Romans 14:22

The faith which thou hast, have to thyself before God. Happy is he that judgeth not himself in that which he approveth.

Have to thyself before God ... is a vindication of the strong in their possession of Christian liberty. They truly enjoy this liberty in God's presence and are not called upon to surrender it; but, of course, they must not flaunt it to the discomfiture and destruction of the weak. As Denny observed:

Romans 14:22a is another exhortation to the strong and means that they are not to parade and protest their rights to the detriment of the weak and with the evil consequences delineated in the preceding verses.[17]

Happy is he that judgeth not himself in that which he approveth ... is rendered in some of the ancient manuscripts as "Happy is he that judgeth not himself in that which he putteth to the test," the same suggesting that the idea here is, "Happy is the man who does not condemn himself by overriding his own conscience to test things he inwardly believes to be wrong." There is a type of person who may be unduly influenced by what is held to be popular and who may thus go beyond his conscience in order to conform to the behavior pattern of others. Sanday was convinced of a different shade of meaning here, which, whether correct or not, is permissible. Thus:

In the acts which he permits himself,

he is a happy man who can eat what he pleases, and drink what he please, without any qualms of conscience to condemn him while he does so.[18]

[17] James Denny, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1947), p. 706.

[18] W. Sanday, Ellicott's Bible Commentary on the Holy Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1959), p. 260.