PAUL’S LETTER TO THE CHRISTIANS IN ROME

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Verses 1-6 The weak and strong Christians

A Christian may feel safe because he is lost in the church. He is just one more member. We know that in Rome there were lots of Christians but we think that they had not yet formed churches. This is probably not the reason that Paul speaks as he does here. Each Christian has the duty to show love to each other Christian. Each Christian has the right to feel the love of other Christians. So in verse 5, Paul speaks about ‘One man’ and ‘another man’. He does not speak about ‘Some Christians’ and ‘other Christians’. When he comes to verse 12, he speaks not about ‘all of us’ but about ‘each one of us’.

So in verse 1, Paul tells us to welcome weak Christians. Jesus would not send them away so we should not either. Now we should be careful. It is not always easy to say who is weak and who is strong. See 2 Corinthians 12:10 and 13:9. We might think that a man who will not eat meat was strong. Paul says that he is weak in his trust in Christ.

Now it may be that some Christians who had been Jews would only eat ‘Kosher’ meat. ’Kosher’ meat comes from animals which have been killed in the way that the Jewish law lays down. Other people felt that it was wrong to eat meat from animals which the priests of false gods sacrificed to idols. These were good animals. Often this meat was the best to be had in the markets. There may have been some other reason. After all, meat in the market would have flies all over it! It would be better for your health to eat other food. See Daniel 1:11-16, perhaps. Paul now says these things:-

1. It is wrong to welcome someone who has such ideas if we only want to argue about them. The devil can easily tempt us in this way.
2. In verse 3, the man who eats meat must not look down on the man who does not.
3. The man who does not eat meat must not say to the man who does:- ‘You are wrong’.

More and more people today do not eat meat. They are ‘vegetarians’. That is quite all right. But they must not tell people who do eat meat that they are wrong. And they must not be proud of their vegetarianism as though it brought them closer to God.
(Verse 4) God is the only Judge. We may not judge one another. God is like the master of a great house. God’s house is the church in all the world. He has servants who work for Him in His house. Paul does not mean ‘slaves’ here. The Master has ‘welcomed’ or ‘accepted’ (verses 1 and 3) the servants into His house. We do not have the right to judge one another.

Now Paul goes on to another matter (verse 5). Some of the Christians had once been worshippers of false ‘gods’. They would think that some days were ‘lucky’. They thought that some other days were bad. Then Christians who were Jews would keep the ‘Sabbath’. That might be the seventh day of the week; but it might be the Christian Lord’s Day. That would be the first day of the week. Then there were Jewish feasts and other special days.

Now Paul gives teaching about this in Colossians 2:16. He also speaks about it in Galatians 4:10. Jesus gives some teaching about this too in Matthew 6:16-18. Mark 2 18-20 may help us. How we worship God is not fixed by what day it is. We worship God in the way that we feel we want to. The churches argued for a thousand years about the date of Easter. They were wrong! It was wrong to argue about it. Many Christians keep Christmas, Easter and Whitsun. On the other hand, some very fine Christians have not done so. To keep the Lord’s Day of rest and worship is more useful. It is an important way to show other people that we are Christians. Yet there is no rule to tell us that this is right and that is wrong.

So we can understand what Paul says in the first part of verse 5. In the second part, what Paul says is that some people think that one day is just as holy as any another. We should give all our days to God! That is far from easy. So Paul says that the man who thinks some days are special (verse 6) does so ‘to the Lord’. He does not do it because the Jewish law tells him to. He does not do it because the priests of the false ‘gods’ do it. He seeks to pray to God and worship Him and to hear His word. Paul wants us to be clear and sure in our own minds about these things. Yet when we are sure in our own minds, it does not mean we can tell other Christians what they should do. They may be ‘weak’. They may even take too much notice of what we say to them!

Verses 7-12: Christians are equal before God

So Paul says that whether we eat meat or only salads, we give thanks to God. In verse 7, Paul does not mean that we live or die to other people. He means that we live to God and we die to God. ‘When a man is afraid to die, he may well be afraid to live. If we were always ready to die we should be ready to live. [14.2] See Philippians 1:21 and 22 and Hebrews 11:35. Christ is our Lord in this life, but that is not all. See the teaching of Jesus in Mark 12:26-27. Jesus died to redeem us. We belong to Him. Even death cannot change that. We are His by right, whether we live or die (verse 8).

So in verse 9, Paul does not speak about life and death. He speaks now about death first and then life! Christ lived and died and came back to real life again. Paul brings us back from life beyond death to this life at the end of verse 9. (Verse 10) There is no good reason for the ‘weak’ Christian to say that what the ‘strong’Christian does is wrong. And the ‘strong’ Christian must not look down on what the ‘weak’ Christian does. You can only look down on someone if you are higher up than they are! Weak and strong share one thing. If we are Christians, we shall not only live this life. We shall also live the life of glory. In between is death and also judgment. God, through Christ, will judge each one of us.

In verse 11, Paul takes some words from Isaiah 49:18 and then 45:23. It is good to look at both places. In these places God does not say:- ‘You are bad. You must go to hell’. They are both full of good things for God’s people. God says:- ‘As I live’. The line between life and death means so much to us that live. It cannot stop God, who gives life to all. So in verse 12, Paul speaks about ‘each one of us’. Some of us are weak. Some of us are strong. We are all different. Each one will have to ‘give an account’ of our own lives. We shall not try to make excuses for other Christians. We shall not have to ‘give an account’ to other Christians then. We do not have to do so now. The teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ is in Matthew 25. Verses 19-23 and verses 34-40 tell us what judgment means. God will show us what our present lives mean to Him. Only when we see and know this will we be ready to move on into the life of glory. God is judge: we are not.

Verses 13-23: The Rule of Love

All the way through this part of the letter, Paul writes about three things. They are our freedom, our love to one another and God as our Lord. God is our Lord now and He will be our judge. When we see that, we shall not judge one another. Then love will take over. Because we love one another, we now judge ourselves. Our English Bibles mostly do not help us to see what Paul says here. ‘Do not judge what others do. Judge what you do yourself’. Love will not let you trip up your brother or trap him. In verse 14, Paul goes back to the question of clean and unclean food. See the teaching of Jesus in Mark 7:17-19, and also in Acts 10:15. I am free to eat what I like. Yet (verse 15) I have to think about other people. If what I eat causes another Christian to suffer pain, then love has not guided me. Paul has teaching like this in 1 Corinthians 8, and the last part of verse 15 is rather like 1 Corinthians 8:11. We should never try to pull down what God has built up. Our fellow Christian may seem to us to be weak. Yet Christ died for both of us. (Verse 16) We may think that as Christians we are quite free to do something. Yet if other people feel that our freedom is really bad, then we have gone wrong. My ‘strength’ may be good and the other Christian’s ‘weakness’ may be less good. Yet faith and love are better than either strength or weakness.

(Verse 17) Only the power of God could make us really free. See John 8:31-36 for the teaching which Jesus gives about freedom. People often argue about freedom, and it is mostly about ‘free will’. We ought rather to look at what the Bible says about freedom. See Psalm 119:45, James 1:25 and 2:12, and 1 Peter 2:16. Now we see that this freedom is what God gives to us in the Kingdom of God. This does not make us less free. It is just because we are ‘in the Kingdom’ that we really are free.

This is the only place in the letter to the Romans where Paul writes about ‘the Kingdom of God’. (Paul also speaks about the Kingdom of God in 1 Corinthians 4:30; 6:9 and 10; 15:50; Colossians 4:11; 1 Thessalonians 2:12; and 2 Thessalonians 1:5. See also Colossians 1:13; 1 Corinthians 15:24 and Ephesians 5:5.) In Acts 28:31 we read that Paul preached the Kingdom of God. Go back to the start of the Book of Acts and in Acts 1:3 you will find that Jesus spoke about the Kingdom of God. This was after He rose from death. So the idea of ‘the Kingdom of God’ was there in the minds and hearts of Christians.

We should say these things about the Kingdom of God. [14.3]
1. When Matthew speaks about the Kingdom of Heaven, he does not mean something different from the Kingdom of God.

2. Almost all of the teaching about the Kingdom of God is the teaching of Jesus in Matthew, Mark and Luke. In John’s Gospel we have only John 3:3 and 5. But these verses are most important.

3. It is clear enough that even in the teaching of Jesus, the words do not alway mean the same thing. In Matthew 5:3 there is a Kingdom of Grace here and now. It is made up of those who are ‘poor in spirit’ before God. Yet for them God makes the Kingdom of Glory ready. The Kingdom is the Kingdom which God has promised to give to His people. See Matthew 26:29, and many other places.

4. In the Old Testament, we see the Kingdom of God in power. See Psalm 93:1;97:1 and 99:1, for example. In the New Testament we see the Kingdom of God’s grace. We wish, perhaps, that the other writers of the New Testament had said more about the Kingdom of God.

So Paul says that the Kingdom of God is not about eating and drinking. We do not have to obey rules about what we eat or drink. That is not the way to enter or to enjoy the Kingdom of God. Just what ‘righteousness, peace and joy’ mean is something we could argue about. Yet we know that because we have faith in Christ, God declares that we are righteous. It is only then that we have peace with God. Then we feel joy. All this is true because the Holy Spirit is at work inside us. (Verse 18) This is the way to serve Christ. This is the way to please God. And then no one who knows us can say that we are wrong.

(Verse 19) So we enjoy peace with God and we want peace with men. ‘Edification’ (NIV) and ‘edify’ (RSV in 15:2) are words which are hardly used in English today. See Chapter 15:2 and the note there [15.1]. In verse 15 we had the warning that we should not pull down what God has built. ’Edification’ here just means to build up. The picture is quite common in the New Testament. A group of Christian people is like a building. God is the builder. In 15:2 Paul does not talk about a group. There he speaks about just one Christian. Here the work that the Christian is to do is to build up. We must not pull down instead (verse 20).

We remember that some years before Paul wrote this letter, Claudius had made all the Jews leave Rome. That meant that Jews who were Christians had to go as well. So for some years the other Christians did not have to think about the feelings of Jewish Christians. (Verse 21) Now, the Jews had come back, and the other Christians had to think about their feelings again. (Verse 22)

Paul says that what we believe is a private matter between us and God. To use the word ‘faith’ here (as in RSV) is too strong. [14.4] So in verse 23, Paul ends what he has said. He still talks about food and drink. ‘Faith’ here is not the faith by which we are saved. ‘Doubts’ are not doubts as to whether God had saved us