Chapter # 14 Paragraph # 2 Study # 11
July 18, 2021
Humble, Texas
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Thesis: The "Faith" that pleases God is a "Love" based yielding to the
revealed aspect of the purposes of God.
Introduction: In our studies of Paul's teaching regarding how we are to relate to one another when there are relatively deep differences of understanding regarding "baggage things" that came with us into "The Faith", we have seen that there are two essentials involved: a
legitimate valuation of a matter regarding the brother with whom we have a difference of understanding; and a
single-hearted pursuit of a clear conscience regarding our responses to God and our interactions with men. These are not
simple matters, but they are
necessary ones.
We have also seen that the root of these differences, at one level, is a flawed grasp of "The Faith" as a message of "Grace" and, at another level, a flawed grasp of "The Love" as the motivation for our actions. Under all of the "flaws" is the misunderstanding of the essence of The Kingdom of The God, with a focus upon the identity of "believers" as "slaves" of The King, and a corollary misunderstanding of the proper objective of the slave: the pursuit of the things of the Peace and the things which Build one another.
Thus, we have come to a very basic demand that arises out of these problematic issues. We have already seen the first statement of this demand in the "chiasm" at the point of 14:15b: Do not destroy that one for whom Christ died for the sake the exercise of personal "freedoms". Now we see the same demand in restatement in our study this evening of 14:20a.
- I. The Restatement.
- A. In the prior statements we have two issues.
- 1. The brother who is being subjected to a "destruction" of some sort, is first "grieved" (put between a rock and a hard place wherein the "rock" is "conscience" and the "hard place" is "lust for acceptance".
- 2. Then that brother is "destroyed" (caused to violate his conscience before God) in respect to his "faith" in the death Christ died for him (a la "if my brother rejects me, God probably does also" so that the death of Christ is belittled in his/her mind).
- B. In the current statement we also have two issues.
- 1. The first is the driving motivation: "meat".
- a. This motivation begins with a clear realization of "freedom" from dietary restrictions so that the taste of a particular food, being strongly desired, can be experienced.
- b. The second aspect of this motivation is that any who stands in the way of my desire for the food is simply "diseased in The Faith" and "Why should I forfeit my freedom because of his hangups?"
- c. The third part of this motivation is a smug sense of superiority because "I know that God is not bothered by my dietary choices".
- 2. The second is the careless dismantling of the "brother's" reasons for believing.
- a. The word translated "tear down" means "to remove the pieces one by one" against the background of the metaphor of a "brother" who has had certain pieces of The Faith put in place like one brick after another in a building project.
- b. The most critical "piece" put in place is both "critical" and "difficult": the declaration of God's love as presented in the death of The Christ.
- 1) If this "cornerstone" of the "brother/edifice" is destroyed, all else crumbles.
- 2) Precisely because this "cornerstone" is as difficult as it is to "believe", it has to be put in place by the Holy Spirit (as Galatians 5 says).
- a) If "believing in the Love of God for me" (as opposed to the generic "us") is simple, or easy, why did Paul write Ephesians 3:16-19?
- i. In this text, the most fundamental issue is "being rooted and grounded in Love".
- ii. And following this most fundamental issue is the next BIG issue: "that Christ may dwell in your hearts through Faith".
- iii. And, both of these "fundamentals" are presented as the outworking of God's grant of a strengthening with power through His Spirit in the inner man "according to the riches of His glory" so that this is that for which Paul prays.
- b) The difficulties are many.
- i. They begin with the double edged sword of the record of man's profound bondage to the problems of Sin's continuing influence in both heart and mind (in all of the biblical record two things stand out: the failure of the blessed and the absence of an encouraging presentation of man -- except for three; Noah, Daniel, Job).
- i) This sword is double edged because without the humility of the awareness of great failure, there can be no salvation, but that same humility tends to generate a conviction that we are beyond the love of God ... so there is no salvation.
- ii) This sword cuts two ways and it is only by the working of the Spirit of God than anyone comes to the proper understanding of how to remain on the knife's edge without falling into the deep errors that exist on either side.
- ii. They continue with the absence of a convincing human demonstration.
- i) Man, in his weakness, gravitates to "dependence upon some human being" instead of the exclusive dependence we must have upon God alone.
- ii) And if this weakness is met by the absence of such a human illustration, it is with great difficulty that anyone is "rooted and grounded in the Love of God".
- c) And the work of the Spirit is undercut when the conscience is violated.
- i. A violated conscience leads to divine discipline.
- ii. Divine discipline is, then, misinterpreted as "proof" that God's does not love because of its unpleasantness, rather than properly understood as training unto righteousness, peace, and joy.
- iii. Thus, the very proof of God's strong commitment becomes a strong argument against "faith" in that commitment.
- C. Thus, what we have is Paul's insistence that the one who has a legitimate intellectual grasp of the Grace of God in both Love and Truth be a temporary stand-in for God in the lives of the "diseased" until they grow out of their "diseased condition".
- 1. This cannot be done without the "sacrifices" involved in "accepting" the weakness of the diseased until it is no longer a weakness.
- 2. But, it might not be done in any case.
