CRITICAL NOTES
Romans 14:10.—Being accountable to Christ, we cannot be accountable in the highest sense to any other.
Romans 14:11.—The phrase indicates the act of those who shall worship and acknowledge God. The knee may bend and the heart not engaged. Let us praise the Lord’s mercy and justice.
Romans 14:13.—Rabbins said, “When I enter the school to expound the law, I pray that no occasion of stumbling may arise through me to any.” Jewish Christians guilty by imposing Judaism, Gentile Christians by repelling scrupulous Jews.
Romans 14:14.—Nothing is unclean of itself.—Call nothing common or unclean. A thing may become evil if done against conscience, if the doing cause offence, if it make us leave some important work undone.
Romans 14:15. Because of meat.—Purposely selected as something contemptible. Eternal perdition not meant here. Destroy by causing him to act against his conscience, and so commit sin.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 14:10-15
Self-judgment the paramount duty.—There is a certain morbid state of nature which leads men and women to spend too much time in judging themselves. There is also a censorious spirit which spends too much time in judging others. Both courses of conduct may be morally injurious. Nevertheless, we must judge ourselves, and if we do so aright we shall be the more disposed to walk charitably towards those who consider this or that not lawful.
I. We must judge ourselves, for we have our weaknesses.—We should not be human if we had not our weaknesses. A depraved nature suggests that we may have sins as well as weaknesses. The man who properly knows himself will make large allowance for others. If the Pharisee had known himself, had seen how contemptible was his sanctimonious and sinful pride in the view of the All-holy, he would not have directed a scornful look at the publican. There may be a littleness and a weakness about the man who prides himself upon his elevation above materialism, as there is a littleness about the man who has not learnt that the material is secondary to the spiritual. Why dost thou set at naught thy brother? Brethren have a family likeness and family failings. The strong brother of the family is not far removed from the weak. The good, stay-at-home brother did not show himself nearer heaven than the broken-down, prodigal brother who returned with tears of repentance.
II. We must judge ourselves, for we are individually responsible.—“We shall all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ,” but each one must give account of himself to God. The strong brother will not have to give an account of the weak, but of himself. Solemn thought! How hast thou used thy strength? Has it been employed rather for self-glorification than for the helping of the weak? Thou hast gloried in thy strength; and yet what small moral use has it been to humanity! Thou hast condemned thy brother’s punctiliousness; and yet the weak brother may have helped to invest material things with spiritual significances.
III. We must judge ourselves, lest we hinder others.—A strong man is a pleasant sight; but strength is harmful if it become a stumbling-block so as to wound the weak brother, or an obstacle against which the weak brother stumbles and falls. Is it not likely to be true that more moral damage has been done to the world by the strong than by the weak? The Samsons of time have slain their thousands. Napoleons have done damage which long years only can repair. The Byrons of song have polluted the world’s ears with their melodies. Strong men, in their impatience of restraints, have engendered heresies of a pestilential character.
IV. We must judge ourselves in the light of divine teaching.—Material things have no moral qualities. A piece of meat has no conscience, and cannot be unclean of itself. A small square of bread cannot be incorporated with spiritual vitality. Bread of itself cannot give physical life, much less spiritual life. Still, if my weak brother esteemeth the bread supernaturally endowed, then as a strong brother I must walk charitably. The strong must not produce any painful and bitter feeling in the heart of the weak by the spectacle of free and bold eating, by the aspect of seeming irreverence with reference to sacred things. However, we must take care lest, while we vaunt our charity, we are only using another name for indifference. Charity suffereth long. Divine love suffers long. God is love, and yet God hates evil. St. John was the apostle of love, and yet he could say, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” Modern so-called charity would scout the exhortation, “If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God-speed: for he that biddeth him God-speed is partaker of his evil deeds.”
V. We must judge ourselves, lest we obstruct the Saviour’s purposes.—“Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died.” Let us not stay to inquire how man, weak at his best, can obstruct the purposes of the strong Christ. Let us seek to move in harmony with the merciful purpose of the loving Mediator. He came to save the weak as well as the strong. The mission of every Christlike soul should be a mission of salvation. Divine salvation is vaster than human. The latter is too often an affair of the letter; the former is of the spirit. Faith, hope, and love are the great words of spiritual salvation—faith in Christ, hope built upon faith, love the outcome of faith and hope. Let us work so that faith may be stronger, hope brighter, and love more far-reaching.
Romans 14:10. The coming judgment.—It is well said that he who judges arrogates to himself Christ’s office; he who bears in mind that Christ will judge us all will no more condemn. What must we think of the prisoner awaiting trial who presumes to pronounce sentence upon his fellow-prisoners? It is a course of conduct we might not naturally expect; but the unexpected happens; and we know from observation that the worst sinners are not the most lenient in their judgments. It is often the case that the purer the life, the more charitable the judgment. Who was purer than Christ, and who gentler in judgment? If He were severe, it was only to the vile pretenders. He was gentleness itself to publicans and harlots. The thought of a coming judgment should lead to gentleness and forbearance in dealing with our fellow-sinners. Alas! the thought of a coming judgment seems often eliminated from modern life. Let us consider the awe-inspiring fact.
I. There are declarations of a coming judgment.—The declarations of the inspired word of God tell us of a judgment to come. Our blessed Lord, by striking and terrible imagery, places before the minds of men the fact of such an event taking place in the moral government of God. Our Lord had no reason to deceive. The almost universal verdict of humanity is that Christ was the essence of goodness, and He could not be that if He were capable of deception. Can we for one moment entertain the idea of deception upon such an awful and momentous topic of consideration? We may not be able either to understand or to explain all His imagery, but the plain truth abides that there will be a general judgment. He speaks with authority, not only as being absolutely pure, but as coming forth from eternity and being intimately acquainted with all the counsels and designs of the Infinite.
II. There are premonitions of a coming judgment.—An appeal to the Bible is with many out of date. The preacher is not now asked to quote chapter and verse. A sentence from Shakespeare or Tennyson or Ruskin is often more welcome and more thought about than a sentence from the Bible. But we believe that in this case the declarations of the Bible are strongly supported by the premonitions of the human soul. Why speak we of premonitions? Why talk we of a coming judgment? Why, when there is a judgment here and now? Christ has His judgment-seat in the human conscience. The process is going on day by day—the process, we mean, of moral reckoning. The doctrine of moral accountability to the human being is not quite destroyed. In this enlightened age men are not to be frightened into being religious, and we quite admit that the religion of terror only is a base sort of thing. But even now men have their doubts and fears, and these are not the product of a cunning priestcraft. They spring from the constitution of the human soul. It is fatuous to talk of introducing the alien principle or faculty of conscience into the human creature if there be no place for it among our moral faculties—if there be no combination of faculties out of which such a faculty as conscience could be developed; that is, if we proceed on the false principle that conscience is not original, but derived. The doubts and fears with which the mind is tossed and harassed, the writhings of a guilty conscience, are the dread premonitions of a coming judgment. Conscience could not make us cowards if there were no moral Governor, if there were no judgment to come, if we did not fear that somewhere and somehow there would be a judgment. There is no need to lessen the vital importance of the question by materialising the thought. St. Paul must speak in human language. “We must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ” sets before us a solemn fact. We know not where the judgment-seat will be. We may in vain try to fancy the myriads upon myriads of our species that have lived on the earth, from the first man who saw creation’s prime to the last man who sees its final collapse, standing before the judgment-seat; but we cannot get away from our own oppressive thought that somehow there will be a judgment of the just and the unjust.
III. There are the certainties of a coming judgment.—These certainties are founded upon the declarations of the Bible and upon the premonitions of mankind—upon the testimony of conscience, which asserts, sometimes unwillingly, the equity and necessity of a final judgment. We speak of a religion of love and scout the idea of a religion of fear. But, after all, fear or misgiving of some kind or another has more to do with our religion than we are at all times prepared to allow. Vague fears are the foundation of all the religions, true or false, that have appeared. It is all very fine for philosophers to bid us shake ourselves free from fear and break loose from the miserable trammels of old world superstitions and traditions. They might as well tell us to shake ourselves free from ourselves; for these fears, these premonitions, these stirrings of conscience, are woven into the very texture of our nature. The coming judgment is not a mere probability; it is a certainty. If it be contended that it is only a probability, we affirm that such probabilities amount to certainties. We say it is probable that the sun will rise to-morrow because he has risen every day for so many ages. Probable, but not certain; and yet the business man and the farmer, in fact every sensible man, proceed as if it were a certainty that the sun will rise as aforetime. Let us for the moment admit that the judgment to come is only a probable event, then as sensible men it becomes us to proceed in life as if that probability were a certainty. But if we look carefully into the workings of our own moral natures, if we hear the dread warnings of conscience, the dark whisperings of the Infinite, if we listen to the words of divine wisdom, we shall assent to the statement that a coming judgment is a certainty, a crisis which we must all meet. We must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ—all—judges and judged, conquerors and conquered, righteous Pharisees and sinful publicans, Cæsars and their subjects, czars and their serfs, philosophers and fools, bishops and their flocks, inquisitors and their victims—there is no exception: we must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ.
IV. There is a preparation for the coming judgment.—Preparation for ondemnation and preparation for acquittal. Preparation for condemnation there may be, though the man does not set himself in the way of fitting himself for the awful event. The man is practically preparing himself for a felon’s doom who is adopting a felon’s course of conduct. Condemnation is what the sinner has earned. He has prepared the way for the sentence of death to be pronounced. “The wages of sin is death.” What is our life? Are we preparing for condemnation? Are we sowing to the wind that by-and-by we may reap the dire whirlwind of righteous indignation? Is there any escape? Yes; there is a way of escape. Penitent and believing sinners have a powerful advocate in the Judge Himself. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from sin. “There is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.”
V. There is a twofold feeling with reference to the judgment to come.—Not necessarily in the same individual, but in different sections of the human race. The one feeling is that of sadness, of vague fears, sometimes of positive horror; the other feeling is that of gladness, of quiet confidence, of sweet assurance. What is our state of feeling? We too often come short of the gladness as we think of the judgment. We have our moments of confidence, and then we are tossed with fears. Happy man who can look forward to the judgment and feel no terrors in connection with that great day! Blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven, who tastes the sweets of pardon; he can see the Lord coming in dreadful majesty, and feel no alarm; he can perceive the earth quaking, and experience no terror; the stars may withdraw their light, nature may wrap herself in funereal darkness, but in the soul of the true believer is a light that shines through all glooms, is a gladness which overtops all sorrows, is a confidence which overmasters all fears.
Romans 14:10. The great assize.—Consider:
1. The chief circumstances which will precede our standing before the judgment-seat of Christ;
2. The judgment itself;
3. Circumstances which will follow it;
4. Application to the hearer.—John Wesley.
Romans 14:12. Individual responsibility.—Here is a solemn truth which must, we think, have at once lifted the thoughts of the apostle’s Roman readers above the little controversies in which they were engaged into a higher and a serener atmosphere. Whatever food they ate or did not eat, whatever days they did or did not privately observe, one thing was certain—they would have to give an account of this particular act or omission, as of everything else in their whole lives. “Every one shall give account of himself to God.” My duty is that which, as a man, as a Christian, I have to do. My responsibility recalls the account which I must render for what I do and what I leave undone. Duty looks to the present, responsibility to the present and the future. Duty may seem at first to represent the most disinterested of the two ideas. Responsibility, human nature being what it is, is the more practically vigorous. Responsibility goes hand in hand with power—with power of choice. No man is responsible for the size of his body, or for the colour of his hair, or for the number of his sisters and brothers. His responsibility begins exactly where his power of choice begins. It varies with that power, and upon the use he makes of it will depend the kind of account which, sooner or later, he will have to give. It stands to reason that an account must be given, if given at all, to some person. Responsibility implies a person to whom responsible man is responsible. All human society is based on this law of responsibility to persons. The strongest of all the motives that can change a man’s life, both within and without, for his lasting good, is the love of God. If we could love God quite sincerely for twenty-four hours we should be other men, capable, spiritually speaking, almost of anything. But if this be so, the next motive in the order of efficiency is, beyond all doubt, the remembrance of the inevitable last account which we must each of us give before the judgment-seat of Christ. St. Augustine says, “Nothing has contributed more powerfully to wean me from all that held me down to earth than the thought constantly dwelt on of death and of the last account.” This resolution to give thought to the last account would prove a useful stimulus. It is like the old Jewish law—it is a schoolmaster to bring the soul to the feet of Jesus Christ; for the thought of that account does force us to think over our lives here—not once or twice, but often—not superficially, but with a determination to see ourselves as we are. To think of ourselves thus is to anticipate its result as far as we are conerned. It is to act on St. Paul’s advice—that if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. We can do all things through Christ that strengthened us; and so with His cross before our eyes, with His gracious presence and blessing within our souls, we look forward to our account with trembling joy.—Canon Liddon.
Joy and peace in believing.—“Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.” It will be good to take this apostolic prayer to pieces, and mark each separate part and truth.
I. The hope.—It is of the things hoped for that the apostle is speaking. It is not to “hope,” or to “a hope,” but to “the hope,” that he is poinring. It is not that thing called “hope,” as springing up in our breasts, that he would have us dwell upon; it is the glory to be revealed, the hops which is laid up for us in heaven. This is the bright star on which he fixes our eye.
II. The God of the hope.—Of that hope He is the beginning, the middle, and the end; the centre and the circumference; its root and stem and branches; its seed, its blossom, and its fruit. There is not one of these “things hoped for” but is to be t aced to Him as its sole fountain-head.
III. Fill you with all joy and peace.—There is joy, “joy unspeakable and full of glory”; but it is nor, of earth. It comes down from heaven. There is peace, the peace which passeth all understanding; but its fountain is above. It is God who gives these; and He does so as “the God of the hope.”
IV. In believing.—This joy and peace, though heavenly in their origin and nature, were not miraculous. They did not gush up into the soul like water springing from the sand by some supernatural touch. They found their way into the soul by a very natural, very simple, but very effectual channel—the belief of God’s good news about His only begotten Son. They were not the reward of believing; they were not purchased by believing; nor did they come in after believing: they were obtained in believing.
V. That we may abound in the hope.—The hope not only fills, but overflows, as the word “abound” might be rendered. It comes in and lights up the soul with its heavenly brightness; but it does more. It is so glorious and so boundless that the soul cannot contain it.
VI. Through the power of the Holy Ghost.—He comes in and dwells in us; thus working in us from within, not from without. He comes in as the Spirit of power and love and of a sound mind. He con es in as the earnest of the inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession. He comes in, not in feebleness, but in power, in almighty power, to work a work in us and for us which but for Him must remain unaccomplished for ever.—H. Bonar.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 14:10-15
AII shall be manifest.—All the wickedness that men have brooded on and hatched in the darkest vaults of their own hearts, or acted in the obscurest secrecy, shall be then made as manifest as if they were every one of them written on their foreheads with the point of a sunbeam. Here on earth none know so much of us—neither would we that they should—as our own consciences; and yet those great secretaries, our own consciences, through ignorance or searedness, overlook many sins which we commit. But our own consciences shall not know more of us than all the world shall, for all that has been done shall be brought into public notice.—Bishop Hopkins.
Another’s fault may be ours.—It matters not that Christ warned us to “judge not, that we be not judged” (Matthew 7:1), for men still hold up each other’s faults, real or suspected, and inspect and dissect them, and pronounce judgment, as if they fear to find a worthy man, lost their own meanness should stand out in dark contrast. There are modifying facts of which all men are ignorant concerning every action. It therefore requires much knowledge and wisdom to render right judgment. How is it, then, that we dishonour God’s command, and call fellow-beings before the bar of our illegal court for rash and presumptuous sentences? Do not, then, hold the characters of others up for dissection; do not talk much about people in any way: turn your conversation into more intellectual, less dangerous, and more profitable lines. Do not judge. The fault which you detect in another, even though radical and unmistakable, is no worse than some other evil, or often the selfsame evil, in yourself. Nay, look well to it that you have not weaknesses even more shameful and grievous; for the censor is often worse than his victim. Robert Westly Peach.
It is a true proverb, “Though two do the same thing, it is not really the same thing”; for not the form of the deed, but the sense of the doer, decides as to whether anything is unclean or holy, or contrary to faith and love (Romans 14:14).—Besser.
Dangerous to increase restrictions.—It is always dangerous to multiply restrictions and requirements beyond what is essential—because men, feeling themselves hemmed in, break the artificial barrier; but, breaking it with a sense of guilt, thereby become hardened in conscience, and prepared for transgressions against commandments which are divine and of eternal obligation. Hence it is that the criminal has so often in his confessions traced his deterioration in crime to the first step of breaking the Sabbath day; and no doubt with accurate truth. If God have judgments in store for England, it is because we are selfish men—because we prefer pleasure to duty, party to our Church, and ourselves to everything else.—F. W. Robertson.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 14
Romans 14:10. Judgments, kind.—Jesus arrived one evening at the gates of a certain city, and He sent His disciples forward to prepare supper, while He Himself, intent on doing good, walked through the streets into the market-place. And He saw at the corner of the market some people gathered together, looking at an object ou the ground; and He drew near to see what it might be. It was a dead dog with a halter round its neck, by which it appeared to have been dragged through the dirt; and a viler, a more abject, a more unclean thing never met the eyes of man. “Faugh!” said one, stopping his nose; “it pollutes the air.” “How long,” said another, “shall this foul beast offend our sight?” “Look at its torn hide,” said a third; “one could not even cut a shoe out of it.” “And its ears,” said a fourth, “all draggled and bleeding.” “No doubt,” said a fifth, “it has been hanged for thieving.” And Jesus heard them, and looking down compassionately on the dead creature, He said, “Pearls are not equal to the whiteness of its teeth.” Then the people turned towards Him with amazement, and said among themselves, “Who is this? This must be Jesus of Nazareth, for only He could find something to pity and approve even in a dead dog.” And being ashamed, they bowed their heads before Him, and went each on his way.—Persian Fable.
Romans 14:10-15. The cadi and the king.—One of the Moorish kings of Spain wished to build a pavilion on a field near his garden, and offered to purchase it of the woman to whom it belonged, but she would not consent to part with the inheritance of her fathers. The field, however, was seized, and the building was erected. The poor woman complained to a cadi, who promised to do all in his power to serve her. One day, while the king was in the field, the cadi came with an empty sack, and asked permission to fill it with the earth on which he was treading. He obtained leave, and when the sack was filled he requested the king to complete his kindness by assisting him to load his ass with it. The monarch laughed, and tried to lift it, but soon let it fall, complaining of its enormous weight. “It is, however,” said the cadi, “only a small part of the ground which thou ast wrested from one of thy subjects; how then wilt thou bear the weight of the whole field when thou shalt appear before the great Judge laden with this iniquity?” The king thanked him for his reproof, and not only restored the field to its owner, but gave her the building which he had erected and all the wealth which it contained.
Romans 14:14-15. Charitable judgments.—Those of us who have read classic history may remember an incident in the history of the Macedonian emperor. A painter was commanded to sketch the monarch. In one of his great battles he had been struck with a sword upon the forehead, and a very large scar had been left on the right temple. The painter, who was a master-hand in his art, sketched him leaning on his elbow with his finger covering the scar on his forehead; and so the likeness of the king was taken, but without the scar. Let us put the finger of charity upon the scar of the Christian as we look at him, whatever it may be—the finger of a tender and forbearing charity—and see, in spite of it and under it, the image of Christ notwithstanding.—Dr. Cumming.