Romans 14:1-23

Apostolic Admonitions

Romans 14:0

It is important to know to what subjects the Apostle Paul is confining his attention in his chapter upon Christian casuistry. He is not talking about the distinction between eternal right and eternal wrong: he is alluding wholly to questions of opinion, ceremony, ritual, formality, mechanical adjustment, and the like. This clears the ground of a thousand difficulties. "In every work regard the author's end." The Apostle is not submitting the Cross of Christ for diversity of opinion; he is not submitting the doctrine of the Holy Ghost, and saying to men, You can believe it or not, and the one shall just be as good as the other. In reality these are not vital questions, and yet they are questions which come up again and again, especially in early Christian experience; and to these questions which come and go the Apostle is now directing his entire attention. This chapter has been wrested, so that men have built upon it doctrines of the most objectionable kind. They have exaggerated liberty into licentiousness; they have been irreverent or indifferent or defiant, and have quoted this chapter in support of their erratic spirit and conduct. They are wholly wrong. They have forgotten what the Apostle was dealing with. It has been supposed that he was dealing with the greatest questions, whereas he was only adjusting matters of casuistry, and endeavouring to find a point of harmony and reconciliation amid tumults that were dividing the Church in a very immature state of Christian experience. Let us follow the Apostle in his reasoning according to this light.

Paul being himself a strong man, almost equally strong at every point, had a distinct doctrine about weak people. The Apostle was always careful about the "weak brother." Yet he discharged his conscience in reference to that man by distinctly calling him weak. He never left that man under the impression that he was as good as anybody else; he always laid his hand upon the lame limb and said, You are a cripple. He never failed to point out the sightless eye, and to say, You do not see as well as some other people see. He never told the weak man a lie. Steadily and frankly he persevered in telling the weak man that he was weak, and that if anything was done on his account, it was done simply because a good many things are done for the sake of the baby of the household. But because all these concessions are made to him he does not cease to be a baby. "Him that is weak in the faith," not the faith as represented in a body of theology, which is often erroneously and mischievously called "the faith"; as if any words of man's collocation could swing themselves around the infinite circumference of God's truth. Rather, him that is weak in faith, a mere child in trust; the infantile man, doubtful, cloudy, timid, groping, uncertain; willing to be right, but a very long way from having attained the sacred purpose. "...receive ye ": let him come into the house, find a position for him in the Church, enrol him on the register of those who have espoused the Cross as the symbol of their life, and the plea of their soul. But when you receive him do not make him, as the Puritans would say, question-sick. Do not receive him for the purpose of disputing with him. Seldom is any good done to a man by arguing with him about anything. The weaker he is the more disposed he will be to argue. He may have lost all his limbs, but he still retains that mischievous tongue. When you receive into the Church a man who is weak in faith, do not attempt to talk to him about his doubts. The more you talk to him about them the more he will doubt. Set before him a heroic life, show him what you do under the inspiration of religious trust, put his disputatious-ness to shame by your self-sacrifice: he will soon find that he is no longer eloquent, but only a poor chatterer of words; he will withdraw his lame arguments in the presence of your burning holiness.

Then the Apostle comes into the detail of casuistical questions: "For one believeth that he may eat all things; another, who is wok, eateth herbs." We have nothing to do with these questions. The difficulty was about meats offered to idols. The question arose, Is it right to eat such meats? They have been laid upon forbidden altars, they have been mentioned under names that should be unknown in the Christian sanctuary: have they ceased to be legitimate foods? have they ceased to be nutritious meats? Ought they to be taken at the base altars and thrown into the black river, to be taken whither the river may flow? Or have they not been desecrated? are the meats still good for use? is there a healthy purpose to be served by eating them? The Apostle says, Brethren, if you think you ought not to eat these meats, let them alone: your duty is clear. But, on the other hand, another man says, The meat cannot be desecrated; it has been put to a foolish purpose religiously, but the meat, as meat, is just as good as ever, and I intend to eat it. Then, says the Apostle, you are at liberty to carry out your notions: you need not debate these things; for the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; it is not this view of flesh meat, and this view of vegetables, and this view of discipline; the kingdom of God is not built upon that narrow basis; it is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; a grand spiritual revelation, a holy mystery. They who would bring it under discussion as relating to ceremonies of any kind would desecrate the very religion which they profess to honour.

"Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not." That is the danger of strength. Power is always likely to become contemptuous. Sheer strength is not the glory of any man. God's power is nothing but for God's mercy. The mercy that withholds the power is greater than the power would be without the mercy. When a man is himself well reformed he is apt to despise the ignorant. No truly educated man will ever despise the struggling honest mind; no really refined soul will remark upon the want of refinement in others. Partial education will be severe: whatever approaches complete education will in that measure be self-controlled, well regulated, and will be held in a spirit of modesty and trusteeship, and not in a spirit of arrogance and independence. "...and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth." The danger of weakness is fault-finding, Here is a poor cripple who cannot get off his stool: but what a tongue he has, what a file of a tongue, what a rasping tongue! How he finds fault with minister, office-bearer, fellow-member, fellow-student, fellow-worshipper! Hear how he riles and reviles, and how exasperating is his talk. Weak! see his weakness in his criticism, his fault-finding, his love of discovering weakness, or imagining it, in the character of other men. Here are two difficulties to be avoided. Paul says, You are a strong man: do not be contemptuous. Then he says, You are a weak man: do not be fault-finding, censorious, and seeking to make up for intellectual and spiritual weakness by a rasping criticism. The weak man, however, is in more danger than the strong man. Strength can be patient, modest, tranquil: but weakness is always seeking self-compensation, What can I do to make myself seen and heard and felt? Weakness will send a man into severe punishment for a mistake in spelling, in punctuation, in dating a letter: and yet that same weakness will one day be found to have misspelt every word, to have mispointed every paragraph, and to have mistaken the whole gist and purpose of life. Wherever you find a censorious man you find a weak man. There are some persons cursed with the genius of criticism.

Why is the strong man to refrain from contempt? Why is the weak man to refrain from censoriousness? Paul gives the reason at the close of the third verse "for God hath received him. Who art thou that judgest another man's servant?" That is the annihilating question. It brings every man up sharply, when he is asked to produce his title. You find fault with the minister! produce your title to open your mouth in any respectable company. You find fault with your fellow-worshipper! you say you could not do as he does; how he does it you cannot conceive: who art thou? who asked you to conceive anything? who ever troubled you with an inquiry addressed to your imagination? Let him that is without sin cast the first stone. If there is a perfect man let him rise. We should listen to his impeccability with the modesty due to deity. When men attend to their own faults they will be surprised how very little time is left to attend to the faults of other people. Are you aware that, when you are finding fault so glibly with men who have forgotten more than you ever had the capacity to acquire, there are those who are stigmatising you as little, miserable, foolish, objectionable, detestable a man they would not have within their threshold?

Is there then no standard of responsibility? The Apostle answers the question "To his own master he standeth or falleth.... We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.... Every one of us shall give account of himself to God." It is because there is a standard set up by hands Divine that we are not called upon to play the judge over one another. The universe does not begin and end in our individuality. Let no man suppose that he can escape final criticism: but the glory and the advantage of that criticism are to be found in its perfectness, for it will be conducted by him who knows us in and out, through and through, ancestrally, and circumstantially. Remember it is because there is an eternal judgment seat that we are released from the necessity of fault-finding, criticism, and judgment. "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves... Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." The time of judgment is not yet. There may be tares among the wheat of your neighbour's character: let both grow together until the harvest; the discriminating angels will separate the one from the other. If we must be frank, and, indeed, what may appear to be objectionable, let us do it as if we would rather not do it; never let us do it defiantly, boastfully, vain-gloriously, as who should say, I have an eye for faults: beware how you conduct yourselves in my presence. Let us rather fall down in self-accusation, and venture with timid modesty to exercise the work of criticism where it is needful such work should really be done.

The Apostle proceeds to deal with special cases: "One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike." Here is the importance of the principle with which we started. About what days is the Apostle talking? Not about the Sabbath day at all. No man can have what he believes to be a Divine commandment steadily before his eyes, and then say to all other men, You can treat that commandment just as you please: if you like it, keep it; if you do not like it, neglect it: it really makes no matter; please yourselves. The Apostle could not so conduct a Christian argument. He is talking about days that have been set aside by scribes and Pharisees, and pedants and Judaisers and interlopers, and inventors of ceremonies and festivals and observances. One man finds it good to fast one day in the week; Paul says, Then by all means let him fast, because he finds it good for his soul thus to punish his body. Another man finds it quite possible to pray after every meal and to make every meal a sacrament; he has no need to take a day out of the week for the purpose of religious fasting; the Apostle says, Then by all means let him have the liberty of his own judgment and conscience; where there is no written, distinct, positive law men are left to realise the circumstances in the light of their own experience, and they are entitled to enjoy the liberty of their spiritual conviction. This is apostolic doctrine. But the man who fasts cannot let the man who feasts alone: the man who feasts finds it difficult not to remark upon the ascetic who has his days of fasting. Thus liberty is impugned, thus liberty is dishonoured. The Church which ought to represent every possible variety of opinion upon disputed questions is turned into a beargarden. It should be the glory of the Church that it can differ and yet agree. The Church will never be one in mere matters of opinion. The Lord allows the liberty of indi vidual judgment upon a thousand questions. They may be questions of climate, circumstance, individual condition, family limitations. The Lord does not dishonour the human intellect or dismiss from his service the human reason; he says, you are responsible beings, you have intelligence, you can saturate your souls in prayer, you can come to the consideration of every subject in a reverential spirit: according to your faith, so ye shall be judged. Many persons have thought that the Apostle was talking about the Sabbath day, and consequently they had opened all their museums and all their picture-galleries, and run all the omnibuses they could lay their hands upon, on the strength of the fifth and sixth verses. No man would be more surprised at that interpretation than the Apostle Paul himself would be. The Apostle had a way of taking some things for granted which ought never to be disputed. The Apostle often assumed that he was writing to common-sense men. If it had occurred to that ardent and dazzling mind that there were fools who thought a commandment could be trifled with, he would have started and conducted his argument accordingly. He comes amongst the inventions of the Church, its calendared feast days and fast days and new moons and observances, and he says, I am not going to interfere with these things in any arrogant spirit: really, much must be left to individual reason and individual conscience: if a fast day will do you good, have it; if you can do without fasting, continue in your usual course of life: only let there be no bickering, disputing, fault-finding, censoriousness: we are neither saved nor lost by our fast days. All reason is on the side of the Apostle, and all wisdom confirms the wisdom of his admonitions. There are no such days of dissipation in any country as the days of fasting. Men are never so drunk as on the fasting days. There is a time-bill for fast days, and that is generally about the middle of the day when everybody can see you, but as the sun goes down, and the curtains are drawn, and the family lights are set ablaze, then say if it were not well that these beasts fasted before they began that tumult at the trough. "When thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret."

Note how wondrously the Apostle always comes from the discussion of little disputable questions and fortifies himself by great principles: "For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living." That is Pauline. Even when you bring this mighty mind to the consideration and adjustment of casuistical detail, at the very first opening he lifts his pinions and flies into broad heavens. If men had greater principles they would have less difficulty in detail. If we were sounder in heart we should have fewer difficulties in the head. If our spirit were really baptised into the Spirit of Christ we should know a thousand things without learning them. We need not be drilled into fast days and feast days, and little arrangements and small disciplines and stipulations with ourselves which only show our feebleness: we should know what to do, by the inspired spirit, the refined and sensitive soul, that knows God afar off, and that feels the law, and therefore need not have it written.

The Apostle must, however, come back to reason with men who are frail of mind and uncertain in spirit; so he says, "But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother?" See the brother, not the sinner; see the brother, not the wanderer; see the man, rather than the criminal. The tendency of our minds, being immature, imperfect, unfurnished as to the higher qualities of soul, is to look upon circumstances, external conditions. The magistrate is in infinite haste to seize the criminal; perhaps it is well he should be so: the Lord, the Christ of God, the Saviour of the world, does not see the criminal; he sees the man, the woman, the child, the image of God, for who has eyes like Christ, who can see through the shell into the kernel, who can penetrate the environment and see the living soul?

What then are we to do? Paul answers "Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother's way." You do a great many things for the baby. That baby is the master of the household, in a certain sense and for a limited time; but if he remain a baby more than five or ten years you have a right to chastise him and tell him that his babyhood has ceased. So we cannot have this weak brother amongst us over long; he must be getting better by the prayer, the thought, the exhortation, and the example of those amongst whom he is living. If he continue to whine much longer he must be put in a room by himself, that he may admire his own shadow. Still, the Apostle will be patient if he can. He says there are some things which may be done with a good conscience, and may not be done with a good conscience. There are some amusements which you might enjoy, and yet if they make a man who is weaker than you are really soul-sorrowful; well, think of it: will it not be better to deny yourselves than to mortally offend that poor cripple? To that principle there is no answer. It is the principle of the Cross, it is the principle of self-sacrifice, it is the Divine principle of self-denial. If any man should say, The reason why I abstain from meat or vegetables or wine is that I am trying to help some other man to be a better man than he is, to that argument there is no reply; it is beneficent, it is grand, it is Divine. The Apostle Paul puts the whole case with inspired vividness and liberality. A thing may be good in itself, but another man is hurt by certain uses of it; then consider the man rather than consider yourself, and for his sake refrain from doing much which to yourselves would be perfectly innocent.

"Let not then your good be evil spoken of: for the kingdom of God is not meat and drink." The kingdom of God has nothing to do with externals. The kingdom of God is not measured by what a man abstains from, or what a man partakes of, or what a man's opinion is about casuistical questions: the kingdom of God is, like God himself, intensely, ineffably, infinitely spiritual.

"For meat destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are pure: but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence. It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak." Yet we must not pamper the weak man too much, or he will become weaker. We may touch even the vanity of weakness and make it intolerable, so that a man only needs to have a prejudice, when he knows that all the good men of the Church will acknowledge his prejudice and do as he wants them to do, while he is nursing this foolish prejudice in his foolish heart. Surely there must be some public aspect of this deference which is perfectly consistent with the larger liberty which men may enjoy in the absence of the weak man. There are some things you would not say before your child, yet you would not hesitate to say them when the child was absent; there are certain things you would never dream of doing in the nursery, but you would not hesitate to do them in the more public rooms of the house. There are certain things you would never allow the weak man to know that you even thought of. He has no right to be your master, to be the critic of the whole range of your life; and you have no need to call him in and say, Weak man, I want thee: I am thinking of a certain course of conduct, I am organising a policy of life: come and tell me what thou thinkest of it. Certainly not. It would be monstrous, irrational, intolerable. And yet the great principle of the Apostle remains the same royal, far-seeing in sagacity, all-saving in beneficence; the sum total of the meaning being this If by any means you can help a weak man to become a strong man do it: but if you are wasting your life, and the man becomes no stronger, then consider what is best to be done.

"Hast thou faith? Have it to thyself before God." This is the law of sacred privacy. Here is the sanctuary within which great liberty may be enjoyed. Hast thou faith? Talk it out with God; let God be the companion of all thy indulgences, and they will be all right; always have God in the sanctuary of thy confidence, and say to him, Lord, I can do this in thy presence; I could not do it in the presence of my weak brother. Even along this line of private and sacred liberty men must exercise sanctified reason. This applies to matters theological, though the Apostle did not intend such matters to be thought of in this connection. Hast thou a doubt? Have it to thyself. We do not want any man to stand in the Christian pulpit and tell us what he doubts about: we want him to tell us what he believes, and what he wants us to believe, and what he lives upon, from what fount he draws his immortality. Hast thou faith the larger faith, the faith that would be called heterodoxy by those whose ignorance enables them to be fluent? Have that larger faith to thyself before God. Dost thou see a new era coming for the Church? Do not name it yet, because many persons would not understand it. Dost thou see a larger inspiration, a nobler brotherhood, a sublimer millennium? Keep that faith to thyself before God: do not be wantonly defiant, do not trample down boundaries and limitations ruthlessly, but know that as sure as thy thought is true it will come to pass, yea, it will come quietly, quietly like the dawn: men will not know that the light has come until they see it on the mountain tops hastening down to the green valleys. Who ever heard the wheel of the sun grinding its way up into the orient? Who ever heard the blade of grass making a noise as it rose into the air and then filled the ear with the corn meant for the satisfaction of human hunger? Who ever saw himself grow? What noise do the stars make as they sparkle in the heavens? Many things come noiselessly; especially will this be the case with the kingdom of heaven. It cometh not with observation. Do not bluster about great liberties; they will come little by little, and the time will arrive when all we shall have to do will be to welcome men to the enjoyment of their freedom. This is the sanctuary of Christ's truth. These reconciliations and harmonies have been made possible by the Cross. The Apostle never ceases even in this reasoning to cite the example of Christ. It is by Christ men have liberty; by Christ men are restrained from the enjoyment of much liberty; by Christ men are enabled not to contemn the weak; by Christ the weak are restrained from criticising the strong; by Christ a man is taught what to eat, what to drink, what to take, what to let alone. If the Spirit of Christ be in a man, he will no longer have difficulties about the practical conduct of life; he will know and be persuaded, in the language of the Apostle, what to do, and how to do it, and he will do everything, great and small, in the presence of the all-judging Christ.

Prayer

Almighty God, thou has set us amidst great wonders; this moment a thousand men are dying, this moment a thousand men are being born into the world; there is a continual outgoing and incoming, and the Lord is Keeper of all. Yonder is the wedding feast, and here is the funeral ceremony; here there is great sorrow, and yonder there is naught but joy, loud, pure, dominant. We live in this world, so intermixed, so self-contradictory; thou hast put us here to be educated, chastened, ennobled. Watch over all the ministries of thine own creation, and adapt them to the fulfilling of thy purposes of love. May we be large hearted, tender in feeling, accessible to every honest petition of need and pain; may we answer the petitions of weakness in all the fulness of our strength. We bless thee for health and reason, for continued faculty, for force of character; we thank thee also for vows that are courageously borne, burdens that are bravely carried; we thank thee for all the ministry of education continually appealing to our lives. Let the sick-chamber draw thee into its sadness, O thou Healer of men. Hear the song of those who have great gladness, and who wish to praise thee as they had never praised thee before. Lead the blind by a way that they know not; show us the worthlessness of all men's inventions if they be not founded in the uprightness of God. Pity the little earth with continual tears; it is still thine; vagrant, it is still of the household of the stars; thou hast not set thy foot upon it and extinguished it, therefore the continuance of thy patience is itself an assurance that thou wilt bring all this ministry of sin and heartache and weariness to a blessed consummation. The Lord reigneth; we will abide in the tabernacle of the Almighty, and hide ourselves under the wings of his strength. The Lord help poor lives to struggle a day or two longer, and say unto them that by thy grace on the third day they shall be perfected. Amen.