The Romance of Romans-Part 100

Romans Chapter 14 cont'd

Place working for and preserving unity with fellow believers and building up one another at the top of your list of life's values. Let the freedom to express your liberty in Christ in non-essentials come somewhere down the list! Don't destroy the work of God for the sake of something as boring as meat-eating. Truly, all things are pure, but not all truths are equally important. And besides, if someone believes that eating meat is wrong, it's wrong for him to eat it. It is honorable to forego any liberty, like eating meat or drinking wine, if it somehow pressures a fellow believer to violate her/his conscience.
Do you have a strong faith that can handle such liberties? Great! Enjoy them before God. Just don't project onto others the same expectation. We will be happy if we aren't self-condemned for the liberties we allow ourselves. But if you have doubts about the legitimacy of any behavior, like eating meat, and you do it anyway, your joy will evaporate because you aren't living by faith. And whatever cannot be done in faith is, by definition, sinful.

Comments:

In these last two paragraphs of Romans 14, Paul summarizes the main point of the passage on the, sometimes, delicate ethical balance between living in both liberty and brotherly love. The way of Christ is the way of the heart. God, and his word, always penetrate to the heart of matters and never content to view human life and its choices on the superficial plane. Love is to be our motive and goal and, in that context, God makes a lot of room for individual liberty based in the guidance of personal conviction and conscience.

Our faith can never be boiled down to a static set of "rules for living" because of God's deeper commitment to bring us into a personal and dynamic interactive relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in real time. In one situation or time frame, love may look like one thing and in the next situation or season, it may look like the opposite: taking action or being patient; speaking up or being silent; showing mercy or applying justice; confronting or forbearing; working hard or simply trusting God to work; remaining peaceful or expressing righteous anger; resisting a trial or accepting it; expecting a miracle or leaving the matter to providence...often the way of Christ's love implies a wise blending of both.

No written code could cover all the possibilities of what "love looks like", nor could we memorize them and apply them perfectly if we had such a thing. The Scriptures tell us stories of God's love, the failures of human wisdom and foolishness and prescribe ethical boundaries...and it is vital for us to read and re-read the texts. However, the Trinity will work within us to bring these things to mind in timely ways and give us special wisdom in our hours of need for it.