Tolerance is a gospel issue (Romans 14)

At our Sunday morning meeting we looked at Romans 14:1-15:6. We learnt from there how we should accept brothers and sisters in Christ even though we may have differences about how we practise our faith. If you want to listen to the sermon it is available online here.

Paul is not talking about compromising over the truth about Christ or the authority of the Bible, or tolerating immorality, as though God doesn’t care about these things. His focus is more on personal behaviour from Christians carefully considering how they should behave in relationship to their Lord.

In the Roman church the majority would have been gentiles (non-Jews), who did not mind what they ate or drank or about special days. The Jews would have grown up being very careful about the food they ate and had sacred days, especially the Sabbath. It would be easy for the Jewish Christians to condemn the gentiles, and for the gentile Christians to despise and look down on the Jews. However, Paul calls them to mutual acceptance and love.

He says first: do not condemn. Recognise that your Christian brother or sister is accepted by God, responsible to Him and that ultimately God will judge their actions, not you. Secondly he says: do not despise. Looking down on your brother and carrying on with your behaviour regardless of their feelings could be a stumbling block causing them distress, or destroying their faith and the witness of the church.

As our example Paul says look at Christ who endured the disdain of men. He saw a higher purpose to his mission and Christians need to look at the cross of Jesus and then work out what that means for serving our brothers and sisters in the church, not having to stand up for our rights.

Finally Paul said: make unity your goal. We need to work and pray for unity, because this is a powerful witness to a watching world.

There are many applications on this in relationships within and between churches. We talked in the sermon about the issue of total abstinence from alcohol and Sunday being thought of as the Sabbath to illustrate the kind of issues that may divide us.

Any comments or questions are most welcome.