Romans 14:15

15. Grieved The grief which one Christian may be supposed to feel when he beholds the transgression of another.

Charitably According to the law of love, which requires the sacrifice of our own convenience and taste for the good of the souls of others.

Destroy not The grieved brother might be induced through disgust to leave the Christian communion, and so be lost. It was the strong brother’s duty if possible to retain him within the Christian circle, even for the very purpose of inspiring him with a purer, firmer grounding in Christian faith and morality.

This passage belongs to that large class of proof-texts which show that a Christian may totally apostatize from a true faith, and so be finally lost, by warning against that result as a confessedly and practically possible reality. Such texts require us to fear such a catastrophe as what not only may happen, but for aught we know has often happened. The customary reply to this is that these warnings are the means to prevent that catastrophe, and God’s grace will take care that this shall always be successful. But if God has predetermined that no Christian shall ever fall, the very means used to prevent the fall are falsehoods. God’s pre-determination eternally precedes the warning and falsifies it. But here the warning is not given to the Christian not to apostatize. It is given to the destroyer; it warns him not to make another person apostatize. It directs him to consider that result as sure from a certain course of his own. And so sure does the apostle feel that result to be, so practically inevitable, that he is ready in the case to eat no meat so long as he liveth. (1 Corinthians 8:13.) Surely his Roman and Corinthian readers would think it very strange if the apostle should add in a sub-tone, “But the case of a weak brother’s being destroyed is by God’s decree absolutely impossible!” All these warnings are at once neutralized when the Christian has been told, “Do not be alarmed; God has determined from all eternity that you shall never fall.”

For whom Christ died This proves to a demonstration that Christ’s death for a man is not incompatible with the man’s final destruction. It both proves that Christ died for all, and that all men will not necessarily be saved because Christ died for all.