Romans - Lesson 52

This transcript follows the main points of the speaker but is not always word-for-word.

Romans 14:1-15:13

A. Strong Verses the Weak in Faith: We want to talk about this passage of exhortation where Paul now addresses the situation that has come about in the Roman Christian community. There could be a number of different house churches plying for a sort of strong or even weak position. There are clearly two different groups that Paul is addressing in 14:1 through 15:13. This is a classic text on the competing of virtues of liberty and love. This is a text that Paul has prepared for throughout the letter, the theology he has provided for us. I don’t think that that this is the high point of the letter like others do. I think that is giving it too much credit. Nevertheless, there is a lot of the theology here that Paul has been talking about as we have seen in chapters 12-13, a concern about boasting, etc. This feeds into what he is now telling the Christians in Rome. Rather than going through verse by verse, we are going to take a more thematic approach. This is part of Scripture where Paul repeats himself a lot. It is more conducive to a more topical or thematic approach than some of the other texts we have looked at. You can see in verse 1, Paul talks about the need to accept the one whose faith is weak. That is the NIV rendering here. Another way to translate that would be, ‘those who are weak with respect to faith.’ So, what is Paul talking about here? I don’t think he is talking about faith in an absolute sense. When he talks about the weak in faith verses the strong in faith, it isn’t a matter of saying here are some mature and solid believers and here are some immature beginning superficial believers. Paul immediately uses the language of faith in verse 2. One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another whose faith in weak, eats only vegetables. The language of a person’s faith allowing them to eat gets to the heart of what Paul wants to say about being weak in faith. I would paraphrase that as being what we think our faith will allow us to do. It isn’t a matter of talking about believers who are mature or immature. I think it is possible for some of those people who Paul calls weak in faith, might be more mature in their faith overall than some who are strong in faith. It is in terms of what we think our faith in Christ allows us to do or not to do. That is the issue Paul is addressing here in these chapters.

B. Don’t Do Anything That Would Cause Your Brother to Stumble: He tells them to accept the one whose faith is weak. Paul’s concern is for reconciliation and for mutual acceptance and for a full accounting of each other for our faith in Christ. The specific issues that are dividing the two groups in Rome; Paul mentions several: first we see in verse 2 of eating meat which he returns to in verse 6. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord for they give thanks to God and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. The second issue involves the observation of holy days in verse 5. One person considers one day more sacred than another while another person considers everyday alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. So, these are the two things that Paul clearly says are dividing these believers. In verse 21, he introduces the idea of drinking wine. But he kind of uses this as an illustration as it isn’t entirely clear that this was one of the dividing issues. Don’t eat meat or drink wine or do anything else that would cause your brother or sister to fall. I think that it is likely that this was part of the issue, but again, this isn’t clear. We also get to recognize as we are trying to understand what the issue is exactly, that at the conclusion of this section, Paul focuses again on the way in which God is using Christ, not only to serve Jews and bring them into the kingdom but also to extend mercy to the Gentiles. So the theme of Jew and Gentile relationship which we have seen throughout the letter is important here again.  The very language of weak verses strong carried a bit of an implication about which side is the best to be on. He doesn’t choose neutral terms to describe the two. The word in the Greek as well in the English has a bit of negative sense to it.

C. Daniel and Kosher Laws in Babylon: Paul never gets to a point of clarity as to what exactly is the underlining problem is. Of what he mentions, this has given rise to a lot of scholarly options here. What was the real issue in the Roman church? I think there has been a growing consensus emerging of a difference over some of the stipulations of the Torah, or what one would broadly call Torah piety. The best illustration here is illustrated in the opening chapter of Daniel. Daniel and his three friends are in the court of the king, Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. Daniel had decided not to eat the royal food and wine that was offered. He had asked permission from the chief officer not to eat the food offered. Daniel was a faithful pious Jew in a Gentile dominated context decided to avoid the king’s food and wine at the court, out of faithfulness to his God. Otherwise, he would have defiled himself by eating it. What is reflected in Daniel, we know about this from many other Jewish sources of the time; Jews living in predominately Gentile environments would be very worried about going against their own food laws given in the Torah. This could be eating meat that was killed in local Gentile shops having had contact with pagan deities. It was certainly not killed in a clean way, obviously following the Jewish Kosher laws. It was the same with the wine which was often used in libations to the Greek and Romans gods later on. Jews felt that it was contaminated by the pagans in that way. So, we have fairly good evidence that Jews living in such environments would go beyond what the Torah required to make sure they were not contaminated. They did not violate their own food laws in regards to the way they were supposed to live.

So, the scenario fits what was seen in the Roman Christian community and the way Paul develops the theology of it in the letter. We have a community that started out as a Jewish Christian community, most likely following a lot of the law. They felt no need to abandon their childhood understandings of how to live as a people of God in a pagan environment. Then all of a sudden, the Jews had to leave Rome and so what are left are the Gentile believers who now dominate the church. So, these Gentiles don’t have the same religious history and developed culture as the Jews. Why can’t we drink wine and why can’t we eat meat; what is this business about the Sabbath; all of this is Jewish stuff. So, they didn’t observe the same rules as those of the Jewish Christians. Now, after the return of the Jewish Christians to Rome; they had been allowed back in by the Emperor. These Jews now see that their traditional piety is being scorned by the Gentile believers. So, the Jewish Christians began to say that they are the true pious people; we are the righteous remnant here in the Christian community in Rome. We are the ones trying to follow God’s will whereas you Gentile Christians are following your own ways, doing things that are going to harm you. You can sense these two groups going at each other in different ways.

D. The Idea of Adiaphora: What is important to understand in regards to Paul’s teaching here is the issue that what Paul confronts here belong to a category that we call the adiaphora, things that are different which are neither commended nor prohibited by Scripture. It is very important to make that point because some interpreters have come to Romans 14 & 15 and used it with a sort basis to say that Christians need to accept one another regardless of what you disagree on. But Paul takes a very different approach to issues he considers central to the Gospel. Galatians is the obvious example where Paul talks about these people who have come in with a different Gospel; may they suffer under the curse of God. He pleads to the Galatians not to listen to them for they are putting their own justification in peril. This is a clear Gospel issue where there can be no compromise. This is a different kind of issue. One of the great challenges for Christians in our day is to know where to draw those lines. We have such a variety of Christian churches in North America where people draw those lines in different ways and places. A friend of mind from England tells a story of different taboos in different parts of the world in terms of what it means to be a Christian. One such visiting American Christian doing missionary work in Europe was talking to a Dutch woman, also a believer. The American woman was talking about things that she was doing in regards to her faith, etc. They were having a good conversation until the American mentions something about a movie she had watched the night before. The Dutch woman was horrified that she had gone to a movie, a sister in Christ desecrating herself in that way. She was so upset; tears begin streaming down her face onto her cigar and then into her beer. We are all familiar with people drawing lines in different places. In Wheaton, we don’t think it is a very good idea to smoke, but we don’t pay much attention to the Sabbath. You go about ninety miles east to Calvin where you had better observe the Sabbath but smoking a cigar in your office is not a problem. Granted the Biblical distinction between these two things; where do we draw those lines? Some Christians have a very small category of required things; a lot of adiaphora, other Christians have a huge list of requirements and a small adiaphora. Even in this room, we will have disagreement in regards to some of our different practices. So, are these things implicit and required with identifiable outgrowths of our Christian faith and the kingdom system of values or is it an entirely different matter that we can decide to observe with complete freedom.  So, the important point about Romans 14 and 15 is to recognize that it does belong in the category of adiaphora.

Yes, there are differences in attitude to many things in regards to whether it is wrong or not; some of the differences that are considered are out and out sin. What about immorality or pornia as the Greek refers to it; what does that include? What does it not include? We are told to love; what are the requirements under that? This goes on and on because we are not given those kinds of specifics nor obviously is the New Testament contextualizing within our own world in a way that would help us to figure all of these things out. There are a lot of practical issues of wisdom that come out of Scripture. It is one issue to say that as a Christian trying to live in and evangelize a particular group of people; I need to respect what their taboos and habits and customs are and fit into that. So it is one thing to say that I am not going to eat pork in this context in order to evangelize; but it is another thing to say that your faith doesn’t allow you to eat pork. These are two slightly different things. So, many of these things can be seen as an adiaphora as we think about contextualizing this text and preaching it. We need to apply this to issues in our churches where we have decided that this is not a Gospel matter; it is not something that our faith is requiring us to preach or have to live it. Any matter where people have a difference of opinion, whether it is strong or not the concern should be of acceptance and welcome giving full recognition to someone else. So, there is recognition of difference that nevertheless doesn’t necessarily divide.

E. Liberty and Love: So, Paul spent a lot of time focusing on the strong. He spent much more time talking about the strong and their need not to give up their liberty but to curtail the way they express their liberty by love. That comes back to our basic slogan of liberty and love. No other Christian has the right to take away my liberty in Christ, but my concern and love for fellow believers might lead me not to use that liberty in certain contexts and ways. Paul’s ‘bottom line’ here is not to do anything that causes a fellow believer to stumble. Don’t do anything that causes a fellow believer spiritual harm. I think spiritual harm is the issue here. What this doesn’t mean, if I am a strong believer in certain issues that I shouldn’t do something just because another believer disagrees with me. Neither does it mean that I shouldn’t do something because another believer is unhappy with me. The criterion is what I am doing, is it causing spiritual harm to that person? If it is then I need to try to curtail my liberty. However, if it is a matter of disagreement, then I don’t have to restrict my exercise in liberty at that point. The weak believer should never have the veto power over anything a strong believer wants to do. This could happen as we interpret this too strongly in that particular way. A similar point here is; let us recognize also that while we like Paul and want to be strong in our faith; we also appropriately recognize areas that we might be subject to particular temptation and be unapologetic about choosing to reframe from certain activities or habits that we think might cause us spiritual harm. We shouldn’t be embarrassed in saying that here are some things that I am not going to get involved in. I think that I have the liberty in Christ to do them, but I am not going to because I am afraid they might cause me spiritual harm. We shouldn’t let others look at these decisions we have made in a critical way or for them to make us feel less Christian than we really are. We live in a world where our history, family or simply the way which we are made are susceptible to certain kinds of sin. It is utter foolishness for us to pretend that such temptation for us may not exist and not do what we can do to make sure we avoid that particular temptation. We need to put some rules for ourselves in place. This is not to say that every Christian will observe the same rules as we do, but for me as I work out my faith in honoring God and avoiding falling into sin; these are some guidelines that I have established for myself. Now Paul is talking about our sacrifices instead of the animal sacrifices that were initially required.