United AND Unified

Recap The Greatest Commandments

We continue our series on the early church. Last week, we looked at our orders as Christians. In chapter 13, Paul tells them that they need to be subordinate to the state and they also need to love their neighbors. We looked at the idea that if we follow the two greatest commandments, then everything else will fall into place. If we love God with all our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls, then we are going to obey the first few of the Ten Commandments. Those commandments discuss our relationship with God and how we are to act toward Him. If we love Him more than anything, then nothing will come in between us and Him.

Paul encourages us to avoid entanglements, ensuring that others do not have a weird level of power over us. We shouldn’t owe anyone anything other than love. We owe everyone love, but that comes along with being a Christian. 1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.” Our main goal as believers is to love. This desire to love should naturally flow from us. We don’t do these things because we are trying to satisfy God and make Him happy. We don’t love out of obligation. This love should be free flowing from us. We follow the law not because we have fear of punishment. Instead, we do these things because they reflect who God is. They are His attributes. All that we are reading here, these are things that God Himself does. This characteristic of love is who He is. As His people, we should have that love too.

If we love our neighbors like we love ourselves, then we are going to love our neighbors correctly. When we love our neighbors as ourselves, then we won’t commit sins against other people. We won’t lie, we won’t cheat, we won’t steal, we won’t murder, we won’t covet. Do we like to be lied to? I am willing to bet we don’t. We don’t like it when people steal from us, we don’t like it when people murder. We don’t want any of that to happen to us, so when we love others, we won’t do the same to them.

I think a big issue is that we can fall into the trap of wanting to take it easy on ourselves while being harsh toward others. We want leniency, but then when we see someone else mess up or we feel that they have wronged us, we can get nasty and bitter toward the people we are called to love. Sadly, that’s part of human nature. What’s more is that these people will prop themselves up and act as if they are in fact Christian, while not acting in the manner He has called us to act. When people look at us as followers of Christ, they should not know us by our hatred or judgment or covetousness. They should know us by our love. That’s the point of putting on the armor of light. Our goal as believers is not to look like the rest of the world. Our goal is to reflect Jesus in everything we do. God sent Jesus here so that we could have true freedom from sinfulness and death. We should use that freedom to love and serve, not to continue living in the flesh.

Today we are going to keep moving along in Romans. We are almost done in this book and will be on to 2 Chronicles in the near future! If you have your Bibles, please turn them to Romans 14:1-12

Romans 14:1–12 CSB

Welcome anyone who is weak in faith, but don’t argue about disputed matters. One person believes he may eat anything, while one who is weak eats only vegetables. One who eats must not look down on one who does not eat, and one who does not eat must not judge one who does, because God has accepted him. Who are you to judge another’s household servant? Before his own Lord he stands or falls. And he will stand, because the Lord is able to make him stand. One person judges one day to be more important than another day. Someone else judges every day to be the same. Let each one be fully convinced in his own mind. Whoever observes the day, observes it for the honor of the Lord. Whoever eats, eats for the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; and whoever does not eat, it is for the Lord that he does not eat it, and he gives thanks to God. For none of us lives for himself, and no one dies for himself. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. Christ died and returned to life for this: that he might be Lord over both the dead and the living. But you, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, As I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow to me, and every tongue will give praise to God. So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.

Paul is getting to another issue within the Roman church. We have said before that these folks are comprised of Jewish and Gentile converts. They have been united in Christ, but they are not unified. That is a problem, because it winds up creating infighting. The fact is that there is a big enemy out there in the world that needs to be defeated. The church cannot go and fulfill the Great Commission if there is infighting within the group. It is possible to be united, but not being unified. One way to explain united but not unified is if you were to take two cats, tie them together by their tails, and hang them over a clothesline, you will see a perfect example of what it means to be joined, but not together. This group of people here in the Roman church are united, but they are not unified. They are fighting over the minutiae of what it means to be a faithful person. As a result, some are acting as stumbling blocks to believers in the church.

There are people in the church judging others based on what they think is right. Now, there is a huge difference between what we think is right and what God thinks is right. God is the creator of the universe, He is the author of salvation, He has given us His word to guide us on how we are supposed to live. We must continue to go back to the Bible and seek Him for guidance, not on what our preferences are or how we think people should be behaved. Our personal preference does not matter. What matters is God and what He has commanded.

In the early church, the issue was over small debatable things, such as what kind of food to eat and the observance of sacred days on the calendar. Because there is disparity in the ranks, judgment comes and it creates a problem within the Roman church. It’s silly because all of these things are gray zones. Yet, when we can get wrapped up in the axle on the gray zones, it makes the church ineffective because it is focusing on things that don’t really matter when it comes to salvation. If you attend the Bible study during the week, you will often hear me say something along the lines of “this is what my study has led me to” or “I don’t know exactly, but this is what I am thinking” and “at the end of the day, it is something we won’t know until we are joined up with Christ in eternity.” I have a list of questions I plan to ask if there is a question and answer time after the judgment seat.

These disputable matters are not a problem until they prevent moving forward. We have disputable matters in the church today. Just like the Roman church, we must remember that we should not be placing judgment on other brothers and sisters for the small disputable matters. There are several. I’m old enough to remember the debate on what was allowable on Sunday and what was not. I had a friend that was not allowed to do anything but go to church on Sunday since anything else could be considered work. Which meant that he could not go out and play baseball or football. He couldn’t even watch football at the house. I had a pastor buddy of mine that got in trouble with a church he pastored because he dared to mow the parsonage lawn on a Sunday. His simple response to that was, “Well, if I’m guilty of breaking the Sabbath, then no church members better be going out to eat on Sunday.” When asked why he responded that “You’re going out and supporting someone working on the Sabbath. So if I can’t do this then you shouldn’t do that.” Silly, right? It’s not a big deal as long as it isn’t slowing down forward progress. And that’s the danger. Some of these people are coming from a pious standpoint trying to say that they are doing the right thing. However, that is not their intent. Their intent is not on glorifying God. Instead, it is about glorifying self. They put on the clothing and act like they are moving the mission forward, but they are not. Jesus warns about this in Matthew 7:15–16 ““Be on your guard against false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravaging wolves. You’ll recognize them by their fruit. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes or figs from thistles?” They’ll come out and they will play the part, trying to blend in and make people think they are here to help, but instead, they are really just wolves trying to bring others down. How can we tell the difference between a wolf in sheep’s clothing and an actual sheep? It’s going to be in the fruit. What is that person producing?

Now that is not to say that we won’t always have disputable matters. What I am saying is that we should not be concerned about those disputable things. When we focus on the minutiae and begin fighting within the organization, it prevents forward progress. At the end of the day, these disputable matters are not what saves the lost. It is Jesus that does that.

The Roman church was in an interesting spot. If we think about it, they were in the process of learning how to do religion in a whole new way. The Jewish converts are now following this new way of following God and the Gentiles are learning a way to follow only one God.

The argument about food makes sense. This concern was coming from the Old Testament, specifically in dealing with the Levitical food ordnances and kosher food. If we read through Leviticus, there are plenty of animals that they are banned from eating. For instance, they were not supposed to eat fish without scales or shellfish. So no catfish or lobster or shrimp. All common things that we eat today. Why was that a problem back then? Well, they are bottom feeders. There was the good chance that these fish had eaten some kind of dead animal on the bottom of the ocean and then consuming them could contaminate the person eating it. Today we still worry about food borne illnesses, don’t we? Back in those days pigs were filthy. They were gross and ate garbage. These things were also banned from the kosher diet because if the meat was not prepared properly, it was going to infect people and cause them problems. There were these dietary restrictions set out to protect the people not withhold from them.

However, those standards change in the New Testament. A while back we went over the story where Peter has a dream in which all of these banned foods are on a sheet. Peter is told to get up, kill, and eat. Peter, being the good Israelite that he is, refuses, saying that he has not eaten anything to defile himself and he is not going to start now. After his second refusal we read in Acts 10:15 “Again, a second time, the voice said to him, “What God has made clean, do not call impure.”” Did you know that there are certain groups that interpret this Scripture to mean that Peter was being told to go and preach the gospel to the Gentiles. With that interpretation, this group maintains the Kosher diet. I was talking with a member of the youth about this a while back and he asked me if that was a problem. I explained that it is not a problem for Christians to maintain a Kosher diet. There really isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with a Christian that maintains a vegetarian or a vegan diet. The only time it becomes a problem is when the people practicing these things decide they are better Christians than others and cast judgment for those that don’t follow their ways.

That’s the mentality that Paul is writing against here. We have the folks that are not eating meat for whatever reason. It is most likely that they are not eating meat because there is the possibility that it was sacrificed to an idol or the blood was not completely drained from it. Frankly, I don’t know how much meat I would want to eat back then or even back in the early 1900s since it was hard to keep fresh without any refrigeration methods. Anyway, this group of people is doing what works for them. Paul has no problem with them holding this dietary practice. However, he has a real problem with the people looking down on these people.

Essentially Paul is saying “how dare you judge this person for doing what he or she feels necessary to maintain their faith.”

Now, Paul is not saying that these people should go and do whatever they want. Instead, he is saying that whatever spiritual behaviors they are maintaining for the Lord, giving thanks to Him and giving God the glory, these things are acceptable to Him. These people are not committing sin. Instead, they are doing good things trying to practice their faith in a tangible way that makes them feel closer to God. This group believes they can better give God glory by following a strict diet. We’ve talked before about Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. They were given the good food off the king’s table, but they ask not to eat from the king’s table. They believe it will be more beneficial and glorifying to God to only eat vegetables and drink water. These four Jewish men were not the only Jewish men to be conscripted for the king’s service. However, they did not share in the same ideas as Daniel and his three friends. From what we can tell, Daniel did not lay any judgment on those folks that are eating from the king’s table. I wonder how the folks that were eating from the king’s table felt about the four that did not. I can hear them now. “What’s wrong with them? Why won’t they eat this good food? If it’s good enough for the king, then it can’t be bad. Those guys must just have weak faith.” Of course, those four consistently demonstrate throughout the book of Daniel that they had incredibly strong faith. You all know one of my favorite speeches in the Bible is from Daniel’s friends when they are confronted by Nebuchadnezzar. They explain their faith in God. They know that God is strong to save and He can save them from the fiery furnace. Daniel 3:18 “But even if he does not rescue us, we want you as king to know that we will not serve your gods or worship the gold statue you set up.”” Even if God doesn’t save us, we are not going to bow down to you.

Which leads us to the last point that Paul brings up with the people here. Whether we live or die, we belong to the LORD. We are His no matter what this world throws at us. Since we belong to Him, then we should not judge one another or look down on one another. We should be quick to forgive, quick to help, not quick to judge or condemn. Us and the rest of the world will one day give account to God for how we lived our lives. That does not just include the believers, but one day everyone will give an account. You recognize the understanding that one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess. Paul quotes Isaiah 45:23 “By myself I have sworn; truth has gone from my mouth, a word that will not be revoked: Every knee will bow to me, every tongue will swear allegiance.” God is not just talking about the believers here, He is talking about every human being to ever walk the earth. Those that live far from the LORD and deny Him altogether will one day be confronted with His reality and His holiness.

So since we are all subject to God, believers and unbelievers alike, why would we be concerned about the judgment from others? Why would we be worried about how someone feels about us? We see a lot of that happening especially in social media, people post something, then someone disagrees with it, then the next thing you know they are in some kind of argument for everyone to see. Life is short, we don’t need to spend our time on the internet arguing with strangers. We also don’t need to be on there arguing and judging others.

Just as we should not be looking down on others, when others look down on us, we don’t need to worry about that either. That is not a problem that we have it is a problem that they have. We don’t need to be intimidated by these people and their thoughts about us. At the end of the day, we belong to the LORD. We should seek to make Him happy and keep His ordinances since we are going to stand in judgment before Him. As we walk this earth, there are going to be people that don’t like us for whatever reason. No need to fear, their opinion of us won’t persuade God’s opinion of us one way or the other. That’s why we have no need to fear people. Jesus explains in Matthew 10:28 “Don’t fear those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul; rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” No one can condemn us other than God. Just like no one can condemn us, we cannot condemn anyone else. It goes both ways. Our goal this day and every day is to get up and serve God to the best of our abilities. If we lay our heads down and night and proclaim what other people should have done or should be doing, we might want to recalibrate. Our goal can be to lay our heads down at the end of the day and be satisfied that we did what we could to serve Him and live for Him.

There is hope, though. It amazes me that there were all these issues in the Roman church with the infighting. Today we still have infighting, but the church universal continues to survive.