Bible Talks - Family Church (9:45am)
Series: Lean On Me - Sermons From Romans
When “could” doesn’t mean “should”
Friday, 19 July 2002
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Romans Chapter 14 and part of chapter 15 deals with principles for handling conflict in the church arising from people’s sensitive conscience. The principles Paul provides for this conflict in Rome are important and relevant for us in our church today.
But first a true story from my own life that is now almost ancient history. When I was a 4th Year apprentice electrician on the NSW Government Railways I spent 3 months in the Signals Branch. We learnt to walk along the tracks to service the electrical side of the signalling system. At one period of time I was stationed at Central, to the East of Central Railway station. The small humpy from which we worked was next to the rail line between the tunnels and platforms 23 and 24.
One morning , at 7.00 a.m. I went to the eastern end of Platform 17 ready to cross the 7 sets of busy suburban rail lines to reach the electricians workshop. As I came to the end of the platform I saw a Station Assistant remonstrating with an strong minded middle aged woman. He was explaining that crossing the rails was dangerous, she wasn’t authorised to do it, she wasn’t a member of the Railways Staff, and she would be fined if she did! She then argued back- she didn’t want to walk down the stairs, she wanted to be free to cross the rails. And so it went.
As I approached and passed them something in me hinted that I should be cautious, but being 18, and male, I walked past them, jumped down onto the track and proceeded to walk across the rails.
I was a railway employee and so I could do it. I had been trained how to cross the rails safely in peak hour- so I knew what others didn’t know. I had legal business and a reason for doing what I did in going where I went. I enjoyed the privilidge and freedom to go where the general public couldn’t go.
But I acted thoughtlessly ; I had shown no concern or agape love for that angry woman nor the harassed Station Assistant, I had put my position first of being able to do what I was entitled to do. I used my freedom and status to set a bad example and to make the harassed assistant’s job much more difficult.
THE ‘STRONG AND THE WEAK'
(Romans14:1-15.13)
What exactly was the problem within the church with which Paul was concerned. Although the protagonists are not described, their different stances are. It appears that there were two different groups in the congregation each with a different understanding of the place of the Jewish ritual laws in the life of the Christian.
It is likely that when the Gospel came to Rome some Roman and other Gentiles believed the Gospel and put their faith in the death of Jesus alone to be reconciled to God. They knew they were leaving the corrupt religion of their day with its immorality and immmoral god’s- some of these so called god’s had intercourse with humans, others murdered other god’s, etc. So the Gentile Christians understood the freedom they received through the Gospel.. Complete forgiveness by a Holy God who had conquered sin, death and the world.
But there were also the Jewish converts who were living in Rome. They had been devout Jews who had followed the ritual cleansing regulations that God had given to His people through Moses. The also had believed the Gospel, but they were not exiting an unethical religion for an ethical one. What they were really doing was accepting that Jesus is God’s Messiah and that it was by his death on the cross that they were made right with God. They did not have to unlearn what God’s character was like and many of them felt that the ritual cleansing rules continued to apply to them as Christians. They were critical of the Gentile Christians for not keeping these rules.
We need to be clear about what Paul meant by the terms weak and strong. “Weak” does not refer to those who come to church with emotional and cultural problems. There are people who will come to our church who have experienced emotional and physical abuse and are “weak” because of what they have learnt from those experiences. The Gospel is clear that we are to help the weak in this sense and to work with them so that they will come to know the freedom in Christ available to those who have been the victims of evil actions.
Nor does the term weak refer to new Christians who are still learning s God’s ways in contrast to the world’s ways. The Gospel is also clear about these people; they are to be taught God’s Word, discipled and encouraged.
A third group of people, whom some might say are weak, are those who would pervert the Gospel. The Scriptures are clear about what we are to in this situation. We are to strenuously oppose those people and their distorted Gospel.
Now to consider what Paul meant by the term weak in Romans 14. He had in mind those Christians whose consciences are disturbed by the practices of other Christians in areas to do with the literal obedience of the ceremonial part of the Old Testament law. The ‘weak’, felt that they could not, with a clear conscience, give up the observance of such ritual requirements as the distinction between clean and unclean foods and the keeping of special days.
This is why it appears that the division between the ‘weak’ and the ‘strong’ was also, to a large extent, one between Jewish and Gentile Christians. (This agrees well with the use of 'ritually unclean' in 14.14 and of 'clean' in 14.20. Possibly some Christians in a pagan city, wishing to be sure of avoiding meat which may have been unclean according to the Old Testament ritual law, decided to simply abstain altogether from meat.)
Because of the length of the Bible passage I have attempted to identify the principles Paul applied in dealing with this issue. Identifying these Biblical principles may also enable us to apply them to situations in our church.
PRINCIPLE 1
Be welcoming, these people are the Lord’s servants; to judge them is to judge Him !
Verses 1-6: The church as a whole being addressed. Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgement on those who eat. Do we judge others or do we despise some in our church? The eaters tended to despise the non-eaters as not worth taking seriously, while the non-eaters were prone to adopt a censorious attitude to the eaters. But God has received the people in both groups so how can they judge the others. For a believer to presume to pass judgment on one whom God has thus received clearly cannot be right.
They are challenged to consider the enormity of what they are doing when they presume to pass judgment on someone who, like themselves, is in Christ's household - a slave and therefore answerable only to Him. It is before their own Lord they stand or fall. Christ is involved; his interest is at stake. The master is responsible for the servant’s development and behaviour, and to criticise the servant is to criticise the master.
PRINCIPLE 2
Do what you do to honour the Lord. He is Lord of this life and life beyond death.
Verses 7-12: Both groups honour the Lord when they thank him for their meat or non meat meals. We neither live to ourselves, nor do we die to ourselves. Christ died so that we might live for Him in this life and the next. There can be no more meaningful life than this.
For we all stand before the judgement seat of God. Each one of us will indeed have to give account: none will be exempted.
PRINCIPLE 3
We are our brother’s keepers by the example we set.
Verses 13-16: Ensure that nothing you do might cause one of our Lord’s other servants to stumble. Consider the effect our behaviour, especially our freedom in the Gospel, might have on those with sensitive consciences.
Whilst it is true that nothing is unclean in in itself it is unclean for anyone who thinks it is unclean. It is a reality that Christ's work has now been accomplished and has radically transformed the situation with regard to the ceremonial part of the Old Testament law. But don’t injure your brother or sister by your actions. If they imitate you but have a bad conscience about it they sin.
PRINCIPLE 4
God’s Kingdom is more than food and drink-don’t cause others to stumble
Verses 17-18: The Kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. The Christians priority is to be about helping others not only know God’s righteousness through the death Of Christ, and peace with God and his people, but is also about sharing in God’s joy that people have entered into fellowship with God. Are our actions at our church bringing the joy of the Holy Spirit to the “weaker” members of our church?
PRINCIPLE 5
Your freedom in Christ sometimes needs to be a secret with God so that others may be built up in the faith.
Verses 19-23: Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. We are to build on the true peace which is peace with God established in Christ. Paul's thought seems to be that God Himself, church ministers, and all the members of the Church, are engaged in the building of the Church. So ensure that the use you make of your freedom in the Gospel leads to the building of God’s church rather than its destruction.
Paul is saying that the inner freedom Christians have doesn’t have to be expressed, it can instead be a secret before God if there are Christians nearby who could be hurt by the expression of that freedom. The matter is serious because if someone does follow the example of the strong Christian, in an area where their conscience condemns them, then their action will be sin because it does not proceed from faith (v 23).
PRINCIPLE 6
Work at being steadfast and patient for the sake of the unity that will glorify Christ
Ch 15: 1-7: have the right attitude to putting up with the failings of the ‘weak’. Follow Jesus’ example. Paul wrote that Christ did not please himself, he took the full concentation of all human’s hatred of God, with its futile, and contemptuous insolence against God on Himself. So how much more should we be prepared to renounce our self-gratification in so trivial a matter as the exercising of our freedom with regard to our ‘weaker’ brethren?
This exercise of self-discipline for the sake of our neighbours will require steadfastness. But that is what God wants for us. God is the God of steadfastness and encouragement and he desires that the church in Rome, and our church, live in harmony with one another. The unity was to be that of the Jews and Gentile that would produce a united praise of God.
V 8-12: Paul now reinforces the need for a unity based on what Christ wants and what he achieved. He become a servant to the Jews first in order that he might fulfill God’s promises given to the patriachs. Therefore the Gentiles should respect and honour the Jewish Christians, e.g., Jesus became a Jew and ministered to them. But Jesus is also the one who fulfilled the prophecies, such as Ps 18:49 and Isaiah 11:10 dealing with the Messiah’s ministry so that the Gentiles would glorify God for His mercy. Therefore the Jewish Christians were to honour the Gentile Christians for Jesus sake. Both groups, ministered to by the Christ are to be united in him.
Verse 13 is God’s desire for the Romans and us. God, the provider of hope and joy, wishes to fill us with all joy and peace in our believing, so that our lives will have an abundance of the hope to live in unity with our ‘stonger’ and ‘weaker’ fellow believers by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Let us consider where we are as a church at the moment as we come to apply this Word of God to ourselves. We have recently seen God bring people to our church. We thank God for that. But those of you who have been here for some time will remember when we had a very different culture here. We were an ageing church that focussed on reverenc in the Church Services, traditional ways of worship and the expectation that parents would control their children. We can thank God that He challenged us to be a church that would have a culture that would not be a stumbling block to seekers. We changed our music, we reconsidered our hospitality, we thought through our corporate worship to remove unessential historical cultural patterns. You may remember how it was to expereince the differences in our church services. And praise God those church members who couldn’t stand the new form of service invariabley said, “ Please don’t misunderstand me. I think what you are doing in the 9.30 Service is great. I am excited with the young families now coming. But I cannot stand this form of Service. I am going to attend the 8.00a.m. Service because it has the reverence and depth that I need. May God bring even more young families to the 9.30 service.”
Do you see that those Christians were acting according to the Spiritual principle in Romas 14-15? And I think the same challenge is coming to us again. There are indications that God wishes to bring other groups of people to our church, through Life Works and for other reasons. How prepared are we to bring change for the sake of these new people?
We will need to be prepared to remind ourselves that Christ is the Lord and that he wants to build his church. Are we prepared to be steadfast in controlling our own desires for things to be done our way. What price will we pay to have a church that can really meet the needs of those groups of people with whom we currently have no contact?
May God, the provider of hope and joy, who wishes to fill us with all joy and peace in our believing give us the courage and wisdom to live in unity and to become a church that will welcome very different people by the power of the Holy Spirit.
