Cheeseburgers At The Church Picnic

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Romans 14:13-23

13 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. 14 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. 15 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. 16 So do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil. 17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. 18 Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. 19 So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.

20 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. 21 It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. 22 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. 23 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.

 
 

Paul’s point in writing to this entire letter to the Romans is to introduce himself and his Gospel, and to address some of the divisions in the Roman church between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians. His message in today’s reading? Don’t do anything that makes it harder for fellow Christians to pursue Christ.

I wonder what contemporary debates might fall into that category today?

There were Jewish Christians who felt that faithfulness required them to continue to obey the Jewish kosher laws. Paul—Jewish by background—has come to understand that in Jesus all the food laws that separated Israel from the nations have been fulfilled. After the Resurrection, what separates the people of God is not keeping the Jewish dietary or ceremonial laws, but faith in Jesus.

BUT

Paul also knows that there is nothing wrong with the Jewish Christian practice of continuing to keep kosher, and he doesn’t want those Christians who do NOT keep kosher to scandalize the Jewish Christians by eating food in front of them that the Jewish Christians would consider unclean.

BRINGING CHEESEBURGERS TO THE CHURCH PICNIC

Imagine that I am Jewish by background, and you are Greek by background. We’ve both come to faith in Christ and are members in the Roman church. And let’s say that I am just really struggling with the idea that the Jesus-people don’t have to obey the food laws anymore—my background as a Jew taught me that how we eat is one of the defining marks of membership in God’s people, and it’s just TOO WEIRD AND OFF-PUTTING to think I don’t have to anymore. More than that, I feel somehow wrong if I eat non-kosher.

If you show up at the church picnic with a basket of cheeseburgers and start chowing down right in front of me, it is really going to be hard for me to take. It will affect my walk with God.

So, Paul tells the Roman Christians who do NOT keep kosher that if they mess with someone’s faith, they are doing wrong. Ultimately, the Kingdom of God is more important than what you eat or drink. Yes, of course you are not WRONG to eat a cheeseburger, but if you do it in front of me knowing that it is an issue for me, what you are doing is actually hindering God’s work in me:

20 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. 21 It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. 22 The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God [Romans 14:20–22].

22 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. 23 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 [Romans 14:22–23].

What do these verses mean? I found this helpful:

In contrast to the Christian who acts from conviction is the weak Christian “who has doubts” or “who wavers.” The doubts of such Christians arise from the fact that they do not have a strong enough faith to believe that they can ignore the ritual elements of the OT law. Doubters such as this, Paul says, are “condemned” when they eat. This is not simply a subjective self-condemnation; as the reference to it later in the verse makes clear, Paul refers to God’s disapproval of such an act. Condemnation comes not because of the eating itself; as Paul has already explained (vv. 14, 20), eating anything one wants is quite all right for the believer. Rather, what brings God’s condemnation is eating when one does not have the faith to believe that it is right to do it. This, Paul claims, is “sin.” Why? Because, Paul goes on to explain, “everything that is not out of faith is sin.” Paul here asserts a general theological principle. But it is necessary to describe accurately just what that principle is…. Paul claims that any act that does not arise from a conviction rooted in one’s faith in Christ is sinful. For a Christian not a single decision and action can be good which he does not think he can justify on the ground of his Christian conviction and his liberty before God in Christ. Violation of the dictates of the conscience, even when the conscience does not conform perfectly with God’s will, is sinful. And we must remember that Paul cites this theological point to buttress his exhortation of the strong. The strong, he is suggesting, should not force the weak to eat meat, or drink wine, or ignore the Sabbath, when the weak are not yet convinced that their faith in Christ allows them to do so. For to do so would be to force them into sin, to put a stumbling block in their way (see vv. 13, 20-21). First, their faith must be strengthened, their consciences enlightened; and then they can follow the strong in exercising Christian liberty together. —Douglas Moo

What can you do this Thanksgiving week to build up the faith of someone else?

 

The "Weak" and the "Strong"

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Romans 14:1-12

14 As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. 2 One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. 3 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. 4 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.

5 One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 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. 7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 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. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

10 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; 11 for it is written,

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

12 So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.

 
 

Who are the “weak” and who are the “strong?”

Remember that Paul is a pastor as well as a church planter, and he’s writing to real people in a real church in Rome. These people have divisions and difficulties, and Paul is writing to help them live fully into Christ.

At the time Paul is writing, the church in Rome is divided—there are Jewish Christians and there are Gentile Christians, and how they worship and live their lives is influenced by their relationship to the Mosaic Law (the Old Testament food laws).

The group Paul calls the “weak” are the Jewish Christians who still follow the Mosaic Laws and who are really troubled by the Gentile Christian practice of not following the Mosaic Laws. These Jewish Christians are passing judgment on the Gentile Christians who do not keep kosher. The reason Paul calls them the “weak” is because their conscience is seriously troubled by the thought of no longer needing to follow the Mosaic Law.

The Mosaic Law was necessary before Jesus as a sign of the Old Covenant—God asked His people to keep kosher as a way of showing their commitment to the covenant and membership in His people.

But, after the Resurrection, membership in God’s people is not defined by the Mosaic Law, but by faith. The problem is that for some of the Jewish Christians, this is really hard for them to mentally accept—it’s a huge change from how they were brought up.

1 As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. 2 One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. 3 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. 4 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 [Romans 14:1–4].

Paul wants the Gentile Christians to be understanding of the Jewish Christians who are scandalized by the fact that Christians no longer have to follow the Mosaic dietary and ceremonial laws. He reminds them that both the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians serve the same Lord, and so on these matters Paul reminds the Roman Christians that each person will have to stand in their conscience before Jesus, and that the Lord is with them.

5 One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 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. 7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 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. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

10 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; 11 for it is written,

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

12 So then each of us will give an account of himself to God [Romans 14:5–12].

In the same way that the Jewish Christians—due to their upbringings—observed certain Jewish dietary laws differently than did the Gentile Christians, so also they observed Jewish Old Testament holidays and sabbaths differently than did the Gentile Christians; Paul reminds them that it all belongs to God, and each Christian is going to have to stand before God.

How do you know the difference between small issues—over which Christians can come to different opinions in good faith—and big issues—about which Christians must be united? The short, self-serving answer: reading and studying Paul’s Letter to the Romans would be a good start! The more we allow Romans to transform our thoughts, the more we will better be able to see the difference between the big issues over which there can be no compromise, and the small issues where we can agree to disagree.

This is why I want Asbury to be a Bible-reading church—so we will be able to discern God’s will for us and know what the big issues are we must hold onto no matter the cost.

Let me close with what might seem like a silly example, but one I feel could be helpful to us at Asbury.

Every Sunday morning, we have two main services in our Sanctuary:

  • A 9:00 AM “traditional” service

  • An 11:00 AM “modern” service

(We also have two much smaller services in our chapel—Thursdays at 6 PM and Sundays at 8 AM. Together they account for only about 13% of our total average weekly attendance.)

I have found that people at Asbury make value judgments on those who attend either the traditional or modern services, and I don’t think this sort of attitude is helpful. In fact, I think it is harmful for the unity of the body at Asbury. I think we can all agree that musical preference is not a moral issue—you may believe that this form or that form of music is aesthetically and spiritually superior, but it’s not immoral for other people to prefer to worship in a different style.

You may very well be correct in your judgment that X style is superior to Y style. But when it comes to music—and much else in our church—let us beware that we let our preferences cause us to become puffed up with pride.

A small example, but an important one, I think.

P.S. I think 14:7-8 are just beautiful:

7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 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 [Romans 14:7–8].