The Letter to the Romans: Message #8 – Chapter 14

Now, let’s see if we can find something that will open this whole chapter for us, because there’s one more major thing here. Let me see if I can make a point and get it really clear. Are you clear that you are personally free to do anything as a Christian? You’ve got freedom like nobody else on earth. What about speeding down the highway? If you’re willing to pay the ticket, and your conscience does not say to you, “You’re endangering other people’s lives…”? Love thy neighbor as thyself and fulfill all the law. If you feel like you’re loving your neighbor when you pass him at 110 miles an hour, and you’re willing to pay a $500 fine and have your license revoked—go to it, fellow.

Now, that’s the first standard the Christian is exposed to. Now, we may get a little bit more information as we go along here, but you’ve got to start with freedom and work from there. Now, do you think this is what most Christians hear? What will most of us meet when we first get saved? “Stop driving fast!” Oh, it’s more than that. Don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do this—and do this, and do this, and do this, and you say, “Yes, sir! Boy, I’m a new Christian!” I’m a Christian, and you can’t do those things; you can’t live up to that. Somebody has to come around years later and tell you you’re free from all law, and then you go, “Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!” We ought to start out with freedom—freedom from all things—and then set our course according to the Spirit within us and a few other little guideposts that we will bump into here in just a minute.

Alright, let’s just look at a few things in this chapter. In verse 4…okay, let me go back to verse 1…there are vegetarians and there are meat eaters. Which one of them should give in first? Who should give in first? The meat-eater should. The meat-eater should give in. What does that mean, Gene? I’m not really clear on what that means exactly, but you should respect the weakness of the vegetarian. And do me a favor, if you ever come to my house and I open a cabinet and I’m about to reach up to get something, will you please not laugh at all the vitamins and minerals I’ve got in there? I’m a weak person, and shame on you, meat eaters, for standing there laughing at my vitamins and minerals. Have you no respect for the aged? You need to always ask this question. Am I dealing from the viewpoint of the stronger one or the weaker one? Now, who is the stronger one, the legalist or the one who has great freedom? Now there is an interesting question. Who is the stronger? The one with great freedom, or the one who is very legalistic? Now, this is going to be interesting. Alright, just a minute. Now think about it. Which is the stronger? Alright, everybody who feels the legalist is stronger, please raise your hand. Okay, we have one vote. Everybody who—well, I think we’ve got no votes here at all, it looks like. How many of you feel that the guy who’s free about everything is the stronger? Let me see here. Well, Alex, I hate to do this. Yeah, let’s hear the third. Ah, I wasn’t talking about them; I’m talking about the confirmed legalist, and I agree with you—the confirmed legalist or the guy who’s really free. In my judgment, the person who is free is far, far stronger. He’s not as afraid. I’m not talking about someone who’s gone into licentiousness; I’m talking about someone who’s free in Christ.

Legalists are just all tied up in knots. There’s a boogeyman behind every post, there’s a devil under every bed, there’s a sin in every thought and every move. Our poor guy is weak. Now, who’s going to give in first? Huh? No, the legalists? No. The stronger gives in. The stronger gives in. The free person should conform to the legalist. Well, you don’t drink wine. Now, this is stupid—to talk to a bunch of Puerto Ricans about not drinking wine, I’m sure—but I was on a train in Italy. I did not drink wine. I’ve never been among people who drank wine. I’m a Baptist; Baptists don’t even know what it tastes like! I’m sitting in a compartment, and there are fifteen Italians in there, and every one of them has got a hold of me, trying to push wine down my throat because they feel that if they don’t, they’re not being hospitable, and they’ve never met anybody who didn’t drink wine. Who’s the stronger and who’s the weaker in a case like this, huh? The one who refused to drink the wine is definitely the weaker. I am definitely, because I’m living by rules and regulations. If I had any good sense at all, I’d have to say, “Let me have the stuff, my cow,” and take in a couple of swallows, and let that have been the end of it. The Lord wasn’t going to rain judgment on me for drinking something to get some Italians off my back. They were so free, they couldn’t understand anybody who would think wine was wrong. It was like somebody refusing water because it was a sin to them. Do you understand that?

Alright, we’ve got it now that the legalist is the weaker; that means those of us who have freedom in Christ should conform. Now, let me just turn that around and say to you that, as a Christian, personally, most of my life, I have not drunk wine, but I am not going to turn it down and start a ruckus. We had a party that almost…no, not we…but we were invited to a home. It wasn’t even a party; it was dinner. Excuse me—it was a dinner. The couple was really thankful because of the way we had taken care of our kids. They invited us and everyone else who lived at Tashay House into their home, and the whole dinner came to a halt when one brother absolutely refused to drink wine there. Well, you know, I honor that brother, and if we had all read that book—this book—we would have stopped insisting right then and there on his drinking wine. I didn’t, but the family did. They would have backed away, recognized his weakness, and not asked him to, and you should never try to get a vegetarian to eat meat; it might literally cause him to fall into sin.

Now, while you’re all feeling very self-righteous, I want to tell you that every one of you is weak somewhere. You have a conviction you hold on to that’s probably abnormal. I have one. It may or may not be abnormal. I have not been to a motion picture since I was eighteen years old. I made a vow to the Lord that I would never again. Don’t ever try to force me into a theater; I don’t know what would happen to me if I went into one. I told the Lord I would never walk into one again as long as I lived, and boy, at that time, that was very important to me. Now, you probably are astonished at that, but you should honor my weakness, if that’s what it is. Do you understand? You have the freedom to go to one—you never made that vow. I did. I made that vow, and you may meet a brother someday who vowed never to drink wine as long as he lived, and he may be an alcoholic who is reformed. You need to understand that and back away.

Here’s the whole point of this entire section: Who are you (verse 4), to judge the servant of another? Anytime you start putting your view on another brother or sister, you have taken the position of God and said, “This is my servant.” You’ve done it. Verse 4—you should not do this. You have taken the position of God. “This is my slave; he must do what I tell him.” But the truth is, he’s not your slave. He is His slave. By the way, this would make perfect sense in a letter written to Rome, where half the people in the city are slaves. I don’t walk up in the middle of the street in Rome and walk up to someone else’s slave and say to him, “You shouldn’t dress that way.” That slave is none of my business; I do not own that person. Do you understand? Leave the slave alone; he belongs to his master, and that master is not you. Are you clear? You got that? Alright.

On the other hand, read verse 5: “Let each man be fully convinced in his own mind.” That’s a very vague sentence, isn’t it? Do you have any idea what that means? Well, let me tell you what it means. You ought to live by a very definite standard set of convictions for your own life. You should not, personally and individually, be willy-nilly— “Well, I guess it’s all right to shoot dope; I don’t know.” No, it’s not all right to shoot dope, is it? Well, I guess just one quart of whiskey wouldn’t hurt. You need to come up with convictions that you consider pleasing in the sight of God. You ought to make some decisions, brothers and sisters. I think sometimes some Christians have never decided whether or not they believe adultery is a sin, and whether or not they’re not going to do it.

There are all sorts of fleshly things we need to settle one way or the other, and in all of these other matters you really do need, for your own private life, to get clear on how you feel, what you believe, what your convictions are, and what your values are. Did you hear that? Well, don’t forget the first part of that sentence, because here comes the second half. The second half of that sentence is: then keep it to yourself, then keep it to yourself, then keep it to yourself. Now, doesn’t this get paradoxical? Strong set of convictions—keep them to yourself. Well, anybody knows you’re not to stand up on a soapbox and preach it. Keep your convictions to yourself. Do not judge someone else’s slave. On the other hand, get some strong convictions of your own. Do not ever stand in judgment of your brother.

I’m going to be parenthetical here. There are some things we, as Christians, are told to leave behind the day we get saved. They simply are things for darkness. Eating vegetarian food or eating meat is not one of them, and I would say most—I think you understand—that most of our fussing with one another is not over drunkenness. It’s over hamburgers and carrots. Yeah, things that are ridiculous, if we could see them from the mind of God! Paul said, “Concerning food, I’m convinced everything’s clean.” Boy, play that to a Jew, and he would just curl up his coals and die, and a Jew wrote that! Everything is clean for you. Now, a Greek would just agree with that up a storm. “Yeah, we just eat almost anything. It doesn’t matter if it’s for sale or if it’s free—we’ll eat it.” “If it doesn’t bite back, we’ll bite in.”

Then Paul asked, “When your brother stands before the Lord Jesus Christ, is he going to be judged by your standards?” Huh? God’s going to say, “Here—excuse me, Bill—what were your standards? You were his roommate on earth.” Are you going to be judged by someone else’s standards? Okay, here comes the funny part. Then by what standard will you be judged? Say it; by what standard will you be judged? Yeah, I think it’s perhaps more human than divine there. If you judge, if you’re a judgmental person, and you raise a standard, other people start holding you to that standard, but according to Paul, in this section at least, by what standards will you be judged? It’s right there. Well, that’s in there, too. That’s bad enough, but you’re going to be judged by God’s standards. We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. When you get judged by God’s standards, how are you going to do? Huh?

Would the brother or sister in here who has lived up to God’s standards please stand so we can see? Okay, doesn’t that make a lot of us look pretty stupid then? What are your standards, suddenly? What are your standards? What earthly significance are they? If we’re going to be judged by God’s standards, all of us, we’re all going to flunk. If this brother over here isn’t living by your standards, and you’re trying to introduce him to yours, what have you accomplished? Whose standards are yours? They have failed as much as his have, and all of us, we shall fall by our own standards. We will be judged by our own standards, in that we will be judged by God’s standards—and all of our standards are useless. I cannot please God by my standards. You see, I don’t chew tobacco, and I don’t spit on the sidewalk. I don’t use the Lord’s name. You don’t jaywalk. You don’t run red lights, and you don’t speed down the road. If you chew tobacco and spit on the sidewalk, who’s ahead? Ah, but I go to Sunday school and church, and you never darken the door of a church. Who’s ahead? I don’t care what happens, buddy; nobody’s ahead. Nobody’s ahead. Anybody here who judges another, just give the rest of us fifteen minutes to encircle you like wagons and sit down, and just give us fifteen minutes of your time, please, and we will show you hypocrisy, paradox, irony, inconsistency.