‘But him who is weak in faith receive you, (yet) not to disputes about scruples.'
He calls on the Roman Christians to be ready to receive any who were ‘weak in faith', but not in order to argue with them about unnecessary scruples. What they were to do was seek to strengthen each other's faith in Christ, not undermine each other's faith over secondary matters. And he deals with two matters which were clearly urgent, and which are of some interest to Christians today. The first dealing with the question of what Christians should not eat, and the second dealing with the observance of a special day to the LORD.
‘Weak in faith.' That is, they were not strong enough to make the complete break from Judaism. They had not yet realised that in His coming the Messiah had replaced the Old Testament rituals by being their fulfilment. The phrase does not mean that the faith of such believers in Christ was weak, only that their cautious approach indicated that they were not as strong as Paul in breaking free from the past. Their faith could not cope with the idea of Messiah's people being free from the traditions of the past. They themselves still felt themselves as bound by those traditions, and they saw them as binding on others. Some would see them as binding on Jewish Christians. Others would see them as binding on all Christians. Thus their faith in the Messiah, however strong it was, was not sufficient to enable them to recognise that He had delivered them from all these things. And they thus often passed judgment on those who failed to fall into line.