HOW SHOULD YOU RELATE TO FELLOW CHRISTIANS WHEN YOUR CONSCIENCES DISAGREE?
This is where the book turns from focusing on just you and your individual conscience to how your conscience relates to others. The complexity of conscience-related problems rises exponentially when you move from an individual to a group of people—and so do the stakes. This complexity explains why this is the book’s most dense chapter. But the high stakes make it essential for you to patiently slog through these principles of how to get along with people who have differing consciences.
How should you relate to other people with differing consciences, especially family members and church members? What do you do when your conscience allows you to do certain practices but another person’s conscience does not? What do you do when your conscience does not allow you to do certain practices but another person’s conscience does?
You’ve probably experienced triage if you’ve ever visited an emergency room. Let’s say that on a Friday night you break your leg. When you arrive at the emergency room, about twenty other people are already sitting around. You check in, have a seat, and wait . . . and wait. Thirty minutes pass. You must be getting close. Then all of a sudden, another person arrives on a stretcher—an hour after you did—and he gets immediate medical attention because he was just in a horrific car accident. Why does he get to cut in line? You were there first! This is an example of medical triage: assigning degrees of urgency to wounds or illnesses to decide in what order to treat a large number of patients. Triage is the action of sorting according to priority and urgency.
We understand that sometimes we have to prioritize. Some things are more pressing and more important than other things. My wife, Jenni, and I (Andy) have three little girls, and sometimes all of them are crying at the same time. We have to prioritize their needs according to urgency. We might call that parental triage.
Did you know that this is also the case with truths that the Bible teaches? We could call it theological triage.1 Some Bible teachings are more important than other Bible teachings. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:3, “I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received.” The words “first importance” imply that although everything in the Bible is important, not everything is equally important. Some doctrines are more important. To simplify things, we could think of three levels of theological triage:
First-level issues are most central and essential to Christianity. You can’t deny these teachings and still be a Christian in any meaningful sense. For example, there is one God in three persons; Jesus is fully God and fully human; Jesus sacrificially died for sinners; Jesus rose bodily from the dead; we are justified by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone; Jesus is coming back.
Second-level issues create reasonable boundaries between Christians, such as different denominations and local churches. These issues will have a bearing on what sort of church you are part of. For example, what’s your view on baptism or church government or God’s sovereignty in salvation or the role of men and women in the church and home? You don’t have to hold one particular view to be a Christian, but it’s challenging for a church to have a healthy unity when its leaders and members disagree on these matters.
Third-level issues are disputable matters (also called matters of indifference or matters of conscience). They might involve how you interpret particular passages of the Bible. For example, who are “the sons of God” in Genesis 6? There is more than one viable view. Third-level issues also include many practical questions. For example, how should Christians view the “Sabbath”? Is it okay on Sundays to go to a public restaurant? Or shop at a grocery store? Or watch a football game? Or play a football game? Or mow your lawn? Or work for pay? Disputable matters aren’t unimportant, but members of the same church should be able to disagree on these issues and still have close fellowship with each other. Disagreement on third-level issues shouldn’t cause disunity in the church family.
It’s easy for third-level matters to become deeply ingrained in someone’s conscience. And wherever two or more people interact in some sort of relationship—whether they are siblings, fellow students, coworkers, neighbors, or church members—they will dispute some issues. No two (finite and fallen) humans will ever agree on absolutely everything—not even a godly husband and godly wife who are happily married. We all have different perspectives, backgrounds, personalities, preferences, thought processes, and levels of understanding truth about God and his Word and his world.
So can you guess what happens when a group of self-professed Christians joins together as a church—even a doctrinally robust, gospel-centered church? They will disagree about many matters. We should expect disagreements with fellow Christians about third-level matters, and we should learn to live with those differences. Christians don’t always need to eliminate differences, but they should always seek to glorify God by loving each other in their differences. Understanding what the conscience is and how it works helps us do that.
Conscience Controversies in the Early Church
One text in particular addresses this very question: Romans 14:1–15:7. In the greatest letter ever written in the history of the world, Paul spends about 10 percent of his time addressing the subject of conscience controversies within the church. We do well to give it the same kind of attention. This passage is brilliant. It’s profound. It displays God’s great knowledge and insight. Understanding and applying the principles in this passage of Scripture should make you marvel at God’s wisdom.
The disputable matters that concern us today almost never exactly parallel what Paul addresses in this passage, but the principles in this passage directly apply to our time.2 Before we can apply these principles to our specific contexts, though, we need to understand the nature of the disagreements that Paul addressed in his day. As we explore the situation in Romans, we will also consider related passages, such as 1 Corinthians 8–10, Galatians 2, and Colossians 2.
A typical church in Paul’s day consisted of both Jewish and Gentile Christians. Coming from a religious culture that put a high premium on eating food that only the law of Moses allowed, most Jewish Christians carried that strictness into their new faith. Most Gentiles, on the other hand, had no such background. So a typical church had two groups, as table 3 shows:
Table 3. The strong and the weak
The strong-weak distinction that Paul makes does not necessarily line up with a strong or weak conscience for every third-level issue, but it does for many of them, including the issues in Romans 14. The tables in this section highlight just one of the issues: eating meat (14:2). But the Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians in Rome also disagreed about holy days (14:5) and drinking wine (14:21; cf. 14:17).3
Regarding meat and holy days, the “weak in faith” were most likely a group of mainly Jewish Christians. This is
the one passage in Romans in which it appears that Paul has a specific problem in mind (14:1–15:13). This section rebukes two groups for their intolerance toward each other: the “weak in faith” (probably mainly Jewish Christians) and the “strong in faith” (probably mainly Gentile Christians). The rebuke focuses on the Gentile Christians, who are becoming arrogant toward the shrinking minority of Jewish Christians. . . . [So] one of Paul’s purposes in writing this letter was to heal this division in the Christian community in Rome.4
Doug Moo explains,
The weak were influenced by a Jewish tradition of asceticism based on the torah. . . . Jewish Christians in Rome, convinced that the torah was still authoritative for Christians, claimed that a sincere Christian should avoid meat and wine and should observe the Sabbath and Jewish holy days. Only by following such practices could a Christian avoid ritual contamination and please God.5
Had the two sides been content to live with these differences, Paul might never have felt the need to write Romans 14. But human nature being what it is, some from both sides went too far and began to impose their freedoms or scruples on others (see table 4):
Table 4. Potential conflict between the strong and the weak
Ethnic harmony in Christ was among Paul’s highest concerns. It would have been disastrous if the churches had divided over issues related to ethnicity. And you can be sure that Satan, who is always looking for a split in the log, would bring his axe right down on this crack.
Seeds of Heresy to the Right and to the Left
But disunity wasn’t the only danger. Seeds of outright heresy began to germinate on both sides of the controversy. In Corinth some of the believers with a strong conscience grew overconfident and had the gall to accept invitations to the banqueting halls connected to the pagan temples (see 1 Corinthians 8–10). This was quite tempting because meat was a luxury; a pagan feast might provide their protein fix for the entire month. We’re pretty sure these Christians were attending only for the food and friendship and didn’t even pay attention to the little opening ceremony that some pagan priest presided over. He said some meaningless chant and presented some of the meat to some empty idol. It didn’t have any more meaning than a prayer before a football game in Texas. But Paul had to tell those careless believers in 1 Corinthians 10 that their participation at this event wasn’t meaningless. Behind the empty idols were demons vying for their loyalty. Just by being there, these Christians were actually participating in what Paul called demon communion. We have the Lord’s Supper, and they have Satan’s supper (1 Cor. 10:19–21). Paul condemned this overconfidence in the strongest way (1 Cor. 10:12).
When we see the “strong” in Corinth swerve like this into lawlessness, we’re tempted to think that it’s best just to play it safe and err on the strict side. But the strict fell into heresies as well. In Galatia, some of the strict believers went so far as to insist that if people didn’t obey the Mosaic food and circumcision laws, they couldn’t be Christians at all (see Acts 15:1; Galatians 1–2). The Bible calls these false teachers Judaizers or “the circumcision party” (Gal. 2:12). It was a heresy that brought down Paul’s severest condemnation: “Let [them] be accursed” (Gal. 1:9).
So eventually the early churches began to see not only two overreactions concerning meat and other issues (the two inner columns in table 5) but two potential heresies as well (the two outer columns in table 5). None of these four positions led to peace and edification:
Table 5. Seeds of heresy among the strong and the weak (two outer columns)
Paul saw the gap growing wider and wider. What would he do to keep these disagreements from destroying the unity of the churches? Paul was an apostle, so he could have easily solved this specific controversy in the church at Rome with a blanket command like this: “If you have a weak conscience, you must mature and start eating meat. Enjoy what God gives you to enjoy.” After all, that was Paul’s own position (Rom. 14:14). But this solution would have ignored the danger of compelling Christians to sin against their conscience, even a misinformed conscience. Mature Christians should help other Christians train their consciences, but no one should force others to change their conscience.
Or Paul could have given the opposite command: “If you have a strong conscience, you must stop eating meat entirely since exercising your freedom might affect those with a weak conscience.” Many conservative churches today land here. But this solution denies believers their freedom to enjoy God’s good bounty and might even cross the line into false teaching:
Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. (1 Tim. 4:1–4)
It doesn’t do any good to be stricter than God!6
Rather than lay down a law, Paul appealed to love. His concern was unity, and ours should be too. Doug Moo puts it well:
One of the most important points in Romans 14 is something that Paul does not say: that the weak in faith must change their view. He makes clear that he does not agree with them, and by labeling them weak he implies also that they have room to grow on these matters. But he does not tell them to change their mind; he does not berate them for being “immature”; he does not tell them to “get with the program.”
Yet this is usually our first reaction to someone who differs with us. We want to change their minds, to convince them we are right. Paul would undoubtedly support the church’s efforts to educate its members as fully as possible about the gospel and its implications. But he is wise enough to know that there is a time and a place for such efforts. . . . All of us have our traditions, and they are not easy to give up. As long as they are not contrary to the gospel and hindering the work of the church, we should learn to tolerate these differences.7
What was Paul’s solution? How would he bind these two potential factions together? His solution was love, not law. Table 6 inserts Paul’s threefold solution in the place of the growing split between those with a strong conscience and those with a weak conscience. Only the three center columns please God and result in unity. On any given disagreement over disputable matters, God calls us to land on one of these three positions. God forbids the attitudes of those described in the two far left columns who look down on the strict and those described in the two far right columns who judge those with freedoms. (Don’t let the size of the chart discourage you. Taking time to work your way through it will help you to understand the important issues of Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8–10 and to discern where your own conscience falls on this spectrum.)
Table 6. Paul’s solution of love (three center columns)
Here’s the gist of what Paul told those with a strong conscience (column 1): “You can continue to use your freedom because in principle you’re right about these issues. But what you must not do is look down on (i.e., despise) the strict. You must welcome them, learn how to get along with them, and learn to appreciate their subculture. You need to assume that they’re being strict for God’s glory, not because they’re neurotic fundamentalists. And one more thing: when you use your freedoms, don’t flaunt them. Don’t be ‘in-your-face.’ That’s not showing love. Most important, if the way you use your freedom emboldens a wavering brother or sister to sin against their conscience, you are sinning against that fellow believer. The kingdom of God is so much more than your right to eat and drink certain things.”
What was Paul’s message to the weak of conscience (summarized in column 3)? “If your strictness in these matters is causing you to judge others and bring division to the church, you are sinning and failing to show love. The kingdom of God is about love and righteousness and peace and joy, not about food (14:17). And one more thing: stop trying to force others to obey the rules of your conscience. Your conscience is for you, not them. Welcome those who disagree with you on food and drink and holy days. Learn about them. Appreciate their robust conscience. Assume that they are exercising their freedoms for God’s glory. The kingdom of God is so much more than your scruples about food and holy days.”
But the center column (column 2) is the goal of every mature believer. This column reflects the example of Christ and Paul, and it summarizes the message of the first half of Romans 15 as well as 1 Corinthians 9 (not to mention the subject of the present chapter of this book). Our ultimate goal is not simply to stop judging those who are free or to stop looking down on those who are strict. Our ultimate goal is to follow the example of our Lord Jesus, who gave up his rights for others. He joyfully renounced his unbelievable freedom in heaven to come to earth and become an obedient Jew in order to save his people (Rom. 15:3–9).
Likewise, even though Paul agreed with the free group that all food and drink is allowable for a believer (Rom. 14:14, 20), he was so filled with Christ’s welcoming love that he happily (not grudgingly) gave up any personal preference if that might result in peace within the church or success in winning people outside the church to Christ. Around Jews he was happy to be strict. Around Greeks he was happy to be free. He didn’t count his freedoms or his comfort as the highest priority but always asked himself these two questions: (1) How does this particular action affect other believers? and (2) How does this particular action further the gospel of Christ? “Paul’s overriding concern in this passage,” Moo observes, “is not with who is right and who is wrong. He is concerned about unity.”8
With this fairly complicated but necessary background, let’s listen to God instruct us how to disagree with other Christians about disputable matters. The stakes are high; we must understand and internalize these principles if we are to have any hope of unity and joy in our churches.
Twelve Principles about How to Disagree with Other Christians on Disputable Matters9
1. Welcome those who disagree with you (Rom. 14:1–2).
As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions [NIV: “without quarreling over disputable matters”]. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables.
Concerning any area of disagreement on third-level matters, a church will have two groups: (1) those who are “weak in faith” (14:1) on that issue and (2) those “who are strong” (15:1). The weak in faith have a weak conscience on that matter, and the strong in faith, a strong conscience. Don’t forget that “faith” here refers not to saving faith in Christ (14:22a makes that clear) but to the confidence a person has in their heart or conscience to do a particular activity, such as eat meat (14:2). The weak person’s conscience lacks sufficient confidence (i.e., faith) to do a particular act without self-judgment, even if that act is actually not a sin. To him it would be a sin. “The issue is not who has the most faith,” Moo notes. “The issue is who thinks that his or her faith lets him or her do this or that.”10 Think once again of the apostle Peter when God commanded him to eat food that his conscience would not allow him to eat (Acts 10:9–16). No one would claim that Peter was weak in saving faith; he might have been the strongest Christian alive at the time. But concerning eating unclean meat and hanging out with Gentiles, his faith was very weak indeed. His conscience lacked the confidence (faith) to do those things without self-condemnation.
We are not saying that the faith to eat and faith in Christ are completely unrelated. We believe that the more you understand what faith in Christ means, the more you will be set free from unnecessary regulations in your life. But we must stress again that those with a strong conscience do not necessarily please God any more than those with a weak conscience. Both can glorify God, and both can sin against God.
As you are thinking about these issues, perhaps you’ve already put yourself in a “strong conscience” or “weak conscience” box (though we hardly ever meet a believer willing to admit that they are weak!). But in most issues, you are probably both weak and strong at the same time in comparison to other people.11 Think of a spectrum: there is almost always someone to your left and right on any given disputable issue. For example, if you’re the person in figure 5 below who is free to eat meat sold in the meat market without feeling any need to ask questions, Paul says you have a responsibility to resist the temptation to judge the person freer than you to your left and a responsibility to resist the temptation to look down on the person stricter than you to the right.
Figure 5. The spectrum of conscience
Not only are there Christians to your left and right, but within your own conscience you might be quite confident and strong to participate in one activity but completely unable to participate in another without self-condemnation. The Christians in Rome were weak or strong with reference to the three specific issues Paul addressed (meat, holy days, and wine), and the weak were strict in all three of those areas. But it’s not at all unusual for a person to have a strong conscience on some issues and a weak conscience on others (or, more accurately, stronger on some and weaker on others). The designations weak conscience and strong conscience apply not to groups of persons across the board but to how each individual approaches specific issues.
A person of my parent’s generation told me (J. D.) that she had one college roommate whose conscience would allow her to play with playing cards but not dominos and another roommate who could enjoy dominos but not playing cards. Needless to say, it was a dull year in the dorm!
What this means is that you are responsible to obey both Paul’s exhortations to the weak and his exhortations to the strong, since (1) there are usually people on either side of you on any given issue and (2) you yourself likely have a stronger conscience on some issues and a weaker conscience on others. This brings us to Paul’s second principle when Christians disagree on scruples.
2. Those who have freedom of conscience must not look down on those who don’t (Rom. 14:3–4).
Let not the one who eats despise [NIV: “treat with contempt”] the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on [i.e., be judgmental toward] the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
The strong, who have freedom to do what others cannot do, are tempted to look down on and despise those who are more strict. They may say, “Those people don’t understand the freedom we have in Christ. They’re not mature like us! They’re legalistic. All they think about are rules.” Paul condemns this attitude of superiority.
In regard to looking down on others, we must also be careful not to assume that Christians who abstain from a particular activity are doing so out of a weak conscience. For example, perhaps you were part of a subculture that held relatively strict standards on third-level issues, as both of us were. Many people from our background have weak consciences on several third-level issues, but it’s a mistake to assume that they all do. Some people in those subcultures have strong consciences on many issues but intentionally refrain from exercising their liberty in order to edify those around them. They contextualize in order to serve others. So avoid assuming that everyone in a particular subculture has weaker consciences on certain issues; that’s probably not the case.
3. Those whose conscience restricts them must not be judgmental toward those who have freedom (Rom. 14:3–4).
Those who have a weaker conscience on a particular issue are always tempted to pass judgment on those who are freer. They may say, “How can those people be Christians and do that? Don’t they know they’re hurting the testimony of Christ? Don’t they know that they are supposed to give up things like that for the sake of the gospel?”
Paul gives two reasons that it’s such a serious sin to break these two principles, that is, for the strong to look down on those with a weaker conscience and for the weak to judge those with a stronger conscience:
1.“God has welcomed him” (14:3c). Do you have the right to reject someone whom God has welcomed? Are you holier than God? If God himself allows his people to hold different opinions on third-level matters, should you force everyone to agree with you?
2.“Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?” (14:4a). You are not the master of other believers. When you look down on someone with a weaker conscience or judge someone with a stronger conscience, you’re acting as though that person is your servant and you are his master. But God is his master. In matters of opinion, you must let God do his work. You just need to welcome your brother or sister. God is a better master than you are.
We should qualify again that third-level issues are not necessarily unimportant. We don’t mean to trivialize them. It’s okay to talk about them. It’s okay to preach about them. It’s okay to tweet and blog about them. It’s okay to mention them on Facebook. But with at least two conditions:
1.Have the right spirit. Don’t be judgmental toward others who are either more or less strict than you. “Do not adopt a critical spirit, a condemning attitude,” to quote D. A. Carson.12 As a general rule, be strict with yourself and generous with others.
2.Have the right proportion. Keep disputable matters in their place as third-level issues. Don’t treat them like first- or second-level issues. And don’t become preoccupied with them or divisive about them. They shouldn’t be so important to you that it’s all you want to talk about. They shouldn’t be the main reason that you choose what church to join. They shouldn’t be issues that you are the most passionate about such that you are constantly trying to win people over to your position and then looking down on them if they decide not to join your side.
People enjoy being with people like them. But sometimes a subculture can develop within a church in which the majority of people hold particular views on a group of third-level issues. Then when someone joins that assembly, whether coming from another church background or showing up as a new believer, they may feel pressure to embrace the whole package if they want to be a “good” Christian. Also, those in the church who don’t hold the views of the majority may feel judged and pressured to change for the wrong reasons.
The stakes get even higher when leaders begin to impose prohibitions that Scripture clearly allows, as did the false teachers Paul warned about in 1 Timothy 4:1–4. Reflecting on that passage and the problem of man-made prohibitions, the Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli echoed Paul when he nailed the source of such ascetic legalism: “Those that take from Christians such freedom by their prohibition are inspired by the devil.”13 This is why the same Paul who urged the strong to “bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please [yourselves]” (Rom. 15:1) told the Colossian Christians something quite different: “Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath” (Col. 2:16). Paul told them to stand up to those false teachers who wanted to control everyone’s consciences, just as he stood up to the false brothers in Jerusalem who wanted to force him to circumcise Titus. The same Paul who said to the Romans, “pursue what makes for peace” (Rom. 14:19), said concerning the circumcision group, “we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you” (Gal. 2:5). In Antioch, when even Peter wilted under the pressure of the Pork Police from Jerusalem, Paul “opposed him to his face” because he knew that the gospel was at stake (Gal. 2:11–14).
You need God’s wisdom to discern the difference between (1) weak and wavering believers for whom you must flex and (2) controlling Christians who want to force their scruples on everyone else. Why? So that you, like Paul, can preserve the truth of the gospel for the next generation.
4. Each believer must be fully convinced of their position in their own conscience (Rom. 14:5).
One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.
Should Christians celebrate Jewish holy days? This issue, which Paul is addressing here, illustrates the principle that on disputable matters, you should obey your conscience.
This does not mean that your conscience is always right. It’s wise to calibrate your conscience to better fit God’s will, as we discussed at length in chapter 4. But it does mean that you cannot constantly sin against your conscience and be a healthy Christian. You must be fully convinced of your present position on food or drink or special days—or whatever the issue—and then live consistently by that decision until God may lead you by his Word and Spirit to adjust your conscience.
As we said earlier, the word conscience doesn’t appear in Romans 14, but the parallel concept of a confident heart on the one hand, and a doubting, accusing heart on the other, is in nearly every verse. And conscience occurs eight times in the parallel passage of 1 Corinthians 8 and 10. It’s clear from these passages that the consciences of Christians are not identical. And God doesn’t expect them to be, or he wouldn’t have led Paul to write Romans 14.
Figure 6. Two consciences
In figure 6 we return to our use of triangles to illustrate that no two Christians have exactly the same conscience. There will be significant overlap, but they’re never identical. The areas of disagreement are at the edges where their consciences don’t overlap.
The triangle for Christian Two is larger because it’s packed with more rules. He has a stricter (or weaker) conscience than Christian One.
You must respect the consciences of others and not make fun of their rules or freedoms. If you have an opportunity, you can slowly help them train their conscience to be more in line with God’s standards, but you must never compel someone to sin against their conscience.
If we could understand God’s revealed will completely, it would be immediately obvious to us that none of us has a conscience that matches perfectly with God’s standards (see figure 7). Realizing this truth brings a spirit of humility into conscience controversies and opens the door to the Holy Spirit’s work of calibrating our own consciences to match God’s will better.
Figure 7. Human conscience and God’s standards
As you come to understand God’s will more and more, you must do the hard work of continually adding rules to your conscience that God’s Word says should be there and continually weeding out rules from your conscience that should not be there. This will take your entire life, but you have the Holy Spirit and the Word of God to help you. God is the only Lord of your conscience.
Paul was a “Pharisee of the Pharisees.” When God saved him, his conscience must have been like a bursting suitcase, way overpacked with hundreds of rules, some of which were supposed to be there, but many of which should not have been (for example, his conscience told him to persecute Christians!). It’s clear from his later writing that he immediately began the difficult task of tending his conscience for the glory of God, streamlining it until what was left was only what God intended to be there. At least, that was his goal.
5. Assume that others are partaking or refraining for the glory of God (Rom. 14:6–9).
The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.
Notice how generous Paul is to both sides. He assumes that both sides are exercising their freedoms or restrictions for the glory of God. Wouldn’t it be amazing to be in a church where everyone gave each other the benefit of the doubt on these differences, instead of putting the worst possible spin on everything?
Paul says that both the weak and the strong can please the Lord even while holding different views on disputable matters. They have different positions but the same motivation: to honor God. They both do what they do for the glory of God, not because they
1.care what others will think or say;
2.want to fit in by being strict like others in their church;
3.want to fit in by exercising freedoms like others in their church; or
4.want to break free from their strict background and start doing all the stuff they were never allowed to do.
Those are all wrong motivations. And while we should believe the best about other people and their motives, we shouldn’t assume that our motives are okay. In their book Ethics for a Brave New World, John and Paul Feinberg suggest “eight questions (tests) that each Christian must face when deciding whether or not to indulge in a given activity”:14
1.Am I fully persuaded that it is right? (Rom. 14:5, 14, 23)
2.Can I do it as unto the Lord? (Rom. 14:6–8)
3.Can I do it without being a stumbling block to my brother or sister in Christ? (Rom. 14:13, 15, 20–22)
4.Does it bring peace? (Rom. 14:17–18)
5.Does it edify my brother? (Rom. 14:19)
6.Is it profitable? (1 Cor. 6:12)
7.Does it enslave me? (1 Cor. 6:12)
8.Does it bring glory to God? (1 Cor. 10:31)
6. Do not judge each other in these matters because we will all someday stand before the judgment seat of God (Rom. 14:10–12).
Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written,
“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
and every tongue shall confess to God.”
So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.
If we thought more about our own situation before the judgment throne of God, we would be less likely to pass judgment on fellow Christians. On that day we’ll be busy enough answering for our own life; we don’t need to spend our short life meddling in the lives of others. In these matters where good Christians disagree, we just need to mind our own conscience and let God be the judge of others.
7. Your freedom to eat meat is correct, but don’t let your freedom destroy the faith of a weak brother (Rom. 14:13–15).
Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean. For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. By what you eat, do not destroy the one for whom Christ died.
Free and strict Christians in a church both have responsibilities toward each other. Strict Christians have a responsibility not to impose their conscience on everyone else in the church. It is a serious sin to try to bind someone else’s conscience with rules that God does not clearly command.
But the second half of Romans 14 places the bulk of responsibility on Christians with a strong conscience. One obvious reason is that they are strong, so God calls on them to bear with the weaknesses of the weak (Rom. 15:1). Not only that, of the two groups, only the strong have a choice in third-level matters like meat, holy days, and wine. They can either partake or abstain, whereas the conscience of the strict allows them only one choice. It is a great privilege for the strong to have double the choices of the weak. They must use this gift wisely by considering how their actions affect the sensitive consciences of their brothers and sisters.
Another reason that the bulk of responsibility falls on the strong has to do with the nature of conscience. As we explain in chapter 3, one of the two great principles of human conscience is “obey it.” To disobey conscience can actually jeopardize one’s eternal destiny (1 Tim. 1:19). This truth leads Paul to spend the bulk of Romans 14 (and half of 1 Corinthians 8) on the stumbling-block principle: Christians with a strong conscience must not allow their freedom to embolden a weaker brother or sister to sin against their conscience.
The concern here is not merely that your freedom may irritate, annoy, or offend your weaker brother or sister. If a brother or sister simply doesn’t like your freedoms, that is their problem. But if your practice of freedom leads your brother or sister to sin against their conscience, then it becomes your problem. Christ gave up his life for that brother or sister; are you unwilling to give up your freedom if that would help your fellow believer avoid sinning against conscience? That’s what this passage is talking about when it refers to putting “a stumbling block or hindrance” (Rom. 14:13) in another’s way. We shouldn’t bring spiritual harm to others (see also vv. 20–21).
So how might your use of freedom bring spiritual harm to other professing believers? Paul isn’t clear here, but Doug Moo suggests “two main possibilities”:
[1] Our engaging in an activity that another believer thinks to be wrong may encourage that other believer to do it as well. They would then be sinning because they are not acting “from faith” (v. 23). . . .
[2] An ostentatious flaunting of liberty on a particular matter may so deeply offend someone that he or she may turn from the faith altogether.15
Once again we must emphasize that the stumbling block principle does not teach that we must refrain from an activity that another believer may simply disagree with. For example, the two of us use modern Bible translations such as the ESV and the NIV rather than the KJV because the Scripture writers wrote in the common language of the people. Yet we know Christians who are very unhappy when we use a translation other than the KJV. As best we can see, we are bringing no spiritual harm to them when we use a modern translation; that is, we’re not emboldening them to sin against their conscience and put themselves in danger of turning away from Christianity. So we don’t need to refrain from using modern translations for their sake; doing so poses no stumbling block. That said, Christian love and flexibility may lead us to use the KJV in certain situations.
Moo highlights another common misunderstanding about the stumbling-block principle:
In Christian books and from Christian pulpits one sometimes hears Romans 14 applied something like this: believers should refrain from drinking alcohol out of deference to other Christians who might be inclined to overindulge and abuse alcohol. Those other Christians are the “weaker brothers and sisters”—weak because they have a weakness for alcohol. The principle, of course, is valid enough. Christians should recognize the weaknesses of fellow Christians and do what they can to keep them from succumbing to those weaknesses. But we must point out that this idea of “weakness” is not what Paul is talking about in Romans 14. The weak brother or sister in this chapter is the one who is weak in faith. They believe that their faith does not allow them to do certain things. The weakness has nothing to do with an emotional or physical susceptibility. It is a theological weakness.16
We must never allow the conscience of others to determine our own conscience. But we must always consider the conscience of others when we determine our own actions.
8. Disagreements about eating and drinking are not important in the kingdom of God; building each other up in righteousness, peace, and joy is the important thing (Rom. 14:16–21).
So do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.
Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.
The New Testament clearly and repeatedly lays down the principle that God is completely indifferent to what we ingest. First and most important, the Lord Jesus himself memorably proclaimed all foods to be legitimate for eating in Mark 7:1–23 (esp. vv. 18–19). Since Peter didn’t seem to get the memo, the Lord Jesus had to give him a vision three times to show him that Christians must not make food an issue (Acts 10:9–16). Then in 1 Corinthians 8:8, Paul comes right out and says it: “Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do.” And just in case we still didn’t get it, God gave us Romans 14:17, which shows that the kingdom of God has nothing to do with food and drink. Nothing. God doesn’t care at all about what we ingest.
This might seem mistaken. Doesn’t God care if we take poison? Not if the purpose is to cure. Every day Christians take poison into their bodies to cure themselves of cancer. But if we take in poison to kill ourselves, that’s another matter entirely. In Christianity, why you do things is more important than what you do.
There is something striking and truly counterintuitive about Paul’s reasoning here and in 1 Corinthians 8:8. Paul appropriates an argument that the strong want to use for their side (that what we eat or drink doesn’t matter to God so quit making a big deal about it) to instead chasten the strong. Since food and drink do not commend us to God, since the kingdom of God is not about food and drink, since food and drink are not matters of importance, then why not voluntarily abstain if your freedom could harm the faith of a wavering Christian? Fortunately, we rarely encounter this decision, but we have to be willing to make it.
Paul mentions just “eating and drinking” in verse 17, but this principle extends to many other disputable matters. The kingdom of God is not a matter of schooling choices, political parties, musical styles, and so on. Once again, we’re not suggesting that third-level matters are unimportant. We have some strong opinions on them. But they are not what the kingdom of God is about. The most important thing is not what we eat or drink. Schismatically dividing over these less important matters does not make “for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Rom. 14:19).17
9. If you have freedom, don’t flaunt it; if you are strict, don’t expect others to be strict like you (Rom. 14:22a).
The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God.
This truth applies equally to the strong and the weak. To those with a strong conscience you have much freedom in Christ. But don’t flaunt it or show it off in a way that may cause others to sin. Be especially careful to nurture the faith of young people and new Christians.
Those of you with a weak conscience in a particular area also have a responsibility not to “police” others by pressuring them to adopt your strict standards. You should keep these matters between yourself and God.
As we saw in table 5 above, those who are strict may be prone to an even more serious error, namely, insisting that everyone must hold their view in order to be a Christian. When you say that holding a particular view on a disputable matter is essential to be a Christian, you have crossed the line into legalism.18 Here’s how Sam Storms defines legalism: “Legalism is the tendency to regard as divine law things that God has neither required nor forbidden in Scripture, and the corresponding inclination to look with suspicion on others for their failure or refusal to conform. . . . Do you elevate to the status of moral law something the Bible does not require?”19
10. A person who lives according to their conscience is blessed (Rom. 14:22b–23).
Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.
God gave us the gift of conscience in order to significantly increase our joy as we obey its warnings. As we saw in chapter 1 and explored further in chapter 4, one of the two great principles of conscience is to obey it. “Paul judges it dangerous for Christians to defy their consciences, because if they get in the habit of ignoring the voice of conscience, they may ignore that voice even when the conscience is well informed and properly warning them of something that is positively evil.”20 Just as God’s gift of touch and pain guards us from what would rob us of physical health, conscience continually guards us from the sin that robs our joy.
11. We must follow the example of Christ, who put others first (Rom. 15:1–6).
We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.” For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This principle doesn’t mean that the strong have to agree with the position of the weak. It doesn’t even mean that the strong can never again exercise their freedoms. On the other hand, neither does it mean that the strong only put up with or endure or tolerate the weak, like a person who tolerates someone who annoys him. For a Christian, to “bear with” the weaknesses of the weak means that you gladly help the weak by refraining from doing anything that would hurt their faith.
Be careful not to misunderstand verse 2: “Let each of us please his neighbor.” Paul is not telling you to become a “people pleaser” who cares more about what others think than about what God thinks. The choice is not between pleasing people and pleasing God, but between pleasing others and pleasing yourself. Christian freedom is not “I always do what I want.” Nor is it “I always do whatever the other person wants.” It is “I do what brings glory to God. I do what brings others under the influence of the gospel. I do what leads to peace in the church.”
Romans 15:3 emphasizes the example of Christ. We cannot even begin to imagine the freedoms and privileges that belonged to the Son of God in heaven. To be God is to be completely free. Yet Christ “did not please himself” but gave up his rights and freedoms to become a servant so that we could be saved from wrath. Compared to what Christ suffered on the cross, to give up a freedom like eating meat is a trifle indeed.
12. We bring glory to God when we welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us (Rom. 15:7).
Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.
With this sentence, Paul bookends this long section that began with similar words in 14:1: “Welcome him. . . .” But here in 15:7 Paul adds a comparison—“as Christ has welcomed you”—and a purpose—“for the glory of God.” It matters how you treat those who disagree with you on disputable matters. When you welcome them as Christ has welcomed you, you glorify God.
Conclusion
This is God’s brilliant solution when Christians disagree about disputable matters. It is much easier said than done. So let’s ask God for grace to respond to his Word in a way that gives him glory:
Father, we are finite and sinful people, and for a complex of reasons that you know far better than we do, we disagree with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ on all sorts of disputable matters.
1.Would you please give us grace to welcome those who disagree with us on various disputable issues?
2.Would you please give us grace to not look down on those who are stricter than we are?
3.Would you please give us grace to not be judgmental toward those who exercise more freedom than we do?
4.Would you please give us grace to be fully convinced of our positions in our own consciences?
5.Would you please give us grace to practice our freedoms and restrictions for your glory and to assume that other believers are doing the same?
6.Would you please give us grace to keep disputable matters in perspective, knowing that we will all someday stand before your judgment seat?
7.Would you please give us grace to not let our freedom destroy the faith of a professing Christian who is weaker on a particular disputable matter?
8.Would you please give us grace to build each other up in righteousness, peace, and joy?
9.Would you please give us grace to not flaunt our freedom or expect others to be as strict as we are?
10.Would you please give us grace to live according to our conscience and experience your blessing?
11.Would you please give us grace to follow the example of Christ, who put others first?
12.Would you please give us grace to bring you glory by welcoming one another as Christ has welcomed us?
Lord, we are weak and selfish. We need so much endurance and encouragement to live with our brothers and sisters in this way of peace. You are the God of endurance and encouragement. Please grant us to live in such harmony with one another and in accord with Christ Jesus that together we may with one voice glorify you, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
1 See, e.g., R. Albert Mohler Jr., “Confessional Evangelicalism,” in Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism, ed. Andrew David Naselli and Collin Hansen, Counterpoints: Bible and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 77–80. Some people refer to these three levels as (1) dogma, (2) doctrine, and (3) differences; or (1) absolutes, (2) convictions, and (3) opinions and questions; or (1) essential, (2) important, and (3) nonessential.
2 Douglas J. Moo notes: “But the value of this section is not limited to Paul’s advice on these specific issues. For Paul here sets forth principles that are applicable to a range of issues that we may loosely classify as adiaphora: matters neither required of Christians nor prohibited to them.” The Epistle to the Romans, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 881.
3 See table 2 in chapter 4.
4 D. A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo, Introducing the New Testament: A Short Guide to Its History and Message, ed. Andrew David Naselli (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 83–84.
5 Douglas J. Moo, Encountering the Book of Romans: A Theological Survey, 2nd ed., Encountering Biblical Studies (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2014), 180.
6 See John Murray, “The Weak and the Strong,” Westminster Theological Journal 12, no. 2 (1950): 153; Craig Blomberg, 1 Corinthians, NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 169; Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 2nd ed., New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), 432, 530, 541.
7 Douglas J. Moo, Romans, NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), 467.
8 Moo, Encountering the Book of Romans, 180.
9 This section revises portions of J. D. Crowley, Commentary on the Book of Romans for Cambodia and Asia, ASEAN Bible Commentary (Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Fount of Wisdom, 2014), 227–43, which we have used by permission of the publisher.
10 Moo, Encountering the Book of Romans, 181. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge also observe, “Paul holds that a conscience is ‘weak’ if it makes one think something is wrong when in fact that thing is not itself objectively wrong, wrong in God’s eyes.” Letters Along the Way: A Novel of the Christian Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1993), 91. Elsewhere, D. A. Carson notes: “The ‘weak’ brother in this chapter ([1 Cor.] 8:7–13) is one with a ‘weak’ conscience; that is, one who thinks some action is wrong even though there is nothing intrinsically wrong in it. Thus the ‘weak’ brother is more bound by rules than the ‘strong’ brother. Both will adopt the rules that touch things truly wrong, while the weak brother adds rules for things that are not truly wrong but that are at that point wrong for him, since he thinks them wrong.” For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God’s Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1998), vol. 1, Sept. 3 entry.
11 Cf. Robert Duncan Culver, who observes, “Weak consciences abound in every corner of Christendom and perhaps in some corner of every Christian soul.” Systematic Theology: Biblical and Historical (Fearn, Scotland: Mentor, 2005), 267.
12 D. A. Carson, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and His Confrontation with the World: An Exposition of Matthew 5–10 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1987), 105.
13 Ulrich Zwingli, “Concerning Choice and Liberty Respecting Food—Concerning Offence and Vexation—Whether Anyone Has Power to Forbid Foods at Certain Times—Opinion of Huldreich Zwingli (April 16, 1522),” in Ulrich Zwingli, Early Writings, ed. Samuel Macauley Jackson (1912; repr., Durham, NC: The Labyrinth Press, 1987), 76–77.
14 John S. Feinberg and Paul D. Feinberg, Ethics for a Brave New World, 2nd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 53–55.
15 Moo, Romans, 468. Cf. Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998), 736: “Being ‘grieved’ [in v. 19] is often understood to denote the feelings of sadness one experiences when others engage in behavior that is deemed inappropriate. . . . [But] the grief intended here relates to eternal destruction. Thus the ‘weak’ are grieved (or stumble, etc.) if they imitate the behavior of the ‘strong’ without having the same faith as the ‘strong.’ What damages the ‘weak,’ then, is to engage in behavior that is contrary to their faith and conscience. . . . In most modern debates about these and similar issues there is no danger that the more ‘traditional’ or ‘conservative’ person will proceed to imitate the behavior of the so-called strong and thus be plunged to eternal ruin.” See also Murray, “The Weak and the Strong,” 147–48.
16 Moo, Encountering the Book of Romans, 184. See also Murray, “The Weak and the Strong,” 136–53.
17 Of course, there will always be some Christians who go beyond the limits of these principles and use freedom as an excuse for lawlessness. This is another reason churches need Spirit-filled pastors to shepherd and warn their (sometimes self-deceived) sheep.
18 Cf. Carson and Woodbridge, Letters Along the Way, 92; R. C. Sproul, The Gospel of God: An Exposition of Romans, Focus on the Bible Commentary (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 1999), 237.
19 Sam Storms, Tough Topics: Biblical Answers to 25 Challenging Questions (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 311.
20 D. A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry: An Exposition of Passages from 1 Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1993), 123.