Freedom in faith
Text: Romans 14:1–12
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. From the earliest days of the Church (and even among the apostles themselves, for that matter), Christians have been comparing themselves with each other.
In Romans 14, St. Paul provides some helpful advice for a group of Christians who are finding it hard to get along. Some of the members of the Roman church were former Jews who believed in Jesus but still wanted to follow some of the rules and observe the customs that had always been so important to them. Paul mentions food laws and keeping special days as examples.
The Gentile Christians, on the other hand, knew that believers in Christ are free from those things. After all, Jesus himself had declared all foods clean and challenged what everyone had thought the Sabbath day was really for.
Th Roman church was a mixture of people with differing opinions on how faith should be observed. In this church, we might not debate whether we can eat pork and if we need to observe new moons, but we can certainly think differently about how our lives of faith should be lived.
There are a few points that St. Paul makes that are helpful for us to hear:
Firstly, that every Christian has their own personal faith. We are all on our own journey and have different backgrounds that will shape how we feel we should live as Christians.
Secondly, that there is some flexibility in how faith is expressed. There are some things we shouldn’t budge on when it comes to the Christian faith, but there is plenty of flexibility in other areas, particularly how we live as Christians day to day.
Thirdly, regardless of how our faith looks, Jesus welcomes everyone equally through faith in Him.
Every Christian has their own faith.
Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarrelling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables.
Romans 14:1,2
In any relationship, there is a level of acceptance needed for that relationship to last. I have had to accept that Olivia is an Adelaide Crows fan while I support Port Adelaide. That difference doesn’t mean our marriage is in trouble—it just means that we have had to learn to accept that we back different teams and we both have to give as good as we get.
That’s just a very trivial example, but it makes the point. In the case St. Paul is addressing, some Jews would have felt that the Old Testament laws around clean and unclean foods could not simply be disregarded after being adhered to for centuries. Diet was not just a matter of preference or choice, but was essential for being a part of Jewish culture. God had commanded it, so they took it seriously.
These Jewish Christians were taking a big leap to leave their culture and join the Jesus-followers. They had done so clearly because they were convinced that Jesus was really the Christ and had died and risen again to save them. They were committed to their new faith, but it was not easy to leave the old behind completely.
Imagine if one day, the government suddenly came down hard on Christian churches and prohibited us from owning our own property and meeting in our buildings. If we could no longer gather in our building for Divine Service, we would all feel quite lost and disoriented for a while, maybe even permanently. We might have to share the town hall with the other churches in town and rotate our service times to be fair to everyone. We might even have to open our homes and gather that way on Sundays.
When our lives of faith have revolved around the same way of doing it for our whole lives (and longer), our faith can sometimes latch on to those things and take a hit when they’re removed. The time we gather, the building we gather in, and what we do when we gather all make up a huge part of our Christian faith because it’s how we’ve experienced it.
That’s how the first Christians felt. Everything they knew had been shaken to the core and completely reoriented. For now, their faith is weak. To have a strong faith is to be able to let go of the peripheral things like food laws and holy days and rely completely on the Christian faith which had been gifted to them by the Holy Spirit. None of us are capable of doing that by our own strength and probably won’t reach that point until all those temporary, worldly things are taken away forever.
The Christian Church is diverse. Even in the tiniest rural churches where all six of the people are related and share mast of their lives together, they are still different people with different experiences and different thoughts about faith expression. But the Christian Church is precisely where God wants both the weak and the strong in faith to be.
The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them.
Romans 14:3
There is some flexibility in how faith is expressed.
Every Christian has their own faith. Just as every person is created by God as a unique individual, so there are many ways that Christians express their faith and live according to it.
Some of us prefer organ music, while others prefer the piano.
Some of us place a high value on altars, candles, and paraments, while others would be quite happy without them.
Some of us like to pray with our eyes closed and the door shut, while others like to pray throughout the day whenever they think about it.
In the Roman church, Paul has two examples: eating certain foods and observing holy days. In these two cases he says that, whichever way a person goes, God accepts them either way and that “each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind.” (Ro. 14:5)
If you’ve got a good reason why you want to express your faith that way, go right ahead. So long as what you’re doing gives glory to God and builds up His people in some way, there is nothing stopping you.
Most of the church’s disagreements come about when it’s not clear which way God chooses for us. There are things that are neither commanded nor forbidden in Scripture that we call adiaphora.
There are things that are certainly commanded: practicing forgiveness; gathering in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit; baptising people in that name; eating and drinking Christ’s body and blood in His remembrance. There are also things that are forbidden: everything we’re told not to do in the Ten Commandments, for a start.
But sometimes there are things that are neither commanded nor forbidden. That’s when we have the freedom and the flexibility to do what makes the most sense for where we are.
For example, God does not command us to light candles when we gather for worship, but Christians have done so for centuries because it’s seen as a fitting symbol of Christ as the Light of the world being with us.
God doesn’t command us to meet on Sunday mornings, but Christians have done so for centuries because it’s seen as a fitting way to commemorate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead on Easter morning.
There is no one way to live as a Christian person. In many aspects of our Christian lives, there is flexibility.
All are welcomed equally through faith.
Christians, through faith in Christ, have a certain kind of freedom that goes beyond just the things we do or don’t have at services. Martin Luther wrote a great little book called ‘The Freedom of a Christian’ to describe it, and he addresses the flexibility that we have in how we express our faith:
We don’t become a Christian by things we do physically. Outward physical things can’t give us Christian freedom or right standing with God—and neither can they put us in a wrong standing with God or in spiritual slavery. For example, if our body is well, free, and active, and if we can eat, drink, and do as we please outwardly, that doesn’t help us inwardly or spiritually. After all, people can be outwardly healthy and free to do as they like, and still be the most godless slaves to vice. On the other hand, even the most godly people, and those who are free because of a clear conscience, can have poor health or be in prison or hungry or thirsty.
Similarly, actions like wearing sacred robes, being in consecrated spaces, eating or abstaining from certain foods, or performing special trials don’t by themselves make any difference to us spiritually. Bad people and hypocrites can do these things just as well. And neither will it harm us spiritually if the body is dressed in secular clothes, lives in unconsecrated spaces, eats ordinary food, and does not perform special rituals. Even whether or not we undertake mental and spiritual exercises like contemplation and mediation doesn’t make us a Christian or not a Christian.
David Schubert, Christian Faith and Freedom: Martin Luther’s The Freedom of a Christian paraphrased for today, 6
The mistake we make is that we look at things backwards. Our outward acts don’t make us Christians. Rather, once we are made Christians by receiving the good news of Christ through the Word, outward acts follow. We do things as Christian people not because we have to to maintain our membership in the club, but because we have been changed from the inside out.
For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.
Romans 14:7–9
Because of what Christ has done for all people, we are free to accept and welcome all people into our church and into our own lives. May we treasure the freedom that His death and resurrection gives us. May He strengthen our weak faith by His Holy Spirit.
In the name of Christ. Amen.
