Romans 14 Basics
Romans 14
is too often forgotten by me. There is
some really good advice in this passage, and it is advice that I desperately
need to remember most of the time.
Unfortunately, I forget it more often than I should. And there is a danger in Romans 14 as
well. But I’ll get to that a little
later.
Here’s
basically what Romans 14 says. If God
calls you to do something one way, do it.
If God calls another brother or sister to do it another way, give them
the freedom to do it another way and don’t feel that in having your differences
that the same God cannot be at work.
What works for you might work for others, but there might be another
method that works better for them.
Essentially,
Romans 14 is a chapter about Christian freedom.
It is not a freedom to do whatever we want; it is a freedom to respond
to God’s call in ways that make sense to each of us. This goes back to the comments I made when we
began Romans. We are by nature God’s
slaves. We are not free to do whatever
we please. Where we are free is that we
are free to respond to God’s call.
Perhaps an
example is in order. I am a huge fan of
Christian Rock.*
I love bands like Skillet, Disciple, Thousand Foot Crutch, The Letter
Black, We As Human**, Tourniquet***, Deliverance, and a slew of others I should
list here but don’t have the space. Yet,
that kind of music is not for everyone.
I need not feel guilty for listening to music that teaches me scripture
and drives me to God. I also need not
require other people to love it. {However, I do have the right to expect them
to accept it as a genuine expression of faith – we’ll get to that later, too.} Romans 14 gives me permission to express my
faith in this fashion and experience faith in this manner with others who also
desire to express it this way.
In fact,
Romans 14:6 takes it one step further: “So do not let what you regard as good
be spoken of as evil.” If God has told
me that something is good in my life, I am not to let it be spoken of as
evil. I am called by God to defend that
which God has used for good in my life!
I am called to actively defend personal expressions of faith that are
different than other people’s expressions of faith!
Going Too Far
There is
an inherent danger in this line of thinking, though. As humans, we like to apply generalities to
life and stretch them way too far.
Romans 14 is not telling me that I can go out and live my life just any
old way I desire. I have no right to
take the words in this chapter and say, “Since Christ died on the cross I can
do whatever I want and know that if I sin then God will have to forgive me.” That is pushing the words of Romans 14 too
far. We as human beings like to do
this. We like to make generalizations
and then apply them so broad that the truth they contain no longer holds.
You see,
verses 17-18 provide the counterpoint to an abusive approach to Romans 14. “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of
eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men.” That which serves Christ is acceptable. If it doesn’t serve Christ, why would we want
to do it?
Here those
words well. Not everything is
acceptable. Not everything is
permissible. Only that which (or who)
serves Christ is acceptable to God. And
here we have a great litmus test. The
question is not “do I like something?”
The question is not “is this a legitimate part of my tradition?” The question that we should all be asking is
“does this serve Christ?” If we would
learn to ask this question instead of all the others we like to use as
evaluation tools we would be in a much better place in life.
Back to Basics
When we
learn this lesson we actually learn how Christ makes us free while we are still
in bondage to Him. We are free to do
that which serves Christ, but we are not bound to do everything which serves
Christ. If listening to Christian Rock
music serves Christ – and it does – I am free to do it. I am also free to not do it but accept that
other people are free to do it so long as it serves Christ.
Let me
take a moment to show the significance of this concept. Suppose there is a person who wishes to
worship on the Sabbath instead of Sunday morning as is the Christian
tradition. So long as it serves Christ,
they are free to do so. In fact, if
there is a group of people who wish to worship on Tuesday evening and not
worship at all on Sunday or the Sabbath – so long as their worship is truly serving
Christ – they are free to do it!
Let me
give another fairly general example. Suppose
there is a group of people who prefer to baptize in rivers (or flowing water) instead
of inside churches. So long as it serves
Christ, they are free to do it! But they
don’t have the right to criticize people who baptize in another fashion that
legitimately also serves Christ.
The key in
Christ is not setting up strict rules and regulations. After all, when does God tell us that the
Holy Spirit works in predictable manners?
Does not the Bible tell us that God’s ways are not our ways (see Isaiah
55:8-9) and that we cannot know from where the Spirit is coming or to where He
is going (See John 3:8)? The key is
setting up a proper evaluation tool for discerning the movement of the Spirit
in our life: does it serve Christ? That
is the evaluation tool above all else.
If it serves Christ, then it is up to us to make room for it in our
understanding of God’s Kingdom.
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*In fact, I just got to
experience Winterjam 2012 in Greensboro, NC, and Skillet put on the best live
performance I have ever seen. In one
particular song the drummer – who was beating the heck out of the drums to
begin with – and her platform began to be elevated into the air a good 15 feet
up off of the stage atop what looked like a scissor lift (And the stage as a
good 5 feet up already). When she got to
the top, the whole platform began to spin around at a rate of a full rotation
about every 8 or 10 seconds. Then the
guitarist and bassist get on these individual platforms and for the duration of
the whole song they are raised and lowered 15 feet into the air. All this while a phenomenal light show and
pyrotechnical show is going off. It was
amazing.
**This is a band I just
heard two nights ago for the first time, and I heard them live. They have a great stage presence. And I have fallen in love with their song Dead
Man. The lyrics are from the perspective
of a person coming to understand what Jesus offers them in life. The song almost sounds like a conversation
between an individual, their old and dead self, and Jesus. The chorus goes like this: “Sitting here in
my grave side, I’ve never been so alive.
You pull the dead man out of me.
I’m not what I was … I’ll never be what I was. You pull the dead man out of me.” Great set of lyrics!
***Anyone wanting to listen
to Tourniquet can do so for free at their homepage:
tourniquetbandcamp.com. In fact, all
their CDs are a $7.77 download. Well
worth it if you like the same style of music that I do!
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