Welcome back to our current Bible study series, working through the Book of Romans with HelloMornings. I'm so glad to have you join us here.
The Bible reading for today is Romans 14: 19 - 23 ...
So then, we must pursue what promotes peace and what builds up one another. 20 Do not tear down God’s work because of food. Everything is clean, but it is wrong for a man to cause stumbling by what he eats. 21 It is a noble thing not to eat meat, or drink wine, or do anything that makes your brother stumble. 22 Do you have a conviction? Keep it to yourself before God. The man who does not condemn himself by what he approves is blessed. 23 But whoever doubts stands condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from a conviction, and everything that is not from a conviction is sin.
Paul's words today carry echoes of Jesus's Sermon on the Mount ... Jesus also exhorted His disciples to build one another up in a non-judgmental way (see Matthew 7: 1 - 5), and to lay aside their own rights and self-sufficiency in favour of unity between brothers and sisters in Christ (see Matthew 5: 1 - 2).
In the church in Rome, disputes between the Jewish and the Gentile Christians was threatening to tear the fledgling church apart. One of the major sources of the conflict was food. The Jewish Believers still maintained their old ways of eating according to the Old Testament commands (see Leviticus 7: 22 - 27), and expected the newly converted Gentiles to do the same. Never having kept these dietary laws before, the Gentiles resisted these new "rules", and probably caused offense by eating "forbidden foods" in front of their Jewish brothers.
As he has throughout this chapter of Romans, Paul urges the church to "pursue the things that will bring peace" (Jaime Hilton).
Paul was asking them to work towards harmony, by allowing differences over the non-essential issues, in order to be of one mind and one heart on the issues that truly matter - like salvation and mutual edification of the people of God.
Interestingly, the Jewish dietary laws were never intended to be a weapon of division - God instituted these requirements as a sign for His people to the surrounding nations that they were separate - set apart for the Lord’s purposes.
Just to prove that all of God’s Word is one unified text, and that God’s plans and purposes do not alter with generations and seasons, Christ-followers in the New Testament are similarly required to set themselves apart from the things of the world (1 Peter 2: 9).
The Jews and the Gentiles in the church at Rome were indeed arguing over a non-essential matter (the type of food we eat), and missing the essential significance of the matter (having hearts and lives consecrated to the Lord)!