Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Romans · About this commentary
No Stumbling Block
Romans 14:13-18
13 Therefore let’s not judge one another any more, but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block in his brother’s way, or an occasion for falling. · WEB
Liberty is affirmed and then subordinated — nothing unclean in itself, but love will not destroy a brother with a menu.
Therefore let's not judge one another any more, but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block in his brother's way, or an occasion for falling.
The judging verb is kept and re-aimed: keep judging — but change the case. The docket is no longer the brother's practice; it is one's own effect on the brother's footing. And the address has quietly shifted: from here the commands run to the strong, because liberty carries the heavier duty.
Verse 14 states the strong position at full strength, with apostolic backing: I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean of itself — the freedom is real, known in the Lord Jesus, not a compromise position. And then the qualifier that governs everything: except that to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.
Conscience binds even where the object does not. A believer acting against his own conviction sins in the acting — not because the food is defiled but because the person proceeds against what he believes God requires Romans 14:23. Which means the strong can be entirely right about the meat and entirely wrong in the use of the rightness.
Yet if because of food your brother is grieved, you walk no longer in love. Don't destroy with your food him for whom Christ died Romans 14:15.
The sentence sets the two prices side by side: a menu, and a brother valued at the cross. The strong believer's freedom, exercised in front of a wavering conscience, can embolden that conscience to act against itself — and the trajectory of acting-against-conscience is destruction. The measure of the folly is the comparison: Christ died for this man; the strong will not even alter dinner for him.
Verse 17 gives the proportion that settles it: for God's Kingdom is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
The kingdom's actual currencies — the letter's own words: righteousness Romans 3:22, peace Romans 5:1, joy Romans 5:11, in the Spirit Romans 8 — against the currency the quarrel is denominated in. A believer who sacrifices kingdom goods to defend table rights has confused the treasury with the pantry. And verse 18 promises the double approval — acceptable to God and approved by men — to the one who serves Christ in these things: the kingdom's things, not the menu's.
settled What this mark means