Welcome the Weak

A Sermon on Romans 14:1–3 preached by Ps Phil Hunt

Click here to listen to the sermon.

Those of us who will remain in the auditorium, please take your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Romans, Romans chapter 14. I appreciate so much Carol and her testimony this morning, and I’m so thankful for the many ways God has given us — the many opportunities He has given us at Kitwe Church — to teach the truth of God’s Word. I heard in her testimony that she mentioned CR, Celebrate Recovery, as one of the opportunities here that the Lord has used in her life. It’s such a blessing. And there are others, of course — we have the Connection Group Bible studies, and I know the Young Adults Ministry met yesterday. I heard a good report from there. So many opportunities.

But this morning, we’ve gathered as the people of God to worship Him, in the gathering of the saints. And we are in a study through the book of Romans on Sunday mornings, so please turn to Romans chapter 14. I want to speak to you this morning on this subject: Welcome the Weak.

You know, we at Kitwe Church are a global church. People have gathered here this morning from many different nations. We bring along with us different customs, and even different church traditions that have influenced our own upbringing — maybe as a child, or as a young person. We have different opinions on what the normal Christian practice should look like. There is a variety of those opinions sitting here this morning.

We are many different people, and yet we are called by God into one body. We share one table. We gather together. We baptized our sister into one body — the body of Christ, the church of Jesus Christ — and she joined with us officially this morning through that profession of faith through believer’s baptism. But here’s the challenge I want us to look at this morning.

We are different, and yet, as different people gathered together at Kitwe Church sharing one table, we are tempted to let our own convictions be the standard by which we judge everyone else. In other words, we are not coming into the Scripture necessarily, but we are taking our own differences, our own convictions, our own opinions about how the Christian life should be lived, and we’re bringing those in and using them as the lens through which we look at one another. Those values become the standard by which we judge everyone else.

That temptation is just as strong in us as it was in the church at Rome. You see, Paul, in this section of his letter, is giving practical instructions to Christians in the city of Rome on how they should live the Christian life in the will of God as a living sacrifice — we saw that in chapter 12, verses 1 and 2, as we entered this section. We have learned that we are to live with one another within the body of Christ in genuine love (chapter 12, verse 9). And last week we saw that the debt we owe one another is to continue in that genuine love. In other words, every day, and in every opportunity that our lives connect together, we are making the willful choice to demonstrate love to one another.

And that continues until Jesus comes. But what does that practical, everyday love look like within a congregation like ours at Kitwe Church — a multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-national gathering of people? It’s a little bit of a microcosm of what heaven will actually be like one day, when there is a gathering of all peoples and languages and tongues, gathered together in one chorus before the throne to worship the Lamb for all eternity. This is how heaven will be — with all of our distinctiveness, and all of our opinions, and all of our differences of background, and differences of language, and different ways that we weigh things in their relative importance to the Christian life.

You see, we are called as a church to confront a brother or sister who is living in sin, and, in a worst-case scenario, if they are resistant to that discipleship, ultimately to even move toward discipline as a local body against a member who refuses to repent of sin.

We may think that a Christian in sin is the greatest threat to the unity of the church. But I would like us to see this morning that a greater threat to unity is the differences within our congregation. That is a far greater threat to the unity of Kitwe Church than the individual sin of a member — even a member who is resisting repentance and making things right. That is a problem, and it must be dealt with biblically, in love — and yet it is not as great a threat to disunity within the church as what we are speaking about this morning: the differences within the congregation. And they are many. There are differences between young and old, differences between countries and cultures, and differences of religious background. All of these differences are opportunities for our church to be divided.

Paul is dealing with that issue head-on in this text by addressing a huge cultural issue facing the church in Rome. From this text, I want us to see this morning that each of us, as children of God, will give an account of ourselves to God, and we are not called to judge our brother, but to live together in unity and service.

Notice, please, verses 1 through 3. Look back at your text. I hope your Bible is open in your lap, and you can feel the pages and the cover in your fingers. And I hope you have an ink pen, so that you’re writing a few things down and even marking your Bible. You know, you can’t mark a digital Bible, right? You can’t take a real pen and mark your cell phone. So bring a real Bible, so that you can circle things and mark things in the margin — right there — so that when you go back to that text, you can remember some of the things God was showing you. That’s just practical. You’re not sinning — that’s my opinion. You’ll see that as we get into this text. But that’s my encouragement.

So notice verses 1 through 3:

“As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person only eats vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him.”

There are three big ideas I want you to see, and we’re going to move rather quickly this morning, because we’ve already worshiped God in so many ways and our time is running short. So buckle your seatbelts and turn up your hearing aids — we’re going to run through the text.

We Welcome the Weak Because God Accepts Them

Here is the first truth: we welcome the weak at Kitwe Church because God accepts them. You see this in verses 1 through 3.

Notice what Paul is saying with this word “welcome” — welcome one another regardless of your differences. This word means to show warm, loving hospitality and acceptance in the spirit of friendship and love. Is that how you relate to those within this body — that you are welcoming? Warm, loving hospitality and acceptance in the spirit of friendship and love.

Now notice, he says you are to welcome — he’s telling these Roman Christians, you are to welcome the weak. Who is “the weak”? Who is he talking about? Well, first of all, this person is a Christian. This is a genuine, born-again child of God whom we are to welcome. But notice that not only is this person a Christian, this person is a weak Christian. The idea here is that this is a believer, a true child of God, who is weak in his or her understanding of how to apply the faith to everyday living.

They’re not weak morally or doctrinally. They’re not denying some of the fundamental doctrines of the faith — no, that’s not what he’s talking about. They’re weak in the exercise of faith, not in the content. In other words, their beliefs are orthodox and biblical, but the application to everyday living — they’re weak there. They haven’t grown yet. They’re in the process of growing.

Now, why is this person weak? I’ve got three possibilities.

One, it could be that they are undiscipled — a lack of discipleship. They don’t yet understand the Scriptures in any depth. They are in the process of being discipled as a Christian; they haven’t been discipled yet, and so they are weak in the application of the truths of Scripture to everyday living.

Or, two, they are immature. They have an immature faith. I think Paul is pointing to that in this text. They have not yet grown to spiritual adulthood — they are babies. In fact, Paul talks in some cases of being so concerned that in some churches, people who received the gospel and who are genuine believers, after all of these years, are still infants. He says, “I’m so concerned that I have to feed you spiritual milk instead of meat, because you’re not able to bear it” — you can’t chew on the doctrines of Scripture because you’re still a spiritual baby. You’ve never grown up.

Babies are weak, right? We expect a baby to be weak. We just don’t expect you to stay a baby. We want to help you grow up — that’s what Kitwe Church is all about, helping you grow up in your faith, to become strong and mature. But in this case, this weak believer is immature.

Or, three, they have a mistrained conscience. They may have been saved for many, many years, but their conscience has been trained to believe something that is not directly taught in Scripture. In other words, they have been taught — perhaps since childhood, perhaps through their religious background or church background — applications of Scripture that they believe are equal to “thus saith the Lord.” I’ll give you some examples in just a moment to help you understand.

So these are weak Christians, and Paul says we welcome the weak — we bring them into loving hospitality and acceptance — because God accepts them. You see, these brothers have opinions on how to live in a way that’s pleasing to God, and yet you have two brothers or sisters in the same church who, when they look at a particular issue, come to different conclusions about how they are to live in an effort to honor and glorify God. They literally come to two separate applications of the same truth that they both believe. That’s what’s happening here.

Now, how does this happen? Culture. Culture is the way that we think. Culture is what helps us understand and interpret the world around us. Culture shapes our thinking and our values.

Let’s say you and I come home at night — you’ve invited me to your place for a meal, my wife and I — and as we walk toward your front door, it’s night, and on the flower bed, on the trellis over the front of your door, sitting straight in the middle of your front door, is the biggest owl you have ever seen, just perched there looking at us.

What is your initial reaction, before common sense takes over? Some of you have an immediate reaction to that owl sitting there in the middle of the night, looking at us as we’re trying to walk up to the front door — a reaction different from someone else’s. Your response would be different than mine. That doesn’t make you right and me wrong, or me right and you wrong. But some of us respond differently. Why do we look at the owl differently? Culture. Because each of us was taught from childhood to believe certain things about an owl. And though we are both believers, and we both acknowledge the truth about the owl, we can still have an immediate, gut-level reaction that is different. This is what we’re talking about — our culture influences us.

The homes we grew up in shape us. For instance, where I’m originally from in the US, I had friends whose homes, as I evaluated them as a younger person, placed a low value on truth-telling but a high value on respect. A child had better say “yes sir” or “yes ma’am,” or they would get their head knocked. But it was nothing for the dad to get on the phone and lie to his boss, or tell the child, when the salesman came, “Tell him I’m not here.” So literally, the same son who would get the back of his father’s hand for disrespecting him would be told by that same father to go lie to the man at the front door. Cultural shaping — right there in our homes.

Religious backgrounds shape us too. There are churches that only sing the old hymns from the UK. In Zambia, some believe it’s only right to sing old hymns from the 1600s in the UK, and it’s not right to sing anything else in church. Differences of religious background — or following a strict liturgy, or a particular order of service, whatever it might be.

Then there’s the cultural dynamic of our community. Some of us were raised in an individualistic community, and some were raised in a communalistic community. One culture is very self-effacing, seeing that as respect toward others. Another culture is very confrontational, seeing that approach as honesty. The self-effacing brother is offended — he judges the other as not being a good Christian because he’s too confrontational. Meanwhile, the confrontational brother believes the first brother is acting hypocritically and despises him for it.

The people group we belong to — our tribe or ethnic distinction — shapes the way we interact with one another, as does the country we live in. In Zambia, we tend to get things done relationally, not strictly according to documented processes. Differences.

Paul is dealing with this, and he’s saying: welcome the weak because God’s accepting them. Welcome one another regardless of our differences. We welcome one another, and by doing so we reject disunity in the church.

Notice what he says at the end of verse 1: “As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him” — notice — “but not to quarrel over opinions.” Don’t welcome your brother so that you can now start debating. That’s what he’s saying. There is a place for defending the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints — Paul is not talking about that here. He’s talking about a strongly held, differing opinion over the application of Scripture to everyday decisions in life. And Paul is saying you can welcome that brother, welcome that sister, without reservation, because God’s welcome of you never depended on you having it all figured out either. Aren’t you glad God didn’t wait until you had the whole Christian life figured out before He welcomed you? Aren’t you glad?

We are not to pass judgment on the scruples of another, or to quarrel over opinions and applications of Scripture. Where Scripture is silent, we leave room for various applications and opinions. Strong believers may disagree on some fine points of application, but that does not need to cause a strong believer to stumble. We must exercise love and caution in dealing with the scruples of new Christians.

Now notice what was happening here, because he mentions in verses 2 and 3 that one Christian in this church believes he can eat anything, and another only eats vegetables. They were quarreling over beliefs, and in this case, it was food. You might say, what in the world? Because this makes no sense to us. But it made sense to them. You see, the Jews, throughout the Old Testament, had been given strict guidelines on what they could eat and what they could not eat. They could eat things that were clean, and they could not eat things that were unclean. There was a long list — clean and unclean.

In fact, mark this down: Acts chapter 10, verses 12 through 16. Peter is trying to figure out where he’s supposed to go next to preach the gospel, and he receives a vision. A sheet comes down out of heaven, held by four corners, and inside are all manner of unclean animals. A voice from heaven says, “Peter, rise, kill, and eat.” Peter says in verse 11, “Not so, Lord. I have never eaten anything that is unclean.” There are pigs in there — all kinds of things that are taboo, unclean, for an Orthodox Jew. “I can’t eat from there.” And the voice from heaven said, “Peter, what God has cleansed, do not call unclean.” And this happened three times — because the repetition of three in Scripture is always like putting exclamation points on something. Don’t miss this. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God” — you might miss a lot of things in the book of Isaiah, but you had better not miss that God is holy. Holy, holy, holy — three times. “Rise, Peter, kill and eat.” “God, I can’t do that, it’s unclean.” “Rise, Peter, kill it.” “I can’t.” “Rise, Peter, kill and eat — don’t call what I have cleansed unclean.”

That’s what’s going on here. You have Jews whose consciences had been trained theologically and religiously for generations, for millennia, that these things — you cannot eat them. Then you have the Greeks and Romans coming out of paganism — idol worship, debauchery, and drunkenness. Before they were saved, they would take animals for sacrifice to the temple of idols, and they would offer sacrifices to the idols in these temples in Rome. And after all of the religious ceremony was done — and, by the way, most of those religious ceremonies also involved one or both of two things: drunkenness, absolute drunken debauchery as part of their worship, and/or sexual immorality, such as temple prostitutes as part of worship — they would bring and sacrifice animals.

When the sacrifice was all over and all the worship ceremony was done, the pagan priests would take those sacrificed animals and slaughter them, and out behind the temple they had a place called the shambles — like an open-air market, a compound of little sheds — and they would hang the meat from all of the sacrifices. The poor people could go behind the temple and buy cheap steak at a discount — discounted steak that had been offered to idols.

Now they are gloriously saved. Now they are in the church. And they are saying, “There is no way I can be a true Christian and honor my God, Jesus Christ who died for me, and eat meat that was sacrificed to that vile idol I used to worship. There’s no way you can be a Christian and eat that meat.” Do you see what’s happening?

Meanwhile, the strong Christian who understands the truth of Scripture is saying, “Come on, we can get cheap steaks,” because he understands that an idol is nothing — there’s no such thing as another god. He also understands that God is the one who created that cow, and when God created the cow, He looked at it and said, “It is good.” So he’s strong in his faith, and he’s saying, “I can eat that meat. God created the cow. These idols are a bunch of foolish nonsense.” And so he’s going back and buying cheap steak, feeling free.

And what’s happening in the church is that the weak believers, young in their faith, saved out of that kind of background, are looking at the one buying those “idol steaks” — that “demon meat” — and judging him: “You can’t be a good Christian and eat that meat.” Meanwhile, the Christian who has grown in his faith and realizes there’s no such thing as an idol, and that God created the cow and gave us all good things to enjoy, is looking at the weak Christian and thinking, “These people — ignorant.” Do you see what’s happening? That’s what Paul is dealing with: welcome one another, and reject disunity.

Now, you might say, “Okay, that’s good and fine, but we don’t have that problem at Kitwe Church. None of us are stumbling. None of us are judging or despising each other over steak. None of us are asking, ‘Where did that chicken come from?'” All right, let me give you some examples of what we do quarrel over sometimes.

Here’s one I’ve experienced: guns — firearms. Should a Christian own or use them? Some time ago, I took my older children to a gun range for target practice and posted some photos on Facebook. The comments from Africa ranged from astonishment that I, as a pastor, could allow my children to shoot a gun, to condemnation — how could I call myself a Christian and use a gun? You can scroll back a couple of years; you’ll find it.

For some, they believe you should never do business on the Lord’s Day, never work on the Lord’s Day — it’s a holy day. Others don’t see that there’s a problem.

Clothing. Should a Christian come to church without a coat and tie? Should ladies come to church in anything other than a dress or a skirt? Do you know there are churches in Zambia where, if a man shows up on a Sunday morning without a coat and tie, they will not allow him into the building? They won’t let you in.

Here’s a big one: alcoholic beverages. Should a Christian ever drink? I was taught growing up, by my parents and my church, that drinking alcohol of any kind was a sin. That’s how I grew up — believing it was a sin. As I became a young adult, entered ministry, and studied Scripture for myself, I found that Scripture gives real warnings — very clearly, that drunkenness is absolutely a sin, that to be intoxicated is a sin, and there is strong wisdom in the book of Proverbs to avoid wine altogether. And yet I could not find one absolute command forbidding it outright. It’s not there.

Even Jesus turned water into wine. There’s a lot to be said about that, and I don’t want to get sidetracked, but if you study the Old Testament, they diluted the wine with water — sometimes six parts water to ten parts wine — so you would have to drink a great deal to get drunk. But it was wine. And for years, as a young man in ministry, I judged those who had a glass of wine with their meal, certain that I had the truth and they didn’t.

I’ve also seen it go the other way — I’ve seen those who partake mocking and pressuring those who abstain. You might ask, “Pastor, what’s your view on this — are you advocating something here?” No, absolutely not. I’ll tell you what I’m advocating: I don’t drink. I never have, and by God’s grace, I never will. But I don’t believe it’s a sin for someone to drink a glass of wine. I’m not going to do it — I don’t think it’s wise — but I also don’t think it’s a sin if somebody does. Drunkenness is a vile evil; it’s wickedness and sin. Scripture is very clear on that. And if you can’t control it, join me in abstaining from it completely. In fact, I’d encourage you to abstain anyway — I think that’s where wisdom is. But if you don’t, I’m not going to judge you.

Do you see what’s happening here? It’s quiet now, because this one is real. The meat-sacrificed-to-idols example, you can say, “That’s crazy old stuff.” But what about this one?

Why do we welcome the weak? Notice what he says: we welcome the weak because God has welcomed them. Don’t judge one another. Don’t despise the one who abstains from certain food. Don’t judge the one who partakes of that food. Don’t despise the one who values special days on the calendar, and don’t judge the one who views every day alike.

The temptation for the strong believer is to despise the weak believer for his applications of Scripture, and the temptation for the weak believer is to judge the strong believer for his exercise of liberty. Instead, we are to bear with each other with grace, gentleness, and love.

Our unity at Kitwe Church is not that we are culturally aligned on what you think is the best way of doing things. We are not seeking uniformity. We are not seeking a monoculture. We have had people visit us at Kitwe Church who later decided God led them somewhere else, to some other church. And when you talk with them, what they often say is, “Kitwe Church — I just wasn’t so comfortable there.” So they found a church that is monocultural — “That’s where I feel comfortable. I just didn’t feel comfortable with all the differences. I just want to be together with people who are only like me, who only think like me, and who only apply Scripture like me.” That’s fine — we’re not going to judge you for that. You’re free in Christ to do that. You’re going to have a hard time in your first few hours in heaven, but that’s okay.

Our unity is not in all of those things. Our unity is that we share the same Master. It’s not only that God has already welcomed this person — this person doesn’t belong to you. He doesn’t answer to you, and you don’t answer to me. That’s what we’ll pick up next Sunday.

We all have a Master to whom we will give an account. So how do we hold firmly to our convictions without judging a brother, and without that brother being critical of us and despising us? How do we maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace? That’s what this text is about, and that’s what we’ll talk about again next week.

Let me ask you this: have you been caught up in this somehow? Have you been affected by a judgmental spirit toward someone in this church, because they don’t align with you culturally, or because some of the applications they make of Scripture are different from yours? Just a little self-evaluation before the Lord this morning as we close. Have you had a harsh, judgmental spirit toward someone who is exercising their liberty in Christ? Do you feel disgust — do you despise someone in this congregation because they’re not as mature as you? Their opinions and their applications — you could go right to Scripture and show them, in your mind, how what they think is nonsense. Have any of us been guilty of that? You see, that will cause disunity within the family of God here at Kitwe Church.

Have you believed in Jesus as your Savior? Is He your Master and Lord? If you are here this morning and you have never trusted Christ as your Savior, I want to invite you to come to Jesus today. Place your faith in Jesus, and God will declare you righteous. This is what Paul has been talking about throughout Romans. He will forgive you of your sins and bring you into His family. If you don’t know Christ this morning, would you receive Him now? And if you, as a Christian, have been caught up in a spirit of judgmentalism, or in despising someone who is not like you, would you acknowledge that to God this morning? Ask Him for forgiveness, and for the grace to love and serve one another the way He commands.

Would you bow your heads together, please? Let me invite you to take a moment of quiet reflection before the Lord.

Heavenly Father, we thank You for the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the uniter of Your church. We thank You that You loved us in Christ, that You deliver us from sin and condemnation in Christ, that You bring us into the body — the church — with all of our differences and all of our varied cultures. And through the grace of God, and through the indwelling Spirit, You enable us to live together in this body in perfect harmony, with hearts of love overflowing for one another, giving each other grace and receiving the same. I pray, Lord, that You would remove from us the spirit of being a judge, remove from us a spirit of despising someone we feel has not reached our level of understanding and application. I pray that the love we have as a congregation would be so strong, so real, so pure and fresh, that it would compel the lost from our city to come near, so that they could hear the glorious gospel that transforms lives in this way. This is where the rubber meets the road. Help us to put our spiritual shoes on and walk in love this week — walk in faith, and walk according to truth. For the one here who does not know You as Savior, may this be the day You deliver them from the guilt of their sins and give them eternal life in Jesus. It’s in His name we pray these things. Amen.