Romans 14:1-4

Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

Just prior to Romans 14, Paul says, “Let us behave decently, … not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature” (Rom. 13:13-14). It is not surprising, then, that much of Romans 14 and some of Romans 15 instructs believers in how to behave decently rather than in dissension and jealousy.

Paul tackles dissension in Romans 14:1. Rather than division, the command is to accept. The person to be accepted is “him whose faith is weak.” The way this acceptance works itself out is by not “passing judgment,” and the specific instances in which believers are not to pass judgment are in the case of “disputable matters.” So this command applies specifically to people of strong faith. The command is not a prohibition of all judgment. Rather, it is a challenging command, because it requires a person who is strong in faith to be strong also in discernment, strong enough to know which issues are “disputable” and which are not.

However, Paul does not give only a command. He illuminates his meaning. Romans 14:2 sets up an example situation in which this principle may be applied. The example has to do with what a person eats. According to Paul, a person with strong faith eats “everything.” By contrast, a man whose faith is weak eats “only vegetables.” This example helps us to understand Paul’s definitions of “strong” and “weak” faith. It seems from this example that a strong faith allows a person to participate more broadly in the available opportunities and options, but that a weak faith restricts a person’s personal freedom to partake of certain aspects of life – in this case, food.

In the situation just described, the person with strong faith is not to regard his weaker-faith brother with contempt (Rom. 14:3a). Such a situation involves a disputable matter, though the text does not at this point explain what the dispute might involve. Obviously, almost any matter is disputable in some sense. Any time two people disagree about how to behave, each believing she is right and the other is wrong, there is dispute. But some matters ought not to be disputable. Murder, for instance, ought to be clearly wrong in the minds of all. The fact that someone chooses to believe murder is sometimes right does not make this issue disputable; murder remains indisputably wrong. People might be expected to sustain a reasonable and legitimate contempt toward a person who continually argues against the truth that murder is wrong. But Paul writes that there is no place for a strong-faith believer to show contempt toward a weak-faith believer over such disputable matters as whether to eat everything or only vegetables.

At the same time, Paul begins to address the weak-faith Christian’s proper response; he should not judge the person who eats everything (Rom. 14:3). This judgment is likely tied to the jealousy Paul wrote about in Romans 13:13. Jealousy is sometimes a desire to have what another has, or to do what another does. But this sense of jealousy derives from an even more tightly defined understanding of jealousy, an understanding which sees jealousy as that by which a person claims and guards the things that rightly belong to him. This sense of jealousy is seen, for instance, in Exodus 20:5, where God says, “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God…” God is not jealous in the sense we usually think of; He does not want something that rightly belongs to another person. Instead, God is jealous when what is properly His is given to someone else. He claims and guards worship as an honor that should be given to Him alone because it is intended for Him alone. In this sense, a Christian whose faith convinced him that he should only eat vegetables might look at a fellow-believer with jealousy. This jealousy would come as a judgment against the fellow-believer, for it would declare that he was being unfaithful to God by eating “everything” rather than limiting himself to vegetables. Rather than allowing a weak-faith believer wrongly to sustain such a jealousy to uphold God’s honor against a fellow-believer, Paul commands those who are weak in faith not to judge those who live more freely than themselves.

Paul’s basis for these statements is simple: “God has accepted him.” To a believer with weak faith, passionately jealous for God to be appropriately obeyed and tempted to judge a brother who eats “everything,” the simple statement “God has accepted him” should be sufficient to halt his judgments. If God has accepted this person who consistently eats foods that “should not be eaten,” then as Paul writes in verse 4, “Who are you to judge [God’s] servant?” Because the statement “God has accepted him” follows not only Paul’s command toward weak-faith believers but also toward strong-faith believers, it is almost certainly the basis also for the command that those who are strong not look down on those who are weak. Believers both of strong faith and of weak faith, when in disagreement, should view each other first of all as people whom God accepts. When believers look at each other with this amazing truth in mind, disagreements may not disappear, but judgments do. Rather than looking at each other’s disputable activities to figure out who is acceptable before God, their focus is to be on God: “To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand” (Rom. 14:4).

Father, thank You that Your acceptance is more important than any differences between those You have accepted, those who believe in Jesus Christ. Thank You for urging us to love each other deeply enough to put up with differences – differences that feel significant to us. Thank You that because of You and Jesus Christ, Your Son, believers can look at each other and see people “Accepted by God.” Because each of my fellow believers is “Accepted by God,” I know that they should also be “Accepted by Me.” I cannot reject people God accepts. Forgive me for the times I lean towards rejecting brothers, and teach me and all believers to accept one another, despite all our flaws and misunderstandings.

*note: I’m taking a break for a little while from Acts to explore Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8.