Presented to TSA Corps 614 Regent Park, Toronto, 29 May 2016 and 06 November 2022 by Major Michael Ramsay
This is the BC 2022 version, to view the Toronto 2016 version, click here: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2016/05/romans-14-dont-condemn-dont-despise-but.html
Today, I want you to remember one thing about Romans 14 and that is, ‘Don’t condemn, don’t despise each other’.
As many of you know, our kids are vegetarians: I have a story about how that all began. Susan tells the story a little differently but this is my recollection.
Many years ago, Susan and I were studying Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline. We were encouraged to try each of the disciplines as we read the book. Susan began exploring vegetarianism – for her it was about stewardship of God’s earth as much as anything else. If you ask her another time, I am sure she will quite happily tell you more about this.
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While we were studying Celebration of Discipline and after Susan had experimented with vegetarianism for a couple of days, I went grocery shopping with a 2- or 3-year-old Rebecca and a 1- or 2-year-old Sarah-Grace. That wasn’t always so easy. To help them settle, I would often tell them that if they co-operated, I would let them watch the live trout or lobsters in the tanks at the store. I was trying to get everything on the list Susan gave me and contain a 2-year-old who wanted to wander here, there and everywhere – the one-year-old was firmly secured in the shopping cart, so caging the two year-old there was not an option; thus I let Rebecca look at the trout swimming around as I was getting everything near there in the store. Then as I was putting a packaged fish in my shopping cart, Rebecca looked at the package and asked, ‘Where do fish come from?’
When I told Susan that story at dinner it led to future discussions with Rebecca and from then on Susan was very good at encouraging Rebecca in her vegetarianism. Rebecca, in turn, encouraged Sarah-Grace who was even younger and for a couple of years Sarah-Grace would say that she too was a vegetarian - but her favourite vegetable was sausages.
Romans 14:2: “Some believe in eating anything but the weak eat only vegetables.” Is this what Paul was writing about in Romans… contemporary vegetarianism? Does it mean that all vegetarians are weak people who should be more like us strong meat eaters? No. It isn’t
But let’s try to figure out what this verse is saying by exploring the context. When first preparing for this sermon, I read a lot of Biblical scholars and historians’ writings about these ‘weak’ vegetarians, hoping to gain some insight into why these Christians were not eating meat. Some academics think that since some Jews – the Essenes – didn’t eat much meat and were very strong in keeping Sabbath laws, maybe when they became Christians, they were the weak vegetarians and Sabbath-keepers to whom Paul is referring. The problem with this is that the Essenes wouldn’t have interacted with others. They kept very much to themselves. They were like the Hutterites in the Canadian prairies or even the Amish.[2] They wouldn’t be a part of society as a whole – especially Roman society – so this wouldn’t apply to them.
Others have suggested that the weak vegetarians were not Christian Essene Jews but simply everyday regular Christian Jews or Gentiles.[3] Paul in his other letters speaks a lot about meat sacrificed to idols. In the first century they didn’t have Save-On. Buy-Low or QF. Butcher shops and marketplaces in the Roman Empire were often located right inside pagan temples. When someone brought an animal to be butchered for eating, it would be offered as a sacrifice. The leftovers from sacrifices could often be sold in the market alongside other butchered meat; so some Christians didn’t want to risk eating meat that had been sacrificed to an idol so they just didn’t eat meat at all.[4] The problem with this idea is that these are the ‘weak’ folk is – in contrast to his many of his other letters - Paul doesn’t specifically deal with meat sacrificed to idols at all.
So then who are these 'weak' vegetarians to whom Paul is referring? …Basically, the answer is… we don’t know. Some of the best scholars disagree with each other and none of them make an overwhelmingly compelling argument. But we do know that they weren’t like PETA or today’s vegetarians who think of eating meat as eating a pet or even a friend. There is no record of that concept in the ancient world. And they probably were not even like Christian vegetarians today who refrain from eating meat as a way of being good stewards of the earth. We don’t really know who these vegetarians are who Paul refers to as weak but we do know that ‘eating only meat’ is 1 of 3 attributes of the weak that he addresses, the three items are:
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1. Romans 14:2: Some believe in eating anything, but the weak eat only vegetables.
2. Romans 14:5: Some (the weak) consider one day to be better than another.
3. Romans 14:21: It is good to not drink wine
We talked about the uncertainties around not eating meat. There was also the same uncertainties around judging one day as better than the others. Jews had a lot of feast days. This could be what this passage is talking about. Maybe the Jewish Christians were still celebrating all of the old Jewish feast days and the Gentiles couldn’t or didn’t want to keep up with all of that. Maybe this is what Paul is saying doesn’t really matter.
This passage may refer to – or at least be extended to – the Sabbath as well. The Sabbath is Saturday and some Jewish Christians would still celebrate the Sabbath in synagogue on Saturday before they would get together with other Christians on Sunday, the Lord’s Day. Paul might be saying that this is what doesn’t matter.[5] Everyday for the Christian is supposed be Sabbath. That might be part of what he is talking about.
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Next there is drinking. Paul says that just like weak Christians don’t eat meat, they also don’t drink and we have no idea what this is all about but we do know that Paul says here in Verse 21 that it is GOOD not to eat meat or to drink wine.
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‘Don’t condemn, don’t despise!’ This is the main part for all of these things. For some reason the here-called ‘weak’ people, they didn’t eat meat or drink wine, and they held some days as more important than others. These people apparently thought that everyone should act like they do. They thought that because they were right in their own estimation not to drink or eat meat or do anything on Saturday that nobody else should. Paul says in Verse 3 and elsewhere that these people were getting a little - what we would call it in my day? - ‘holier than thou.’ Paul calls these ‘holier than thou’ people, weak. He tells them that they are not to condemn people in the church here (v.3). Paul says if they aren’t your employees, they don’t have to answer to you. They serve God so they answer to Him (v.4). If we insult each other like this, Paul says, then we are really insulting Christ (15:3) and that is never good. To the holier than thou group, Paul says, ‘Stop it! ‘You’re not the boss of them.’[6] ‘Don’t condemn others!’
Then to the others – to the so-called ‘strong’ Christians, Paul says, ‘smarten up!’ They’re not to judge you but you DON’T despise them. How easy is it for people to ‘write off’ others? How easy it is for us to simply despise people as hypocrites and have nothing to do with them? Paul says don’t be so selfish![7] Christ died for those people I just called weak just like he died for you supposedly strong people. Because of this, Romans 14:7-8, we aren’t supposed to just live for ourselves and do whatever we like; we are supposed to live for Christ and live for others.[8] If your friend doesn’t drink, don’t go out for dinner with them and proceed to order a pint of beer or a glass of wine. That’s just mean. Don’t tempt them to do something that might be very bad for them. Don’t despise them because they don’t drink. Don’t put a stumbling block in their way.
Paul also says it really doesn’t matter if some people observe every special day in the church. To bring this into a bit more of a contemporary context: does anyone remember ‘fish Fridays’? In the Roman Catholic Church when I was a kid anyway, they would not eat any meat but fish on Fridays. So – as an evangelical - if you were going to go out to a fish ’n chips restaurant, it would be wise to pick a different day than Friday; they were just packed.
Also, does anyone remember when there was no Sunday shopping? To this day, some Christians still refuse to buy anything on Sundays. I remember my college church group, decades ago, would have spaghetti lunches at one point so that we wouldn’t go out for lunch on Sundays. The Apostle Paul is saying none of this matters; so stop despising your friends who want to keep these days as holy. And for those of you that are just keeping one day holy, remember that God made all of the days and so as such, every day is the Lord’s day. So don’t condemn and don’t despise others!
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To the weak Paul says, ‘don’t condemn!’ To the strong Paul says, ‘don’t despise!’ This is so important. We are not supposed to fight with each other. We are supposed to help each other; we need to stop our bickering.[9] If you flip to Chapter 16:17-20, that we read earlier, you will notice what Paul says about all this and about all of us:
I urge you, brothers and sisters, to keep an eye on those who cause dissensions and offenses, in opposition to the teaching that you have learned; avoid them. For such people do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the simple-minded. For while your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, I want you to be wise in what is good and guiltless in what is evil. The God of peace will shortly crush Satan under your feet.
In other words, don’t bud into things that are none of your business! Don’t cause trouble! Don’t despise or condemn one another! Instead encourage each other in obedience, be wise in what is good and be guiltless in what is evil and then God will crush Satan under our feet. Jesus died on the cross and rose again not so that we will despise and condemn each other; quite the opposite. He died and rose again so that we may live and that we may live our life abundantly. So to that end I encourage us all today to encourage each other, uphold the week, and support the strong in Jesus Name.
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Let us pray.
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[1] Paul J. Achtemeier, Romans. Interpretation: (Atlanta, Georgia: John Knox Press, 1985), 214
[2] W.E Vines, “Week in Faith”, in Vine's Word Studies of New Testament Vol. III. (Nashville, Tennessee: Royal Publishers Inc., 1939), p. 166.
[3] NT Wright, Romans for Everyone Part 2: Chapters 9-16 (Louisville, US: WKJ, 2004), 95.
[4] Cf. Michael Ramsay, 1 Corinthians 6-10: In Tents Storm of Life: Everything is Permissible but Not Everything is Beneficial. (Swift Current The Salvation Army: Sheepspeak, 01 June 2014) On-line: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2014/05/1-corinthians-6-10-in-tents-storm-of.html cf. also N.T. Wright, '1 Corinthians' in Paul for Everyone, (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 98.
[5] Cf. William Hendricksen, Exposition of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, NTC (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic: 1981), 458.
[6] The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, 2919: ‘Krino’, (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1995), 51.
[7] Cf. N.T. Wright, The Letter to the Romans (NIB 10: Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1995), 475.
[8] Cf. Alan Le Grys, The Expository Times 122 (11). ‘11th September: Proper 19: Vision and Reality’.(August 2011), 549
[9] Cf. John Stott, Romans, (Downers Grove, Ill., IVP, 1994), 369.
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