Chapter # 14 Paragraph # 2 Study # 4
May 2, 2021
Humble, Texas
(120)
1769 KJV Translation:
15 But if thy brother be grieved with [
thy] meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died.
16 Let not then your good be evil spoken of:
17 For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
18 For he that in these things serveth Christ [
is] acceptable to God, and approved of men.
19 Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another.
20 For meat destroy not the work of God. All things indeed [
are] pure; but [
it is] evil for that man who eateth with offence.
21 [
It is] good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor [
any thing] whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.
22 Hast thou faith? have [
it] to thyself before God. Happy [
is] he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.
23 And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because [
he eateth] not of faith: for whatsoever [
is] not of faith is sin.
1901 ASV Translation:
15 For if because of meat thy brother is grieved, thou walkest no longer in love. Destroy not with thy meat him for whom Christ died.
16 Let not then your good be evil spoken of:
17 for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
18 For he that herein serveth Christ is well-pleasing to God, and approved of men.
19 So then let us follow after things which make for peace, and things whereby we may edify one another.
20 Overthrow not for meat's sake the work of God. All things indeed are clean; howbeit it is evil for that man who eateth with offence.
21 It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor [to do anything] whereby thy brother stumbleth.
22 The faith which thou hast, have thou to thyself before God. Happy is he that judgeth not himself in that which he approveth.
23 But he that doubteth is condemned if he eat, because [he eateth] not of faith; and whatsoever is not of faith is sin.
- I. Paul's Major Thesis.
- A. The pattern of his words.
- 14:14 -- Nothing is unclean except to him who thinks it unclean.
- 14:15 -- Do not continue to 'destroy' that one for whom Christ died.
- 14:16 -- Do not continue to allow your good to be blasphemed.
- 14:17 -- The Kingdom of The God is righteousness, peace, and joy.
- 14:18 -- The one who serves pleases God and is approved by men.
- 14:19 -- Pursue peace and the building up of one another.
- 14:20a -- Do not keep on tearing down the work of The God.
- 14:20b -- All things are indeed clean except to the one who eats with offense.
- B. Kingdom people are to live like "Kingdom People" ("...you are to be walking according to Love...").
- II. The Details.
- A. The opening issue: the people of God are not to regard "common" issues as worthy of pursuit or commitment.
- 1. There is nothing "common" of itself (so the people of God are "free" to take advantage of the use of these things).
- 2. But everything is "common" to the one who "reckons" it/them to be "common" (so those "reckoning" in that manner are not "free" to indulge themselves in the benefits of these things).
- 3. The bottom line issue here is this fact: it is impossible to live in harmony with God as long as there is a wilfulness against Him that consists of doing something which one "thinks" is not something He wishes us to do. One simply must have a clear conscience toward God; otherwise one's soul is in turmoil and one's spirit is in rebellion.
- B. The next issue: thinking there is "Life" in the use of God's creation without regard for the reality that "Life" only involves the harmony of "Life" between God and His servant.
- 1. It is this false thinking that moves a person to "grieve" his brother by the use of "food" (for the body and not the soul or spirit).
- a. The issue of "grief".
- 1) Matthew 14:9 identifies "grief" as the emotional conflict that arises when a person is put "between a rock and a hard place": conflicting "desires" that force a person to do what he/she does not wish to do, or to refrain from doing something he/she wishes to do. That situation where strong impulses war against one another so that something is done/not done against a powerful wish because the "wishes" involved are contrary to one another, but one trumps the other for less than good reasons. Matthew 19:22 gives us this same type of scenario of a person internally conflicted by competing desires (parallel to Mark 10:22).
- 2) Matthew 17:23 contains the same "situation" in that the disciples "believe" one part of Jesus' statement and not the other and that part that is believed is extremely contrary to what they "want". In this case, it is not a conflict between two competing "wants", but, rather, a conflict between what is "desired" and what is going to happen because they cannot stop it. Matthew 26:22 is similar: the disciples are told of a betrayal that they cannot stop and are "grieved" because it is so contrary to what they want (parallel to Mark 14:19 and John 16:20). Matthew 26:37 follows this same line of thought.
- 3) Matthew 18:31 continues along this vein: something was done that was totally against what those "grieved" wanted to happen. The difference in this case is that what was not "wanted" has already happened.
- 4) John 21:17 makes Peter's "grief" the result of his recognition that Jesus didn't believe him. Paul's uses of the word in 2 Corinthians follows this particular "thread": the Corinthians were "made sorrowful" because Paul let them know had badly they were letting him down (i.e., Paul was thinking things about them that the Corinthians did not want him thinking because the roots of such thoughts showed them in a very bad light).
- 5) The rest of the uses in the New Testament follow this same "field of meaning" for "grief": a person has been subjected to a situation that he/she did not want to have to face. Thus, the issue of "grief" in our text (Romans 14:15) is that of a "brother" who is "forced" by his desire to be commended by his fellow believer to do something that he feels like God will disapprove, but he cannot be "faithful" to God by reason of his lust for his "brother's" good opinion of him. Thus: Paul is telling the "brother" who has a "better" understanding of The Faith not to put his "brother" in this position (legalists, by nature, value the glory of men more than the glory which God offers, and these "diseased" brothers are legalists at their core). Recognizing this about his "messed up brother" puts the "understanding brother" under a "loving" obligation to not force this kind of issue upon the "other". In a sense, however, Paul has already done this himself: he has "grieved" the "diseased in The Faith" brother by identifying him as "diseased".