Romans 14 - Building unity across ethnic/religious diversity. # 67. 08/03/2022
Out of Many, One People
Welcome. This week a look at scripture, with questions bible study groups might find helpful.
Romans 14 - Building unity across ethnic/religious diversity
Do Not Judge Another
14 Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. 2 Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. 3 Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. 4 Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.
5 Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. 6 Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God.
7 We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. 8 If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.
10 Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. 11 For it is written,
“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
and every tongue shall give praise to[f] God.”
12 So then, each of us will be accountable to God.
Do Not Make Another Stumble
13 Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another. 14 I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean. 15 If your brother or sister[i] is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died. 16 So do not let your good be spoken of as evil. 17 For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. 18 The one who thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and has human approval. 19 Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. 20 Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for you to make others fall by what you eat; 21 it is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother or sister[j] stumble. 22 The faith that you have, have as your own conviction before God. Blessed are those who have no reason to condemn themselves because of what they approve. 23 But those who have doubts are condemned if they eat, because they do not act from faith;[l] for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.
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In Romans 14 Paul discusses tensions between the ‘strong’ and the ‘weak’. The issue is often interpreted as being over moral issues: the ‘weak’ are vulnerable to particular temptations, and therefore require the ‘strong’ to set them a good example by also avoiding those issues. However, the debate is not primarily about moral differences but ‘identity’ issues. ‘Food, circumcision and sabbath were, by common consent, the key markers which said “We are loyal Torah-observant Jews”’ (N T Wright in ‘Paul and the Faithfulness of God’ p 364). It needs a step of imagination for those of us from cultures where external constraints are considerably weaker to appreciate just how vulnerable Jewish Christians must have felt in Gentile majority churches. So the passage calls for sensitivity to the qualms experienced by Jewish believers in the context of a church with people from very different religious and cultural traditions.
James Dunn’s scenario concerning the recipients of the letter to the Romans is that initially the church consisted of Jewish and proselyte Christians, who were increasingly joined by Gentile converts. When the Jews were expelled from Rome in AD 49 the church became predominantly Gentile. Thus when Jewish Christians started returning to Rome the onus was on the Gentiles to welcome them. ‘Paul wrote to counter (potential) divisions within Rome among the Christian house churches, particularly the danger of gentile believers despising less liberated Jewish believers’ (Dunn, ‘The Theology of Paul the Apostle’ p lvii); so Romans 14:1 ‘is better understood of Gentile-Christian majority congregations welcoming individual Jewish Christians into their fellowship.” Dunn estimates there were at least five house churches in Rome, but sees no suggestion of ethnic segregation.
Thus the ‘weak’ are those for whom meat eating is associated with idolatry, and the ‘strong’ those for whom, as Paul writes in 1 Cor 8:4 ‘no idol in the world really exists’, thus there is no problem in eating the meat. Paul urges restraint therefore in order not to create confusion for those who have internalized traditions about what is offensive. A modern parallel might be that whereas traditionally Christians were urged ‘don’t go to the pub to avoid tempting those with drink problems’, a stronger comparison would be to say ‘don’t go to the pub to avoid distressing Moslem-background believers’, (or friends who are practicing Moslems) since they have been brought up as seeing alcohol consumption as ungodly. Note, however, that Dunn warns ‘thoughts of modern disagreements about healthy eating and sabbatarianism . . . would be very misleading. What was at stake would be much more profound and fundamental in character”; relating as it did to deep-seated issues of Jewish religious, national identity (as part of his discussion of Romans 14:1-15:6 on pp 680-692).
Certainly the overall message of Romans 14 and 15 is clear: “that together with one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (15:6). Unity trumps the diversities of cultural tradition and preference. The specifics of who is being addressed about what is much less clear. In Tom Wright’s popular ‘For Everyone’ commentary on Romans he provides an intriguing explanation for Paul’s rather veiled depiction of the situation: “What is fascinating about this whole chapter is that, though it seems clear that the issues Paul is talking about are things that would have divided Jewish Christians from Gentile Christians, he does not say ‘Many Jewish Christians don’t eat meat, and many Gentile Christians do’. . . . .His reason, I think, is that he precisely trying to break down the walls which early Christians so easily put up between people of different ethnic origin. If he’d said ‘Jewish Christians do this, Gentile Christians do that’ he would simply have been reinforcing the barriers he was trying to get them to forget” (Wright 2004, p 96).
Accordingly Paul makes a number of emphases which enable Christians of backgrounds to live together harmoniously. Contempt from one side, or judgement from the other are alike out of place (vv 3 & 10), instead all should be trusted to God (v 4), since the pre-eminent issue is that all belong to the one Lord (v 9).
A central principle is that amongst the differing sensitivities brought by people from varying ethnic groups into the common life of one congregation is the importance of restraint – of willingly forgoing certain patterns of behaviour out of love for those who are different. Subduing rather than asserting ethnic identities in a mixed setting seems to be Paul’s overall perspective, thus his rather cautious wording that Wright notes above.
This makes for a provocative comparison with present day London, where the ‘latecomer’ minority ethnic Christians, like the Gentiles in the church in Rome, now outnumber the original ‘hosts. Mark Sturge, in ‘Look what the Lord has done: An Exploration of Black Christian Faith in Britain’ (2005) uses 1 Corinthians to form ‘Ten Fundamental Principles for Promoting Unity’ summarises the situation in very similar terms as follows: ‘because unity with Jerusalem and the dominant Jewish congregation in the region was so important to him, Paul seems to have made demands on the Gentile church in Corinth to take on Jewish traditions. To be honest, it seems to me that he often rode roughshod over the Gentile preferences and relegated their customs to a secondary position’ (p 198). Sturge’s suggestion is that Black Majority Churches, like the Gentiles, need to ‘give way’, and that unity demanded more behavioural concessions from the Gentiles, though one might add that renunciation of privileged attitudes might be required from the Jews, as suggested by Paul’s account of what he had to let go of in Phil 3:3-7.
How then might Romans 14 work out in the very different context of modern Britain? Some questions to consider.
1. If different attitudes to food and days by different groups seems to have been controversial areas for the church in first century Rome, can you list what ‘identity’ issues cause differences in your church today? What problems do you see caused by ethnic diversity in your church today?
2. Over what issues should people from different ethnic groups learn to exercise restraint today in your church?
3. ‘Resolve . . never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another’ (14:13). What stumbling blocks might we be creating?
4. That Rome should have ‘Gentile’ and ‘Jewish’ churches was unthinkable to Paul; we take parallel ethnic divisions today as almost normative. What changes does your church need to make so that people of other ethnicities feel welcomed and at home in it?
Pray Romans 15:5,6 for your church: ‘May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant (us) to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, 6 so that together (we) may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Add Ons.
* Tomorrow: Gresham College’s on-line lecture: Professor Alec Ryrie on ‘How Protestant Missionaries encountered Slavery’ at 6 pm on March 9th. Full details on the Gresham College web-site.
WEBINAR: ‘Setting us Free’ Hosted by the Racial Justice Advocacy Forum, 21 March 2022, 7-9pm Exploring how to heal the 400 years of damage caused by enslavement and racism to Black Christians. Details at Churches Together in Britain and Ireland.