Romans 14
Receiving the Weak in Faith 1–4
Accountability to Christ, the Lord of All 5–12
Avoid Causing a Brother to Stumble 13–23
Bible text: King James Version (1769 Blayney text) · Public domain
Study Notes for Romans 14
Verse 1
receive ye — Proslambanomai, to take to oneself. The same verb is God’s act in v.3, ‘God hath received him’, and the pattern of 15:7, ‘receive ye one another, as Christ also received us’. ‘Weak’ is astheneo, to lack strength. ‘Doubtful disputations’ is literally judgments on his thoughts: the weak brother is welcomed without his opinions being sat in judgment on.
Verse 2
eateth herbs — Lachanon, garden vegetables. The strong man’s freedom rests on the grant of Gen 9:3, ‘even as the green herb have I given you all things’, and on the truth that ‘every creature of God is good’ (1 Tim 4:4). Both men are said to act in faith: one ‘believeth’ (pisteuo) he may eat all things, and the other is weak in the faith.
Verse 3
God hath received him — The strong man’s sin is to ‘despise’ (exoutheneo, treat as nothing); the weak man’s is to ‘judge’ (krino). The same two verbs return in v.10, ‘why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother?’ The ground for both is one fact: God has taken the eater and the abstainer alike.
Verse 4
another man’s servant — Oiketes, a household servant. Whether he ‘standeth or falleth’ is a matter for ‘his own master’, and the master has promised the outcome: ‘God is able to make him stand’. Jude gives the same assurance, ‘him that is able to keep you from falling’ (Jude 24); James asks the same question, ‘who art thou that judgest another?’ (James 4:12).
Verse 5
fully persuaded — Plerophoreo, to be filled to the full with assurance, the verb used of Abraham, ‘being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform’ (4:21). Here it asks for settled conviction ‘in his own mind’ on the keeping of days. Paul gives the same freedom in Col 2:16, ‘in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days’.
Verse 8
we are the Lord’s — Kyrios, Lord, three times in the verse. Life and death are both held under his rule, and the verse is the practical side of 2 Cor 5:15, that ‘they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.’ The same lordship is the reason given in v.9.
Verse 9
died, and rose, and revived — Anazao, to live again. Kyrieuo, ‘be Lord’, is used of Christ here and of death in 6:9: ‘death hath no more dominion over him’. The one who has passed through death is now Lord ‘both of the dead and living’. He says of himself, ‘I am he that liveth, and was dead’ (Rev 1:18).
Verse 10
the judgment seat of Christ — Bema, the raised seat of a magistrate, the word for Pilate’s seat (Matt 27:19). Paul writes the same of himself in 2 Cor 5:10, ‘we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ’. In v.12 he states the result: ‘every one of us shall give account of himself to God’. Judging a brother takes a place that is not yours.
Verse 13
judge this rather — A play on krino: ‘let us not therefore judge one another… but judge this rather’. The thing to decide is that no one puts ‘a stumblingblock’ (proskomma, an obstacle struck against) or ‘an occasion to fall’ (skandalon, the trap’s trigger) in a brother’s way. Paul says it of Corinth: ‘this liberty of yours’ may become a stumblingblock (1 Cor 8:9).
Verse 14
nothing unclean of itself — Koinos, common, the word Peter used at Joppa: ‘I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean’, and the voice answered, ‘What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common’ (Acts 10:14–15). Paul is ‘persuaded by the Lord Jesus’, who said that nothing entering from without ‘can defile him’ (Mark 7:15). Yet to the man who counts it unclean, it is.
Verse 15
walkest thou not charitably — Literally ‘walkest not according to love’ (kata agapen). ‘Destroy’ is apollymi, the verb of perishing, used in 1 Cor 8:11, ‘through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?’ The cost of a brother is set against a meal: Christ died for him.
Verse 17
the kingdom of God is not meat and drink — Brosis and posis, eating and drinking, the pair in Col 2:16. The kingdom is ‘righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost’. Paul adds the same principle elsewhere: ‘meat commendeth us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse’ (1 Cor 8:8).
Verse 19
follow after — Dioko, to pursue, the word used of persecuting (Acts 9:4) and of the runner pressing on (Phil 3:14). It is applied here to peace, as in Heb 12:14, ‘Follow peace with all men’, and Ps 34:14, ‘seek peace, and pursue it’. ‘Edify’ is the noun oikodome: things that tend to the building up of another.
Verse 21
stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak — Paul uses three verbs: proskopto, skandalizo and astheneo, the last the ‘weak’ of vv.1–2. ‘Flesh’ (kreas) is meat. Paul takes the rule on himself in 1 Cor 8:13: ‘if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth’. What is lawful is given up for the brother’s sake.
Verse 22
Hast thou faith? — The strong man’s conviction is not to be paraded: ‘have it to thyself before God’ (enopion). ‘Happy’ is makarios, blessed: blessed is he that ‘condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth’ (dokimazo, to test and approve). John states the same ease of conscience: ‘if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God’ (1 John 3:21).
Verse 23
not of faith is sin — Diakrino, to doubt, is the root of the ‘disputations’ in v.1. ‘Damned’ is katakrino, to condemn, as in Rom 8:34, ‘Who is he that condemneth?’ The verse makes faith the measure of the act: to eat while unpersuaded is to act against what he believes, and ‘without faith it is impossible to please him’ (Heb 11:6).