Romans 14

Romans — Steve Gregg

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Romans 14

RomansSteve Gregg

The Biblical chapter of Romans 14 addresses the issues of differing beliefs and practices within the Christian church. It highlights the importance of respecting others' convictions and following one's own conscience. The text emphasizes that Christians should live to please God and not judge one another based on personal practices. Moreover, it encourages believers to prioritize love and unity, promoting peace and edification within the church.

Transcript

Let's turn now to Romans chapter 14. In chapters 12 and 13, Paul was talking about practical ramifications of Christian doctrine. He'd been talking about the theology in the first 11 chapters, and then he began to expound on practical ramifications of that theology in our lives.

Chapters 12 and 13 covered quite a few important areas of Christian conduct. In fact, there's not very many categories that aren't addressed in this section. And we come to chapter 14 where there's a very specific issue of Christian conduct which has to do with differences of convictions between different parts of the body of Christ.

And I'm of the opinion he means the Jewish and the Gentile portions. Now, he doesn't specify the Jews and the Gentiles here, but he does talk about differences of convictions which he identifies as the very kind that we would expect to find between the Jewish and the Gentile sectors in the church. And we know that much of the book up to this point has been addressing that concern about the unity between those two parts of the church, that the Jews who had been banished from Rome in 49 by Claudius had come back after five years' absence and found the church, of course, having developed for five years without Jewish influence, but the Jews come back with their Jewish convictions, and now we've got this cultural divide in the church which seems to have involved two problems, an attitude on the part of the Jews and an attitude on the part of the Gentiles.

And most of the early part of the book seems to be rebuking the Jews for their elitism and their suggestion that they are better than Gentiles because of their having the law and being circumcised and all those things. Paul has given them a pretty rough time in some of those early chapters. And these latter chapters, although they address the issue, I think, between the Jews and the Gentiles in the church, they perhaps more address the Gentile attitude, which, of course, needs to be addressed as well.

Even back in chapter 11, there was a suggestion that Gentiles might be looking down on the Jews a little bit because according to their theology, and correctly so, unbelieving Jewish branches have been broken off the tree and Gentile branches have been grafted in their place. This could give the impression, if it's not looked at carefully enough, that God has done with the Jews and the Gentiles have come in to replace the Jews. This is not what the Bible teaches.

Gentiles don't replace the Jews, but believing Gentiles have replaced the unbelieving Jews on the tree. And believing Jews are still there. But the point here is Paul anticipates some Gentiles being a little bit smug about being added to the tree where the Jews have been removed.

In chapter 11, verse 19, he says, You will say then branches were broken off that I might be grafted in. This is a Gentile's attitude. Well said, because of unbelief they were broken off and you stand by faith, but do not be haughty, but fear.

For if God did not spare the natural branches, He may not spare you either. So the point he makes here is that Gentiles now need to be careful about their smugness. There was a smugness on the part of the Jews that had to be corrected in the early chapters of Romans.

And now we need to make sure that the Gentiles are not stepping into that error, thinking that they're the better ones now. And so we find in chapter 14 a discussion about the different convictions between different Christians in the Church of Rome. And they, in my opinion, they look like the kinds of differences that Jews and Gentiles might have culturally.

And although both sides are addressed, and Paul's really going to say let everyone be fully persuaded in his own mind, which really is an address to both sides. Don't criticize the other side. It looks to me like this chapter is for the most part addressed to the Gentile with the exhortation that they have to receive people whose convictions are more uptight than theirs.

And certainly the Gentiles would see the Jews as more uptight. The Jews would be restraining their diet. The Jews would be pushing for no working on certain days, their holy days and things like that.

That's their culture. That's their religious convictions they had before they were Christians, and they no doubt brought some of those sensitivities with them into their Christian life. The Gentiles didn't have those sensitivities, and so they kind of didn't respect the unnecessary restriction that some were placing on themselves.

And Paul has to tell those who are not thus restricted in their conscience not to despise those who are, and those who are restricted not to judge those who are not. You see, the ones who are more legalistic would tend to judge those who don't keep the same rules. The ones who are less legalistic would look down on the legalists as not really understanding properly the gospel and the grace of God and so forth.

Paul, after all, has spent a lot of time correcting that Jewish elitism, and so his Gentile readers may very well be tracking with him to the point where they're really looking down on the Jews who still have these uptight convictions, these Jewish convictions. And Paul has to address them, no, you are the ones who have the stronger conscience. The ones who are more restricted are the ones who have the weaker conscience.

And he says, receive one who is weak in the faith, not to dispute over doubtful things. For one believes he may eat all things. That'd be Gentiles, generally speaking.

But he who is weak eats only vegetables. Now, the Jewish convictions did not require vegetarianism, but they did require strict restrictions on the kind of meat they would eat. And in a Gentile land like Italy, they often were not 100% sure where the source was of the meat that they were buying.

In many cases, the meat in the marketplace had been remnants of animals that were sacrificed to idols in the temples of that city. Just as in Jerusalem, thousands and thousands of bulls and sheep and goats would be sacrificed in the temple, the priests couldn't eat them all. Likewise, in the pagan lands, they sacrificed lots of animals to their gods too, but the priests in the temple couldn't eat them all, and so the extra meat was sold to make profit for the temple, sold in the regular meat market.

Now, a Jew wouldn't want to eat any meat that was from that source because it had been offered to idols. And so, they were often very cautious about buying any meat in the meat market. In addition to that, even kosher meat, or I should say otherwise kosher meat, meat that had not been offered to idols and that was of the right kind of animals and so forth, might not have been drained of blood adequately for the Jew.

And therefore, it was perhaps difficult for the Jewish person who was very conscientious about all the dietary restrictions. He's not sure he can really buy meat and eat it. It's not that he's against eating meat per se, but just to play it safe, he might just stick with vegetables because there weren't any vegetables that were unclean under the law, only certain meat.

And so, Paul seems to describe people who are very strict and will eat only vegetables as opposed to some who will eat anything. He says, let not him who eats, and that would be the person less restricted in his diet obviously, let him not despise those who don't eat. The tendency of the libertine conscience is to look down on the legalistic conscience as if it is immature, as if it is uptight, as if it's not spiritual.

And frankly, Paul seems to agree somewhat with that libertine idea because he refers to those who are more restricted as weak in their conscience. It's not a sin to have certain convictions that are unnecessary, but it is weak. That is, you don't have the liberty, you don't have the strength of understanding of the faith.

Your faith is weak, and therefore you still feel like you have to keep certain rules that God doesn't require you in fact to keep. In our own day, in modern times, there might be any number of rules like that that Christians might feel they have to keep because of whatever their upbringing, especially their denominational issues. Certain denominations are against drinking any alcohol.

Some denominations are completely against any divorce for any cause. Some are against women wearing makeup or jewelry or anything other than dresses. I mean, there's these different convictions that different denominations have, and people who are raised in those denominations would have perhaps a sensitive conscience about those things if they bought into those rules growing up, and now they've become real Christians.

You can tell them, well, God doesn't require you to do that if you're a woman. You can wear pants. Well, maybe they can, but they still feel really awkward doing it because they've been conditioned all their life to think that's not appropriate.

Same thing with drinking alcohol or something like that, smoking cigarettes. Many Christians smoke cigarettes without conviction, but there are some who it would be the ultimate sin for them to smoke cigarettes in their denomination. And so with Jews, they were raised religiously restricted in their conscience.

Now they're Christians. You can tell them they have liberty. You can tell them they can eat anything they want to, but really when it comes to looking at a plate of pork, they're thinking, I don't think so.

I just don't, that really, I don't feel good about that. My conscience won't let me do that. I've got a sensitive conscience, a weak conscience.

Weak in this case, I think, meaning brittle, hypersensitive, easily injured. Whereas a person who allows himself a lot of liberty in things that they really have legitimate liberty in, that person's conscience is not fragile. That person's conscience is strong.

So Paul uses the term strong and weak, as we shall see, to speak of people who are at liberty or not at liberty to do certain things, respectively. The ones who allow themselves to do things that are legitimate and don't have unnecessary conscience restrictions, those are the ones who are strong. They're not fragile.

The ones who have restrictions in their conscience that are not really required by Christianity, but they feel them anyway and they have to observe them, they have a weak conscience. That's how Paul uses the term. So he says in verse 2 there, which we read, one believes he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats only vegetables.

Now the exhortation of verse 1 is receive the one who is weak in the faith. So it's addressed to probably the Gentiles who don't have the restrictions in their diet and saying you need to not exclude these people as if they're second class Christians just because they can't bring themselves to eat everything you can bring yourself to eat. You've got to respect their convictions.

Their convictions may be man-made. They may not be required by God, but it's not sinful for them. Certainly God doesn't require them to eat meat.

So if they don't want to, give them a break. There's liberty here. He says who are you to judge another's servant, verse 4. Actually I should go back to verse 3. Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats, for God has received him.

God has received both of these people because they're in Christ. But the one who is more strict is likely to judge the one who is behaving more, well, more freely. And the one who behaves more freely might resent and look down on the one who's trying to restrict him unnecessarily.

And so he says listen, there's these two different types of conscience in the church. You've just got to receive them. God receives them.

And he says who are you to judge another's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed he will be made to stand for God is able to make him stand. Another example, one person esteems one day above another.

That's almost certainly the Jewish Christian who would tend to be wanting to keep the Sabbath probably at least, possibly some of the other holy days. Another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind.

He who observes the day observes it to the Lord. He who does not observe the day to the Lord, he does not observe it. He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks.

And he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and he gives God thanks. Now what he's saying is all these people, if they're Christians, are doing what they're doing toward the Lord. It's their service toward God.

It's their worship toward the Lord. It's to the Lord that this person offers his abstinence, abstinence from meat. He thinks he should.

He thinks that pleases the Lord. He does that unto the Lord. The other man who gives God thanks for everything thinks, I should eat everything and just give God thanks for it.

And that agrees really with what Paul told Timothy, where he talked about the time will come when people command you to abstain from meat, which God has given to us all to enjoy and so forth. That's in 1 Timothy chapter 4. In 1 Timothy 4, 1, Paul says, now the Spirit speaks expressly that in the latter times, some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good.

Nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. So Paul said, there's no animal that we can't eat. Now there's animals that the Jewish religion wouldn't let you eat, but that's not the case anymore.

In Colossians 2, 16, Paul said, let no one judge you concerning food and drink. Those were shadows, he said. There's no, Paul was on the side of those who felt they could eat everything.

Well, Jesus had spoken to the disciples more than once about this. On one occasion in Mark 7, with its parallel in Matthew 15, Jesus had said, it's not what goes into a man's mouth that defiles him. It's what comes out of his mouth.

In Mark 7, where Jesus makes that comment, Mark makes the comment, thus he cleansed all foods. By saying what goes into your mouth can't defile you, that is very contrary to Jewish thinking. A Jew thought you could definitely be defiled by eating unclean food.

Jesus said, not so. All foods are now clean. And when Peter was on the housetop in Joppa and he had this vision, Jesus spoke to him and said, see all these unclean animals, kill and eat them.

And Peter said, I don't eat unclean things, Lord. He said, well, don't you call unclean what I've cleansed. Now of course, this secondary meaning was, and the primary reason for the vision was the Gentiles were regarded as unclean and God was cleansing them and Peter as a Jew shouldn't look down on them.

But it was in fact animals, unclean animals that Jesus was telling him to kill and eat. And when Peter objected, he said, I have cleansed it. Jesus made it very clear that animals are not unclean in themselves.

And Paul said the same thing. He said even false teachers would come forbidding people to eat meats that God has commanded or not commanded, but allowed us to eat. Every creature of God is good if it's received with thanksgiving.

Now that's what Paul says here in Romans 14, the man who eats the food that the other man would not eat is doing it to the Lord and he gives God thanks. He receives it with thanksgiving and he rejoices in God. God is worshiped in his thankful eating of the gifts of God, which includes food that Jews wouldn't eat.

Likewise, the one who keeps a special day, he keeps it to the Lord. That is his conscience toward God causes him to keep one day holy as an offering to the Lord. The man who keeps every day alike is offering every day to the Lord.

Whichever practice is being followed is being done by a person with reference to their conscience toward God and God receives that. God's looking at their conscience. He doesn't care as much about how much you restrict your diet or your activities on certain days as he cares about your heart.

So Paul says just let everyone be fully persuaded in his own mind. Now this whole section that we just read certainly enters into the debate that exists in a big way in the modern evangelical church over, for example, Sabbath keeping or keeping the Jewish festivals. We live at a time where an increasing number of evangelicals are seeing some need or at least some merit in following Jewish holidays and there's always been those like the Seventh-day Adventists who believe that keeping the Sabbath on Saturday and not working on the Sabbath like the Jews, that this is something Christians ought to follow.

In the latter case, it's because it's in the Ten Commandments. But in the case of the Hebrew Roots Movement, they're just thinking, you know, all these Jewish laws, you can be holier if you're more Jewish, frankly. You can be holier if you follow the Hebrew customs more.

And so they want to keep all these holy days. Now in answer to that, we have Paul saying one man esteems one day above another, another man esteems every day alike. Let everyone be fully persuaded in his own mind.

In other words, you have liberty to go either way, whichever your conscience says. When this is quoted to, for example, Seventh-day Adventists and other Sabbath keepers, they say, well, Paul's not talking about the Sabbath. When he says one man esteems one day above another, and that's not necessary.

He's talking about all holy days except the Sabbath because certainly the Sabbath is in the Ten Commandments. And if the Sabbath is in the Ten Commandments, we have to obey it, they say. But Paul doesn't say that Sabbath is an exception to this general principle.

He said one man esteems a day above another. The most likely understanding of that would be a Sabbath day, maybe other days too. But he says one day above another, and that's most likely the Sabbath.

In any case, the opposite view, which is also permitted, is to esteem every day alike. And regardless which days we are thinking of as being observed by the more conscientious Jew, if you keep every day alike, you're not keeping a Sabbath. So, the ones who were not keeping a special day, whatever day we want to make it, were ones who were not keeping any day special.

They were keeping every day alike, and this was okay. Now, it shows us that the Sabbath is in a different category than the moral laws in the Ten Commandments because laws like you shall not murder or commit adultery or steal or bear false witness are definitely moral in character. And if Paul had known of some Christians who were saying it's okay to murder, and others say, no, I don't think so, he wouldn't say, well, let everyone be fully persuaded in his own mind about that.

You know, there isn't liberty about murder. There isn't liberty about adultery. Why? These are moral issues.

Morality is the same in all ages. It's always wrong to murder. It's always wrong to commit adultery.

It's always wrong to steal. It doesn't matter which covenant God has with His people in all cultures at all times. Morality is morality.

But keeping the Sabbath is a special command which in the book of Exodus in chapter 31, God said it was a special sign between Himself and Israel of the covenant He had with them. That covenant isn't around anymore. That's been replaced by a new covenant.

If they want to still keep the Sabbath, they may do so, but it's not part of what's required anymore. And those who keep every day alike, not keeping any day special, are within their rights. Paul couldn't say one man forbids adultery.

Another man permits adultery. Let everyone be fully persuaded in his own mind. Of course, Paul couldn't say that.

But if one man keeps special holy days, including Sabbath, another man doesn't keep any holy days, including Sabbath, well, let everyone be fully persuaded in his own mind. It makes it clear that to Paul's mind, Sabbath keeping is not one of the requirements of the Christian life. You can keep it if you want to.

But anybody who says we must is not taking Paul seriously here. And frankly, that is the case with many in the Hebrew Roots movement. They don't take Paul very seriously and they're not ashamed of it.

They think Paul led the church astray because we should have been keeping all these Jewish laws all this time and Paul was really a trouble to the church because he tended to be too libertine. One has to ask, why would Paul be so libertine? He was a Pharisee before he was a Christian, a very non-libertine individual, temperamentally, very legalistic. What is it that made him such a libertine if in fact it wasn't Jesus? It certainly isn't a hangover from his past Jewishness.

If that were the case, he'd be on the side of the most legalistic ones. But he seems to favor liberty in areas where the average Jew would not, including the average Jewish Christian apparently in Rome. So Paul says, don't criticize each other about things like this because they're doing it unto the Lord.

Now, he's not saying we could do everything conceivable unto the Lord. You can't go around and be a serial killer unto the Lord. You can't be a prostitute unto the Lord.

You can't be a drug dealer unto the Lord. Not everything is there liberty in, but in things ceremonial, restrictions on diet, keeping special days, those are ceremonial issues. They're not moral issues.

Moral issues, Paul never granted that kind of flexibility about. Paul is very strong on moral issues. When he lists certain sins, for example, in Galatians 5 or 1 Corinthians 6, 9 and 10, he lists a whole wreath of sins and he says, those who do these things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

There's not liberty in all areas, but there is in areas that are mere ceremonial issues. So Paul says there needs to be a ceasing of this criticism between the two. He says, for none of us lives to himself and no one dies to himself, for if we live, we live to the Lord.

If we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. Now, he's saying essentially people who do things to the Lord, unto the Lord, that's between them and God.

We don't live to ourselves. We don't do what we want to do just with our own interests in mind. We have the Lord's interests in mind.

And if what we do is going to stumble somebody else, that goes against the Lord's interests as Paul is going to make clear here in the following verses. We are living to the Lord. We're not living to ourselves.

We don't belong to ourselves. We've been bought with a price. And therefore, everything we do is to be for the Lord.

And so you want to eat? Well, he's going to say you can. You have liberty. But if you're going to stumble others by what you eat, then you shouldn't.

You do have liberty before God, but maybe not in the sight of all people. And if someone's going to really stumble by what you do, it's a loving thing for you to restrain yourself, to actually restrict your own liberty. And that's where he's moving in this discussion now.

He's obviously, in those words, addressing the person who's got the more flexible conscience, in all likelihood, the Gentile in the church. He's flexible. He doesn't have to keep holy days.

He can eat anything he wants to. But he'd better be aware of exercising his liberty in a way that will stumble his Jewish brother or any other brother for that matter. The point here is that now Paul's talking to the libertine conscience and telling him that they should, out of love, restrict their behavior in certain circumstances, out of consideration for other Christians.

Now, he said, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's, in verse 8. In verse 9 he says, For to this end Christ died and rose and lived again, that he might be the Lord both of the dead and the living. This is a side comment. But since Jesus has been alive, he is the Lord of the living.

Since he's been dead, he's been in that realm too. He's the Lord of that realm as well. And therefore, whether we live or die, whatever realm we're in, whether we're still on earth or whether we've died, he's still the Lord of all.

We don't answer to others. We answer to him. Who are you to judge another man's servant, Paul says.

And so, allowing people to differ. And this is, of course, Paul's policy that differs from many in the modern church. The reason there are 43,000 denominations right now is because in each case, a denomination grew out of a previous group.

You don't have a denomination forming just by someone getting saved and starting their own church. They always come out of a previous group. Why do they come out? Well, because they differ on something.

They might think they should keep a Saturday Sabbath. They might think they should abstain from something that the group they're in doesn't agree with them that they should abstain from. They might have a slightly different doctrinal issue on something that hardly matters, but it matters to them.

And so, they say, well, you know, if you don't agree with me, then I guess I'll leave you and associate with the people who do agree with me. And you then can be left with the people who agree with you. So, we now have a new group.

The group that is left holds the old convictions. The group that is new has modified their convictions and is seeking out those who agree with them. However, that new group will also become the spawn of a new denomination eventually because not everyone in that group is going to always agree.

And as soon as someone disagrees, there's already a precedent. You disagree, you leave. And therefore, they'll go off and start another denomination.

And it keeps going, splintering like that. So, there's now literally 43,000 denominations in the world. And this is the opposite of what Jesus said.

I pray that they might be one. No, we are 400. I mean, we're 43,000.

We're not one. But Paul's answer was, if you disagree, don't start a new denomination. Just let everyone be persuaded in their own mind.

Can't you just kind of get along? Can't you disagree without being threatened or threatening? You see, when people are identified not with Christ or his body, as they should be, but rather with their own special doctrinal convictions, well then, someone who doesn't have those convictions and claims to be a good Christian is threatening. Because I identify myself as a good Christian because of my special convictions. That person says they're a good Christian and they don't have my convictions.

That challenges my mindset that my convictions are what make me a good Christian. I have to put them out of my sight. I have to pretend like they may not be really good Christians after all because my special convictions are what make me a superior Christian.

And it's pride. It's finding identity in your opinion rather than in Christ. It's this total shift from the proper center.

And the church has shifted to that center or to a new center a long, long time ago. The reason the Reformation took place is because the church had shifted and they said, okay, we have to have the right opinions or we can't be the same church. Luther says, well, I have a different opinion than you.

They said, you have to be out of our church then. Start your own church. And that mentality has continued on since the Reformation in the Protestant world.

It is the idea that you have to agree if you're going to be together. In fact, they even say, doesn't the scripture say, can two walk together unless they are agreed in the book of Amos? Can two walk together unless they're agreed? Therefore, we don't agree. So let's not walk together.

Let's walk separately. Let's go start your own group. I've had many pastors quote that to me.

They don't want me to stay in their church because of some difference of opinion. And then they say, well, the Bible says two can't walk together unless they're agreed. What about every detail? Do we have to have the same favorite ice cream flavored? And if we don't agree, we have to start a new denomination.

What do we have to agree on in order to walk together? We have to agree on who the Lord is, because if we're both following him, we can walk together. If we agree on who it is we're following, we don't have to have every opinion the same on everything. You might say tomato and I say tomato.

So let's, we don't agree. So let's start a new denomination. It's absurd.

Yes, we can't walk together unless we agree on whatever it is that defines our walk. But if what defines our walk is we are followers of Jesus, then we can disagree out on a lot of lesser things and still walk together and must. And that's what Paul's saying in the church of Rome.

Some didn't agree about whether they should keep special days, whether they could eat all things or not. There were disagreements. He doesn't say, well, it's, this is causing division.

You guys can't walk together. So you guys started a Jewish church over there and a Gentile church over there. We'll have more peace.

No, he says, you stay together and have peace. You just give freedom to each other. You let everyone be fully persuaded.

So I respect the fact that each of you in his own heart is serving the Lord according to his conscience. And that's what makes you Christians. That's what makes you one, not, not these peripheral practices and convictions.

It's being a Christian that determines whether you should be together. And you should be because you're all doing this unto the Lord. He's the Lord of the dead and the living of all people.

In other words, and if he's your Lord and he's that other person's Lord, then you must walk together and give liberty to each other and love each other despite differences. Verse 10, but why do you judge your brother? Or why do you show contempt for your brother? Now this is addressing both sides because the legalist judges and their libertine shows contempt. The legalist is judging their brother.

The libertine is despising or showing contempt to their brother. Both are rebuked here. For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

That is, I'm not going to stand before the judgment seat of you. When you, when I stand before God, I'm not going to look up and see you sitting there next to Jesus, helping Jesus decide whether I'm okay or not. You're not going to be my judge.

He says, we're all going to stand before one judge Christ. And therefore it's him that we have to please not each other. We'll all stand before the judgment seat of Christ for it is written as I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God.

This verse is a little less familiar to us than Philippians where the same verse is quoted. It's from Isaiah chapter 45 and verse 23. Isaiah 45, 23, God says, as I live, every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God.

Paul modifies this as you probably know in Philippians chapter two, where he says, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. He's still alluding to the same passage in Isaiah 45, 23. But the point here is, I think in Philippians, what he's saying, he's saying Jesus humbled himself and therefore God exalts him and has left no one out of those who must honor him.

He is above all and every single knee and every time is going to bow and respect him. Here he's making a slightly different point from it. The emphasis of this quotation from the same verse in Isaiah is the me part.

Every knee is going to bow to me, not to each other. We're going to stand before God and kneel before him and confess to him, not to each other. We answer to him.

We'll stand before his judgment seat, not another. So then each of us will give account of himself to God. As a standalone verse that can be used to sort of, you know, give people some fear if they are doing the wrong thing and tell them, hey, you're going to have to answer to God for that.

And that's true. But the emphasis in his quotation here is not that you need to be afraid because you're going to stand before God, but rather it is God that you're going to stand before and the same God that every Christian and every person is going to stand before. And therefore we don't answer to other Christians, we answer to God.

Now, it's very important to see this. We'll give account of ourselves to God. Well, what does this say about then accountability in the church? It's a very common thing to talk about the need for accountability.

And in many cases when that term is used, it usually means an institutional accountability, sort of a flow chart kind of accountability. You answer to this person, they answer to that person, they answer to that person, they answer to the person above them. It's like this flow chart of authority.

You answer and you're accountable to somebody who's your supervisor in the faith. And sometimes this has gotten to be extremely complex and extremely legalistic as it was in the shepherding movement, for example, in the 1970s where there was a group of leaders in Florida that had men who were under them in different parts of the country who answered to them, and under them were pastors in various churches in their areas, and under the pastors were under shepherds who had small groups, they were small group leaders, and under them was every person in the church, and everyone had to answer to their under shepherd who answered to the pastor who answered to the district guy who answered to the guys in Florida. And it was like a flow chart of authority and everyone had to answer to somebody.

And if you weren't in this matrix of authority and submission, you were unaccountable. You were a lone ranger. This is a term they love to use.

A lone ranger. You're not answerable to anybody. You're just out on your own.

You're a rebel. And rebellion is a sin of witchcraft, they said. So that being so, if you're not accountable properly in a matrix of authority in an institutionalized way, then you're not okay.

Every Christian needs to get into one of these structures. Some years after the shepherding movement was long gone, many of the attitudes still continue. In fact, they still continue to this day.

Many people say, well, who's your covering? What church are you belonging to? Who's got you covered? Covered means who are you accountable to? Who's the authority in your spiritual life? Who's your pastor, your elder, and so forth? Back in the 90s when I was running the school in Oregon, I hadn't played Christian music for a long time. I had put that aside for to just teach. But somebody called attention to my mind that someone in the area in Portland, an area where we were near, was trying to gather Christian musicians into sort of a group to book them to play in churches and coffeehouses and stuff.

And they were asking for Christian musicians to get on their list. And I thought, well, I've got weekends free sometimes. I could get back into that.

I'd done it years earlier, but I hadn't done it for a while. So I contact these people, and they sent me an application to be part of their list. And part of the application was, who's your pastor? Well, it so happened I'd left a church about a year earlier and had been visiting around looking for other churches but hadn't found one, so I didn't have a current pastor.

So I gave the name of a man who'd been my pastor before I was in Oregon, in Santa Cruz, California, who's the last pastor I really had a lot of respect for in my life. And I sent the application back, and they called me. They said, there's a bit of a problem with your application.

I said, what's the problem? They said, well, you list as your pastor someone who's pastoring in Santa Cruz, California. You live in Oregon. I said, yeah, why is that a problem? And they said, well, it doesn't seem like you could be very accountable to him if he's in Santa Cruz.

I said, oh, well, we've known each other for years. He's, you know, we keep track of each other. You know, we're pretty accountable.

They said, no, you need to be accountable to someone in a local church in your area. And I said, well, why would that be? And they said, because we just require you to be in a proper structure of accountability. I said, well, the problem is I'm between churches in that respect, but I do run a school, and we do have a board of directors, and they're spiritual men, and I'm accountable to them.

Also, I'm in fellowship every day in the school. We have meals together, pray together, have classes together every day of the week, sort of like the early church in Acts chapter 2. We were continuing daily and breaking bread and prayers and fellowship and teaching. And I said, isn't that a good enough church to be part of? And they said, no, that's not a church.

That's a parachurch. And I said, I'm kind of like, in a way, sort of like the pastor of this group. You know, I mean, there's, apart from the board of directors, there's no one that I'm really accountable to.

And they said, well, you have to be accountable to a pastor and some elders somewhere. And I said, does it matter who they are to you? They said, no. I said, do you mean to say that I could go to the biggest church in town and sit in the back and go there regularly, and the pastor might not even know my name, and you'd say I'm adequately accountable because I'm in a institutional church? They said, yeah.

And I said, well, I guess we won't be working together because I don't see accountability that way. I don't believe that Jesus set up an organizational accountability. Who was Paul accountable to? The church in Antioch that he visited once every three or four or five years? You know, they're the ones who sent him out.

He wasn't accountable in any organizational sense to anybody, even when he went back to initially to see the apostles in Jerusalem, who were apostles before he was, and to present the gospel as he preached it. As he said in Galatians 2, he said, I didn't really care who they were. God doesn't respect anyone's person.

I just wanted to make sure that we're teaching the same things, just making sure we're in unity about this. But I'm not against having accountability, but the problem is organizational accountability is carnal. There is such a thing as spiritual accountability.

The church I left before this incident I just talked about, I left because they had insistence on sort of a shepherding style of accountability. And I had been through that, been there, done that in the 70s. It was now the 90s.

I thought these people are trailing, you know, 20 years behind the curve here. The church has renounced the shepherding movement at least 15 years ago, and these people are just getting into it. I thought, I'm not there anymore.

And one of the elders in that church was exposed to be in an affair with two women in the church for eight years while he was accountable. I mean, he was in the structure of accountability. He was an elder there, accountable to the other elders.

For eight years he'd been having an affair, two affairs in the church, and they didn't know. So how accountable is that? I'd much rather be in a situation with real relationships with real people who actually know what's going on in my life, and if they see I'm doing something wrong, they can nail me on it. That's accountability.

I'm accountable to lots of people, and they don't have to have any kind of organizational structural thing over me because that's not what the church is. The church is a family. It's not a corporation.

I'm accountable to everybody, which means anybody who sees what I'm doing wrong is entirely at liberty to point it out to me, and I'll consider that something I have to take under advisement, but if I disagree with them, I may not have to change, and I'll listen to them, but who I'm accountable to ultimately is who? God. We will all give account of ourselves to God. That's the only accountability the Bible actually mentions.

The Bible does not mention any accountability other than we all give account of ourselves to God. Now, Paul in 2 Corinthians said that when he preached, he commended himself to every man's conscience. He was an open book.

Let anyone judge what I'm doing, and that's really normative accountability. In the body of Christ, any Christian should be able to say to another Christian, I think you're getting off track. I think what you're doing is wrong.

Paul said, Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, you who are spiritual, not you who hold offices in the church necessarily, but you who are spiritual, restore that person in a spirit of meekness, remembering yourself that you might also be tempted, but you see, this idea of structural accountability comes from seeing the church as a corporation, as an army with actual military ranking or something where you go up the chain of command. You're accountable to someone above you who's accountable to someone above them. This is not the way the church is set up in the Bible.

Church is a family. We don't read of setting up these kinds of structures of accountability. If you're really accountable to God, really, you will be accountable to everybody and happily so.

If your conscience is, I want to please God, any way you see I'm not pleasing God, please let me know, and I'll listen because I care about that because I'm accountable to God. Then anyone can nail me and that's fine. If I'm only accountable to people, I mean, I should say if I am accountable in a structural thing where I've got actually a supervisor, as it were, in the church that I have to answer to, I can hide things from them.

If I'm not accountable to God in my conscience, I can get away with anything I want no matter what structure I'm in. I can be secretive about my sins, but if I'm accountable to God, I can't be. And so accountability is not an organizational hierarchy in the Bible.

It is we're all in our conscience accountable to God. We're each of us going to have to stand before God, have to give account of ourselves to Him. That being so, we would bless the person who corrects us, whoever they may be, because they're helping us be more prepared to stand before God with a clear conscience if they correct us.

A Christian should be correctable, should be teachable, should be transparent, and able to be corrected by anybody. And so Paul sees us as not answering to each other. Who are you to judge another man's servant? We're answerable to God, to Christ, and that makes us live the way we should, though not always in all respects the way that someone else prefers that we would, because there are differences in convictions that are well within the range of possible convictions for Christians to have.

So he says, therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather resolve this, not putting a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother's way. Now that's where he goes off on the rest of this chapter. We don't want to stumble our brother.

Now the Jew who's keeping the Sabbath is probably not going to stumble the guy who doesn't care whether he keeps the Sabbath or not. The Jew who eats only vegetables is not going to be stumbling the guy who's got liberty to eat everything. But the guy who eats everything might stumble the Jew, because the Jew thinks it's not really right to eat those kinds of things, and he's eating them.

That stumbles me. That offends me. And likewise, I think you should keep the Sabbath, and you're not keeping it, I'm stumbled.

The person who's the more legalistic is going to be stumbled more than the person who's the libertine. And so Paul, in telling us not to put a stumbling block, he's talking to the one who's got more liberty. To voluntarily out of love limit your liberty in situations where the person is weaker in their conscience, more restricted in their conscience, the Jew in all likelihood here, where that person would be bothered and stumbled, and it might cause a wedge between you and them.

You want to maintain love and unity as much as you can, even at the expense of your liberty at times. But nobody's entitled to take that liberty from you, but you are very much entitled to lay it down, to lay down your rights. It's one of the great Christian virtues, is to lay down your rights for another person, out of love for them.

He says, I know and I'm convinced by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself. He's talking about food here, of course. But to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.

Yet if your brother is grieved because of your food, you are no longer walking in love. Do not destroy with your food the one for whom Christ died. Therefore do not let your good be spoken of as evil, for the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

For he who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved by men. Now, he's saying, although there is no food that is in God's sight off limits for humans to eat, if it is off limits in your own conscience, then it's off limits. Why? Because your conscience is that sense in you that tells you something is right or wrong.

Not everyone's conscience is equally well calibrated. Some people have thoughts about things being wrong that aren't wrong in themselves. Others have conscience that it's okay to do things that really aren't okay.

The conscience cannot be fully trusted at all times, but it can never be ignored because if your conscience tells you it's wrong to do this, and you go ahead and do it, whether it really was wrong or not, you thought it was wrong, and you deliberately did what you believed was wrong. That's an act of rebellion against God. It's a sin to do what you believe is wrong, even if it isn't really wrong.

If you think it's wrong to drink alcohol, it may not be wrong in God's sight. It may be perfectly okay for someone else to moderately drink alcohol, but if you think it's wrong and you drink it, you're doing what you believe is wrong. Therefore, you're deliberately disobeying what you believe God wants you to do, and therefore you're sinning.

The sin is in the rebellion in the heart. It's not in the act itself in that case because the act is not in itself sin. Now, some sins, some acts are sins in themselves.

Some things it's wrong to do whether you think it's okay or not. It's just wrong because it's a sin. Some things are not in themselves sins, but they become a sin to you.

If you're convinced it's a sin and you do it, you're sinning against your conscience and therefore against your relationship with God, and he says, I'm convinced that nothing is in itself unclean, but if it's unclean to somebody's mind, then it's unclean to them. It's sin to them to eat it, and he says you don't want to do what grieves your brother's conscience or what leads him to do what grieves his conscience. You know, if Jews and Gentiles are at the table together, and they're Christians, and one thinks it's wrong to eat pork, but the Gentile serves pork at the meal and eats the pork, and the Jew says, well, I guess I won't cause sin.

I'll just eat this, but they really feel like they're sinning. You've made them sin against their conscience. You don't encourage behavior in someone that they really believe is sin, even if you know it's not.

You need to protect your brother's conscience. Now, does that mean that people have to live their whole lives with a wrongly informed conscience, and I'm not supposed to help them see their way around it? Not at all. Our consciences need to be educated.

Often, they need to be re-educated because we've got wrong ideas about what God really wants and doesn't want. Well, then discipleship is the process of being taught. What does the Bible say? What does God really care about? It's recalibrating the conscience, which needs to be done, but while it has not yet been done, and while the person's conscience still sees something as evil, you don't just rub it in their face that you're doing something that they believe is wrong.

It's going to make them tend to judge you. It's going to make them not love you in the same sense. It's going to interfere with the relationship.

It's going to divide the body of Christ. It's going to cause sin. It's just much better to be sensitive to someone else's conscience and say, well, you know, since they don't want that, I guess we won't do that while they're here or while we're with them.

And that's what Paul is saying. It's loving to not do what you even know you have the liberty to do if by not doing it, you're serving the tender conscience of somebody who would be offended by you doing it. He says, therefore, verse 16, don't let your good be spoken of as evil.

That is, it may be good for you to have a glass of wine with your meal, but if you're doing this in the presence of someone who thinks it's a sin to drink wine, well, then they're going to speak evil of what you're doing. And it's not, it's what you're doing is good enough, but they're going to speak evil of it. Don't do it in a setting where someone's going to call you evil or think you're evil or have to judge you and hurt their own conscience that way.

For the kingdom of God is not food and drink. In other words, the decision of what you eat and drink isn't related to participation in the kingdom of God. You can be in the kingdom of God eating and drinking any number of things or restricting what you eat and drink any number of ways.

It doesn't, that it's unrelated. Being in the kingdom of God simply means that God is your king and he doesn't care what you eat or drink. So you can restrict it or eat freely insofar as it doesn't interfere with the real values of the kingdom of God, which are righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

And if you serve God in the realm of righteousness, peace, and joy, he says, rather than in concerns about what you eat and drink, he says, he that serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved by men too. That's good. You see, if you are with somebody who restricts their diet and you are in their presence and you don't restrict yours, you may be doing something that God approves, but man doesn't.

The man there doesn't. He thinks it's wrong. But if you're being loving and promoting peace and joy in the Holy Spirit and so forth, and you limit your liberty so as not to offend them, then you'll have the approval of God and man.

And that's what he's saying. Those who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved by men. Therefore, let us pursue the things which make for peace, because that's one of the qualities of the kingdom of God, righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

And it's not peaceable to cause divisions over differences of conviction. And, you know, if you smoke cigarettes in front of people who think it's a sin to smoke cigarettes, that might cause an argument about the subject. If you think you've got the liberty and you're around someone who doesn't, don't smoke it when you're with them and then there won't be an argument.

You'll be pursuing peace. You don't have to do that which rubs things in the wounds of people who are hypersensitive and stings them, rubbing salt in their wound. You might think, well, this will heal the wound, this salt.

Well, but it stings and you're causing an interruption in the peace in the body of Christ. Pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify one another. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food.

I mean, another Christian is the work of God. And if he stumbles and leaves the church or something because the Christians are eating pork and he's a Jew who thinks it's a sin, he says, I'm out of here, I'm going back to Judaism. You've destroyed the work of God in his life.

If he's weak, you need to coddle him a little more, even at your own inconvenience. Don't destroy the work of God just so you can eat what you want to eat when you want to eat it. All things indeed are pure.

Again, he's talking about food, but it is evil for the man who eats it with offense that is causing a stumbling block to others. It's okay to eat it unless you're causing a stumbling block to someone else or you're eating it and you yourself are stumbled by it. If you're a Jew who's been influenced to eat what you don't believe in eating because Gentiles around you are doing so.

Okay, it's good neither to eat meat nor to drink wine nor to do anything by which a brother stumbles or is offended or is made weak. He's not saying we shouldn't eat meat or shouldn't drink wine. He says it's good not to do so if that's going to make someone weak.

He's not saying that in itself it's good to abstain from those things, but it is if it's a loving act on your part to abstain out of deference to somebody else's sensitivities. Do you have faith? And by this he means do you have the confidence that it's okay to eat a certain thing that somebody else doesn't have the faith or the confidence about eating in their conscience. They don't have that confidence in their conscience.

Do you have that faith? Have it to yourself before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. You're a happy person if you're under more liberty than someone else is.

If you can eat pork and your conscience doesn't condemn you, you're happier than the person who can't do that perhaps, but keep that to yourself if it's going to offend your brother. But he who doubts, that means if somebody eats but their conscience is not confident that this is okay, they have their doubts that this is okay, but they do it anyway. They're going against their conscience.

That's sinning for them. He who doubts is condemned if he eats because he does not eat from faith for whatever is not of faith is sin. Now this last line whatever is not of faith is sin has sometimes been taken out of its context and quoted to just kind of make different statements about it that Paul's not making.

It may indeed be that it can be used besides in the way that Paul means here, but he's saying whatever you do that you don't have confidence and clarity in your conscience about, you don't have faith that it's okay, your belief is that it's wrong. Whatever you do that goes against your conscience, your faith, it's sin for you to do. It may not be something that is itself sin, but it is sin for you if it goes against your faith, your confidence, your clarity of conscience.

So Paul's saying that we could in a sense cause other people to be destroyed and fall into sin spiritually. They get destroyed if we influence them toward doing things that they're not allowed to do by their own conscience. If we change their conscience legitimately, if God transforms them by the renewal of their mind through proper teaching over time, well then they can be liberated from those laws and restrictions they're under.

But if they're not liberated from it yet, if they still don't have any confidence about it, it's wrong for them to break that conscience, so don't do that. Now Paul in chapter 15 is still talking about the strong and the weak for a few verses, so he's not really quite done with the subject, but the chapter division is a natural place for us to quit since we've come to the end of our session. So we'll come back to chapter 15 and do this next time.