Romans 14:15 (NLT)
And if another believer is distressed by what you eat, you are not acting in love if you eat it. Don’t let your eating ruin someone for whom Christ died.
If we’re honest, we are well aware that we are selfish creatures. Rarely do we really put our own comforts on the backburner when making a decision. We also get really bent out of shape when someone confronts us about something we don’t think is wrong. Maybe you smoke cigarettes. Maybe you enjoy drinking a beer in your easy chair after work. Maybe you like to work out and eat right six days out of the week and gorge yourself at the Chinese buffet every Saturday afternoon. I don’t know what your thing is but I’m sure you have one.
In this instance, Paul is talking specifically about food. In his day, many people hadn’t yet embraced the new covenant that Jesus’ death on the cross signified and were still trying to earn salvation by obeying the law God gave to Israel through Moses in the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). Among other things, there were many rules about food. There were many specific laws regarding the preparation of food and there were even some foods that could not be eaten at all.
What we find here is that even though Paul understood that doing his best to obey the law was no longer required to make himself right with God, being a jerk about it was not going to help the cause of Christ. He decided that instead of offending others by eating whatever he wanted (and expecting them to understand, accept, and conform), he would better minister to them by meeting them where they were.
We will continue this conversation tomorrow.
