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Rom.
14 - "Paul Called Those Who Keep Kosher and the Feastdays 'Weak'"
by Michael Bugg
When I was younger, I once made a tongue-in-cheek argument to a couple of friends that based on this passage, I could prove that I had the greatest faith of all if I could just come up with a meal that broke every kosher commandment all at once. Ah, the foolishness of youth! In dealing with this passage, we really have to subdivide it into two separate issues, both of which are under the umbrella of unity in the Body of the Messiah—which is really what Paul is dealing with. In fact, the subject of unity between the Redeemed from every sort of background is the very reason he wrote Romans. Therefore, even if Paul was calling those who kept the Torah “weak”—and we will see shortly that he was not—he still commands the “strong” not to judge them, but rather, “let us not judge one another anymore, but rather resolve this, not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother's way” (v. 13, NKJV). Let us then deal with this passage in this light. First, does Paul call those keeping kosher “weak”? Let us read what he says:
Kosher vs. Vegetarianism
Receive one who is weak in the faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things. For one believes he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats only vegetables. Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats; for God has received him. Who are you to judge another's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand. (vv. 1-4, NKJV) The key phrase is in bold above. Note the nature of the issue: Paul does not call one weak who “eats only certain kinds of meat,” but says that of the vegetarian, one who eats no meat at all! Now let us be clear about something: One who simply prefers vegetables to meat as a matter of taste, or who takes on a vegetarian diet for health reasons, or even one who avoids meat because of a soft spot for animals is not being called weak in their faith here—indeed, none of those reasons has anything to do with one’s faith. Rather, though Paul does not here spell it out for us, the issue is tied to the issue of eating things sacrificed to idols. Remember that one of the main injunctions that the new Gentile believers were held to was to avoid eating meat sacrificed to idols (Acts 15:20 & 29, 21:25; 1 Co. 10:20f). This apparently led to a debate over whether one had to investigate the origin of every piece of meat sold in the market, much of which may have come from the pagan temples. Since constantly worrying about the origin of meat would have made the impression that the Christians were afraid of the pagan gods getting some power over them through food, Paul gave the following guidelines on how to deal with meat: So,
as for eating food sacrificed to idols, we “know” that, as you say, “An
idol has no real existence in the world, and there is only one God.”
For
even if there are so–called “gods,” either in heaven or on earth––as
in fact there are “gods” and “lords” galore––yet for us there
is one God, the Father, from whom all things come and for whom we exist; and one
Lord, Yeshua the Messiah, through whom were created all things and through whom
we have our being. But
not everyone has this knowledge. Moreover, some people are still so accustomed
to idols that when they eat food which has been sacrificed to them, they think
of it as really affected by the idol; and their consciences, being weak, are
thus defiled. Now
food will not improve our relationship with God––we will be neither poorer
if we abstain nor richer if we eat.
However
watch out that your mastery of the situation does not become a stumbling block
to the weak. You
have this “knowledge”; but suppose someone with a weak conscience sees you
sitting, eating a meal in the temple of an idol. Won’t he be built up wrongly
to eat this food which has been sacrificed to idols?
Thus
by your “knowledge” this weak person is destroyed, this brother for whom the
Messiah died; and so, when you sin against the brothers by wounding their
conscience when it is weak, you are sinning against the Messiah! To sum up, if
food will be a snare for my brother, I will never eat meat again, lest I cause
my brother to sin.
(1 That is to say, they were not to
worry about investigating the background of every piece of meat, whether bought
at the market or offered at a pagan friends’ table, but if they were told that
the meat had in fact been sacrificed to an idol, they were to obstain—not
because the meat had any power over them, but so as to provide a witness that
they had completely separated from the pagan gods, both to the pagans and to the
Jews! Indeed, Paul states that
he would rather not eat meat ever again than to cause his brother to sin (skandalιsu
σκανδαλισω,
literally, to trip or cause to stumble). Apparently, there were those in
the Roman fellowship who rejected eating any meat at all on the basis that it
might have been sacrificed to an idol (if they had not received Paul’s
letters to the Corinthians) or to avoid causing others to stumble.
If the first was the case, then Paul was calling their faith
“weak” because they were taking an unnecessary precaution and treating the
meat as if it truly had power over them. If
the latter was the case, then he is not truly calling them weak, but is
referring to the perception that they are weak by their brothers. Whichever is the case, two points
are key:
Every
Day Alike?
One person esteems one
day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced
in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; and he who
does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. He who eats, eats
to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he
does not eat, and gives God thanks. ( The first thing to notice on Paul’s teaching here is what is missing: That’s right, he does not call the one who “esteems one day above another” “weak.” Some assume that he thinks them weak on the basis of parallelism, but as every word in Scripture means something, we should not note that Paul very deliberately leaves out the word. Indeed, it would be most inconsistent with Paul’s life and teachings if he thought those who observed God’s Mo’edim (Appointed Times/Feasts) to be weak by doing so. After all, he
And
finally, if it is true that Paul wrote the book of Hebrews (as early Church
tradition has it), he actually states flat out that we
are to rest from our works on the seventh day as God did from His (Heb.
4:1-11). Indeed, he could hardly
have rejected the charge that he was teaching Jews to disobey the Torah if he
hadn’t (Acts 21:20ff). No,
it is clear that to interpolate that Paul thought that those who observed
the Lord’s Appointed Times into this text is to miss the point. The Crisis That Raised the Issue
So if Paul believed that one should continue to keep the Feasts, why then does
he here make it optional? To answer
that question, we need to look at the circumstances particular to the Roman
church: At some point during the
reign of Claudius (41-54 CE) the Jews were expelled from This
begs the question: How did the Romans identify the Jews for legal
purposes? It is unlikely that they
would have tracked down genealogical records.
It is far more likely that the Jews were simply identified as anyone who
identified with the Jewish synagogue, kept the Jewish Feasts instead of the
pagan holidays, observed Sabbath, etc. This
provides the key to understanding Paul’s teaching here, since those
Christians who remained in Now
keep in mind what the sudden loss of the Jewish community meant to those early
Christians. Suddenly, they had no
Scriptures, except perhaps a few epistles that were in circulation.
They also lost their teachers and even their places of worship.
Further, if they tried to keep the Sabbaths and the Feasts, they too
risked expulsion—and unlike the Jews, they did not have a larger community
outside of Rome to provide support and aid in re-establishing themselves—or
worse in the case of slaves. So what
did they do? They carried on as best
they could, trying to treat every day as holy, and remembering that they were
saved by their trust in the Son of God, not by keeping the Torah correctly.
(See the response to Acts 15 for more on this
issue.) When
the Jews were allowed to return, there was doubtless tension between the Jewish
and Gentile believers. It is that
tension which Paul is attempting to defuse in his letter.
Chapters 1-3 make the point that “all have sinned and fallen short of
the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), so no one has room to boast.
Chapters 4-5 builds the idea of salvation by faith rather than works,
while chapters 6-7 counterbalance this by explaining that God’s grace is no
license to sin. Chapter 8 brings
these two thoughts together in a reminder that whose who are in the Messiah are
in God’s hands, and He is committed to conform us “into the image of His
Son” (v. 29). Chapters
9-11 deal with the issue of The
entire purpose of Romans is to promote brotherhood in the Body of Yeshua, and
that is the context into which Romans 14 must be read.
Even
today, there is a continuing debate within Messianic Judaism as to whether
Gentile believers should keep the Appointed Times that the Eternal One gave to Shalom! |
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