A Message by Pastor Michael Palmer
Given to
November 29, 2009
LOVE PEOPLE!
Romans 14:13-15:7
This passage helps us
understand how to live out our life before others while maintaining a clear
conscience and love toward others. Read
below the comments of John MacArthur and J. M. Boice (quoting Barclay):
In His New Covenant, our Lord Jesus
Christ has granted marvelous freedom to those who belong to Him by faith. Most importantly, we are freed from the
penalty of sin, from spiritual death and eternal damnations. But Christians also are freed from the
encumbrances of the ceremonial law and dietary restrictions of the Old
Covenant. Apart from sin, we are
completely free to enjoy all the good gifts that God has so graciously bestowed
on those who trust in His beloved Son, Jesus Christ.
But although we are permitted to enjoy
that freedom, we are not commanded to do so.
We are not obligated to exercise every freedom we have in Christ. In fact, the greater our love and spiritual
maturity, the less important those freedoms will be to us and the more willing
we will be to relinquish them for the sake of best serving the Lord and others,
especially other believers. Most
especially, our concern should be for fellow Christians whom Paul describes as
weak, those who are still shackled in some way by the external requirements and
restrictions under which they formerly lived.
The issue for the strong, mature Christian is not whether or not he
possesses freedom but how he should exercise or waive that freedom on the basis
of how it will affect others.
But as Paul emphasizes throughout
14:1-15:13, and as was discussed in the previous chapter, all responsibility
does not fall on the stronger brother.
Strong and weak believers have a mutual responsibility to love and
fellowship with each other and to refrain from judging the other’s convictions
in regard to issues that the New Testament neither commands nor condemns.
Most churches include dedicated,
faithful believers whose consciences do not allow them to participate in or
approve of certain practices. When
stronger believers, out of love for those brothers and sisters in the Lord,
voluntarily restrict their own lives to conform to the stricter standards of
the weaker believers, they build closer relationships with each other and the
church as a whole is strengthened and unified.
And in that loving environment, the weaker believers are helped to become
stronger.
Our Christian liberty is vertical,
before the Lord. But the exercise of
that liberty is horizontal, because it is seen by and affects others. To rightly understand and use our freedom in
Christ brings great satisfaction. But
that satisfaction is multiplied when we willingly surrender the exercise of a
liberty for the sake of other believers.
More importantly, it greatly pleases our Lord and promotes harmony in
His church.
Christian liberty is not meant to bring
spiritual self-retardation, as its misuse invariably does. Far more than any other age in history, ours
is besieged with a seemingly limitless array of things that can consume our
time, energy, and finances. Many of
those things are so flagrantly immoral and ungodly. But even inherently innocent things are so
pervasive and accessible that they easily can undermine our devotion to the
Lord and to His people, retard our spiritual growth, and reduce our spiritual
usefulness.
Do the strong in faith have to forgo anything
about which some weaker believer might object?
In a world with so much variety there is hardly anything you or I might
do that will not be objected to by some other believer. Moreover, there are believers on both sides
of most issues. If we were to listen to
what all these other Christians have to say and try to live by their
standards, we would either fall into a new legalism or go crazy trying to
balance thousands of conflicting claims on our behavior.
William Barclay expresses this well when
he writes, “Paul is not saying that we must always allow our conduct to be
dominated and dictated by the views, and even the prejudices, of others; there
are matters which are essentially matters of principle, and in them a man must
take his own way. But there are a great
many things which are neutral and indifferent, . . . and it is Paul’s
conviction that in such things we have no right to give offence to the more
scrupulous brother.”
Barclay says, “It is a Christian duty to
think of everything, not as it affects ourselves only, but also it affects
others.” This is part of what it means
for a believer in Christ to be guided by a Christian mind.
1.
Don’t cause your brother to stumble. 14:13
2.
Don’t grieve your brother. 14:14-15a
3.
Don’t devastate your brother. 14:15b
4.
Don’t forfeit your witness. 14:16-19
See
also: 1 Cor. 9:19; Phil. 1:11; Romans 12:10
5.
Don’t pull down the word of God. 14:20-21
6.
Don’t denounce or flaunt your
7.
Have genuine regard for others. 15:1a
8.
Don’t just please yourself. 15:1b-2
9.
Make it your goal to glorify or build up others. 15:2
This
will require honesty, transparency, and
effort to
reach out to others in love.
10.
Our need is to let Jesus live through us—He did not
please Himself! 15:3
11.
Scripture instructs us to persevere and gives
12.
We all need God’s power—His perseverance and
encouragement—to be of the same mind in our Christian living. This is a supernatural process!! 15:5
13.
When we love each other and resolve to not be a stumbling block, our
unity is a witness to a lost world and is giving glory to God. 15:6