Christian, disagree agreeably

Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarrelling over disputable matters. ² One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. ³ The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. ⁴ Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

⁵ One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind…

²² So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves. ²³ But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.

Romans 14:1-5, 22-23

Did you watch last Sunday’s England v Spain Euro-final? I haven’t seen the official viewing statistics, but I’ve no doubt that they ran into many millions.

Another question: Did you feel a touch guilty about watching the game? It was Sunday, after all. And doesn’t the Bible tell us to “honour the sabbath day and keep it holy”?

I ask because I couldn’t help reflecting on how things have changed over the decades. I became a Christian as a teenager in the 1960s, and in the church where I was converted we were not taught it was wrong to watch television on a Sunday – not taught, because it was just taken for granted, something that simply wasn’t done. There were various unwritten rules like that: you were expected to dress smartly for church; no shopping on Sundays; no work on Sundays; and of course you wouldn’t smoke or drink alcohol on any day of the week. Everything was very black and white, and you just accepted it without really giving it any thought. (I was only fifteen, after all.)

Well, those days are well gone! I sat down to watch the game without any qualms, and I couldn’t help thinking what a journey I have travelled over those fifty-odd years (and I can’t remember the last time I wore a tie for church).

But one thought nags at me. How have I made that journey? Prayerfully? Thoughtfully? Can I say that I made a conscious, thought-through decision that my earlier conviction was unnecessarily strict, and so abandoned it with a clear conscience? Or did I just drift unthinkingly into my new practice, “going with the flow”, as the saying goes? Mmm… that question leaves me a little uncomfortable.

In Romans 14 Paul is tackling the question of how we as Christians should handle what he calls “disputable matters” (NIV) or “personal opinions” (GNB) (verse 1). He picks out two topics which, presumably, were causing some division in the church at Rome. First, are Christians expected to be vegetarian (verses 1-3)? Second, are they expected to regard various days, especially no doubt the “sabbath”, as specially sacred (verse 5)?

And his answer is simple and clear. Such questions are matters of personal conscience, and nobody’s business but that of the individual involved. So - he says in effect - back off! “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant?” (verse 4).

Jesus didn’t come to give his church a whole new set of rules: he came to bring the mercy and grace of God in the free forgiveness offered through the sacrifice of the cross. “Disputable matters”? – well, I was going to say you can just snap your fingers at them, but, putting it a little more elegantly, they are not worth falling out over; indeed, it is actually sinful to be unduly dogmatic, it is arrogant and judgmental. All that matters is that each of us should be “fully convinced in our own mind” (verse 5).

Various other comments are worth making as we explore Romans 15.

First, it teaches us something about how to use the Bible.

In essence… the Bible is not a text book to be ransacked so that we can quote occasional verses and apply them, out of context, to any given situation we might choose. I quoted earlier the words of the ten commandments about “honouring the sabbath day and keeping it holy”. But of course that command, in context, was given to the ancient people of Israel (Exodus 20), and the sabbath day was Saturday, not our Sunday, or “the Lord’s Day”. So when Christians gather to worship Sunday by Sunday, they could be accused of sabbath-breaking, because the New Testament never contains any command to regard Sunday as a new holy day. No doubt that’s still a good thing to do, but exactly how is another matter.

I spent some weeks a few years ago in a country where the day of worship for all religious traditions was set by the secular government: Friday, I think it was. It was a country with many such traditions, and this was considered useful in terms of social harmony. Should the church have risen up in protest, demanding to be allowed to worship on Sunday? If so, they failed to do so; and who could say they were wrong, and on what grounds? “Tradition”? Surely not!

My wife and I also had devout friends who belonged to the Seventh Day Adventist church, which holds on to Saturday as their chosen “holy day”. You couldn’t wish for finer Christian people, and while we obviously disagreed with one another, we were able to treat one another with cheerful, mutual respect. I think the Paul who wrote Romans 14 would have approved of that.

I think that sums up the essence of Romans 14. But the chapter raises various other questions… How, for example, should we distinguish between “disputable matters” and those which really are important? Is Paul in effect adopting an “anything-goes-as-long-as-you’re-sincere” approach to things like same-sex relations? Are there no absolute rights and wrongs for Christians?

But I find I have run out of space. So, if you are interested, please join me next time…

Father, we live in a world where any given topic attracts a multitude of different opinions, and there are times when we are confused about rights and wrongs. Please help us, by your Spirit, to know when we should stand our ground, and when we should be flexible; above all, when we find that we disagree, to disagree agreeably. Amen.