Romans 14:1-12
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.
Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, Psalm epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The Epistle reading for Sunday September 17, comes from Romans chapter 14 verses one through 12. It reads, as for the one who has weakened faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he meat may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstained. 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 is 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 will 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 both Lord of the Dead End 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. Here is the reading. This reading requires some background information. It begins with talking about quarreling over opinions. And it says one person may he believes he may eat anything, well, the weak person eats only vegetables. Wait a second, is it the strong people are meat eaters, and the weak people are vegans? Not so much. So what's going on here is that in pagan cultures, every time you would eat meat, that meat would have a portion sacrificed to an idol. And so you take an animal and you kill it, and the butcher or other person or the person providing the meal would offer a portion of it as sacrificed. And so what you get then is that there's a group of people who might be considered the strong, who would say, idols don't exist, they're false, so I can eat the meat. And there are other people who are might be considered weak who would say to themselves, Oh, no, this, this meat has been sacrificed to an idol and I can't participate without wounding my conscience. And either one is kind of equivalent, right? And so you say to, to them, St. Paul is saying to them, one shouldn't judge the other as if one is a better Christian than the other? Sure. If you are, if you are theologically astute, you can say, oh, yeah, idols don't actually exist. So then you're sacrificing the sacrifices not to a true being. Let's not worry about it. But for the other, they're like, oh, no, I am horrified. Similarly, there are people who believe that one day is is more important than another. And he's saying, when you when you do that, we don't need to, to pass judgment on each other about the ways that we esteem particular days, whether it's feast days, or sad days, or whatever it is. These things are not commands of God, but they are the kinds of things that we we do for ourselves. Let's not pass judgment over it. And so in the meat versus vegetables thing, it's all about making sure that the person who is doing it is doing it for a good reason. And we don't need to make judgments about it. It's difficult to think about something that might have an equivalent here, but it could be something like people who are struggling with alcohol. Often people who struggle with alcohol, believe that it is is untouchable or maybe even evil. And so if they've been through a 12 step program, they approach alcohol as if it is this thing that is, has a power, whereas other people will approach alcohol is a thing that can be abused, or a thing that can be used correctly. And you just say, yeah, I, if I use it, well, it's just fine. Nobody really should be judging the other about how, how they deal with it. Because both of these opinions are sort of equally valid. One person approaches are one way for their own good. Other person can handle alcohol, so it's fine. It's not not a great, equivalent, but similar. In the second section, it talks about steaming different days and observing them in honor of the Lord. I think this is a good time to talk about what it means to have like a church worship schedule, like the church here, we have different days that we esteem as higher than others, like we go to church on Sunday, following the tradition of the Christian church since the very beginning to celebrate the day of the resurrection. We also have other days that we celebrate December 25, is Christmas, we celebrate Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday as days of celebration. But we don't do it as days that are required. These are just things that we do out of out of tradition as teaching tools to mold our lives around telling the story of Jesus. Nobody said that it's required to do it this way. You don't have to. And so there is no real judgment about who's a better Christian for, say, celebrating Christmas or not. We just simply do it as part of our teaching tools. So it's not something required by God, but something that we do. I think, the question that is great to consider, and this is what St. Paul says, Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another, it is before his own master that he stands or falls. And so whether we are whatever we do with these things that are neither commanded nor forbidden by God, what we do is we say, These things are matters that can be decided differently for different Christians. We're not going to make judgments about it. Fall, Paul finishes up when he says, Why do you pass judgment on your brother, or you why 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. And this reminds us that in the very end, we're not here to judge each other. We are here to stand before God, and that God will on the last day, each of us will have to give an account to him. And there will be a judgment seat. And that is the one whom we serve. And so our judgments passing, saying you're doing it wrong, you're doing it right about these things that are indifferent. But that's not what we're supposed to do. What we're supposed to do is look and say, whose heart is in the right place? How do we how are we doing this in faithfulness? Eventually, we end up standing before God and all of us will be equal on that day, begging mercy for the sake of Jesus Christ. That's it for our reading today. We'll see you on Sunday. Bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai