Do Not Cause Another to Stumble (Romans 14:14–18) — A Sermon by R.C. Sproul

0:25 I know and am convinced by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself, but to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. Yet if your brother is grieved because of your food, you are no longer walking in love. Do not destroy with your food the one for whom Christ died. Therefore, do not let your good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved by men.

1:28 Therefore, let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All things indeed are pure, but it is evil for the man who eats with offense. It is good neither to eat meat nor drink wine or do anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended or is made weak. Do you have faith? Have it yourself before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves, but he who doubts is condemned if he eats because he does not eat from faith. For whatever is not from faith is sin. Again, dear ones, you have just heard a recitation not of the opinions of an ancient Jewish scholar, but nothing less than the Word of God Himself, which is given to us to reveal to us His character and what He requires of us, and He has by His eternal right as God the right to bind our consciences to obedience to His Word. Let it be so with us. Please be seated.

2:53 Let us pray. Again, our Father, as we examine this section of the epistle by which the Apostle expounds on what it means concretely to love our neighbor, then the love that is to be manifest between both weak and strong in your body, the church, We pray that we may understand these things and be convicted of the truth of them. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. It's a short passage that I've just read, which Paul continues his instruction that we examined last week about how the stronger brother is to respond to the weaker brethren in the church on matters that are adiophorous, that is, that are matters that in and of themselves do not have ethical bearing. We are not to be longsuffering with gross and heinous evil or disobedience to those laws that God pronounces, but in those areas where God has left us free, we are to be patient one with another with respect to private and individual scruples. Now, Paul continues this instruction in verse 14 where he says, first of all, I know and I am convinced by the Lord Jesus. Let me just pause at that point. Paul is not just giving an educated guess, nor is he expounding an academic thesis that he is submitting for our approval. He's speaking of an apostolic conviction. He's speaking out of a basis of certainty, which certainty he grounds, again, not in his own research, but that the teaching he is enjoining upon the church here

5:00 is that which he has received directly from Christ. So Paul the apostle is passing on to the church that which his Lord and Savior has revealed to him and commissioned him to teach as Christ's chosen apostle to instruct his body, the church. Now what he is introducing here by calling attention again to the source of his conviction that it is from the Lord Jesus is this proposition, quote, that there is nothing unclean of itself. Now when he says there's nothing unclean of itself, he's not saying that there is nothing in this world that is inherently evil. Adultery is inherently evil. Murder is inherently evil. But He's still addressing in this context this whole question about eating and drinking and the disputes that arose concerning that. Now let's look again at some of the historical background. We know that in the Old Testament that God called Israel out of all of the nations of the world to be His chosen people, to be His peculiar or particular people, that they might be a light to the rest of the world. He separated them, He sanctified them, and He called them to be a holy nation, to be different in many respects from the pagan world from which they were called. And so God had a unique relationship with the people of Israel, and He bound them to Himself at Sinai by the giving of the law, the giving of the Ten Commandments that were the provisions of this covenant relationship that God entered into, especially

7:10 with the Jewish people. Now, in addition to that law, God added to the laws governing His holy nation ceremonial rights and responsibilities in terms of the great feasts that were to be celebrated, such as the celebration of the Passover. And also, He gave to the children of Israel a list of dietary regulations that they were obliged to keep at all times. And so you recall how scrupulous the people of Israel were in the Old Testament about trying to keep the dietary laws that God had imposed upon them. You remember, for example, when Israel was sent away captive to Babylon, that the Babylonians did not take everybody from the Jewish people to captivity in Babylon, but rather they selected the creme de la creme of the people, the most educated, the most gifted, the most artistic, the most eloquent, and that group of people were taken away to Babylon. And then it was the intent of the Babylonian monarchy to deconstruct these people that had brought into their culture and try to assimilate them by cutting them off from their roots and trying to Babylonianize them, as it were. We wonder why Daniel ended up in the lion's den or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego wound up in the fiery furnace. It wasn't just because they refused to bow down to the image of the king, but also at the heart of that controversy with the Jews was their refusal to break the dietary laws that God had given to them

9:19 so that even while they were in exile, they were ready to pay with their lives, if necessary, to keep themselves from eating foods that God had declared were unclean. Now imagine that. Century after century after century, the children were indoctrinated in every Jewish household on what was permitted to eat and what was forbidden to eat. That goes even to this day among Orthodox Jews who are zealous to keep kosher. And all of a sudden when the advent of the New Testament economy appears and the gospel now is spread to the Gentiles, and the Gentiles are to be assimilated into the church, into the new Israel, the commonwealth of the people of God, what had been considered unclean was now declared clean. We remember that episode in the book of Acts when Peter was at Cornelius' household, when God gave him a vision in which it was revealed to Peter that those things which were previously deemed to be unclean were now clean. This whole issue provoked so much debate among the first generation of Jewish Christians particularly that it was necessary to call the first great council of the church the Council of Jerusalem that addressed, as well as other matters, this whole question about what dietary laws would be continued to be imposed upon the Gentile community.

11:09 So you get the picture. After centuries and centuries of abstaining from certain foods, all of a sudden, God annuls that rule and said, okay, now you're free to eat. and you can eat those things that the Old Testament did not allow you to eat. Now, nothing less than a specific revelation as Jesus gave to Peter at Cornelius' household would be enough to give them liberty of conscience to depart from that ancient tradition. And even Peter stumbled at it after being himself the one who was singled out by Christ to receive this annulment of the Old Testament passages and principles that later on, under the influence and pressure of the so-called Judaizers who wanted to continue the enforcement of these things, he began to cave in until such point that the Apostle Paul not only disputed with Peter, but rebuked him publicly before the brethren until Simon again got his courage intact and agreed to maintain that which had been revealed to him there at Cornelius' household.

12:39 Now, one of the problems that we have here is our understanding of the law of God. One of the problems that we face frequently in the church is the question, to what extent does the Old Testament law have any bearing upon our lives? Has the New Covenant, with its accent on grace, completely freed us from obeying the Old Testament law? There are many in the church today who really believe and practice what is called antinomianism, where they believe that the Old Testament law has no claim whatsoever upon the New Testament Christian. We're no longer under that law, that is, we're no longer under the burden of it, we're no longer under the curse of it, but the question is, are we still to have our consciences influenced by the law of the Old Testament. Now, the three ways in which the Old Testament law is divided is among these three, the moral law, the ceremonial law, and the dietary laws. Now, the problem I have, and it's a little bit of a quibble, is to make that distinction to distinguish the moral law from the ceremonial law and the dietary law. The reason for the distinction is this. What the church is saying is that there are certain laws in the Old Testament that are no longer applicable to the New Covenant Christian, including the dietary laws, the ceremonial laws. In fact, we don't slaughter animals and offer on sacrifices. In fact, if we were to do that, we would be denying the perfect finished work of Jesus who fulfilled all of those things, so that we understand that the ceremonies of the Old Testament have been abrogated. They've been fulfilled in Christ and therefore have been

14:44 set aside. Likewise, we see in this context the abrogation of the dietary laws of the Old Testament, which are no longer binding on the New Testament Christian. But the third element that is called the moral law, it is argued that it remains intact, and we are still bound by the moral law of God. Now here's where the quibble is with me. For Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and for Daniel, obeying those ceremonial and dietary laws was a moral issue of the highest magnitude. And so we have to understand that to the Jew in the Old Testament, keeping every aspect of the law was of great ethical and moral consequence for them. And so we have to be careful when we make distinctions like the one I just went through about the three dimensions of the Old Testament law. There is another element that faces us here in this first sentence with respect to the abrogation of any law of the Old Testament. Is it not true that the law of God reflects His character, His holiness? The historical context in which He gave all of these laws was this, when He called this people to Himself and He said, be ye holy even as I am holy. And we understand that God's law is not arbitrary. He didn't just go off into a corner and write up a list of do's and don'ts just for His own amusement, but He has a holy and sacred purpose for every law that He legislates. And that law, we understand, in some way comes out of His character. Now the next question is this, is not the nature of God and His character immutable?

16:56 And we would say with the church of all ages that one of the attributes of God that can never be negotiated is that He is immutable. He doesn't change. Well, do you see the problem? If the law reflects His character, His character never changes, then how is it possible that these laws of the Old Testament could ever be abrogated? Well, to answer that question, sometimes I ask you questions that you're not even asking, but in case you are, in case you ever do, try to deal with these, because these are the issues that come up with a text like this. And so here is how we would answer that. In the first place, we see that the New Testament does, in fact, abrogate certain laws of the Old Testament, and that it is God Himself who abrogates it. And so if God abrogates a law, then, dear friends, it is abrogated. But again, we go back to this question of does that not then cast a shadow on His immutable character?

18:14 Not necessarily. Here's where the theologians arrive for the rescue by coming with fine distinctions, which are the prerogatives of all theologians. In theology, with respect to the moral law of God, we make a distinction between two kinds of law, God's natural law and God's purposive law. Now, that can be a little bit confusing, so let me take a moment or two to explain the significance of that distinction. Let's start with the second one first, at least in touching on it briefly, that the purposive law reflects that law that is not part of God's natural law. Now, what is misleading about that is that all of God's law is purposive in the sense that He has a sacred and holy purpose for every law that He ever legislates.

19:28 So why the distinction? Let's look now more carefully at this idea of the natural law of God, and let me call time out for just a second and warn you that I'm using the term natural law here in a way that is different from the way that term is used frequently in the history of philosophy and in the history of jurisprudence. Do any of you remember when Clarence Thomas was before the Senate Judiciary Committee when he was being examined for confirmation to become a justice of the Supreme Court. Do any of you remember that? In the middle of those hearings, Senator Joseph Biden asked a very provocative question of Clarence Thomas. He asked him, do you believe in natural law? And Clarence Thomas said yes. He affirmed his commitment to natural law theory, which provoked quite a hostile response not only from Senator Biden but from other members of that committee. And the idea was, who in the world in this day and age still believes in natural law? There's almost no law schools left in the United States, there are some who still teach natural law. Now, what was meant there was this, that the ordinary customary meaning of the term natural law or the lex naturalis goes back to ancient Rome, even before that to Greece, and to in the history of philosophy that says that there are principles of conduct, moral principles, foundational principles of ethics that are built into the nature of things that can be found in the us gentium, the laws of the nations,

21:45 that if you look at all of the civilized nations of the world, they all have some law against murder in the first degree, against theft, and that sort of thing, reflecting a common understanding of conscience that is built into the nature of things that reveal certain principles of behavior. That's called natural law. That natural law has been thought by philosophers, not just Christian philosophers, but philosophers of all types historically, as a manifestation of the eternal law of God, the lex eternitatis, as it were. And so God eternally is a God of law. His law is revealed to us not only in the Bible in the Ten Commandments, but as we've already examined when we were looking at the second chapter of Romans, that the Apostle Paul reminded the Roman Christians that God has not left Himself without a witness, that He has planted His law in the consciences of every creature, and that His law can be known not only from the Bible, but from nature itself. That's what is normally meant by the term natural law. Okay? That's not what I'm talking about here. So I spent all that time to tell you what I don't mean. Here, when the distinction is made between the natural law of God and the purposive law of God, It really is not discussing this whole debate about some transcendent framework for laws that are enacted in various nations. Rather, the term, the natural law of God here

23:53 refers to those laws that God gives to us that are based upon His own holy nature. And they are so immutable for this reason, for God to abrogate a law that comes out of His own nature. For example, the law against idolatry. If God would say now, after all this time, it's okay to practice idolatry, you may have other gods before me, that for Him to lay aside the first commandment, the second commandment, for example, He would be compromising His own character. You see that? But there are laws that God gives in history for a particular redemptive purpose, which purpose is not necessarily rooted in His eternal, immutable being. For example, the dietary laws He gave to Israel for a reason for a period of time.

25:13 When that time was fulfilled, God could annul that law without doing any damage to His own character. God's character was no way compromised when He put an end to the offering of bulls and goats in the ceremonial rites of the Old Testament. I hope we understand that distinction, because many people in the first century did not understand it, and they struggled because they had spent their whole lives being careful not to eat certain foods, not to drink certain things. And again, the problem was exacerbated in the Gentile community, as I mentioned last week, when pagans had pagan religions in which both wine and meat were used in the pagan sacrifices. Wine was used as an oblation that was offered to the pagan deities in an action of idolatry, and food was offered, meat was offered on the altars for the deity.

26:30 Now, in these rites, the deities didn't come down from Mount Olympus or from somewhere and drink the wine and eat the meat. After their religious observances were finished, then that perfectly good meat was taken into the marketplace. The perfectly good wine was likewise taken into the marketplace and sold. And some Christians liked the bargain prices that these things were being sold, and others said, how can you sit there and eat meat that is so tainted by having been used at one point for a pagan rite? How can you drink the wine that has been used in an offering to a pagan god or goddess. That was what the issue was. By the way, the issue with respect to wine in the first century church was not an issue about wine itself, about whether it was okay to drink wine. It was an issue over whether it was okay to drink wine that had been used in pagan ceremonies. That's what the issue was here. And so, there's this problem that we face here between what we call primary and secondary separation. Another distinction that taxes our minds, but an important one, one that many of us stumble upon from time to time. Somebody just asked me this last week. Should we pay our taxes if the government uses our taxes to support abortion on demand? My answer to them was yes. And they say, well, how can we help support the government in this evil thing? What that person was calling for was not themselves separating

28:37 from abortion. If I separate myself from abortion or my family from abortion, that's primary separation. If I separate myself from anybody that has anything to do with abortion, that's secondary separation. Do you see the difference? And if we are consistent in secondary separation from evil, dear friends, we would have to leave the planet because there's no way to keep ourselves unscathed in a secondary way from what the rest of the world does. If I pay a merchant for his cloth and then he takes what I pay him for his suit and goes out and uses it in some ungodly way, I'm not responsible for what he does with the money after I give it to him, as I am not responsible for what a corrupt government may do with my taxes after I pay them. That's the difference between primary and secondary separation. But again, this was a real matter of conscience in the early Christian community. Now Paul says here that there is nothing, that is with respect to food and drink, that is unclean of itself. That none of these issues of food and drink have to deal with intrinsic uncleanness. The only reason why some of these foods had been declared unclean by God is not because they were intrinsically dirty, but because extrinsically God had declared them not to be used, again, as part of His program to make His Jewish people clearly different both internally and externally to the watching world.

30:38 And so Paul's principle is, again, we're not talking about things that are inherently sinful or not. But again, he repeats this principle, which he will again later, but to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. I mentioned the illustration last week of ping pong, and my former colleague who began to believe that he was sinfully addicted to too much ping pong, but he didn't want to go to the next step and say ping pong is inherently evil, and no one ought to ever be engaged in the playing of that sport. Now, what is the principle is that nobody should be so engaged in the playing of ping pong that they neglect their family and they neglect their work and all the rest. It's like golf. There's a principle here.

31:30 Men who play golf and shoot over 80 are neglecting their golf. Guys who play golf and shoot under 80 are neglecting their work. So, but the principle here is clear. If I think something is a sin, even if it is not, but I believe it to be a sin, if I think that this food is prohibited from God, even if God does not prohibit it, and I think that God has prohibited it, and then I go ahead and eat it, then I have committed a sin. Why? Because I did something I believed wrongly and erroneously, ignorantly, but nevertheless, I believed was sin.

32:32 And so the sin is not eating the food or wearing the lipstick or playing ping pong. the sin is found in doing something that you thought was evil. In a word, you acted against your conscience. Again, we remember Luther at the Diet of Worms when he was called upon to recant of his writings and of his teaching before that imperial hearing. He replied, as you remember, unless I am convinced by sacred Scripture or by evident reason, I cannot recant. Why? Because my conscience is held captive by the Word of God. And then he went on to say, and to act against conscience is neither right nor safe. See, Luther understood the principle that Paul is expounding right here in this text. To act against conscience is neither right nor safe. Now again, neither Paul nor Luther was espousing what I call Jiminy Cricket theology, where we say let your conscience be your guide, where as long as we have a clean conscience, we can go ahead and do whatever we want. No, no, no, dear friends. There are psychopathic murderers out here. There are people who commit the most vicious, dastardly deeds who feel no remorse, no guilt whatsoever for their actions. And if they were to be dragged into court and held on trial for first-degree murder, and their defense plea was, I can't be guilty because I don't feel guilty, that would not amount to a very strong defense for them. Our consciences,

34:37 the Bible tells us, can be seared. Our consciences can be distorted. As I've told you before, Jeremiah rebuked the children of Israel for their repeated sins because, he said, they had the forehead of the harlot, meaning they had lost the capacity to blush. They had sinned so often, so hardened their hearts that they no longer felt any pangs of guilt when they sinned. That did not excuse them. The fact that their conscience said it was okay did not mean it was okay. So we can't reverse these here, that if your conscience says, go ahead and do it, that you're free to do it. If your conscience is informed by Hollywood or popular music that tells you that if it feels good, it is good, and that's your creed, that will never excuse you on the day of judgment before God when you did what you wanted to do and felt it was perfectly all right to do because you wanted to do it, as if that were the law by which God would judge us, we'll never get you past that judgment. It's the flip side that Paul's concerned about here, that if on the other hand my conscience tells me that something is evil, even if my conscience is not properly informed, it's a misinformed conscience. But nevertheless, if it's there, I may not act against it. It's not right to do something you believe to be sin, is what Luther was saying, and it's not safe to do something that you believe to be sin.

36:27 to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. And so far, I've now been able to manage to work our way through one complete verse of chapter 4. So let's press on to verse 15. Yet if your brother is grieved because of your food, you are no longer walking in love. Do not destroy with your food the one for whom Christ died. Remember, you're the stronger brother. You know it's okay to eat that food, but you don't parade your freedom in the face of your weaker brother who is convinced that it's not proper to eat that food. You be sensitive.

37:20 You be careful of the weakness of your brother in his scrupulosity, as we talked about last week. Don't destroy with your food the one for whom Christ died. This is your brother or sister in the faith here who's walking around with this misinformed conscience and has this uninformed scruple about eating meat and drink. Therefore, do not let your good be spoken of as evil. This is another important ethical principle, is that we have to bend over backwards to try as much as we possibly can, not to give the appearance of evil. Now, you can't do that perfectly. There are some people They're going to think that you're doing evil no matter how careful you are in your behavior and in your demeanor. But again, as much as it lies within us, we need to be careful that our good not be spoken of in evil terms. Now, if you take that as an absolute, we would have to stop preaching the gospel altogether, because there are people so hostile to the preaching of the gospel, they despise every time the gospel is preached, and even though the preaching of the gospel is a good thing, people will speak evil of it, just as they spoke evil of Jesus, as they spoke evil of the apostles. We can't control that in the final analysis. But we don't have to throw gasoline on the fire by going out of our way to cause offense to people out there who are watching us.

39:18 For the kingdom of God is not in eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Again, if we could just learn that, all of these disputes that tear churches apart about trivial matters would not happen if we would just get the principle that the kingdom of God is not about eating. It's not about drinking. It's not about lipstick. It's not about these simple externals. That's not what the kingdom of God is about. What is the kingdom of God about?

40:03 Righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Real quickly, let me mention that triad of virtues that describes what the kingdom of God is about. First of all, it's about righteousness. And I wish I had time for three lectures on that, because as I've said to you before, you listen to the jargon of the Christian community. You listen to the piety that we hear in the church. And the goal that people have as Christians is to be pious or to be spiritual. The goal of the kingdom of God is not spirituality. the goal of your Christian life is not spirituality. Now, don't misunderstand me.

41:05 Spirituality is a good thing, but it's not the goal. It's a means to the goal. What the goal of the Christian life is, beloved, is righteousness. That's what we're supposed to be seeking. That's what we're supposed to be striving for, to be righteous people. And you say, wait a minute, that's what the Pharisees did. They were the ones who majored in the pursuit of righteousness. We're not going to be Pharisees, are we, going out there parading our righteousness and exhibiting this attitude of being holier than and thou, or everybody else. No, no, no, no. It was Jesus who said, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. And all these things will be added unto you. Priority number one, protoss, not first in a list of temporal things, but first in terms of importance is the pursuit of the kingdom of God and His righteousness. It's the same Jesus who said, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will no wise enter the kingdom of God. And yet we know that all of our righteousness is this filthy rags. This whole epistle has been written to show that the only way we can stand before God is if we're clothed not in our own righteousness, but the righteousness of Christ, which we receive by faith. And since we have His righteousness by faith, why would we bother seeking our own?

42:44 because justification is not the end of the Christian life, it's the beginning. And it is to be followed by a rigorous pursuit for sanctification, for becoming really holy. we're to be changed people, and we should be seeking to do that which is right. That's what righteousness is. To be a mature Christian is to live according to the principles of God. Which righteousness is not defined in, frankly, Mickey Mouse categories of eating and drinking? What is so destructive about those churches that elevate trivial matters to be the true tests of Christian living? You're really a Christian if you don't go to movies and you don't dance. Such nonsense. Anybody can refrain from those things, but it's the fruit of the Spirit that Christ wants to see from His people. Love, patience, long-suffering, meekness, humility.

44:12 That's hard, isn't it? But that's what righteousness is about, and Paul's reminding the people, he's really saying to the church in the room, grow up. Righteousness and peace. You know, there's the false peace of which Jeremiah spoke with the false prophets cried, peace, peace, when there is no peace. And there are these peacemakers in the church that said, well, doctrine divides. We never can enter into debates about that. Got to keep the peace. Got to keep the peace. That's what Luther called a carnal peace, a peace born of the flesh, a peace born out of fear of conflict, a peace born out of cowardice. No. But on the other side, that we are not to be bellicose people looking for a fight contentious over every minor point, wanting to fight and divide the church over the drop of a hat. Again, this is where immature who are people major in minors.

45:32 Paul said, the kingdom of God is about righteousness. The kingdom of God is about a godly peace. And the kingdom of God is not made up of a company of sourpusses. somebody said to me at the door today i i told my wife this morning i said i can't believe it i said somebody said to me at the door they said you know what i notice about your preaching rc is every time you're going to give a zinger to the people right before you give the zinger you smile spoonful of sugar you know

46:20 But we should be happy people. The kingdom of God is about joy, the joy that has been shed abroad in our hearts because we have been redeemed by the Lord our God. Why would we get dumb and fussing over this stuff about who eats meat and who drinks wine and all of that stuff? It's not what the kingdom of God is about, Paul is saying. It's about loving the things of God, and it's about loving those for whom Christ died. That's the recipe for mature Christianity. Let's pray. Father, the weightier things of the law, justice and mercy, are difficult for us. The pursuit of righteousness remains difficult for us.

47:25 But give to us that hunger and thirst for righteousness that we might be filled and that You might be glorified. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.