Matt Holman, Pastor of Landmark Church in Cincinnati preached a dynamic and insightful sermon on this topic last Sunday and I was blessed to hear it. He began the sermon in an intriguing manner. He told a brief story about two women who almost came to blows in a MacDonald's over how they were serving the waiting customers. The issue that the two reacted to so strongly was trivial but it could have been fatal.
That illustrates St. Paul's admonition to the Roman church about Christians who differ over unimportant doctrines. Some doctrines are essential and some are non-essential or even trivial yet they can start a war of emotional interactions between Christians and end up with church splits and even new denominations.
Several years ago I was invited to speak at the St. Petersburg Institute of Theology. Before allowing me to speak I was required to attend thee meetings with the various key leaders to test my theology. They were very anxious that my American approach was like what they observed on "Christian TV" and had many questions about my TV shows, money raised to save Russia, etc. They did not believe it when I confessed I had no TV show. One man asked, "I thought every American Preacher had a TV show. What is wrong with you?"
As you read Romans 14, look for the things that St. Paul found it necessary to urge the more mature members to ignore to get along with the immature ones? What were some of the marks of Christian maturity and immaturity? What are similar concerns in our modern conservative Christian society?
14 1-4 Welcome
a man whose faith is weak, but not with the idea of arguing over his
scruples. One man believes that he may eat anything, another man,
without this strong conviction, is a vegetarian. The meat-eater should
not despise the vegetarian, nor should the vegetarian condemn the
meat-eater—they should reflect that God has accepted them both. After
all, who are you to criticize the servant of somebody else, especially
when that somebody else is God? It is to his own master that he gives,
or fails to give, satisfactory service. And don’t doubt that
satisfaction, for God is well able to transform men into servants who
are satisfactory.
People are different—make allowances
5-9 Again, one man thinks some days of more importance than others. Another man considers them all alike. Let every one be definite in his own convictions. If a man specially observes one particular day, he does so “to God”. The man who eats, eats “to God”, for he thanks God for the food. The man who fasts also does it “to God”, for he thanks God for the benefits of fasting. The truth is that we neither live nor die as self-contained units. At every turn life links us to God, and when we die we come face to face with him. In life or death we are in the hands of God. Christ lived and died that he might be the Lord in both life and death.10-12 Why, then, criticize your brother’s actions, why try to make him look small? We shall all be judged one day, not by each other’s standards or even our own, but by the standard of Christ. It is written: ‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God’. It is to God alone that we have to answer for our actions.
13 Let us therefore stop turning critical eyes on one another. If we must be critical, let us be critical of our own conduct and see that we do nothing to make a brother stumble or fall.
14-20a I am convinced, and I say this as in the presence of Christ himself, that nothing is intrinsically unholy. But none the less it is unholy to the man who thinks it is. If your habit of unrestricted diet seriously upsets your brother, you are no longer living in love towards him. And surely you wouldn’t let food mean ruin to a man for whom Christ died. You mustn’t let something that is all right for you look like an evil practice to somebody else. After all, the kingdom of Heaven is not a matter of whether you get what you like to eat and drink, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. If you put these things first in serving Christ you will please God and are not likely to offend men. So let us concentrate on the things which make for harmony, and on the growth of one another’s character. Surely we shouldn’t wish to undo God’s work for the sake of a plate of meat!20b-23 I freely admit that all food is, in itself. harmless, but it can be harmful to the man who eats it with a guilty conscience. We should be willing to be both vegetarians and tee totallers if by doing otherwise we should impede a brother’s progress in faith. Your personal convictions are a matter of faith between yourself and God, and you are happy if you have no qualms about what you allow yourself to eat. Yet if a man eats meat with an uneasy conscience about it, you may be sure he is wrong to do so. For his action does not spring from his faith, and when we act apart from our faith we sin.
Are you in these passages? Where?
What fruit do you need to develop in the Spirit to do these things?
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