You had in the first century church of Rome:

AND

Question: What do you think are the modern day Romans 14 issues in your church?

Anyone with a tender conscience, coming from a life of sin, and wanting to be "right" about what they do in everything. Such a person should be encouraged in their exercise of conscience, not belittled, nor overstretched.

Formerly, everything they did was sinful, and engaged them to the devil, and they delighted in dedicating whole swathes of their life to him.

So, now they are a Christian, and can they do so many things which they once did in service to sin? Each occasion is a reminder of their past life, of doing thus a such with a heart of darkness. So, they are hesitant. Their conscience is weak. Is this sin or not?

There could be inherent sin in that thing--they are not well catechized yet, their consciences are not retrained in the Scriptures. Or, the thing could be indifferent, depending on the use--but still, to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. "Whatsoever is not of faith, is sin." So, until such a thing is clearly not sin to him, he should find something else to do.

And we must not lead him into a sin against conscience, by encouraging him in his weakness to take a bold stance against his conscience. We would hurt a man if we told him to bench press too much weight. He could be so injured by the follish attempt, he could never grow up to that weight. Likewise, we must bear with the weak, and train their consciences in the commands of Scripture alone. And ultimately they will be free to dedicate even the celebration of "meats" to the Lord Jesus.

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Rev. Bruce G. Buchanan
ChainOLakes Presbyterian Church, CentralLake, MI


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Please forgive my ignorance, but is the Sabbath included in 14:5 or is it pertaining to all days except the Sabbath? Thank you.

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Regin
Okinawa, Baptist Deacon

I always thought the meat and food versus were about food.

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Willie Grills
Trinity Presbyterian Church
OPC
Huntington, WV

Observance of one-day-in-seven unto the Lord (a Sabbath) is part of the moral law, binding on all persons at all times. On the other hand, someone could consider his birthday a day of special consecration to God, but that doesn't oblige me to moral respect for his conscientiousness.

Furthermore, the Jews as Jews at that time (and still some today) retained an historical observance of their cultural (i.e. Mosaic law) days. Paul is saying that such observances are not relevant to current moral requirements, particularly for Gentile converts to Christianity. Again, the Sabbath is not merely Mosaic law, any more than the law against murder is merely Mosaic.

The original question posed had to do with application of these texts in our context, where most of us in western society don't really contend with the issue of "food sacrificed to idols," later sold in the shops or served to us by our neighbors.

Mark 7:19 "thus He declared all foods clean" yes this is Mark writing but it is scripture and developed more fully elsewhere. Yet it is the Lord's teaching. Getting our consciences to the point where they agree with scripture is the goal.

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Eoghan
member,Thurso Baptist Church
Scotland

specialist subject: Creationist Genetics (Bottleneck effect of the Ark)
interests: holiness (practical theology)
member of Biblical Creation Society (available as a guest speaker in the far north of Scotland)

I suppose you could ask "is your conscience ok with eating hallal meat?"

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Bern
Evangelical
Kent UK