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§34 Rights and Responsibilities (Rom. 14:13–23)

Continuing with the subject of the “strong” and the “weak,” Paul now turns to the proper relationship of freedom to love and faith. The strong in faith are free from observance of days and food regulations, but if they express their freedom at the expense of weaker believers, they violate love. The weak in faith are constrained to observe both days and food regulations, but if they abandon these constraints in the name of freedom, they violate their faith. Each side’s judgment of the other is a subtle infraction of the order of creation by attempting to make others in one’s own image instead of in the image of God.

The issue at hand is the proper use of freedom: freedom in service of love, love expressing itself through freedom, but not freedom as an end in itself or freedom at the expense of others. Freedom is an important characteristic of the Christian faith (cf. Gal. 5:1), but in contrast to the understanding of freedom in the modern West, Christian freedom is not an end in itself, but a means to a greater end. Freedom is not the foundation on which Paul builds Christian ethics; that foundation is reserved for the deeper and more permanent force of love. Writing to the Corinthians on a related matter, the apostle said that “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Cor. 8:1). Whether Christians are free to do something does not settle the matter; the point is whether they ought to do it in light of agapē. On this issue Paul is thoroughly indebted to the teaching of Jesus. “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. So watch yourselves” (Luke 17:1–3). Paul Achtemeier is right, “The question at issue in this passage is the relationship between the right of Christians to use their freedom and their commensurate responsibility to use that undoubted freedom in a way that is constructive rather than destructive of Christian fellowship” (Romans, p. 219).

In addressing primarily the “strong” in this section, Paul anchors his argument to the mooring points of freedom and love. Freedom is asserted in verse 14 (“no food is unclean in itself”) and love in verse 20 (“do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food”). The whole section falls into three parts, each initiated by “therefore” (in Greek). The first shows how the principle of freedom in service of others affects weaker believers (vv. 13–15); the second concerns its effect on others in general (vv. 16–18); and the last shows how it builds up the church (vv. 19–23).

14:13 / The opening line, Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another, summarizes the train of thought in 14:1–12. The word for “judging” (Gk. krinein) is no longer limited to the “weak” as it was in 14:1–12, but is now used generally of both parties. What follows, however, is addressed largely to the “strong.” In Greek there is an effective word play on “judge,” although it is difficult to reproduce in English. Bengel’s free translation comes close to the gist: “Let us no longer judge one another. But if we must judge, let this be our judgment, not to put a stumbling block or obstacle in a brother’s way” (Gnomon, vol. 3, p. 178). This exhortation echoes the teaching of Jesus (Matt. 7:1–5; 17:27; Mark 9:42), as well as the apostle himself (9:30–32; 1 Cor. 8:9–13), and it may have been influenced by an oft-quoted passage in Judaism, “Do not put a stumbling block in front of the blind” (Lev. 19:14). A proskomma (stumbling block) is a static metaphor of a stone in the road which causes one to stumble, whereas skandalon (obstacle) is a more dynamic metaphor, meaning an allurement or enticement to sin, and hence a temptation or entrapment. The words are close synonyms, but there is this difference: a proskomma is something that happens by chance, whereas a skandalon is intentional and thereby more serious. The meaning, obviously, is that believers are to avoid those circumstances in which, either unknowingly or intentionally, they might injure fellow Christians. The issue is again that of freedom and love. Barth’s warning is worth recalling:

No triumphant freedom of conscience, no triumphant faith to eat all things justifies me, if, at the moment of my triumph, I have seated myself upon the throne of God and am myself preparing stumbling blocks and occasions of falling instead of making room for God’s action. Gone then are my faith and my freedom; and all my knowledge is as though I knew nothing (Romans, p. 519).

14:14 / In this verse Paul clearly asserts his apostolic authority (As one who is in the Lord Jesus) and personal conviction (I am fully convinced) in order to justify that no food is unclean in itself. Paul rarely refers to our Lord simply as Jesus (normally, “Christ” or “Christ Jesus”); his doing so here may indicate that he is recalling the authority of Jesus on this matter (Mark 7:15–23 and parallels). The grounding of his authority in both Christ and conscience spares him from Hamlet’s subjectivism, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Act 2, Scene 2, lines 255ff.).

The issue here is not one of morality, but of things in their created state. In themselves they are neutral, although they become clean or unclean according to the attitudes which believers bring to them and the purposes for which they ordain them, whether that be the service of others or the gratification of self (cf. 1 Tim. 4:3–5). Jesus taught similarly, “Nothing outside a man can make him ‘unclean’ by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him ‘unclean’ ” (Mark 7:15). To a Jew who had been raised within the framework of the law such understandings may have seemed rather subjective. Both Jesus and Paul, however, were literally removing “the dividing wall” (Eph. 2:14) that, as was also true in Hamlet’s case, had become a prison rather than a rampart of righteousness. “If the heart is pure,” says Leenhardt, “everything is pure, and in consequence everything is permitted; [one] is then free to use the works of God in conscience, and it is a matter of no importance whether [one] abstains or not from such and such a thing” (Romans, p. 352).

14:15 / To cinch the argument Paul shifts to the second person. Far from being a matter of general importance, the argument is inexorably pressing. If you use your freedom, says Paul, so as to cause someone to stumble or fall, then love has been forfeited to (self-serving) freedom, and your fellow believer’s salvation is imperiled. There is a telling parallel to this verse in 5:6 that speaks of Christ dying for the “powerless.” The word for “powerless” (Gk. asthenos) is the same word employed throughout 14:1–15:13 for the weak! The fact that Paul introduces the cross of Christ at the point of eating reveals that this is not an incidental issue but a matter of salvation. Even “right” theology becomes very wrong when it violates love! (So Gaugler, Der Römerbrief, vol. 2, p. 347). Absurd, says Barth. “Christ died for him, and I—eat against him!” (Romans, p. 519). Or as Bengel said, “Do not value thy food more than Christ valued his life” (Gnomon, vol. 3, p. 179). The problem is compounded by the fact that the greater one’s conscience has been violated, the more difficult it is to induce repentance. In an impassioned judgment Luther calls such a Christian “a cruel murderer, because … you despise, in your brother, the death of Christ, for he died certainly also for him” (Lectures on Romans, p. 398). Lest it seem that Luther overstates the case, it may be noted that the Greek word for destroy, apollynai, suggests, among other things, spiritual ruin and loss of eternal life.

14:16 / Continuing with direct, second-person address, Paul enjoins, Do not allow what you consider good to be spoken of as evil. The original Greek has greater voltage, “Do not allow your good to be blasphemed.” Why might the apostle use such incendiary language here? Several commentators suggest that good is the spiritual freedom of the strong, and that Paul admonishes them not to bring it into disrepute. This is quite possible in light of the fact that Paul appears to have been addressing the strong since 13b. But in conjunction with the latter half of verse 15 where he speaks of spiritual ruin, and with the mention of blasphemy in this verse, it is more likely that good refers not to Christian freedom, but to the gospel of salvation itself. If that is so, then he here addresses both the strong and weak. If Christian freedom is employed to the detriment of a believer’s salvation, then the work of God in the life of the believer is itself spoken of as evil and blasphemed. The weak may thereby attribute to Satan what is actually of God, and this borders on the sin against the Holy Spirit (Mark 3:23–30).

14:17–18 / The direct admonition of the foregoing verses now yields to a positive formulation of the gospel. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (v. 17). The kingdom of God is a rare expression in Paul (occurring some 10 times), which is somewhat surprising when we recall that it was the main theme of Jesus’ teaching. Paul normally employs it eschatologically to mean the kingdom of God which will follow the return of Christ. Here, however, it denotes a present reality, and this may again argue for Paul’s dependence on the teaching of Jesus at this point. Righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit are characteristics of the reign of Jesus Christ in the lives of believers. This is the last appearance of the towering concept of righteousness in Romans. Peace is the health and harmony which results from righteousness in believers’ lives (5:1). The consequence of righteousness and peace is joy, which is introduced here for the first time in Romans.

The reduction of the kingdom of God to eating and drinking is like playing a Mozart piano concerto with one finger. The reign of God confounds all attempts to reduce it to caricatures and formulas. These are human contrivances designed to serve human ends, but the gospel is a matter of serving Christ (v. 18). The idea of serving is doubly appropriate in this context because it corresponds to the larger issue of humility and the surrendering of rights out of love. God is not made in the human image, but humanity is made in God’s image and exists to glorify him. Righteousness, peace and joy are the essential characteristics of the life transformed by Christ. The individual who subordinates his or her life to Christ receives them freely and is thereby pleasing to God and approved by men. The language here clearly echoes the thesis in 12:2. Approved doubtlessly stands in contrast to “blasphemed” above (v. 16). Whoever desires God’s purposes rather than personal freedom will be so recognized by men.

14:19–21 / Having concluded the discussion of freedom and love, Paul proceeds to the third theme of this section in verse 19: the “reverent use of freedom” (The Book of Common Prayer) and the upbuilding of the church in love. Peace and edification (v. 19) are not conceived of passively, but actively and positively. Paul advocates not merely keeping the peace, but pursuing (Gk. diōkein [see Additional Note]) peace and growth, thus bringing into reality something which does not yet exist.

The pursuit of peace is an important vocation of the believer (12:18). The NT understands peace not simply as “peaceful coexistence,” i.e., an absence of hostility and tolerance of differences and difficulties. It is rather an active participation in wholeness and well-being that results from God’s pronouncement of righteousness in Christ (5:1). Paul expressly prefaces edification with mutual, thus repeating the theme of 12:3ff. that the transformed life is a life in relationship with others and in community (also 1 Thess. 5:11). Individual godliness cannot be conceived of without corporate godliness, in the same way that healthy lungs and kidneys, for example, presuppose a functional circulatory system.

Verse 20 returns to the thought of verse 14, but the change to the second person intensifies it, Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. Destroy obviously stands in contrast to edification in verse 19. Food, of course, cannot destroy God’s work, but people’s attitudes toward food may. The work of God may refer to the edification of the church that Paul just alluded to, but it more likely refers to the work of God on the cross for the salvation of weaker believers (v. 15b). The strong may mistakenly think that their freedom is the final word, in which case they violate love. Or again, they may reckon that the constraint of weaker believers means that God is less active in their lives, in which case the strong violate the faith of the weak.

In certain circumstances, therefore, a Christian will be willing to refrain from doing something that is permissible in faith because it is not responsible in love (also 1 Cor. 10:31–33). Paul himself practiced such behavior on several occasions, often to the surprise of his contemporaries (Acts 16:3; 21:20–26; 1 Cor. 9:20). His rationale was not simply that he did not want to offend a weaker believer; rather, he did not want the behavior of the strong to encourage the weak to do something which in the latter’s eyes was wrong; or worse yet, he did not want to carry his new-found liberty to excessive and destructive lengths.

14:22–23 / Paul concludes with an appeal to act in nothing apart from that unconditional trust and reliance on God which is known as faith. Greater faith will, of course, permit a wider range of activities than will weaker faith, but the range of activities is finally irrelevant. The point is not to transgress the field, regardless of its size, which faith creates for the believer. Whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God, says the apostle (v. 22). This is far from an apology for a private faith. “Private faith” is as foreign to Christianity as is a private virus to medicine. This statement, along with the following beatitude, Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves, is an appeal for integrity or consistency between belief and behavior. In the matter of food regulations and observance of days one may know an inner freedom, even if love counsels a more prudent course.

The strong can accommodate their faith to the weak without harming their faith, but the weak cannot accommodate their faith to the strong without harming theirs. That is the point of verse 23, the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith. The weaker believer has acted “beyond” his faith, so to speak, in doing something for which he does not possess the inner freedom. The admonition is again laid at the doorstep of the strong. Their very freedom in dietary matters must not inflate them to overconfidence, but should induce the cautionary note of love as the final arbiter of action. Throughout this discussion, of course, the issue remains one of adiaphora, or things not essential for salvation. The apostle has no intention of advocating moral subjectivism.

A contemporary of Paul, Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai, once asked the meaning of the verse, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people” (Prov. 14:34). The answers he received from various quarters of Judaism agreed that even the good deeds and merciful acts of heathen peoples were accounted as sin because they were done (or so it was supposed) from pride, ambition, and the like (see Str-B, vol. 1, pp. 204–5). Paul’s bold declaration, everything that does not come from faith is sin (v. 23b) has been the subject of similar misunderstanding, as evidenced by Augustine’s pronouncement, for example, that pagan virtues were but “splendid vices” (Contra Julianum 4.32; see Cranfield, Romans, vol. 2, p. 728). The assumption behind such interpretations seems to be that unless one is a Christian one’s virtues are only apparent and not genuine.

This is a gross misreading of verse 23, however, as well as an infraction against charity. It not only contradicts what Paul said in 2:14–15, for example, but it also wrenches the statement from its context. Everything that does not come from faith is sin is controlled by the issues of eating, drinking, and observance of days. In a larger respect it may be true that whatever is not of faith is ultimately idolatrous, as Paul taught in 1:18ff. But this larger issue of faith versus disbelief (e.g., Christianity versus paganism or other religions) is not under consideration here. The present issue is the way Christians, both “strong” and “weak,” practice their faith among one another. Verse 23b is thus a negative rendering of the thought of verse 18, “anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God.” Verse 23 awakens the reader to the conviction that freedom is true freedom only where it embodies faith. Where it stands independently of faith, or exceeds faith, it is sin. Ethically speaking, Christian faith is freedom in the service of love. “For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer” (1 Tim. 4:4–5).