Your Welcome - Romans 14:1-12 (Sermon)
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WELCOME
Thank you, worship team. It is so good to be together. It is great to see you again.
QUESTION ABOUT OPINIONS
Have you ever found yourself fighting about things that don’t matter? For you single people out there, when you get married, you may find that there are all sorts of preferences people have that may not be yours.
Do you roll toilet paper over or under?
Should you keep the toilet lid open or closed?
Who should budget? Do you budget?
Will you be five minutes early or fashionably late?
Is your house more of a boarding house for the visitor or a private retreat center to get away from everyone?
Those can be funny but stark differences you may have to work through when you get married. In church, we have more opinions and preferences that collide.
We have democrats, republicans, and independents who attend,
We have differences of opinion on what is appropriate to wear,
We will disagree on what is okay to eat, drink, and smoke,
And we can debate what is acceptable entertainment.
How do we live in a Christian community where we don’t see eye to eye on such things? Some of us like to run from conflict, others want to fight. These challenges seem small until they divide us. The apostle Paul faced similar divisions and found that the good news about God’s mercy bridges the distances we have with each other. Let me show you where I see that.
TEXT
If you have a Bible, open up to Romans, Chapter 14. Beginning at verse 1. I am going to be having C. & S. K. read for us. Would you please stand with me in honor of God’s Word, if you can?
As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on 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.
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. 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.
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. (Romans 14:1–12, ESV)
PRAYER
Thank you. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your Word. We are all different people here today. We have men and women, youth and adults, we have people with various gifts and talents. We have so many experiences and personalities represented here. Help us to learn to be a healthy, godly, welcoming, Christ-centered community by your Holy Spirit. In Jesus’s name, we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
CONTEXT
Paul was writing to the church in Rome, a diverse group of believers. He spent the first 11 chapters describing the good news about Jesus, God’s one and only Son. The good news was that Jesus died for our sins. Through faith in him, we are forgiven, free to obey, and given a hope of heaven. Chapter 12 takes a turn in this letter, describing the life-changing nature of this good news. This good news motivates love: love for God and love for people. And God’s love brings hope where we are tempted to divide.
POINT / STRUCTURE
Here is how the passage breaks. There is a command with two questions:
14:1-3 WELCOME THE WEAK WITHOUT QUARRELING
14:4-9 WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE? (We belong to God)
14:10-12 WHY DO YOU JUDGE? (He will judge)
If we want to capture the main idea of the text, here it is: Because Christ has welcomed us, we welcome one another in disputable matters—without quarreling, despising, or judging.
14:1-3 WELCOME NOT QUARREL WITH THE WEAK IN THE FAITH
14:1-3 WELCOME THE WEAK WITHOUT QUARRELING
14:4-9 WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE? (We belong to God)
14:10-12 WHY DO YOU JUDGE? (He will judge)
Look at verse 1:
As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. (Romans 14:1–3, ESV)
WELCOME NOT JUDGE
What does it mean to welcome? Other versions say “accept”. In Chapter 15, it says,
“Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God” (Romans 15:7, ESV)
The word "welcome" refers to receiving a guest. It is hospitality. We are to be a community marked by love for one another. Paul contrasted this welcome with quarreling, despising, and judging. In the church in Rome, there were different opinions on secondary matters, matters of preference and conscience. That is true for all churches, even here. Naturally, we will see things differently because of our sex, age, personality, and experience. How do we work well as a community of faith? Diversity can be a strength, a glue that binds us, and empowers ministry, or it can divide and splinter us off into our clicks and tribes. I have found that the differences in my marriage have helped me, rather than set me back. Katie and I have been shaping each other for over two decades. I think we are qualitatively better people than we were when we were younger and less mature. Differences can actually help us in church, too. This came up in an earlier message in Romans when we talked about the various spiritual gifts. Like a human body, we have different parts to play in the church. Each matters. We need to fight against a part of us that wants everyone to look like us, think like us, and act like us.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE WEAK?
In our passage, Paul mentioned opinions. What did he mean? Paul used two examples: diet and days. First, he mentioned diet. Jump to verse 2:
“One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him” (Romans 14:3, ESV).
Apparently, some were herbivores and others omnivores, vegetarians and meat-eaters. Why? Reading in a commentary this week, one scholar thought that with a resident Jewish population in Rome, there may not have been kosher butchers processing meat, so some may have resorted to being vegetarians. Another explanation was that Paul was exaggerating to make a point. We don’t know enough. But we do know that nowhere in the Bible does it call people to be vegetarians. In the first book of the Bible, God gave humanity the animals to subdue. And He made specific rules about which meats are okay to eat and which are not. The only example of vegetarianism I have found was in the book of Daniel. He and his compatriots didn’t eat meat when they arrived in Babylon. They felt it violated their conscience. When God brought his people back to the Promised Land of Israel, he didn’t prohibit eating meat. In the New Testament, God became man, lived with us, and ate meat. After Jesus died, rose, and ascended into heaven, God commanded the apostle Peter to eat meat. The Jerusalem council set some rules about eating meat, but did not command vegetarianism. So, there was freedom in the Bible to eat meat. And here we see a freedom to not.
WEAK
Paul connected this abstention from eating meat to weakness. He was not referring to physical limitations. He wrote that they were weak in faith. This weakness was not in relation to the object of faith. Both groups trusted Christ as their Lord and Savior. They had the same object. Nor was he saying one group was right and the other wrong. This is an in-house discussion about gray areas in which their different actions could both honor the Lord. So what did he mean? Let’s look at how he used the word “weak” elsewhere.
FOOD SACRIFICED TO IDOLS
Paul spoke of weakness in relation to eating his letter to the church in Corinth.
Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. (1 Corinthians 8:4–8, ESV)
So, perhaps this weak faith relates to this weak conscience. In Corinth, people sacrificed food to idols. You could buy discounted meat after it was sacrificed. Paul shared how some saw this eating as supporting idolatry. He argued that it was not, but that they were hurting their conscience and thus wrong in their eating. Perhaps this weakness in faith is a sensitive conscience. The call is to welcome both the one who abstains and the one who partakes.
COMMANDS
How do we welcome each other? Paul went on to address the temptation to quarrel, despise, and judge. To welcome would be not to quarrel, despise, or judge. Today, we must be careful not to become a “cancel culture” church. We don’t want to become an echo chamber and pile onto those we don’t agree with.
DISAGREEMENT
Does this command to welcome mean we can’t disagree? No.
Does this command to 'welcome' mean we pretend to agree? No.
Does this command to welcome mean we must avoid conflict? No.
We will disagree. Conflict is normal and can be very healthy, and done in healthy ways.
PAUL
The context in Romans 14 is debatable matters in the Christian church. Outside of that, there are times when we should not accept but should discern and debate. Where would there be places in life where there is no debate, and we must confront and reject ideas and behaviors? Here are two examples:
If someone knocks at your door tonight, with a ski mask and a handgun? You don’t have to welcome them in for coffee. You can call 911. That is okay and a good thing.
And if someone sounds like they are a threat to your four-year-old daughter, it is good to set a boundary.
We can use common sense.
Paul will argue theology and morality, and we can too, in lovingly firm ways. People disagreed with Paul, and they will disagree with us. Chapter 14 is not relativizing truth or sticking our heads in the sand. It is setting the tone for our in-house conflicts over debatable matters.
QUARRELING
So how do we welcome one another when we disagree about such things? Don’t quarrel. What does that mean? We want to be humble, open to feedback, and input. If we bristle at someone’s correction, let us not jump to conclusions. Let us be open to hearing from God through them. Let us hold secondary opinions loose enough to listen. At the same time, there is a way to quarrel that is nagging, badgering, and pestering. It is a contentious, argumentative, war of words that insists on its own way and attention. Paul was talking about a way in which this quarreling response crosses the line and is not welcoming.
DESPISE
He also prohibited despising. This Greek word relates to disdaining, viewing people as worthless, and contempt. When we encounter different perspectives, let’s listen first. Are we hearing the person correctly? What if we do not understand the situation? I have heard of people with bad hearing getting all upset about issues that don’t exist. Let’s clarify. And after that, if we are tempted to be upset, let’s ask ourselves,
“Why?
What is going on in my heart?
Why do I care about this secondary thing?
Am I seeing things correctly?”
God wants us to love our brothers and sisters in the Lord, not hate them.
JUDGE
And finally, this welcome is not judging. The person who abstains can judge the one who doesn’t, and the person who partakes can judge the one who abstains. Jesus said this about judging,
Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:1–5, ESV)
It is much easier to see the holes in other people’s thinking than our own. When we encounter differences, let us be wary of being judgmental. We may be seeing things incorrectly. Let us be charitable in our judgments. We can ask clarifying questions. And we can run our positions through a grid to see if we are in the wrong. Jesus welcomed us into the family of faith despite all our issues. We weren’t perfect, nor are we perfect now. Let’s be welcoming to each other like him.
PART 2
That brings us to the second part of this text:
14:1-3 WELCOME THE WEAK WITHOUT QUARRELING
14:4-9 WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE? (We belong to God)
14:10-12 WHY DO YOU JUDGE? (He will judge)
Paul circled back on judgment. Go to verse 4:
“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” (Romans 14:4, ESV).
Joe Koehler brought this up at our Monday staff meeting. This verse tells us that people will have to give an account for their individual actions before God one day. We are getting closer to that day. And on one’s own, he or she will stand or fall. Who are we to quarrel, despise, and judge God’s people? And as the followers of Jesus. We all will stand not based on our moral purity, doctrinal precision, talent-show excellence, ancestry, or pedigree. How will we stand? What does the text say? It is the Lord making us stand. “The Lord is able to make him stand.” That is the good news in a nutshell.
DAYS
Paul moved in verse 5 to highlight the debate over days.
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. 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. (Romans 14:5–9, ESV)
Even though this passage is about how we treat those who have different opinions, we can use this passage to judge ourselves instead of others. Here are several principles from this and the surrounding passage:
We can ask ourselves, “Is there a part in the Bible that directly commands or prohibits what I am doing?” If we don’t have explicit guidance, we are talking about these debatable matters, preferences, and opinions.
In verse 5, Paul wrote that we should be fully convinced. Later in the chapter he wrote,
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. (Romans 14:22–23, ESV)
We can judge ourselves. Do I have faith that I am doing the right thing or the wrong thing? If I don’t have faith that it is okay, then I should wait and seek clarity.
In verse 6, we read that the one who eats and does not eat does so in honor of God. We can use that to judge ourselves: Does my act honor the Lord? Can I thank God in such a scenario?
And in verses 7 through 9, Paul connects action to the Lord. He argued that we are the Lord’s. He owns us. So our time, energy, and bodies are his. We can ask ourselves, can we seriously subject God to what we are doing? In Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church, he wrote to them,
Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:18–20, ESV)
We can judge ourselves before we confront each other to test whether we are handling ourselves in a way that respects the Spirit within us and the sacrifice that saved our bodies and promises a resurrected body.
Let me summarize:
Is what I am doing biblical?
Am I fully convinced I am in the right?
Can I thank and honor God in it?
Is this a good use of God’s temple, my body?
FREEDOM
The Bible tells us that we have a lot of latitude. If you are a Christian, you are the freest person on the planet. You can do so many things without sinning. And because of that, we can hang out with each other, go to church with each other, live in proximity with each other, even though we don’t see things the same way. Paul wrote,
“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12, ESV).
He used this principle of freedom, coupled with another that can help us judge ourselves. Let me add one more question to our self-assessment. Is what we are doing controlling us? I know one brother who doesn’t drink coffee for that reason. Maybe a way to avoid jumping down each other’s throats over differences is to clarify that we understand and judge ourselves first.
Is what I am doing biblical?
Am I fully convinced I am in the right?
Can I thank and honor God in it?
Is this a good use of God’s temple, my body?
Is it controlling me?
We can run our decisions through this grid and still disagree with each other. Then what? Welcome each other. Ultimately, we need to recognize that God is the judge. We live in a hyper-individualized world, and the Bible can be twisted to the neglect of the greater good of the community of faith. At the same time, God is the judge of the individual. Who are we to take his place? He will judge, not us. He knows best.
COLOSSIANS
An interesting parallel passage is Colossians. Paul wrote to the church,
“Therefore 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. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (Colossians 2:16–17, ESV).
They were debating what it looked like to honor the command to rest in Paul’s day. Sabbath rest is a big deal for Jewish people. For the non-Jewish people, it wasn’t. How does a church blend cultures with a top ten list that seems archaic or nuanced? What does God want for his people? Is Sabbath a moral matter or a cultural one?
Some people in our county believe God wants them to rest on Saturday. That is their Sabbath. That’s fine for them, but that is not how I interpret the command.
I am related to the Pilgrims. They believed you honor the Sabbath by not playing or purchasing anything on Sunday. That is fine if they want to practice that, but that is not how I interpret the command.
I believe it is good for us to rest. We need Sabbath. The Bible says Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. He is our rest. We rest in him. We can keep this command now in honor of Christ in various ways. I honor it on Thursdays by not doing things that feel workish and enjoying God. You can disagree with my interpretation. But let’s not quarrel, despise, or judge each other.
We might debate lots of different things like this Sabbath issue. What do we do with the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, or Halloween? We can challenge each other on whether kids should play sports on Sunday or how many weekends we give away from our church community. However, let us not hate each other, look down on one another, or strut our stuff like we have it all together. Let us be a humble, loving community, keeping the main things the main things. Jesus is the main thing. He is the one who makes us stand, and we belong to him.
LAST POINT
Although we could end there, this brings us to our last point:
14:1-3 WELCOME THE WEAK WITHOUT QUARRELING
14:4-9 WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE? (We belong to God)
14:10-12 WHY DO YOU JUDGE? (He will judge)
Turn to verse 10:
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. (Romans 14:10–12, ESV)
Paul quoted Isaiah to make his point. God will judge. Friends, we can trust him. Let us seek to use our freedom for others’ benefit. We will talk more about this after Missions month. Romans 15 goes on to say:
“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” (Romans 15:1–2, ESV).
Romans 15 challenges us to bear with each other, please one another, and build one another up. I think welcoming relates to that. What would that look like in your life? What would bearing with and building each other up look like? Paul brought this up in another letter regarding non-believers and their hang-ups over matters of secondary importance.
But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble. (1 Corinthians 8:9–13, ESV)
How far would you go to help others not violate their conscience? Would you become a vegetarian? Paul would. How welcoming is that?
CHAPTER 9
He took this compromise to another level, writing not just about getting along with other believers but using this freedom to abstain from meat to reach unbelievers:
To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. (1 Corinthians 9:22, ESV)
Paul would give up bacon for people’s salvation. Would you? That is a small price to pay. Jesus used his freedom to come to earth to make a way for us to heaven. That is how far he went to welcome us. How far will we go to care for others? This gives us one more question to ask in our grid:
Is what I am doing biblical?
Am I fully convinced I am in the right?
Can I thank and honor God in it?
Is this a good use of God’s temple, my body?
Is it controlling me?
Even if I am free, will this action build up my brother or sister?
PARENTING
One piece of advice I got from a friend early on in my parenting years was this: “Find ways to say yes.” There will be lots of places where we will have to draw the lines and say no. But find ways where we can say yes to our kids. In the same way, if you are with people who see things differently on matters of opinion, what would it look like to move in their direction? Maybe you need to clarify that you understand them. Judge yourself first. Run your decisions through a grid before you take someone else to task. Ask God for help. He is the judge. We are to trust him. Let us lovingly move towards each other in our differences, not away from each other.
APPLICATION
As we wrap up, here are some questions:
Where are you tempted to quarrel, judge, and despise fellow believers?
Why do you think that is?
This week, find one way you can move toward another brother or sister with whom you disagree.
What would it look like for you to trust God, who is the judge, and release those disagreements to him?
PRAYER
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