We’re now well into the paraenetic section of Paul’s letter to the Romans, that is, the portion that calls the audience to action grounded in the arguments of the body of the letter. Specifically, Paul grounds his call to action in the mercy of God, Paul has been exhorting his readers to embody that same mercy in their dealings with one another and society writ large. In the text we’ll look at over the next two posts, he tackles the thorny question of how to manage differences of opinion within the community of faith. Today we’ll look at what genuine welcome looks like and who Paul might be talking about in the passage.
Text
[In this series, I’ve had the habit of not providing translations of longer texts, but only summarizing them. I’m making an exception in this case.]
[14.1] Welcome those who are weak in faith, and not just to argue over beliefs. [2] While one person’s faith allows them to eat everything, one who is weak eats only plants. [3] One who eats shouldn’t look down on one who doesn’t, and one who doesn’t eat shouldn’t judge the one who does, for God has welcomed them. [4] Who are you to judge one who belongs to another’s household? They will stand or fall before their own master. And they will be upheld, for the lord is able to make them stand.
[5] While one person judges one day against another day, another person judges all days alike. Let each be convinced in their own mind. [6] The one who observes the day observes it for the Lord. Likewise, those who eat eat for the Lord, since they give thanks to God; and the one who does not eat abstains for the Lord and gives thanks to God. [7] For none of us lives for themselves, and no one dies to themselves; [8] For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord. And whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. [9] For Christ died and lived for this purpose: that he might be Lord over both the dead and the living.
[10] But why do you judge your brother or sister? Or again, why do you look down on your brother or sister? For we all stand before the judgment seat of God. [11] For it is written: “I live, says the Lord, and so every knee bends to me, and every tongue shall praise God.” [12] So then, each of us will render account for oneself.
[13] Let us therefore no longer judge one another, but rather let your judgment be not to place a stumbling block or snare in the path of a brother or sister. [14] I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but is unclean for anyone who considers it unclean. [15] For if your brother or sister is grieved by your food, you are no longer walking in alignment with love. Do not let your food ruin that person, for whose benefit Christ died! [16] So then, do not let what you consider good be blasphemed. [17] For God’s Kingdom is not food or drink, but justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit! [18] For one who serves Christ in this way is both acceptable to God and approved by people. [19] So then, let us pursue the things of peace and which build one another up. [20] Do not destroy the work of God on account of food! All things are indeed clean, but but it is bad to be a stumbling block to someone on account of what you eat. [21] It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything on which your brother or sister may stumble. [22] Keep the faith that you have before God. Blessed is the one who doesn’t condemn oneself on account of what one approves. [23] And one who wavers condemns oneself if one eats, since they do not act faithfully. For whatever does not proceed from faithfulness is sin.
[15.1] And we who are ‘strong’ ought to lift up the weaknesses of those who are not strong, and not to please ourselves. [2] Let each of us please our neighbour, for their good and building up. [3] For Christ too did not please himself; rather as it is written: “The insults of those who insult you have fallen upon me.” [4] Now whatever was previously written was written for our instruction, so that by perseverance and the exhortation of the Scriptures we might have hope.
[5] May the God of perseverance and exhortation grant you to be of one mind with one another, in alignment with Jesus Christ, [6] so that together you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ with one voice.
[7] So then, welcome one another, just as Christ welcomed you, for the glory of God.
Experience
I’m of two minds when I read this passage. On the one hand, I exult in the ways it echoes Jesus’ teachings against the concept of ritual purity, and I think the general approach to managing difference in community makes sense. But on the other hand, I have concerns about how to apply this to divisions in the Church today: Who gets to decide what is an issue of personal conscience? What level of consensus is required to move forward with a controversial issue? When does conscience become an excuse for intransigence? And who bears the burden of all of this?
Encounter
In this passage, we encounter two groups within the Roman churches: One, whom Paul labels ‘the weak’, has religious scruples that make them profoundly uncomfortable with consuming meat at the churches’ shared meals; the other, with whom Paul personally identifies, has no such scruples, on the grounds that ritual purity is not a legitimate concept in Christian faith. Yet, while Paul agrees with this group, he considers their insistence on serving meat at these meals to be a problem. Their personal beliefs, he maintains, though correct, must not override the law of love that is to govern all activities within the community of faith.
Explore
This passage has a straightforward meaning, but it raises a lot of big questions:
- What does Paul mean by ‘welcoming’ the weak?
- Who are ‘the weak’ Paul is concerned for?
- What is the vision Paul has for managing difference in the Church?
And, in light of all the questions that came up for me the moment I started wondering about applying this text in real-world situations today, we’re also going to need a robust Challenge section. (As I mentioned in the introduction, due to space considerations, I’ll split this study in half, taking up the final question and the Challenge next time)
True Welcome
The passage is governed by an exhortation to welcome the ‘weak’. As Eberhart points out, welcoming is mentioned four times from 14.1-15.13. The theme will be resolved in 15.7, which grounds this welcoming of others directly in Christ’s welcoming of us (cf. his making us right with God (3.21-26), loving us while we were enemies (5.6-11), and welcoming us as adopted brothers and sisters (8.15-17)). This places us in the realm of God’s pay-it-forward economy of grace: we welcome others as we have been welcomed by God, just as we show mercy and grace to others just as we have received grace, forgive as we have been forgiven, and so on.
But what does Paul mean by welcome? It’s instructive that the negative corollary in this passage is judgment. Not only is the verb krino ‘I judge’ found six times in 14.1-13, but the words Paul uses for quarreling and preference/opinion are derived from the same lexical root. This theme strongly suggests that truly welcoming someone means not standing in judgment of them, including picking fights over known areas of difference. To welcome someone means making them feel welcome and adapting to their needs rather than insisting on one’s own preferences (Tonstad 337).
This fits well into the general theme of Romans. Time and time again, Paul has been combating religious “pride, arrogance, boasting, and presumptuousness” (Witherington 333). Think of his harsh words against moralizers and legalists in chapters 2-3, or his attack on Gentile Christians’ disdain for Judaism in chapter 11. The genuine welcome Paul envisions is free of such presumptions of superiority. This is emphasized by Paul’s grounding his argument in everyone’s shared status as servants (literally, ‘household slaves’) of Christ: If he is Lord of us all, then the distinctions among us are of no consequence (Witherington 335; Tonstad 350ff).
Difference
Paul’s point here is that while diversity of opinion and lifestyle is okay within the community of faith, our attitude about it can be a problem (Witherington 332). Paul’s ultimate goal is to establish unity, and anything that gets in the way of that — be it judging others, despising others, pressuring others to act against their conscience, or grieving others through our actions — is to be avoided (Eberhart; Witherington 332). His argument is all the more powerful since he comes down harder here on the side with whom he personally identifies. He may stigmatize the other side by calling them “the weak,” but his harshest words, and greater action, is required of his own side. (Eberhart; Witherington 327). Because of this strong focus on unity within diversity and appeal to the common cause in Christ Paul spent so much of the letter arguing for, Eberhart considers this passage to be the letter’s climax.
The ‘Weak’
While the fault-line Paul is addressing here is clear, the way he talks about the issue makes it less clear who he is talking about. The most obvious (and still most likely) solution is that he’s referring to Jewish Christians who were uncomfortable breaking the dietary laws in the Torah. The problem is that Paul has been happy, both in Romans and elsewhere, to speak openly about Jews and Gentiles by name, so why would he beat around the bush here, referring only to ‘those who eat only vegetables’? This has led some to offer alternative suggestions, ranging from the more likely (e.g., a minority of Jewish Christians and ‘God-fearing’ Gentiles and proselytes, who therefore blurred easy Jew/Gentile divisions), to the less likely but still possible (e.g., former members of certain philosophical schools who practiced vegetarianism; or those in weaker positions on Rome’s social ladder), to the least likely (e.g., Nanos’ suggestion that the ‘weak’ are non-Christian Jews hosting the Christian community in their synagogues) (see Kruse 509 for a discussion of options).
While it’s not clear why Paul doesn’t speak more clearly here, the general consensus does seem to be that Paul is talking about Torah-observant Christian Jews (Kruse 510; Tonstad 338; Witherington 326; Eberhart). Paul plays his hand in 14.14, where he speaks specifically about clean and unclean (koinos, ‘common, profane’) foods. The issue at play seems to be that, in a city like Rome in which very little meat came to market that had not come through the pagan temple system, it would have been near impossible to find meat that had not been offered to idols, and even harder to find meat with no blood in it, which was a critical part of the Torah’s food laws (Nanos; Tonstad 343; Witherington 334; Kruse 511). To this point, Kruse notes that ancient witnesses like (Pseudo-)Constantius and Augustine understood this to be the issue (Kruse 511). So it does seem best to understand this to be a question of comfort with eating meat that would be prohibited under the Law of Moses, and therefore at its heart, a difference largely grounded in ethnic and religious background.
That’s it for today. Next time, we’ll pick up with the more challenging aspects of Paul’s message here.
* For full references, please see the series bibliography.
Matthew Root 