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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadOffice and Duties of the Christian Pastor by Patrick Fairbairn: 28. Romans 14:1-7.
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Rom_14:1-7.
‘4 Now, him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not for judgments of thoughts. 2. One believes he may eat all things; but he that is weak eateth (only) herbs. 3. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth; for God has accepted him. 4. Who art thou that judgest the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls; but he shall be made to stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. 5. One esteems one day above another [lit., day above day]; another esteems every day: let each be fully persuaded in his own mind. 6. He that regards the day, to the Lord regards it; and he that eats, to the Lord eats, for he gives God thanks; and he that eats not (viz., flesh), to the Lord eats not, and gives God thanks. 7. For none of us lives to himself, and none dies to himself; for if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord,’ &c.
The subject handled in these verses, as in the chapter generally from which they are taken, is the treatment that should be given by Christians of enlightened understandings and ripe judgment in Divine things to those whom the apostle calls weak in the faith—persons who, while holding the faith of Christ, were restrained by some scruples of conscience, or some apprehensions of evil, from using the liberty in certain respects to which they were called in Christ. But from the imperfect description which is given of their case, it is extremely difficult to arrive at an intelligent view of their religious position, and consequently to determine the precise bearing of the apostle’s remarks concerning them on questions of legal obligation or Christian duty in present times. The general principle announced at the commencement, that persons weak in the faith should be received, that is, acknowledged as of the brotherhood of faith, must be understood as implying, that the weakness did not touch any vital doctrine, or commonly recognised Christian duty; for in that case it had been the part of the more intelligent and steadfast believers to endeavour to convince them of their error, and, till this was accomplished, keep them at some distance, lest others should become infected with their leaven. So much is plain; and hence the negative prescription given in connection with the receiving of them, that it should not be for judgments of thoughts (εἰς διακρίσεις διαλογισμῶν)—that is, for doing the part of censorious critics and judges on the views peculiar to the persons in question. This, certainly, is the meaning of the expression,—not, as in the English Bible, to doubtful disputations, which the original words will not strictly bear, and which also, in its natural import, seems to point rather in the wrong direction. For the apostle could not mean to say, that it was doubtful which of the two parties occupied the right position, since he characterized the one as relatively weak, and as such, of course, falling below the mark, which they should have aimed at and might have attained. But he means to say, that the specific weakness having its seat in the thoughts of the mind, and these thoughts exercising themselves about matters of no great moment to the Christian life, no harsh judgments should be passed upon them; the persons should be treated with forbearance and kindness.
But to what type or class of early Christian converts shall the persons spoken of be assigned? On this point there has been a considerable diversity of opinion, and the materials apparently are wanting for any very certain conclusions. They could not be, as some have supposed, Jewish-Christians, who stood upon the legal distinctions respecting meat and drink; for these distinctions said nothing about total abstinence from flesh, or the ordinary use of wine. Nor, with others, can we account for those self-imposed restraints, by supposing that it was flesh and wine which had been used in heathen offerings that the persons in question would not taste; for no limitation of this sort is so much as hinted at in the apostle’s words, nor, if that had been the precise ground of their refusal, would he have characterized it as simply a weakness; in another epistle he has at great length urged abstinence from such kinds of food as a matter of Christian duty. (1 Corinthians 8-10.) Then, in regard to the distinguishing of days, so as to make account of some above others, it is difficult to understand how this could be meant of a scrupulous adherence to the Jewish observances as to times and seasons, as if any thing depended on such observances for salvation; for, in the case of the Galatians, the apostle had characterized such adherence to the Jewish ritual, not as a tolerable weakness, but as a dangerous error—a virtual departure from the simplicity of the faith. That the parties are to be identified with Christians of the Ebionite school (according to Baur), who were tinged with the Gnostic-aversion to every thing of a fleshly and materialistic nature, while they retained their Jewish customs, is altogether improbable—both because there was no such distinctly formed Ebionite party at the time this epistle was written, and because, if there had, they could certainly not have been treated so indulgently by Paul, whose teaching stood in such direct antagonism to their views. (See Neander, ‘History of Planting of Christian Church,’ B. iii. c. 7.) And though there is a nearer approach to the apparent circumstances of the case in the supposition of others (Ritschll, Meyer, etc.), that the weak Christians of our passage were a class of supra-legal religionists, believers probably of the Essene sect, who brought with them into Christianity some of their rigid observances and ascetic practices, yet there is no proper historical evidence of such converts to the faith of Christ existing anywhere, and particularly at so great a distance from the seat of the Essene party, at the early period to which the epistle to the Romans belongs. Besides, as the ascetic and ritualistic peculiarities of the Essenes were essentially of that type, against which Paul, in other places, (Colossians 2; 1 Timothy 4.) so earnestly protested, and in which he descried the beginnings of the great apostacy, one is at a loss to understand how, on the supposition of its representatives being found at Rome, he should have made so little account of the fundamentally erroneous principles interwoven with their beliefs.
Amid this uncertainty as to the specific position of the persons referred to, it is necessary to proceed with caution in the interpretation of what is written, and to beware of deducing more general inferences from it than the expressions absolutely warrant. It was one of the exhibitions given, the apostle tells us, of weakness of faith, that one believed he should eat simply vegetables or herbs, while the relatively strong was persuaded he might partake of whatever was edible; and it is implied, in Rom_14:21, that the weakness also shewed itself with some in a religious abstinence from wine. But on what grounds the abstinence was practiced—whether as a species of fasting, with a view to the mortifying of the flesh, or as a protest and example for the good of others in respect to prevailing excesses in meat and drink, or, finally, from lingering doubts, originating in ascetic influences, as to the Divine permission to use such articles of diet—on such points nothing is here indicated, and we are entitled to make no positive assertion. The personal incident mentioned by Josephus, that, after having in early life sought to make himself acquainted with the distinctive Jewish sects, he took up for a time with one Banos, who lived in the desert, and scrupulously abstained from any clothing but what grew on the trees, and ate no food but the spontaneous products of the earth; and the additional fact given in the same direction, that two priests, whom he describes as excellent men, and whom he accompanied to Rome to plead their cause, chose for their food only figs and nuts, (‘Life,’ sees. 2, 3.) clearly shew that peculiarities of this sort were not of infrequent occurrence at that time among the Jews, though they were probably of too irregular and arbitrary a character to come under any common religious definition. Of the persons here referred to by the apostle, we merely know that, for some conscientious reasons (adopted by them as individuals, not as belonging to certain sects), they had thought it their duty neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine; and the apostle’s advice respecting them was, that they should not on this account be treated with harshness or contempt. It was a weakness, no doubt, but still one of a comparatively harmless nature; it had approved itself to their own conscience; let the matter, therefore, be left to Him who is Lord of the conscience, and who would not fail to sustain and guide them, if their hearts were right with Him in the main.
It is scarcely possible to be more particular in regard to the other form of weakness specified; it is not even very definitely indicated on which side the weakness lay, or how far there was a weakness. Two facts only are stated: ‘One man esteems one day above another; another esteems every day’ (the alike added in the authorized version is better omitted). We naturally infer, from the mode of putting the statement, that the weaker was he who made the distinction of day above day; but then how was the distinction made? Wherein did he shew his esteeming of it? Could this have consisted only in his considering it proper to devote one day in the week more especially to religious employments and works of mercy? This had surely been a strange manifestation of weakness, to be marked as such by the apostle, who himself was wont, along with the great body of the early Christians, to appropriate the first day of the week to such purposes, and to style it emphatically the Lord’s day. (Act_21:17; 1Co_15:2; Rev_1:10.) Nor has the experience of the past shewn it to be a weakness, but, on the contrary, to be at once a source and an indication of strength, to avail one’s-self of those statedly recurring opportunities to withdraw from worldly toil, and have the soul braced up by more special communion with itself and Heaven for the work of a Christian calling. Wherever such opportunities are neglected, and no distinction of days is made as to religious observance, the result that inevitably ensues is a general decay and gradual extinction of the religious sentiment. This is admitted by all thoughtful men, whether they hold the strictly Divine institution of the Lord’s day or not. It is impossible St Paul could be insensible to it, or could wish to say any thing that tended to such a result. If, therefore, the esteeming of one day above another is represented as a weakness, one may suppose that some specific value was attached to the day per se, as if it had the power of imparting some virtue of its own to the thing’s done on it, apart from their own inherent character. To attach such ideas, either to the Jewish weekly and other Sabbaths, or even to the Christian Lord’s day, might be regarded as a weakness; since, while the setting apart of such days for special exercises had important ends to serve under both economies, it was only as means to an end; the time by itself carried no peculiar virtue; and, in contradistinction from any feeling of this description, every day should be esteemed. But no day should, in that case, be disesteemed, or regarded as unfit for religious and beneficent action. Nor does the apostle say so, when the correct form of his statement is given, as by Lachmann (approved also by Mill, Griesbach, Meyer (These authorities omit the clause in ver. 6, καὶ ὁ μὴ φρονῶν τὴν ἡμέραν κυρίῳ οὐ φρονεῖ, with all the best MSS., א A B C D E F G, the Italic, Vulgate, Aeth. Copt, versions, Jer., Aug., and other authorities. To admit a text with such evidence against it, and only one uncial MS. L. of no great antiquity for it, were to violate all the established canons of criticism; besides that, it makes no proper sense; at least not without some considerable straining.)). The words run thus: ‘He that regards the day to the Lord regards it; and he that eats (viz., flesh), eats to the Lord; for he gives God thanks; and he that eats not, to the Lord eats not, and gives God thanks.’ The negative, as well as the positive side is exhibited as regards the eating; for both alike eat, and give thanks for what they eat, only the one in his eating confines himself to a vegetable diet. But in the other case, the positive alone is exhibited; for while one may, with a true religious feeling, regard one day more than another, and even carry this to a kind of superstitious extreme; yet not to regard the day can scarcely be represented as a thing done to the Lord. Not the regarding of no particular day is the counter-position indicated by the apostle, but the regarding of every day—this, it is implied, would bespeak the strong man, if so be the other betrayed something of weakness; and the strength in that case would necessarily consist in giving one’s-self to do every day what others deemed it enough, or at least best, to do more especially on one—to do, that is, what may more peculiarly be called works of God. So to employ one’s-self would put all the days on a kind of equality; but, certainly, not by depriving them alike of regard, or by reducing them to the same worldly level; on the contrary, by raising them to a common elevation, devoting them to the special service of Heaven, and the best interests of humanity. So did our Lord, the highest exemplar of healthful and sustained energy in the Divine life; His works were all works of God, proper therefore for one day as well as another; (Joh_5:17.) so that it might be truly said of Him, He regarded every day. And yet it was deemed by Him no way incompatible with this, that He should shew His regard to the seventh day in a somewhat different manner from what He did in respect to the other days of the week. In principle, the works done on this and other days were alike, yet they took, to some extent, their distinctive forms of manifestation. So that, however often the passage before us has been held by certain interpreters to argue something at variance with the religious observance of a Christian Sabbath, this is found rather by ascribing to it an imaginary sense, than by evolving its legitimate and proper import.