1Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. 2One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. 4Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
5One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. 8If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.
9For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. 10You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat. 11It is written:
" 'As surely as I live,' says the Lord,
'every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will confess to God.' "
12So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God. (NIV)
Main Points
1. While Christians may have differing convictions over disputable matters, these differences are never grounds for contempt and condemnation of each other (vv. 1-3).
- The specific situation addressed by Paul: it likely involved the decisions of many Jews to abstain from meat and wine, and observe holy days, in order to preserve their identity in a pagan world. They may have been influenced by Daniel's decision to "not...defile himself with the royal food and wine" of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan 1:8) However, as a result, they were condemning the Gentile majority of the Roman church for refusing to go along with this. For their part, the Gentile believers were quite contemptuous of their Jewish brothers.
-"faith" - in Rom 14 it does not mean belief so much as "one's convictions about what that faith allows him or her to do" (Moo, NIV Application Commentary: Romans, p. 448)
-"judge" does not mean avoiding any judgment at all (compare Jesus' words in Mt 7:1 - which are parallel to this Rom. 14 passage - with what Jesus later says in Mt 7:6.)
- however, as v. 3 makes clear, the judgments Paul refers to are contempt and condemnation.
-we are left with a question: How can we reject someone whom God has accepted?
2. Believers ultimately answer to the LORD alone, because only He has the right to judge them (vv. 4-12).
- important to note: "we cannot extend the tolerance Paul demands here to all issues....he takes a different approach to people who are violating a clear teaching of the gospel" (Moo, p. 453). See Gal 1:6-10 and Rom 16:17. Also, disobeying the clear commands of Scripture should not be tolerated (1 Jn 2:4; 1 Co 5:1,2).
Discussion Question: What are some other "disputable matters" among Christians in our present age?
