”Serving the Same Lord” (Romans 14:1–12)

"Serving the Same Lord” (Romans 14:1–12)
Pastor Cameron Jungels
Eastside Baptist Church
Sunday AM, January 20, 2019

Romans 14:1–12 (NIV)
       14 Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. 2 One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3 The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. 4 Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.
       5 One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. 6 Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. 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. 7 For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. 8 If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. 9 For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.
       10 You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. 11 It is written:
       “ ‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord,
       ‘every knee will bow before me;
       every tongue will acknowledge God.’ ” 
12 So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.

1. Who are the Weak and the Strong?

a. Weak

i. “Faith is weak” (14:1)
ii. “eats only vegetables” (14:2)
iii. “considers one day more sacred/holy than another” (14:5)
iv. “regards something [food] as unclean” (14:14)
v. Implied: [abstain from] drinking wine (14:21)
vi. “failings of the weak” (15:1)
vii. “must not judge the strong” (14:3)
viii. “stop passing judgment one another” (14:13)
ix. “make every effort to do what leads to peace and mutual edification” (14:19)
x. “accept one another” (15:7)
xi. “don’t eat if you are not fully convinced in faith or it is sin” (14:23)

b. Strong

i. “faith allows them to eat anything” (14:2)
ii. “considers everyday alike” (14:5)
iii. “accept the weak” (14:1)
iv. “don’t quarrel over disputable matters” (14:1)
v. “don’t treat with contempt the weak in faith” (14:3)
vi. “don’t put a stumbling block in front of a brother or sister” (14:13)
vii. “act in love” rather than causing a weak brother/sister to be distressed (14:15)
viii. “don’t let your good be evil spoken of” (14:16)
ix. “make every effort to do what leads to peace and mutual edification” (14:19)
x. “don’t destroy the work of God for food” “don’t cause a weaker brother/sister to stumble” (14:20)
xi. Refrain from eating meat and drinking wine so as to not cause a brother or sister to fall (14:21)
xii. Keep your liberty between yourself and God (14:22).
xiii. “bear with the failings of the weak” (15:1)
xiv. “please our neighbors for their good and build them up” (15:2)
xv. “accept one another as Christ accepted you” (15:7)

2. What are the disputable matters? What is the disagreement? Who are the two parties?

Explanations of the root issue in Rom. 14:1–15:13 fall into seven major categories:1

(1) The weak were non-Christian Jews.
(2) The weak were mainly Gentile Christians who abstained from meat (and perhaps wine), particularly on certain “fast” days, under the influence of certain pagan religions.
(3) The weak were Christians, perhaps both Jewish and Gentile, who practiced an ascetic lifestyle for reasons that we cannot determine.
(4) The weak were mainly Jewish Christians who observed certain practices derived from the Mosaic law out of a concern to establish righteousness before God.
(5) The weak were mainly Jewish Christians who followed a sectarian ascetic program as a means of expressing their piety. This program may have been the product of syncretistic tendencies.
(6) The weak were mainly Jewish Christians who, like some of the Corinthians, believed that it was wrong to eat meat that was sold in the marketplace and was probably tainted by idolatry.
(7) The weak were mainly Jewish Christians who refrained from certain kinds of food and observed certain days out of continuing loyalty to the Mosaic law.

Five considerations make the seventh alternative the most likely:2

(1) Verses 5–9 reveal that both weak and strong belong to the Lord Christ; the weak cannot be non-Christian Jews.
(2) There is abundant evidence that the dispute between the weak and the strong was rooted in differences between Jews and Gentiles. The relationship between these two groups has been a leitmotif of Romans since chap. 1; and the conclusion of this section, in which Paul emphasizes the inclusion of both Jews and Gentiles in the one new people of God (15:8–13), brings this motif into Paul’s plea for reconciliation between the strong and the weak. Confirmation of a basically Jewish origin for the position of the weak comes from Paul’s use of the term koinos, “common,” “unclean,” to describe (implicitly) the weak Christians’ attitude toward food (14:14). For this term had become a semi-technical way of describing food prohibited under the Mosaic law (see Mark 7:2, 5; Acts 10:14). Moreover, the NT provides abundant evidence that the OT food laws constituted a prime issue in the early Christian communities. This consideration rules out alternatives two and three. It also creates difficulties for alternative five since those sectarian Jews who abstained from meat and wine usually did so not primarily because of concern about violating the Mosaic law but under the influence of ascetic religious principles derived from non-Jewish sources (and often, indeed, antithetical to the OT/Jewish worldview).
(3) Paul’s plea for understanding and acceptance of the weak within the community makes clear that they were not propagating a view antithetical to the gospel. This makes it impossible to view them as Jews who believed that observance of the law was necessary for salvation.
(4) Paul’s failure to mention “food sacrificed to idols” (eidōlothyta; see 1 Cor. 8:1) and his reference to the observance of special days and abstention from wine make it unlikely that the dispute in Romans can be confined to the issue of food offered to idols (option six).
(5) The practices Paul attributed to the weak can be explained as a result of concerns to observe certain requirements of the Mosaic law. Abstention from meat and wine is, of course, not required by the Mosaic law. But scrupulous Jews would sometimes avoid all meat in environments where they could not be sure that the meat had been prepared in a “kosher” manner. Similarly, Jews would sometimes abstain from wine out of concern that it had been tainted by the pagan practice of offering the wine as a libation to the gods. Finally, of course, the Mosaic law stipulates the observance of many special religious days: the weekly Sabbath and the major religious festivals. And many first-century Jews also observed weekly fasting and prayer days.
        These considerations suggest that the weak were Jewish Christians (and probably also some Gentile God-fearers) who believed that they were still bound by certain ritual requirements of the Mosaic law.

1 Douglas J. Moo, The Letter to the Romans, ed. Ned B. Stonehouse et al., Second Edition., The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018), 844–849.

2 Also from Douglas Moo.