04.41. LESSON 41

LESSON 41

Romans 14:1-23 falls into two main parts. The first part, consisting of Romans 14:1-12, urges that it will help Christians to be mutually sympathetic and tolerant in their unavoidable inequalities and differences concerning things about which more than one good way of procedure is possible to remember that every one of them renders a strict, individual account to Christ, his real Master in life and in death, before whose judgment he stands or falls.

Romans 14:13-23 is an especially effective presentation of the place and power of reciprocal sympathy in Christian edification and fruitfulness. Who does not desire and need an understanding friend to whom he feels free to go, day or night, with assurance of sympathetic hearing, comfort, and help? In a world full of "the invisibly wounded," no one is so strong that he does not have weak hours when he needs, and no one is so weak that he cannot be sometimes, such a friend. What an opportunity —"A door opened, which no man can shut!" The Sovereignty of Conscience In studying Romans 2:1-29, we found that conscience, as is memory, imagination, or reasoning, is a distinct, innate human faculty; that its office is, not to ascertain the truthfulness of things, but to see that its owner is true to himself and follows his convictions; that in violating his conscience, a man so destroys his moral integrity as to make moral, spiritual living impossible; and therefore that the most deadly thing any man can do is to trifle with his conscience, for in so doing he is tampering with the com-pass of his soul.

Paul has been called the apostle of grace and of faith, and he may with equal propriety be called the apostle of conscience. This is not to intimate that he is a spiritual dictator, who cracks a whip over the conscience of others, but that, in a spirit he caught no doubt from his Lord, he believes magnificently in the unfettered conscience of all believers in Christ. He believes that within the large, flexible domain of discretionary matters, but only in this domain of course, a Christian is a law unto himself, and should be left to his own sense of right and expediency, for his conscience is king. Although Paul so respects and reveres conscience, he knows quite well that when Christ speaks explicitly, a Christian conscience trusts and obeys implicitly regardless of all cost. For championing this pre-eminently Christian doctrine of the dignity, honor, sanctity, and freedom of a living soul to learn and to grow, both Christ and Paul lost their lives at the hands of bigoted, dead slaves of tradition and prejudice, who had developed a fatal blind spot in their spiritual vision. Christianity is the only religion that produces true, noble individualism and independent personality, which progressively grows stronger for all, both strong and weak. This growth in character, contrary to man’s thought and expectation comes, not by way of self-assertion and crushing human authority and power, but by way of going outside of self for communion with Christ through the indwelling "Power of the Holy Spirit." No individual is merged with another and lost, but all individuals are cultivated and ripened unto harvest. "0 the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments."

Paul exhorts the "strong" to receive the "weak" cordially, without prying into his attitude towards discretionary things, trusting the Lord to make him stand and grow, according to his new, spiritual birth and nature. This protects the "weak," who is afflicted with a conscience that does not prevent his doing, under pressure, what he thinks to be wrong, by pleading with the "strong," with whom Paul obviously is in sympathy, not to take advantage of a brother who is suffering from a "weak" conscience, somewhat as an angry man might be shamed out of striking a cripple. On the other hand, of course, the "weak" must be willing to learn and grow. In this manner, would Paul correct the defect of love in the one and the defect of knowledge and conscience in the other. When a man is converted to Christ and ready to be baptized into him, Christ, because he actually loves him, is ready without arbitrarily deciding his conscientious "scruples" for him to receive him into his church, and give him an honest chance to learn, grow, and reverently work out his own convictions. In the light of this, who has the right to ask him, without the risk of becoming a sectarian, more -than concerning his faith in Christ, the one foundation of the one church? But every man who is not crucified to the flesh has within him a potential pope and Pharisee who demands that every other man pronounce "Shibboleth" as he pronounces it (Judges 12:6). The flesh which does not, and cannot, please God (Romans 8:8), is similar to Procrustes, the mythical giant of ancient Attica, who after seizing and tying hapless travelers through his petty state to an iron bed, either stretched them or cut off their feet until they fit the bed.

Paul and Peter
(Galatians 2:11-21)

Momentous matters and perplexing situations may arise in connection with things which within themselves are religiously indifferent. Even Peter became Paul’s "weak" man and precipitated a crisis in the church when he "fearing them that were of the circumcision," ceased to eat with Gentile Christians. It was his Christian liberty to eat or not, as it was Paul’s to circumcise or not, according to which choice would be in the interest of Christianity. When he chose not to eat in circumstances that introduced the caste system into the church, thus destroying its universality, Paul had to resist him openly. This occurrence in Antioch throws light on the difficult problem involved in Romans 14:1-23. The apostles did not differ in primary doctrines; Peter only acted as if they did. His cowardly conduct, which belied his doctrine, constituted his "dissimulation," or hypocrisy. Had Peter been a proud, headstrong, self-seeking man, the consequences would have been deadly. But his being honestly converted to Christ, "Crucified... unto the world" (Galatians 6:14), and Christian to the core, made it possible to show him the appalling results of his mistake. Who, knowing Peter, can doubt his eager readiness to heal the fresh wound he had ignorantly inflicted upon the body of his Lord? We know he took his correction meekly and continued to honor and love Paul (2 Peter 3:16-17). Surely, God’s purpose in recording this episode was that his church might have an example for all time of how differences over things that are within themselves neither right nor wrong ("Neither, if we eat not, are we the worse; nor, if we eat, are we the better" (1 Corinthians 8:8), should be handled.

Questions