Day 19 God Accepts Them And So Should We
Accept the one whose faith is weak, without passing judgement on disputable matters. One man’s faith allows him to eat anything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted them Romans 14:1-3
The command to accept those ‘whose faith is weak’ (14:1) is qualified by ‘without passing judgement on disputable matters’ (14:1). ‘Passing judgement’ can mean discussion, debates, quarrels or judgements and ‘disputable matters’ means opinions or scruples. Paul is saying we must receive the weak person with a warm and genuine welcome and not for the purpose of getting into quarrels about opinions. The welcome we give them must include respect for their opinions.
Paul chooses the question of what can and can’t be eaten as his first illustration of how the weak and the strong, the fearful and the free, should act toward each other. ‘One man’s faith allows him to eat anything’, (his freedom in Christ having liberated him from unnecessary, restrictive convictions about food), ‘but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables’ (14:2). This is probably not because he chooses to be a vegetarian or for any other health reasons, but as a safeguard against eating non-kosher meat.
Paul wants both groups to change their attitudes toward each other. ‘The one who eats everything (the strong) must not look down on him who does not (who is weak because of his convictions), and the one who does not eat everything (the weak) must not condemn the man who does’ (who is strong because of his liberty [14:3]). The strong is not to ‘look down on’ the weak; ‘look down on’ carries the thought of ‘reject with contempt’ (Acts 4:11; 1 Thessalonians 5:20). The weak are to ‘not condemn’ the strong; to condemn meant to pronounce doom on a person, here to deny someone the right to salvation.
The reason that both the despising and condemning a fellow Christian is wrong is because ‘God has accepted them’ (14:3). This is Paul’s ‘bottom line’ to the whole issue (elaborated in 14:4-9 and climaxed in 15:7). We can’t reject the one God refuses to reject; in fact, the one He accepts. It is one thing to treat others as we would want to be treated but a truer principle is to treat others the way God treats them. The first, the Golden Rule, is guide based on our fallen self-centredness, while the latter is a standard based on God’s perfection. In 15:7 Paul will use this principle to urge both the ‘weak’ and the ‘strong’ to ‘accept one another.’