WWUTT 1366 Do Not Quarrel Over Opinions (Romans 14:1-5)

Romans 14 says for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions.

There are non -essential matters we do not need to divide over, but we should be charitable toward one another when we understand the text.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you Becky. We come back to our study of Romans, and this week we jump into chapter 14.

If you want to open your Bible and join with me there, I'm going to begin by reading straight through the whole chapter.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome. As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions.

One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables.

Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him.

Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls, and he will be upheld, for the

Lord is able to make him stand. One person esteems one day as better than another, while another person esteems all days alike.

Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day observes it in honor of the

Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the

Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself.

For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the

Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be

Lord both of the dead and of the living. Why do you pass judgment on your brother?

Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God, for it is written,

As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.

So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.

I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.

For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. By what you eat, do not destroy the one for whom

Christ died. So do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil, for the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the

Holy Spirit. Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men.

So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.

Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats.

It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.

The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves.

But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith, for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

And there you go. That's all of Romans chapter 14. It'll probably take us a few weeks to get through all of this.

Today we're just going to look at these first four verses, Romans 14, beginning in verse one. As for the one who is weak in faith,

I actually had to record the beginning of this episode a few times because I kept saying, as for the one who is weak in the faith, that's not what is said there.

As for the one who is weak in faith, we're talking about maturity here. And you can tell that Paul is primarily addressing those who are more mature because he says, as for the one who is weak in faith, but then he goes on to say, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinion.

So who's he talking to? He's not talking about the person who's weak in faith. He's talking about those who are more mature.

And this is not just here in Romans 14, but even as we start chapter 15, we who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the week and not to please ourselves.

So if you are truly more mature in your faith, then you must set an example.

You must be a leader to the rest of the flock. You must put aside yourself and consider the needs of others ahead of your own.

For as Paul will go on to say there in Romans 15 verse two, let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up.

And Christ is our example for Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who approached you fell on me.

So we follow Christ who humbled himself for us. He who washed his own disciples feet, who said the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

So if we are truly more mature in this faith, and we must, we must set that example of maturity to those who are weak in faith.

Now it could have been that in the church in Rome here, there may have been this tendency among those who are more mature to want to argue with those who were weaker and maybe argue is not even the best.

The best word quarrel would be better because that's the word that Paul uses here. Welcome him, but do not quarrel over opinion.

Sometimes in order to mature somebody in faith, an argument may be necessary.

And I mean an argument, not like a quarrel, not like where you're fighting with one another or putting each other down or, or tempers kind of flare and you start to get heated toward one another.

Nothing like that. I'm talking about an argument where you are presenting your case in a mature and gentle manner and that person is responding.

And even if the other person starts to lose their cool, you have enough sense about yourself that you're able to back away from it and say,

Hey, I can tell that, that, you know, you're, you're getting pretty passionate about this. So why don't we step away?

And when cooler heads prevail, we come back together and talk about these things again. This is not being spoken about as the person who is weak in faith.

You just need to let them be weak in faith. Just let them stay in their infancy in their faith, continuing to think that if they eat food, they're going to defile themselves.

Paul doesn't say that here at all. He just says, don't quarrel over opinions. If this person is convinced they can eat this thing to the glory of God, then let them do that.

They're not sinning by doing that. It would be sin to enter a quarrel with them or to impress upon them something that isn't an essential doctrinal matter that would otherwise cause them to slip and fall and falter even in their own flesh, therefore falling into discouragement and sinning before God.

That would be sin to cause your brother to sin as Paul is going to go on and argue here in chapter 14.

He ends this chapter with a pretty hard hitting phrase, and this is one that I don't think we understand enough as believers.

Romans 14, 23, whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats because the eating is not from faith for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

So understand something. You could actually do the right thing, but if it's not done in faith, it would actually be sin.

You think of Isaiah 64, six, where it says, even our best deeds are as filthy rags before a holy

God. So you could do the best works that there is to be done. You could follow the letter of the law and it still be sin before God because it's not being done in faith.

So we must do these things according to Christ and in obedience to him and filled with his righteousness in order to present ourselves as a living sacrifice unto

God, holy and acceptable in our bodies, which is our spiritual act of worship.

And that's going back to Romans 12, one. Remember, that was the verse that kind of set off this section. So even as we're looking here in Romans 14, we're still keeping that in mind, that in view of the mercies of God, that kindness that he has shown to us, we must present ourselves to the

Lord in our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable.

And this is our spiritual worship. We do this even in our interactions with one another as it relates to more unessential doctrinal matters.

And when I say unessential, I'm not saying that these things aren't important. If they weren't important, Paul wouldn't have written this whole chapter about it and then on into chapter 15.

And he talks about it not just here, but with the Corinthians also. He is talking about unessential doctrinal things, still important things, but not fundamental.

It's not necessary for you to have to know this about food in order to have salvation in Christ.

There are things that we come to a knowledge of as we mature in the faith. And as we go through this, as we go through Romans 14, we'll talk about some other examples.

But the two examples that Paul puts forth here are food. That's what we look at here in these first four verses and days, days of the week, which day of the week are we to worship on?

He talks about that one as well. And you can probably see the reason why. You can see why food and day of worship are the two non -essential matters that Paul draws out and addresses the church over.

Because remember, he's got a church here that's full of Jews and Greeks. Go back to Romans 1 16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the

Jew first and also to the Greek. So given that he has been addressing

Jews and Greeks from the first chapter, then what would be why would the two non -essential matters be food and day of worship?

Well, because there were Jews who believed that there were still certain foods they should not eat based on the dietary laws that were given in Leviticus chapter 11 and the day of worship they believed was supposed to be

Saturday. That was the Sabbath. So that must be the day of worship that we gather together. So since there's this disagreement over day of worship and dietary laws as a

Jew and Gentile disagreement, that's why those two subjects come up regarding non -essential matters that Paul says we must welcome one another and not to quarrel over opinions.

The one who abstains does so in honor of the Lord, the one who eats does so in honor of the Lord. But notice that Paul says the one who is still clinging to those dietary laws, who thinks it's not right to eat these certain meats, well, they're weak.

He straight up calls them weak in faith. But those who are more mature should not be quarreling over those things.

I just kind of wonder what the feeling was in the congregation when Paul addressed that when he says, hey, those of you in the congregation who are still not eating certain kinds of meat for certain reasons, you're the immature ones.

So let me address the mature ones. What was the reaction there? They probably still would have thought, even though this was coming from the apostle

Paul, because they're weak in faith, they still would have thought, nah, you know, Paul is talking about, he doesn't know what he's talking about here.

Still maybe even rejecting the authority that was given to the apostles by Christ in matters such as these.

They're saying, no, God is greater than Paul. So I'm going to listen to God and what is said in Leviticus 11, and I'm going to continue to abstain from these foods.

Could have been some kind of reaction that way. So it didn't really matter whether Paul addressed them as this group is mature and this group is immature because the immature were not going to listen to what he had to say regarding the matter anyway.

Now, I say that as a Jew Gentile distinction, but there's another distinction that exists here as well.

And this one probably more prominently in the way that the the verbiage is used, the way the language kind of unfolds here in Romans 14.

There were people that were abstaining from certain foods because they were offered to idols. So this was even among Gentiles.

There were Jews that may have abstained to certain foods because they thought those foods were ungodly, again, based on dietary laws.

But then there were also Gentiles who abstained from certain foods because those foods had been offered to idols.

That was the pagan worship that existed all throughout the Roman Empire. A lot of times the temples, the pagan temples were also butcher shops because you would have these animals that would be brought in and offered to these false gods.

And whatever wasn't offered was sold at market. So these animals being sold in these pagan markets had been food offered to a false deity.

If you participate in the food that the God eats in, then you receive the blessings of that God.

And then, of course, in Roman polytheism, there were different false gods for different things.

So there were those who had come to faith and they had left this pagan way of life. But they're weak in conscience.

They think if I go and I eat that meat that is being sold at market, which

I know had been offered to a false god, am I not going to go back to my former paganism?

Is that what that means? So now I'm eating meat and I'm going back to worshiping false gods? I can't do that.

So there was this distinction that even existed among the Gentiles. And Paul doesn't just address this here with the

Romans. He also addresses it with the Corinthians. Same sort of thing was going on in the church in Corinth.

Here's what Paul says in first Corinthians eight, starting in verse seven. Not all possess this knowledge, but some through former association with idols eat food as really offered to an idol and their conscience being weak is defiled.

Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat and no better off if we do.

But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.

For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol's temple, will he not be encouraged if his conscience is weak to eat food offered to idols?

And so by your knowledge, this weak person is destroyed. The brother for whom

Christ died, thus sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.

Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat lest I make my brother stumble.

So you see the kind of humility that those who are mature need to have with regards to these non -essential matters.

The mature must be willing to say, it'd be better for me to not even partake in that thing if it means

I could potentially be making my brother stumble. So Paul is saying, hey, if for their sake

I have to be a vegetarian so that my brother will not stumble by eating meat that had been offered to idols, thinking maybe he's worshiping a pagan

God, if he were to eat that meat, then I'm not going to eat meat because I don't want to do that to my brother.

And we need to have that kind of consideration with one another. Those who are more mature certainly need to be setting that example more so than those who are weak.

Now then, as we're going to be talking about primarily food and days going through Romans 14 here, surely you know that the principles that are applied here in Romans 14 have also been applied to other non -essential issues.

And we're going to talk about some of those things. I don't know what day that's going to fall on. When we were in Romans 13, 1 through 7,

I said we would exposit the scripture for those seven verses, Monday and Tuesday, and then we would do some application as they related to some current world things that are going on, which we did on Wednesday.

This is a much larger section, so it's a little more difficult for me to say, okay, we'll spend Monday and Tuesday doing this part, and then we'll do application the next day.

We may be doing application as we go, but some of those application things you can probably already think about.

There's mask wearing. That's a big one right now because of the COVID concerns that are going on.

So we're going to talk about how Romans 14 has been used to encourage and discourage mask wearing.

There's two sides of the argument there. Another one, and this one's becoming more and more popular, you may have seen this recently too.

Another way that Romans 14 has been utilized in current issues is in regards to voting.

So like you should not shame a person for the way that they vote a certain way. A person can vote their conscience based on Romans 14, and one person votes one way, another person votes another way, and don't quarrel over opinions.

I would agree that we shouldn't quarrel over opinions, but the way that Romans 14 is being utilized there is not a proper application.

So again, as we go through these things, we'll probably find some modern applications, but our launching point is going to be the two applications that Paul gives with regards to food and with regards to day of worship.

Romans 14 to one person believes he may eat anything while the weak person eats only vegetables.

Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats for God has welcomed him.

Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls and he will be upheld for the

Lord is able to make him stand. So in verse one, it's clear that Paul is primarily addressing those who are more mature.

But when he gets to verse three, this is something that is certainly applicable for the mature or the weak.

Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains the one who eats meat.

Don't despise the one who is not eating meat. Oh, you have weak conscience. What's the matter with you? Come on and eat this food.

Come eat this meat. You'll be just fine. Don't despise the person who abstains. Don't egg them on like that and let not the one who pass, let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats.

So therefore that's being spoken to the one who is weak in faith. You who are weak, don't judge those who are eating.

God has welcomed him. It's it's not that he is now worshiping in a temple to a false

God because he's eating this food that had been offered to false gods. No, God has welcomed him.

He's not in league with demons. He's not in league with Satan here. It's just food.

And so to have to say to the weak person from the apostle, God has welcomed the one who is eating food that you saw offered in meat market the other day to one of these false gods.

God has welcomed him. It's it's food. We are no better off if we eat it.

We're no worse off if we eat it either. You know, a kind of a point that he comes to here and what he also shared with the

Corinthians, who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls and he will be upheld for the

Lord is able to make him stand. A person is not lost because they have eaten food that was offered to a false

God. And so therefore, we should not make such judgments whenever we see somebody partaking in something that would be a nonessential matter such as this.

Nor should we boast in ourselves because we don't participate in that thing or I do that thing, you know, something like that.

We can we can also make these things a matter of elevating ourselves over other people.

I don't think you have to think too hard to apply this to some other real world examples. I've shared with you before that I'm very, very careful about what

I talk about regarding entertainment, music I listen to, movies I watch, plays

I attend and stuff like that. There are certain things that I watch that I don't like some of the worldliness that's in it, but I don't think that I'm defiling myself by watching it or being entertained by it.

However, I'm not going to mention it to somebody else because it may have some things in there that a person who is weaker in conscience could cause them to stumble if they watch it.

So it's just better for me to not even talk about it. Like, so what?

How is anybody's life better because they know my opinion about the

Marvel series, you know, something like that. So it's just better to not even go there. Also, brand clothing.

I will not wear brands. So like, you won't see me in a Coca -Cola T -shirt.

And the reason why I don't do that is because, well, Coca -Cola actually supports some extremely liberal things like you have to subscribe to the

LGBTQ cause, I think, to even work at Coca -Cola. At least I know that at least this was the case with a friend of mine years ago that when he had applied to work at Coke, they had him sit through like these training seminars where he was watching these videos and all of it was like LGBTQ indoctrination was all in there anyway.

So because of that, because they contribute so much money and they try to progress the LGBTQ agenda, if I wear a

Coke shirt, somebody might look at that and go, oh, wow, Gabe is Gabe is supporting

Coke. You know, does he not know that he's actually helping to progress the LGBTQ agenda by wearing that particular shirt?

I don't want anybody's thinking to even go there. So it's just better for me to not wear those not wear any kind of branding at all.

I just don't wear brands. So everything that you see me wear is fairly blah. At least by appearance,

I'm not all that stylish because I don't want to cause somebody to stumble by something that I may be inadvertently promoting.

And I didn't mean to do that. Now, these are just ways in which I try to humble myself and consider somebody else's need ahead of my own regarding non -essential things.

And that's the way that we need to be following that instruction in Philippians to to be mindful of others.

We need to have the mind of Christ. And so let us be in these non -essential things. Let's have the discussion because we don't want to leave a person immature in their faith.

We want to mature them. But let's not quarrel over these opinions as we're going to find other applications for things using these

Romans 14 principles. Continuing this study, let's conclude with prayer. Heavenly Father, thanks for your goodness and your grace and charity toward us.

And may we extend that same charitable conduct toward one another.

Let our living be first and foremost unto Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog, sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers, and offering commentary on the church and social issues.

You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com. Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's when we understand the text.