Romans 14:1-13

Romans 14:1-13
As fallen human beings we have many failings that are all too often common among us all. One of those failings is our constant need to live in comparison to others. We want to be able to look at others around us and say, “Hey, at least I am better than that!” I had a friend in college who told me that she enjoyed watching day time talk shows because when she watched those shows, she could look at the lives of those people and KNOW without a doubt that her life was better than theirs, qualitatively, morally, whatever, her life was never anywhere close to being as messed up and hopeless as the poor peoples’ lives on that show. I suspect that this is exactly the reason why these types of shows are so popular. They give the viewer as sense of superiority. Something to look at and say, at least my life is not as messed up as that.

As children we also had this innate need to feel as if we were somehow better than those around us. After all is it not the desire to show themselves to be better than a particular peer, at the heart of every tattle-tale? There is an overwhelming desire in the heart a small that wants the adult to know exactly how bad little Johnny has been, thus highlighting what a good boy or girl they have been, all though not realizing that they are putting themselves on par with little Johnny because most of the time tattle-taleing is just as naughty as whatever it was that Johnny had been doing. That of course does not seem to matter to them and they do not understand why they too are being reprimanded for bringing Johnny’s short falling to the adult’s attention, in their own mind they have the moral superiority, after all compared to little Johnny they are being a saint.

Paul is dealing with this common human problem among the Christians in the church in Rome. The Christians in Rome were comparing themselves to each other and different individuals had come up with different reasons as to why they were better Christians than those other Christians that were not doing as they were doing. You see the people of that church were split in their opinions on two issues that they thought were very important.

First of all there are those that eat meat and those who do not eat meat. Surprisingly the vegetarian/meat eater debate is still one that rages among Christians and non Christians alike. Although the vegetarians in Paul’s day did not abstain from eating cows because they are so cute, or because human beings should learn to live without killing other living things, or for environmental reasons or for any of the other half-dozen reasons that a modern person might be a vegetarian. They abstained from eating meat for religious reasons and depending on whether they were Jewish Christians or Gentiles they might have had entirely different reasons for abstaining from eating meat.
Some of the Gentiles would have chosen to not eat meat because they felt that it had been defiled. You see most of the meat that would have been available in the Roman market would have come from the slaughtering facilities in the local pagan temples.

The Gentiles who had come out of these pagan religions would know that before the meat was sold that it would very likely have been offered as a sacrifice to a pagan deity. They felt that they would be accepting and promoting the worship of these pagan deities by eating meat that had been previously used in this way. Since there was no way of knowing which meat had been offered to pagan idols and which had not, some of them choose to abstain from eating meat altogether.

The Jewish Christians on the other hand would abstain from eating meat on reasons of Jewish dietary laws. Rome was far away from Jerusalem and any large community of Jews, therefore making it hard for them to find meat that had been prepared in a “kosher” way, in other words the meat at the market was unclean. Finding themselves living in a city where it was nearly impossible to find meat that they would consider clean, some of the Jewish Christians chose to abstain from eating meat.

Note that I said that only some of the Jews and only some of the Gentiles chose to abstain from eating meat altogether, others did not feel that either of these issues had any bearing on their Christianity and chose to eat whatever meat was available to them there in Rome. The problem is not that some ate meat and other did not, but that each group thought that they were necessarily right and the other group was necessarily wrong.

As if this was not complicated enough, there were more issues in the church at Rome than meat. There were meat eaters and vegetarians, but there were also those Jewish Christians who strictly observed the Sabbath, as well as all the feast and fast days that God instructed the Jews to follow in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. The Gentile Christians had probably never read Deuteronomy or Leviticus and did not see why observing these days had anything to do with being a Christian. And of course those that observed the days thought that those that did not observe these days should and those that did not, did not see why those other Christians were so concerned about something that seemed so trivial to them.

Paul would not have had such a problem with people having different opinions if it was not that those that abstained from eating meat and those who abstained from observing the special days despised those that ate meat or observed the special days, while those that ate meat and those that observed the special days judged those that that did not eat meat and did not observe the special days. Paul did not really care if some people liked beef and others did not, what he cared about was all the despising and judging that was going on over what seemed to him to be unimportant issues.

Before I delve into what it is that Paul is saying in this passage let me begin by telling you what he is not saying. Paul is not making a blanket statement to all Christians everywhere not to judge, not to declare what sin is and expect all Christians everywhere to flee from it. He is not saying that all morality is relative, that sin does not matter. He is not telling us that we cannot call sin, sin and wrong doing, wrong doing. In the verses preceding this chapter he does just that, he declares to the people of the Church of Rome just a short list of what he considers sinful and should be avoided if we as Christians are to live honorably as Christ has called us to live.

No Paul is not telling us to be soft on sin and to allow it to seep into our lives and corrupt who we are as Christians. Paul is instead telling us not to live our lives in comparison to those around us. We are not live act as if the rest of the world is a day time tv show and live trying to see that our life is better than theirs. We are not to be five year old tattle-tales that are constantly looking around the sanctuary and telling God exactly how sinful so and so is, so that God will see, and will know exactly what good, wonderful, moral upright Christians we are. We are not to live our Christian lives looking to our neighbor on the road, see their short comings and the areas in which they struggle with sin in their lives and see that we do not struggle or fall short in the same ways they do and therefore judge ourselves to be better than they.

On the other side of the coin neither are we to look at others who are doing their very best to be the people that God has called them to be and in an attempt to flee from anything that might even have the appearance of wrong doing go a little farther than we do, or think is necessary, we might think that they are taking their Christianity to far, or being to strict, surely those things that they are so worried about are not things that God is worried about. We are not to compare ourselves to these people and think how enlightened we are that we are encumbered by the same sensibilities that those people have. We are not to look down our noses and silently call them backwards or simple. In short we are not to despise them for being extra cautious when it comes to their relationship with God.

Paul wants us to know that when we look at other Christians who are striving their best to be the people that God has called them to be and they don’t do things exactly the same way that we do and we think that they are wrong, that if they are truly reaching for God and searching for his guidance in their lives, they are seeking to honor and serve the same God that we honor and serve, they are worshipping the same risen Christ that we are worshipping. Those of us that are seeking the face of God in all that we do, should not be split amongst ourselves. We should be striving together, building each other up and glorifying Jesus Christ as OUR Lord and Savior.
Paul is telling us that in the end we will all stand before the judgment seat of God, after all it is God’s right and not ours to judge our fellow Christians. We will not stand before God and get to have a giant three-year-old-esk tattle-tale session with God, telling him all the things that those other Christians were doing wrong and how we were such better Christians than they were, because we did this and did not do that. We do not get to sit back and watch everyone else’s lives and show God how much better we have been compared to them.

Paul reminds us that when we stand before God each of us will not be accountable for “their lives,” but we will be accountable for ours and ours alone. Remember that one of the most important lessons that we learned as three year old tattle-tales was that we were just as wrong for standing in the judgment seat of the capable adult that was there and declaring the wrongness of our peer, when we ourselves, in the very act of tattling were doing something just wrong. Think how much worse it will be when we stand shamefacedly before the judgment seat of God pointing at our fellow Christian, who Christ declared that we were suppose to encourage and build up, instead of despising and pushing them down with our judgmental attitude towards them and God stands before us and says that we were not called to live our lives as better than “theirs,” but we were to live our lives according to the loving instruction that God himself gave to us.