Romans 14

G. Love and Liberty, 14:1–15:13

Exactly what the problem was with which Paul is dealing in this section is not clear. There has been interminable discussion about it, and nothing like a consensus has been attained.¹ Paul is discussing the relations between those he calls “weak” and those he calls “strong”, but he never explains in detail who they were and what teachings they held. Quite clearly the Roman Christians knew, so there was no need to go into the question. Some hold that these were parties in the Roman church, others that they were individuals and not sufficiently organized to be called “parties”. Still others think that Paul was not referring specifically to people at Rome but to tendencies he found in the church everywhere, and thus his advice was as relevant to Rome as to any other place. Some think the weak were Jewish Christians and the strong were Gentile believers. They point to the somewhat similar situation at Corinth where some believers refrained from eating meat that had been offered to idols and argued that this would be typical of Jewish believers. Jews living in the Gentile world might well abstain from meat because they could never be sure it had not been contaminated by associations with idol worship. Against this it is argued that in a city like Rome with a large Jewish population kosher meat was sure to be available. It is urged that it is illegitimate to bring in the case of Corinth because nothing is said here about idols and we have no reason to hold that the two situations were at all similar. It is further pointed out that some Gentile groups like the Orphics and Pythagoreans were vegetarian, so that the practice might well have originated in Gentile circles. Moreover, the abstention from wine is not known among the Jews except for the Nazirites and for the priests when engaged in their ministry.

The arguments are endless, but no one has been able to come up with convincing evidence for any one position. It is best to accept the fact that we are ignorant of the precise situation and simply to consider what Paul says. The apostle sides with neither the weak nor the strong; clearly he thought that unity was more important than holding either position. The situation is not like that in Galatians where he contended vigorously against legalists; here both groups were evidently clear about the centrality of justification by faith; it was the way that was put into practice that was at stake.

1. Christian liberty, 14:1–12

¹Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. ²One man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. ³The 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. ⁴Who 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.

⁵One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. ⁶He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. ⁷For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. ⁸If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.

⁹For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. ¹⁰You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. ¹¹It is written:

“ ‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord,

‘Every knee will bow before me;

every tongue will confess to God.’ ”^a

¹²So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.

The church was never meant to be a cozy club of like-minded people of one race or social position or intellectual calibre. Christians are not clones, identical in all respects. One of the difficulties the church has always faced is that included in its membership are the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, those from every stratum of society, the old and the young, adults and children, the conservatives and the radicals. People from a great number of nations are Christians, and people of every temperament. This is a wonderful thing about the church, and most of us have thrilled at some time at the contemplation of the rich variety in our brothers and sisters in Christ. But this very variety puts strains on us all. How are we to coexist within one church? Other groupings in the societies we know are more limited in their membership. This takes away from the richness they might otherwise know, but it makes it easier for them to get along with one another. There are bound to be tensions in the Christian society,² and this part of Romans shows that those tensions have been there from the first. It is easier to put our trust in Christ for salvation than to solve the hard problems that confront us when we try to live out the implications of our faith in a society that is not Christian. Paul gives us advice as to how we are to live with others who love the Lord but who do not see what we are doing as the ideal way of living out the Christian faith.

1. Paul begins with “But him that is weak”,³ or what TH calls “the emphatic element in the Greek sentence.” The weak may not matter greatly in the sight of the congregation as a whole, but they are important and Paul emphasizes them. NIV has whose faith is weak, but Paul says rather, “him that is weak in faith”, “in respect of faith”.⁴ As the discussion shows, he does not mean a person who trusts Christ but little, the man of feeble faith. Rather, the person he has in mind is the one who does not understand the conduct implied by faith; perhaps he is the person whose faith is ineffective. His faith is weak in that it cannot sustain him in certain kinds of conduct. He does not understand that when the meaning of justification by faith is grasped questions like the use of meat and wine and special days become irrelevant. Paul is not referring to basic trust in Christ. He assumes that that is present, for this weak person is a member of the church, not an outsider who it is hoped will be converted. What is being discussed is the way the believer should live, the actions that are permissible or required.

Those converted to Christianity in the first century did not come with minds like empty slates. They had had years of living in Judaism or in some pagan situation and in the process had acquired deeply rooted habits and attitudes. They did some things but avoided others. When they became Christians, all this did not drop away from them in a moment. For example, some pagans were so repelled by the self-indulgence they saw as an integral part of the world in which they lived that they turned from it all and lived ascetic lives, sometimes giving up the eating of meat altogether (Olshausen cites Seneca as one who did this). Jewish converts had kept the law of Moses, and specifically they had observed the Sabbath. When such people became Christians they often maintained such habits. They did not see that justification by faith made them irrelevant. It is people who brought from their previous life such habits of thinking and living of whom Paul is speaking.

Throughout the centuries of the Christian church there have been people like that, people who for reasons good or bad have seen certain actions as things they must do and others as things they must not do. And there have been others who have felt no compulsion either way; their faith has made them strong. It is this division (which is still with us) of which Paul writes.⁵

Accept him, says the apostle, and the fact that he is addressing the church at large is surely an indication that the weak were in a minority among the strong. The verb means more than “allow to remain in the membership”; it has the notion of welcome, of taking to oneself and so taking into friendship.⁶ The weak are not to be made to feel that they are barely tolerated and seen as second-class members. They are to be received with warmth and true fellowship. Christian love demands no less.

Paul adds, without passing judgment on disputable matters, a passage not without its obscurities but which makes clear that the weak brother’s scruples are not to hinder the warmth of Christian fellowship.⁷ The Greek may mean “without attempting to settle doubtful points” (NEB), or “without starting an argument” (JB), or “not to pass judgment on his scruples” (Moffatt). Whichever way we take it, Paul is dissuading the strong from any activity that will discourage the weak. “The weak man should be accepted as the Christian brother he claims to be. One should not judge the thoughts which underlie his conduct. This is for God alone to do, cf. v. 22” (F. Büchsel, TDNT, III, p. 950).

2. Paul gives an example of the kind of thing he has in mind, contrasting two people⁸ one of whom eats everything while the other eats only vegetables.⁹ The vegetarian has taken over into his Christianity some scruple about eating meat that he has retained from his pre-Christian experience. In Corinth some Christians could with a good conscience eat meat part of which had been offered to an idol, for they held that an idol is nothing (1 Cor. 8:4). For others conscience made this impossible (1 Cor. 8:7). Paul is not saying that the Corinthian situation was a problem in Rome also (nothing in this passage indicates this, and the idea that the Roman problem was identical with the Corinthian problem must be rejected). But he was writing from Corinth, where he would certainly be mindful of local problems. And the Corinthian dilemma shows us the kind of thing that could arise in the Roman world of the day. Paul is referring to someone who had conscientious scruples about eating meat, and thus confined his diet to vegetables. This is certainly not part of authentic Christian teaching (cf. Mark 7:19), but the scruples were very real and Paul is saying that they must be respected.¹⁰

3. In a situation like this where different Christians had different practices tolerance was important. Each must maintain a right attitude to the other. The eater must not despise¹¹ the non-eater, and the non-eater must not pass judgment on the eater. The strong often have a tendency to look down on the weak and regard them as inferior Christians, while the weak, knowing that it would be wrong for them (thinking as they do) to do something that the strong do, all too easily hold that the strong are sinning and slip into condemning them. Not infrequently the weak is the greater tyrant. Ironically both are falling into much the same error. The weak are clearly in danger of letting works obscure the centrality of justification by faith, and the same is true of the strong, for their attitude implies “My faith is better than yours”, and that turns us to what we do rather than to what Christ has done for us. It is important for each to realize that God has accepted¹² the other. The weak is not to judge the strong because God has welcomed him. And it is just as true that the weak, with all his scruples, is not to be despised, for God has welcomed him, too.

4. Paul begins this sentence with an emphatic you,¹³ which sets his imaginary conversationalist over against God, “Who are you that judge… ?” Both strong and weak should realize that it is God, not they and those who think like them, whose verdict counts. Paul speaks of judging “another’s”, not “another man’s”; his illustration is taken from human affairs, but he has in mind the divine Master. The possessive means that the servant in question belongs to and therefore is accountable to that Other. If a servant is acceptable to his master, it does not matter what his fellow servants think. The word for servant¹⁴ means a household slave. There may be little significance in the use of this word rather than the ordinary word for “slave” which Paul uses elsewhere, but it is possible that he is reminding his readers that a household slave would be especially close to the master. He says that it is with respect to the master (and no one else) that he stands or falls.¹⁵ This may mean either that whether he stands or falls is to his master’s advantage or disadvantage or that it is his master’s business whether he stands or falls.

And he will stand, the apostle goes on. He is surely thinking now of the weak and the strong rather than of his illustration. Neither can disenfranchise the other. It is God, not the strong/weak brother, who makes him stand. Paul finishes with the reminder that the Lord¹⁶ is able to make him stand (Gifford quotes Wiclif, “the Lord is mighty…”). In the last resort it is the power of God that matters. The Lord is able to make his servant stand, and he will.

5. Food was not the only matter in dispute; there was also the question of the observance or nonobservance of certain days.¹⁷ One person considers one day more sacred than another,¹⁸ whereas another person makes no such distinction. This has often been taken to mean that the weak brother observes the Jewish Sabbath.¹⁹ But Paul does not say this, and it is equally possible that he is referring to feast days and fast days, either those laid down in the Jewish law or those derived from other sources. Some refer to lucky and unlucky days deriving from pagan life (so Käsemann [p. 370], O’Neill, and others). The absence of any words of condemnation makes this last unlikely; it is hard to imagine that Paul would have accepted an appeal to luck as an acceptable Christian lifestyle. There is no indication as to which of the other possibilities is to be preferred, but we should bear in mind Paul’s strong words about those who observed “special days and months and seasons and years”, of whom he said, “I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you” (Gal. 4:10–11; cf. Col. 2:16ff.). It seems that some regarded the keeping of sacred times as of the essence of the Christian way. Paul rejected all such views with decision. But where the centrality of justification by faith was clear and the observance of a certain day (or days) was no more than a practice some believer found helpful, it was another matter.

In this situation it is important that each individual be fully convinced²⁰ in his own mind.²¹ To go along with what others do simply because they do it and without being convinced for oneself can be a dangerous practice. Specifically the weak brother can hurt his conscience by following the strong brother’s practice without holding the strong brother’s convictions.²²

6. Paul proceeds to relate the practice of both the strong and the weak to the Master they both serve. His emphasis is on the Lord (mentioned three times in this verse). He speaks first of the person who “sets his mind on the day”,²³ and says that he does this to the Lord.²⁴ It is not a device of the weak brother, brought about for his own comfort, convenience, or edification. He really is seeking to serve his Lord. The observance of the day, then, is in order to honor the Lord. Paul makes a similar statement about eating. The eater eats “to the Lord” (Paul does not say what is eaten, but the context makes it clear that it is meat, as NIV), and this is demonstrated by the fact that he gives thanks to God. But the person who does not eat “does not eat to the Lord”, and he, too, gives thanks (contrast 1:21). In other words, both “say grace” over their meal, whatever it is. Both equally have a religious attitude, and neither is simply conforming to worldly practice or social custom. Paul is not referring to religious indifferentism or to ritualism. He is referring to genuinely held religious conviction, and action that springs from that conviction.

7–8. Paul substantiates this²⁵ by pointing out that none of us lives or dies to himself;²⁶ “we neither live nor die as self-contained units” (Phillips). There is a sense in which “no man is an island”, for all our actions affect our fellowmen. But that is not what Paul is saying here. His thought is rather than neither in life nor in death can we escape the fact that what we do and are we do and are before God. Neither in life nor in death are we quite alone; we do both before God. No one lives or dies “for himself” (GNB). It is God, not self, that is important ultimately; to concentrate on self is to neglect our Maker and to sin against him (Black quotes D. M. Baillie, “the very essence of sin is self-centredness”).²⁷ The reference to death is important in more ways than one. The first-century Stoic might seek to choose both the time and the manner of his death, but this is not a Christian option: our death is in the hands of God and in the purpose of God. Death is an enemy (1 Cor. 15:26), but it cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ (8:38–39). When Paul says that we die to the Lord, he is not saying that we die in any such sense as ceasing to have fellowship with him but rather that we pass from one form of service to God to another form of service to God. He is, of course, talking about Christians, not mankind at large. Alive or dead, we are the Lord’s, and Paul’s threefold use of the Lord in verse 8 puts emphasis on his supreme place.²⁸

9. The death and resurrection of Jesus are now related to his lordship.²⁹ There is textual variation here, but there seems little doubt that we should accept the Greek underlying NIV’s died and returned to life.³⁰ Not appreciating that the aorist is ingressive, some have taken the verb to refer to Jesus’ earthly life (so Olshausen; cf. Phillips, “Christ lived and died”). But the aorist, coming as it does after the reference to the death of Jesus, signifies the entrance to a new state of life (IBNTG, p. 10); he died and subsequently sprang to life. Denney sees the purpose of this³¹ as the purpose of God, and Murray as the purpose of Christ. However, we should probably not make a distinction between the two. Paul is simply referring to the divine purpose. This was that Jesus might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. Again we have an ingressive aorist,³² giving the sense “became Lord”. There is of course a sense in which Jesus was always Lord; that follows from his essential nature. Being who and what he is, he is necessarily Lord of all. But Paul is not talking about that. He is referring to what happened as a result of Jesus’ atoning work; that brought about “the lordship of redemptive relationship” (Murray). In a very special sense Christ is Lord of those to whom he brought salvation through his atoning death. Paul sees both the dead and the living as under the scope of this lordship. The unusual order (we mostly speak of “the living and the dead”) is probably due to the order in which Christ’s dying and living are mentioned in the earlier part of the verse. And since Christ is Lord over all, dead and alive alike, then clearly eating or not eating, keeping a day or not, come under his direction.

10. Twice in this verse Paul uses an emphatic you (cf. GNB, “You, then …—why… ? And you …—why…?”), first of the weak who is inclined to condemn the strong for doing what the weak considers sinful, then of the strong who is tempted to despise the weak (cf. v. 3). The meat eater and the vegetarian, the day-keeper and the non-day-keeper, all alike are subject to the one Lord who will in due course sit in judgment on them all. Any judgments that they may pass are irrelevant, and in the light of the assize they all face they should not presume to anticipate the divine judgment. Both times Paul refers to your brother (a term he has not used since 12:1 and which he employs five times in this chapter), an important concept in this discussion. “If the Lord has ordained among us a society of brothers, equality must be observed. Anyone, therefore, who assumes the part of a judge is behaving insolently” (Calvin). It is not a mere acquaintance but a brother in Christ who is being judged and despised.³³ A reason is introduced by For,³⁴ but it is not clear whether the warning against judging others is because those who judge will themselves face judgment in due course (cf. Matt. 7:1; Luke 6:37) or whether Paul means that the brother who is the object of this “judgment” will in due course be judged by God (not by his fellows). Either way the thought is that the verdict that matters is God’s. The coming judgment will be universal; all are caught up in it and will stand before³⁵ God’s judgment seat.³⁶ Some MSS read “the judgment seat of Christ”, but it is usually agreed that the right reading is God’s.³⁷ The New Testament teaching, of course, is that God will judge us all through the agency of Christ. But even though we reject the reading “Christ’s” at this point, it is important to notice how easily Paul moves from “Christ” to “God” in this passage.

11. Now comes a characteristic appeal to Scripture. The apostle quotes from Isaiah 45:23 (LXX) with a small change of word order, preceded by “ ‘As I live,’ says the Lord” from Isaiah 49:18. NIV takes these words in the sense As surely as I live, which is the meaning of it. The bowing of the knee is an expression of homage and in this passage indicates “worship”. With this is linked every tongue will confess to God.³⁸ This may be understood in the sense “confess that I am God” (GNB) or “give praise to God” (RSV, Moffatt, etc.). Paul is saying that in the end every one of us will do homage to God.

12. Paul rounds off this part of his argument with a short statement of which Denney says, “Every word in this sentence is emphatic” (so Cranfield). So then introduces the logical conclusion.³⁹ Each makes the judgment universal: each one of us is caught up in it and there is no escaping it. Of us makes it personal: we cannot see this as applying to our neighbor but not ourselves. And we should notice that Paul is including himself with his readers. Give an account is an expression often used for the keeping of financial records. A reminder of the judgment we all face is a fitting conclusion to this stage of the discussion. The fact that each will render account for himself leaves no room for despising and judging others. The verdict on them is for God, not us.⁴⁰

2. The Way of Peace and Love, 14:13–23

¹³Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way. ¹⁴As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean. ¹⁵If your brother is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother for whom Christ died. ¹⁶Do not allow what you consider good to be spoken of as evil. ¹⁷For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, ¹⁸because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men.

¹⁹Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. ²⁰Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. ²¹It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother to fall.

²²So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves. ²³But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.

Paul says explicitly that “no food is unclean in itself” (v. 14) and hammers home his argument that no Christian should act as though the presence or absence of scruples about food is the important thing. All believers should have due regard for other believers whose view is different. Much more important than a particular view of food are things like consideration for other people, righteousness, peace, and joy. This part of the argument is a plea that the Roman Christians differentiate the important from the unimportant and that they act with consideration for others. Love, not particular views about food, must be the guide.

13. The first exhortation in this section seems directed at both the weak and the strong, but thereafter the strong are primarily in view. After all, they have greater scope: they can partake of the food in question or abstain; they can treat a day as special or treat all days alike. It is easier for them to change their practice. They should show consideration for their weaker comrades and promote the cause of peace and unity. But when Paul says let us stop passing judgment on one another, he is surely concerned about the weak as well as the strong. It is important that Christians do not arrogate to themselves the right to pass judgment on their fellows, a divine prerogative as Paul has just made clear (vv. 11–12). Indeed, his Therefore⁴¹ bases this direction on what he has just said about judgment. The present tense together with his “no longer”⁴² implies that the Romans have been doing this and urges them to stop.⁴³ But his let us, characteristically including himself, means that this is not a peremptory command given by someone who adopts a superior position. What he is saying is something to which he must give heed as well as they. What he looks for is the very opposite of judgment, as his use of the strong adversative⁴⁴ shows. Jesus warned his followers against actions that would hurt others (cf. Matt. 18:7; Mark 9:42; Luke 17:1–2), and his servant had learned this lesson well. For all its popularity among some Christians, judgment of others is an activity from which believers do well to abstain.⁴⁵ Far from more important than censuring a weaker brother for some overscrupulous action is it to make a firm resolve not to hinder such a weak brother in any way.

The content of the resolve for which the apostle looks is not to put⁴⁶ any stumbling block or obstacle⁴⁷ in that brother’s way. It is not enough for a Christian that a certain course is not wrong; he must also consider its effect on other people, specifically on his brother, one bound to him by close ties.

14. “I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus” (cf. Phil. 2:24) is a very strong affirmation (it is “strikingly emphatic”, Cranfield). Paul lets it be known that he has no doubts about this whatever; it must be stated with the utmost plainness. That is quite clear. What is not quite so clear is whether he is referring directly to some teaching of Jesus (as Matt. 15:11; 23:25–26; Mark 7:15), whether he means “on the authority of the Lord Jesus” (LB, NEB mg.), or whether he is saying, “My union with the Lord Jesus makes me certain…” (GNB). Since he says “in the Lord Jesus”, perhaps some such meaning as that of GNB is in order. He is not so much quoting as speaking out of the richness of his being “in” Christ. His relationship to Christ makes him absolutely certain about some things, of which this is one. “Nothing”, he says, “is common of itself”.⁴⁸ Paul is denying that there is such a thing as ceremonial uncleanness; that is impossible if we take seriously what God has done in Christ (cf. Acts 10:9–15; 1 Tim. 4:4; Tit. 1:15, etc.). All of life is God’s, and there is no ceremonial area from which he is excluded. In principle the “strong” are right. Nothing is inherently unclean.

But⁴⁹ when someone regards something as unclean, the situation is different. If it is a question of food, there is no uncleanness in the thing itself; but if a person regards it as such, then for him it is unclean. The person’s conscience is such that he cannot partake of the food in question without seeing the action as wrong. Such a person should not eat such a food. He should never do anything that he thinks, however misguidedly, is wrong. This is not because of anything inherent in the thing itself; Paul has already made that plain. No, it is because of his conscience. This does not mean, as Dodd points out, that “Nothing is good or ill, but thinking makes it so”, for some things are good and some are evil whatever we may think about them. It is taboos that Paul has in mind.

15. NIV omits “for”,⁵⁰ presumably because it makes for a difficult transition. We should probably take it as referring back to verse 13, with verse 14 as something of a parenthesis. The condition is stated realistically;⁵¹ “on account of food” comes next in an emphatic position. On account of something as unimportant as food, Paul is saying, one who is no less than your brother is grieved. The strong Christian is not dealing with abstract truths but grieving his own brother in Christ.⁵² The verb rendered is distressed⁵³ is a strong term. Paul is saying that the affront to the weak brother’s scruples could cause him deep hurt. His sensitive conscience is deeply pained as he observes the strong brother doing what he cannot but feel is wrong. He may also be emboldened to do the thing himself, in which case the hurt is even deeper. Murray points out that more than grief is involved; there is hurt from the violation of religious convictions. His integrity as a believer is at stake. If this happens, the strong brother is not walking⁵⁴ (a characteristic Pauline term) in love (a characteristic Pauline idea). For Christians love is the standard and love is the motive.⁵⁵

“Not for your food”,⁵⁶ Paul goes on, thus stressing the small gain to the strong Christian compared to the terrible loss for the weak one. “Do not destroy that one”, he says, and his pronoun is emphatic;⁵⁷ “that one for whom Christ died” (cf. 1 Cor. 8:11). It is no less than Christ who did no less than die for that weak brother, and is it too much to ask the strong to abstain from a particular kind of food?⁵⁸

16. Consequently⁵⁹ Paul exhorts believers not to let their good be evil spoken of. The big problem here is the meaning of “good”. Moffatt renders “Your rights must not get a bad name”, and many accept the kindred view that Paul is speaking of the liberty the strong enjoy in Christ (Calvin, Murray, SH, TH, and others), a view which H. Moule expresses in these terms: do not let your liberty “be railed at, as only a thinly-veiled self-indulgence after all.” Others hold that the words are addressed to the Romans as a whole, the weak as well as the strong, and that therefore the meaning cannot be liberty. It must be something like “your salvation” (cf. Lenski), a view which Luther puts this way: “what you are in God and what you have from God.” Or it might be the gospel (Hendriksen, Cranfield; cf. Chrysostom), for this will be brought into disrepute if the strong hurt the weak for the sake of so little. Any of these is possible, but perhaps there is most to be said for the third. It is not clear whether the evil speaking is seen as coming from inside or outside the church. If the former it will be the weak criticizing the strong, but it seems more likely that Paul is thinking of the harm that would come to the Christian message if people outside could see that some Christians had so little care and concern for others in the membership.⁶⁰

17. For carries on the argument and gives a reason for the preceding. It is because the kingdom of God is what it is that those who are in it should behave as Paul has suggested. This is the only use of the expression the kingdom of God in Romans. Indeed, Paul does not make a great deal of use of the concept (1 Cor. 4:20; 6:9–10; 15:50; Gal. 5:21; Col. 4:11; 1 Thess. 2:12; 2 Thess. 1:5; cf. 1 Cor. 15:24; Eph. 5:5; Col. 1:13); all told he uses the word “kingdom” only 14 times (Matthew has it 55 times; Mark, 20; Luke, 46; and John, 5). When he does use it, he mostly refers to the kingdom in its future aspect (the present may be only here and in 1 Cor. 4:20). The kingdom is distinctive,⁶¹ and Paul brings this out by contrasting eating and drinking⁶² (which apparently mattered so much to some of the Romans) with righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. His but is the strong adversative,⁶³ which sets the two in sharp contrast. The three qualities he names are all important concepts with the apostle, and the combination is striking. But there is some dispute as to exactly how they should be understood here. It is possible to see a reference to the righteousness in Christ that is God’s gift (as Hodge, Shedd, and Cranfield). Or the three may refer to ethical qualities: “righteousness as fulfilled and peace promoted and preserved by believers … joy in the believer’s heart” (Murray; cf. SH, Barrett). The former is favored by the primacy of God in the kingdom of God; it is not a kingdom brought in by our efforts but by what God has done and is doing. The latter arises naturally enough from the context, which refers to the actions of Roman Christians. It seems likely that Paul is not differentiating sharply between these two views and that he is using the expression in a way that suggests both (cf. Denney). The concluding words in the Holy Spirit are probably to be attached to all three concepts and not to be confined to joy.⁶⁴

18. Again Paul carries his argument along in logical sequence.⁶⁵ Anyone who serves Christ means more than merely nominal service; it indicates wholehearted commitment.⁶⁶ It is significant that Paul does not say “he who eats rightly” or “he who is considerate of his brother” or the like, but “he who serves Christ”. Everything is related to Christ. There is a problem regarding the Greek rendered in this way, which properly means “in this”. We expect a plural to cover all that has been listed,⁶⁷ and the question arises as to what “this” means. It may be the principle involved, or “in the Holy Spirit” (who has just been mentioned), or “the whole idea of spiritual privilege” (CBSC). Perhaps better is the view that it is the righteousness, peace, and joy that have just been mentioned, the singular being used because they are viewed as a unity. The person who serves like this is pleasing to God (this is the kind of service that God demands) and is also approved by men. This is in contrast to being “spoken of as evil” (v. 16). The word approved⁶⁸ means “able to stand the test”, “approved by testing” and indicates that the person in question, being pleasing to God, has survived the test and should be approved by his fellows, believers and unbelievers alike.⁶⁹

19. As a result of all this⁷⁰ Paul exhorts his readers to pursue⁷¹ (a verb which indicates more than a slight interest; it means earnest application) what leads to peace (more literally “the things of peace”). In the New Testament the most important thing about peace is that Christ has brought about peace with God, but in passages like this one the thought is rather that of peace with one another. Here the word is used in parallel with edification so that it clearly means peace with other people. It is the responsibility of those at peace with God to pursue the kind of conduct that will promote peace with people. Edification⁷² is a term which properly means the erection of a building, but in the New Testament it is used in the metaphorical sense of building people up. It is mostly a Pauline conception (Paul has it 15 times out of 18 in the New Testament). Paul saw the building up of Christians in the faith as most important (cf. 1 Cor. 14:26, “let all things be done for edification”), and further that it was something in which every believer could have a part. So here he exhorts the Roman believers to build one another up. Their aim should be to help one another rather than to criticize or despise.

20. By putting “not for the sake of food” in the emphatic position Paul again draws attention to the very small gain which some were evidently striving to obtain. Not for such a small matter should anyone destroy the work of God. He has just spoken of the importance of “building up”, and he uses a verb which envisages the naturally opposite process and which NIV renders destroy.⁷³ The work of God is a very unusual expression, found only once elsewhere in the New Testament and then in a different sense (John 6:29, where “the work of God” is that we believe; the plural “the works of God” is more frequent). There is wide divergence as to the way we should understand it here. Thus Boylan holds that it refers to what God does in the individual Christian, while Barrett denies this and sees a reference to the church. Wesley combines the two ideas: “Which He builds in the soul by faith, and in the Church by concord.” Michel sees a reference to the cross (as in v. 15b), Cranfield to what God does in the weak brother, and Haldane to what he does in the believer. Without some further explanation we cannot be sure of the apostle’s full meaning, but he is certainly including what God has done in the weak brother, for it is that that is to be built up or broken down. There may be a fuller meaning, but we cannot be sure.

“All things are clean”, Paul goes on to say (NIV inserts food, but while the main thrust of the present argument concerns food, Paul uses a wider term). Clean means free from anything that soils or corrupts. The apostle moves to the singular when he refers to what is “bad”,⁷⁴ evidently as he moves in thought from the general application to all things to the present problem for the individual. The construction is elliptical and the precise meaning is in some doubt. Paul may be referring to the weak or to the strong. The meaning might be “All things are clean but they bring evil to the persn who eats with a sense of offending” (cf. Phillips, food “can be harmful to the man…”), or the very similar “evil happens to the man….” But the meaning might also be “… it is wrong for any one to make others fall by what he eats” (RSV). Cranfield argues that the context favors a reference to the strong, but Murray holds that the meaning is that the weak is in trouble if he eats. Barrett sees a difficulty in that the eater may well be the strong (cf. v. 21) who is thus laying a stumbling block before the weak, or the words may refer to the weak person who has been made to stumble by the example of the strong. He concludes, “It may be, perhaps, that the vagueness and obscurity of Paul’s sentence is due to the fact that he is thinking of both possibilities, and expresses himself so as to allow for both.” In view of the difficulty in tying the meaning down it may be well to adopt some such view and keep open the possibilities.⁷⁵

21. Paul does not say “It is not good to eat meat”,⁷⁶ but “It is good not to eat meat”; he is setting forth the course of action that will help the brother. His use of the aorist tense for his infinitives may be significant.⁷⁷ There is nothing wrong with the eating and drinking as such. They are to be avoided when they cause offence but not necessarily at other times. Paul is relating his teaching to a given situation. With the eating of meat Paul links the drinking of wine, but he does not specify in what way this might cause offence as he has done to some extent with eating (v. 2; he does not actually say that the weak abstain from the use of wine, though that seems implied; but he may be putting a hypothetical case). It may be that some specific practice associated with wine troubled some of the Romans (e.g., being offered to a pagan deity as a libation). Or Paul may simply have been using this as an expression to indicate that in the matter of diet he was ready to go to any lengths to avoid giving trouble to weaker believers. There is another elliptical construction (nothing in the Greek corresponds to NIV’s or to do anything else, though this gives the sense of it; cf. BDF 480[1]).⁷⁸ The important thing is to take such action that we do not lead anyone to stumble; that is, we must not encourage them to perform actions they can only do in defiance of their conscience.

22. Paul opens this verse with an emphatic you, which makes the application personal. Throughout this chapter he has varied his address; he used the first person plural in verses 13 and 19, the second plural in 13 and 16, the second singular in 15 (twice), 20, 21, and 22. There is thus something of a preference for the more personal and individual singular. “You,” he says, “have the faith that⁷⁹ you have to yourself” where he displays prominently the quality of faith. He is not speaking here of saving faith but presuming it. He is thinking rather of the faith that enables anyone who has it to follow without hesitation or scruple a course of action which the weaker brother cannot follow. That faith he should not parade, but exercise it where only he knows about it: “The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God” (RSV).⁸⁰

Paul pronounces a blessing on the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves. Some translations have “happy” instead of “blessed” (so KJV). But the term⁸¹ has a religious content that is lacking in “happy”; it is not just an emotion but the very blessing of God.⁸²

23. Over against the strong, blessed in the freedom he enjoys under God, Paul sets the weak, plagued with doubts.⁸³ If this man eats⁸⁴ he stands condemned.⁸⁵ The reason for this condemnation is that his eating is not from faith.⁸⁶ It is important that we act in accordance with our fundamental Christian beliefs, for “any action that is not based on faith is a sin” (Moffatt).⁸⁷ The apostle is condemning conduct that springs from motives like selfishness or greed or fear. Faith is that by which one receives salvation, but it is also basic to the whole Christian way of life. Faith is a humble reliance on God, on God alone, for salvation and for the living out of the implications of that salvation. What cannot be justified by being in accord with our relation to Christ is sin.⁸⁸

Some take this as very general and see it as meaning that all works done prior to justification are sinful. Augustine is usually cited for this view and it is put forward in modern times by Lenski and others. But we should bear in mind the warning of Chrysostom, “Now all these things have been spoken by Paul of the subject in hand, not of everything.” In the context Paul is referring to those actions of a believer that do not spring from a right faith. Whatever be the truth of actions done before one becomes a believer, Paul is not discussing them here. His concern is with the believer who sometimes does things that are not motivated by faith. It is those things that have the nature of sin.⁸⁹

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