Sunday – October 9, 2022
Word On Worship – Sunday – October 9, 2022
Romans 14:16
“Do not allow what you consider good to be spoken of as evil.”
In Romans 14 the apostle Paul is dealing with matters of Christian conscience and personal convictions, especially as they relate to the relationships of the strong and the weak. He does not praise the overly sensitive conscience of the weak, nor does he condemn it. He accepts Christians where they are in their pilgrimage of faith and pleads with us to do the same.
I have often said the favorite indoor sport of Christians is trying to change each other. But Paul says we should not endeavor to change one another to suit our preferences, but instead we should change our conduct so as not to offend the weaker brother. Paul is particularly gracious and gentle in his instructions concerning the weak brethren in Romans 14, and it is because there was no heresy here, only a difference of understanding in the matter of Christian convictions and Christian liberties. Although Paul deals decisively with moral sin and doctrinal deviation in the New Testament, he pleads for understanding and love when it comes also to immaturity in the matter of Christian liberties.
The story has often been told of the culprits who entered a department store at night and stole nothing—they simply switched the price tags. Refrigerators sold for $9.95 while candy bars were $500. I think someone broke into the church and switched the labels on the strong and the weak. I had always been taught that the strong Christian was the one who knew he couldn’t. He couldn’t smoke, drink, dance or go to movies. And she couldn’t wear lipstick or make-up. The strong Christian is “… someone who lives in mortal terror that someone, somewhere, is enjoying himself.” The weak Christian was the one who spoke of liberty.
If this has been your understanding of the ‘strong’ and the ‘weak,’ then you had better take a closer look at this chapter. The weak brother thinks it is wrong to eat meat, and so he eats only vegetables. The strong knows there is nothing intrinsically sinful about meat-eating. The weak (we would assume) regards some days as more sacred, while the strong regards every day alike. We should expect Christians to differ. Or, to put it differently, Christian unity is not uniformity. unanimity. Paul says that true Christian unity is derived from unanimity on the fundamentals and loving acceptance where non-essentials are concerned. It is my personal conviction that there has been far too much division among Christians on matters that are not fundamental to the Christian faith. It was the apostle Paul himself, a man of great convictions, who wrote: “Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you” (Philippians 3:15). How often we have confused “contend for the faith” (Jude 3) with contending with the faithful.