Now remember, the basic idea, the basic truth of freedom in Christ or Christian liberty, as it's called, is that we are free from the outward requirements of the Old Testament ceremony and we are free to enjoy all of God's good gifts no matter what taboos we have lived under in a former time. We are never free to sin. We are free to enjoy all those things which and in and of themselves are not sinful. Food in and of itself is not sinful. Drink in and of itself is not sinful. Recreation is not sinful. Entertainment is not sinful. Exercising on Sunday in and of itself is not sinful. And a myriad of other things.
But not all of us can accept that. And so while the liberated brethren, the strong might feel they need to exercise their liberty, they would in so doing greatly offend the weak and create conflict in the church which would disrupt the church's unity and harm the church's testimony. So in order for us to understand how to get along, Paul has given us this tremendous insight in chapters 14 and 15.
Now these two chapters, the sections at least to which we look, are divided into four sections of exhortation. He says to us basically there are four things you have to have in mind. Number one, you must receive one another with understanding, that is without condemnation. And that is the subject of chapter 14 verses 1 to 12. You must receive one another with understanding.
Secondly, from verse 13 to 23, you must build up one another without offending. You must be concerned to build up one another without offending.
Thirdly, chapter 15 verses 1 to 7, you must please one another with Christ as your example. And fourthly, from verse 8 to 13, you must rejoice with one another in God's plan.
Now if we learn how to receive one another, build up one another, please one another, rejoice with one another, we will eliminate the potential conflict between the weak and the strong which is always a possibility in the church. Now we're looking, by the way, at the second section, verses 13 to 23 on building up one another without offending.
Now in order to do this effectively, in order to receive one another and in order to build up one another, we discussed last time that we must be willing to limit our liberty for the sake of a weaker brother. That's the primary message here. We set aside the prerogatives of our liberty for the sake of not offending a weaker brother. Now I want to just lead you through the passage. We've already covered half of it, we'll cover the second half. But just to remind you, there are six ways in which Paul points out that we are not to offend...six ways, six things to keep in mind.
The first one we saw last time, don't cause your brother to what? To stumble, verse 13, Let us not therefore‑‑the therefore is there because of what he has just said, since the Lord receives each Christian weak or strong, since the Lord is able to hold them up whether they are weak or strong, since each of them serves the sovereign Lord with his whole heart thinking he's right, and since only the Lord will judge‑‑therefore let us not judge one another anymore. That's for the Lord to do. So let us not sit in condemnation on each other, but if we're going to make a judgment, let's not judge others, let's judge this rather that we never put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in a brother's way. We never want to do anything to cause a brother to stumble.
Now how do you cause a brother to stumble? By exercising your liberty in the face of a weaker brother, you know that weaker brother doesn't enter into that liberty, is not free to do that without having a guilty conscience, but in the exercise of your liberty or in your teaching to that weaker brother, you push him into the situation where he does what he's seen you do and as a result of it...of doing that, it causes him to fall into sin. There are some people, for example, who cannot touch anything that even remotely relates to alcoholic beverage without falling into drunkenness. And the reason they don't is because they know that. If I were to exercise the freedom that I have and to drink something and they would see that and I would say to them, "This is your freedom," and they would do that, it could cause them to fall away from the steadfastness of their faith. I never want to do anything in my life that will offend.
In the day of the Apostle Paul that meant that you didn't want to eat anything in front of a new Jewish convert which that Jewish convert would think violated the law of God because he was just coming out of Judaism with all of its dietary restrictions. If you were to eat that and he were to enter into it, it might cause him great anxiety. It might cause him to fall away thinking he had offended God, thinking he had violated God. He would feel guilty about his sin and it would plunge him into some kind of despair.
It could be that if you were to take a Gentile and say, "Hey, meat offered to an idol isn't anything anyway, don't worry about eating meat that was once offered to an idol," so you invite him to engage in that kind of meat, you invite him maybe to buy at the cheap meat market where the idol meat is sold, the part of the meat that wasn't consumed in the idol temple. But once he gets into that cycle, he's back into that old cycle again and maybe he decides that, "Oh, I ought to go back to the idol feast and see some of my old friends," and before you know it, he's in an orgy again and you've caused him to fall.
You might not think that there's anything wrong with playing cards and a little penny‑ante gambling. Somebody comes along following your lead, does that, plunges into an old habit of gambling and loses a great amount of money and there is a fall in their Christian growth. The idea, don't make your brother stumble is fairly obvious.
The second thing that we need to understand is don't grieve your brother. In verse 14 Paul says, "I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus‑‑this isn't human opinion‑‑that there is nothing unclean of itself." And I remind you that there is nothing unclean that isn't unclean...I mean, that is unclean. It doesn't mean there's nothing unclean period, paragraph. It means there's nothing unclean that's unclean. Those neutral things, those preferential things, those non‑moral things in and of themselves are not unclean. So what he's saying is the strong are right, the strong brothers are right. Moral evil does not exist in non‑ moral things. There's nothing inherently evil about those things.
But, if you're not careful, even though that thing itself is not unclean, if a person esteems it to be unclean, to him it is unclean and if forced into doing it, verse 15 says, your brother will be...what?...will be grieved. You want to preserve a clear conscience. And if a person thinks something is wrong, they shouldn't do it. Why? Because they're training themselves to violate their conscience. And the conscience is a tool, a self‑ judging faculty that God uses to keep you aligned with truth and righteousness. If you train yourself to violate your conscience, you train yourself not to listen to what God says through your conscience, you will have what 1 Timothy 4:2 calls a cauterized conscience, a conscience covered with scar tissue that no longer can be sensitized to the call and the voice of God.
So, learn to listen to your conscience. We do not want to grieve, that means to severely upset some brother by what we do and then he follows along and he does it and it violates his conscience and he becomes in great grief over that.
We had a lovely young couple at our radio Bible conference last week who are coming out of a very, very legalistic background. They came to the radio Bible conference because they've been listening to our ministry on the radio and their greatest fear was that their pastor would find out they came. Because their pastor would condemn them for stepping outside the boundaries of their own legalistic environment. They were so fearful while they were here that they were anxious the whole time and worried. We arranged a meeting for them with a pastor who some years ago had come out of the same sort of fundamental evangelical legalism and they drove maybe a hundred miles to meet for a whole afternoon with this pastor to try to get some help in the de‑programming process of the bondage in which they had been so long held.
And they said to me, "You know, we're hoping, we would pray to the Lord that our daughter might come to your college, but we never would want to send her because, you see, she is suicidal over her inability to keep the rules and we wouldn't want her to kill herself at your school." The interesting thing about this is these people have been hearing the Word of God for a long time but they've been so bound in the system they were in that they're not free to enjoy any of the liberty that God has given them, even the liberty to listen to another person teach the Word of God without a terrible bondage.
The fact of the matter is until they can be released and weaned away from that gracefully, there's little point in them coming to a Bible conference like ours because all it does is pile upon them guilty feelings which make them feel like they're disobeying God. So we want to be very careful and very cautious not to cause grief to a brother who cannot do what we can do without violating conscience. To force a brother into that kind of grief, verse 15 says, is not to walk in love. And love is the pervasive thing. Didn't we see that in 1 Timothy, that the goal of the commandment is love out of a pure heart, isn't that right? God's desire for us is a fellowship of love. And it is not loving to push someone into doing something that causes them to stumble and fall into sin or causes them to be grieved because they've violated their conscience even though their conscience may be reacting to wrong ideas in their mind.
And then there was a third thought that I feel is so important here, not only are we not to cause our brother to stumble and not to grieve our brother, but not to devastate our brother. And in verse 15 he uses a very strong word, "Do not destroy him with your food for whom Christ died...do not destroy him with your food for whom Christ died." The word "destroy" means to experience spiritual loss, literally a devastating spiritual set back, a plunge backwards in your spiritual life.
In 1 Corinthians, if you'll turn there for just a moment, one book to the right, chapter 8 and verse 10, we have a very similar passage. Paul writing to the Corinthians, verse 8 says, "Food commends us not to God, neither if we eat are we the better, neither if we eat not are we the worse." The whole issue here is meat offered to idols. As I mentioned earlier, a person would come to worship a pagan idol, put the meat on the altar. The priest would eat some of the meat, take the meat he didn't need to eat, go back out the door of the temple and sell it on the marketplace. Some person comes along, buys it because it's cheaper than anywhere else, serves it for dinner to a new Gentile convert whose just come out of that pagan religion. He sits down, he says, "Hey, this is great meat, where did you buy it?" "Well, I bought it at the butcher shop of the temple of Diana." And he is plunged into devastation, almost gags on the meat because all that does is remind him of all the vile orgyistic worship that went on in that pagan system, and he sees that meat as having been offered to an idol, tainted with the demonic reality that once was a portion of his life. He is greatly offended.
Now the real issue of meat is no issue at all. Meat is not the issue. It doesn't matter to God if we eat it. It doesn't matter to God if we don't eat it. We're not better if we do, we're not better if we don't. It's a non‑issue. But not to that person. So he says in verse 9, "Take heed, lest by any means this liberty of yours, you're free to eat it, will become a stumbling block to them that are weak, for if any man see thee who hast knowledge, you're a strong believer, you understand your freedom, sitting at the table in the idol's temple," and there may have been even a freedom...they may have had a snack bar in the back of the idol's temple for all I know, "shall not the conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to eat those things offered to idols?"
So, he says, "Hey, he can do that, so I'll go over to the idol temple and have a snack." And through that act, the weaker brother is devastated for whom Christ died. And he adds that line there, the same line in Romans chapter 14. It's simply to point up that Christ went to great lengths to save this individual, how can you treat one whom Christ died to save with indifference? The implication here is if Christ loved that person enough to die for them, you ought to love them enough to be cautious about how you exercise your liberty in front of them. So, it's the same issue there. Now you can go back to Romans, for a moment.
Don't devastate your brother. Don't plunge them into deep spiritual loss. Stumbling seems to mean a sort of momentary stumble, a momentary fall. Grieving is the grief over a guilty conscience. But this one is a devastating thing where the person very likely could be plunged right back into the whole milieu of pagan worship.
So, Paul says then build up your brother, build him up in love. How? By not causing him to stumble, not causing him to grieve, and not causing him to be devastated by falling into sin because you've exercised your liberty in front of him and he cannot experience that without sin and a guilty conscience. Now he broadens his appeal, let me give you the last three, and they are very much the same and they'll go by rather rapidly.
The fourth principle, and this is a sort of broadening of his thought, the fourth thing you want to remember now in not offending another is don't forfeit your witness...don't forfeit your witness. And I'm going to show you some things that I think are so important. It is possible, beloved, to so abuse our liberty among ourselves that we create such conflict between the weak and the strong that the world in general is turned off to Christianity because of what they see. And that's the issue here.
Look at verse 16, "Let not then your good be...what?...evil spoken of, for the Kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he that in these things serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by...whom?...by men." Now that's the thrust. That's the idea. It is possible to so abuse our liberty that our good is evil spoken of in the world around us, that instead of men looking and saying that group is dokimos, that's the word approved, that group is worthy, that group of people is admirable, that group of people is proven to have something genuine and real by the conflict of abusive liberty, the world will look at disapprove rather than approve.
So the word "men" that comes at the end of verse 18 is probably men in general. He's not talking about a brother here or he would probably say a brother. He's talking about the world that's watching us. It is very important that we set aside our liberties for their sake. First of all, just in general, all of us might need in a given cultural situation to set aside our liberty for the sake of evangelism. Do you remember the council of Acts 15 in Jerusalem? Do you remember what they decided? They decided that they were free from the old Mosaic inhibitions. They were free and they could go out and be free. They were in the spirit of Galatians 5, you've been freed, don't tangle yourself up again with the yoke of bondage or you've overturned grace and you've fallen from grace as a principle of living.
They were free...but, when the council met, this was their judgment, verse 19, "Our judgment is this, we're going to find some Jews out there when we go to evangelize and we don't want to offend them, so let's abstain from the pollution of idols, from fornication, from things strangled and from blood." Now three out of those four things are ceremonial...pollution of idols, things strangled and blood..."Because Moses of old time has in every city them that preach him."
In other words, if we're going to reach the Jews, we can't go around violating the external ceremonial law of Moses. They'll be offended. I mean, we're going to go into synagogues, we're going to run into orthodox Jews who are upholding the law of Moses, so for the sake of evangelism, we're going to have to set some of our freedoms aside. In verse 29 they repeat the same thing. Verse 28, "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit, it seemed good to us to lay on you no greater burden than this, just stay away from things offered to idols, blood and things strangled and then fornication." Stay away from those things, those are offensive to a Jew. One of them is a moral thing, three of them are strictly external ceremonial things.
The exercise of Christian liberty then is fundamental to evangelism. And if we abuse that and flaunt that in a given cultural situation, we may lose our opportunity for witness. Look at 1 Peter 2, 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 15 and follow this thought, verse 15, "It is the will of God‑‑he says in verse 15‑‑ it is the will of God that with well doing‑‑that is by goodness of life and character‑‑with well doing you put to silence the ignorance of foolish men." What that means is you just the mouths of the critics of your faith. Now how do you shut the mouths of the critics? How do you to that? Verse 16, "As free, yet never using your freedom as an excuse to cover your evil." See.
In other words, you have to be very careful. If you want to silence the critics by your good life, you can't abuse your freedom. And you certainly can't use your freedom as an excuse to cover your sin. I just point to those two passages by way of passing reference so you'll know that this is not the only text that speaks to the matter of Christian liberty affecting evangelism.
Now Paul seems to be concerned with developing this very thought as we take it up in verse 16. "Let not then your good be evil spoken of." What is your good? Well, it's agathos, it means qualitative good, intrinsic good, real goodness. And he has in mind your freedom in Christ, your freedom in Christ. All that salvation provides, all the goodness of being a believer, all the goodness of enjoying that everything that God has for you, all that good that you've received through salvation will be evil spoken of. That's another way of saying blasphemed if you abuse the freedom it provides. If you abuse your freedom, it will be blasphemed.
Now let's face it. Everything God has given us, we could enjoy. We could enjoy it. And the strong Christian could give thanks for it, be rejoicing in it. But if he damages other people and the world is watching the church and they see these liberated Christians absolutely indifferent to the pain of a weaker brother, do you think they will conclude that this is a marvelous group of people? Not at all...not at all. In Romans 2 Paul says that the Jews while obviously trying to show the world how righteous they were were literally destroying the reputation of God. In Romans 2:24 he says the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you...because of you the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 28, the Apostle Paul speaking similarly says, "If any man say to you‑‑and listen to this, this is really marvelous‑‑if any man say to you, This is offered in sacrifice to idols, this meat, then eat it not for his sake and for his conscience's sake." If you're having a meal and the guy says, "Hey, this is offered to idols," don't eat it. Now listen to this. "Conscience, I say, not yours but the others, why would your liberty be judged by another's conscience?" Now listen, "For if I by grace be a partaker, why am I evil spoken of for that which I give thanks?"
Now let me tell you what he means here. You go to dinner. And here's the issue. You're at meal with a pagan and a believer. And the pagan happens to be your host. And he serves meat offered to idols. Now you're stuck. You're a strong brother, he's a weak brother and this pagan that you're trying to evangelize is serving you dinner. He serves you meat offered to idols. You say, "Hey, this is terrific." Your weaker brother puts an elbow in your ribs and says, "I can't eat that...I can't..that is meat offered to idols, my conscience will not allow me." And your host is happy, verse 28, he says to you, "This is offered in sacrifice to idols." He's proud about it. And the weaker brother is paralyzed. What are you going to do? Do you please the pagan or do you please the weaker brother?
The answer is, you offend the pagan. That's right. You offend the pagan. Because if you offend your weaker brother, you've discredited the significance of Christian love. If you offend the pagan in order to show love to your brother, you've given a profound testimony to that pagan. Right? That love overrules everything. And that's the kind of association most pagans would like to get into, an association where people cared enough about each other to set aside perfectly good liberties so as not to offend. The pagan will see your love and your care for a fellow Christian and be drawn to the gospel, perhaps.
So, what Paul is saying now, back to Romans 14, is don't forfeit your witness by overdoing your liberty and offending your brother in the face of an unbeliever. The unbeliever needs to see you loving your brother. I mean, we don't need to show the world how free we are, we know...we need to show the world how loving we are, is that right? Look at verse 17, I mean, the whole point of the kingdom is not food and drink, kingdom here refers to the sphere of salvation by grace through faith where God rules in Christ over the souls of those who believe. It's the sphere of salvation. It's the kingdom we all belong to when we're saved. And the essence of this kingdom which we all belong to is not meat and drink. In other words, we're not here to promote externals, are we? We're not here to fight over non‑ essentials, though for the most part we do a wonderful job at it.
You know, I guess I believe that fighting over non‑ essentials is a wide‑spread Christian recreation and probably a key reason so many people reject the gospel. Sad. We want to fight about so many silly things and people who want to maintain their freedom don't care what anyone else says and as a result of that, we miss the whole point of the kingdom. The kingdom is not meat and drink, the kingdom is not the things that you can do or not do, the discretionary things. The kingdom is...watch this one..righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Frankly, in those three elements you have a comprehensive summary of the Christian life. You want to know what the Christian life is all about? You want to know what it's like to be in the kingdom? First of all, it's righteousness. The issue is righteous living, righteous living, holy living, a holy obedient God‑honoring life conformed to God's wonderful will. You see, my concern is not liberty, my concern is holiness. My concern is not my right to eat, my right to drink, my right to do this and do that and do the other thing, my concern is righteousness, holiness, integrity. And that's what the watching world is looking for, that I might be filled with the fruits of righteousness, that I might have on the breastplate of righteousness, practical godliness.
Secondly, peace...the kingdom is all about demonstrating the tranquil relationships between people and God and people and people. It is our loving caring. It is our oneness. It is the tranquility of our relationships that have such a profound testimony. It is when the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, is manifest that the watching world sees something that they would like to possess. The essence of the kingdom is not our freedom to do this and do that and offend if we wish, the essence is holy living and tranquil relations with fellow believers. And righteousness means I seek to honor God, and peace means I seek to have harmony with my brother.
And then joy, joy comes to one who is right with God and at peace with his brother. Wouldn't you say? Joy is the personal joy of knowing God, experiencing forgiveness, grace and mercy and love. It is the blessed happy life of salvation which rejoices in everything.
What we want the watching world to see is people who are righteous, people who are at peace and people whose lives are filled with joy. And that kind of environment is created by self‑sacrificing love that does not necessarily exercise its liberty no matter how it offends somebody else. And what I'm saying to you is a message to the strong believers because most of you would fit into that category, to say this, we must move down to the weak brother and sister and honor and respect that weakness until we can by love nurture it to strength. And so there are things we are perfectly free to do that we choose not to do in order that we might demonstrate to a watching world that the kingdom is not a celebration of our rights, but it is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. And when the world sees our lives marked by righteousness, when they see a pers