Romans 14 – a beautiful chapter in the Bible. It is one of the most comprehensive sections of Scripture regarding our liberty in Christ, our relationship to food, drink, holy days, etc., and how we are to love one another in spite of our different convictions.
The context of the chapter is as follows: the Christians in Rome were both Jewish and Gentile, and they needed to understand how to love each other. Some of the Jewish Christians still observed Torah regulations related to diet and looked down on their Gentile brothers and sisters because they did not. Some of the Gentile Christians thought their Jewish brothers and sisters were too scrupulous and looked down on them for being so “traditional.” The Apostle Paul corrected both groups, reminding them that their mutual faith in Christ was the basis of their unity and that they were to leave room for differing convictions of conscience.
Given all that, what principles from Romans 14 can we apply to our lives today? We have been given amazing freedom in Christ. We are no longer bound to strict Torah-observance in regard to food, drink, or holy days. But as the saying goes, with great freedom comes great responsibility.
Even more important than liberty is love. We are called to willingly surrender our liberty in order to love our brothers and sisters in the faith. How do we do that? By not causing them to stumble. Therefore, Paul told the Gentile Christians not to look down upon their Jewish brethren, and vice versa.
If our exercise of liberty causes a brother or sister to stumble in sin due to a weak conscience, love dictates we willingly lay down our liberty so as to not wound them.
Love is a higher priority than liberty.
This is a constant theme throughout the New Testament. Love for one another is the whole reason the Holy Spirit gave spiritual gifts to the Church. Paul tells us the importance of the gifts is in direct proportion to how much they edify the Church (1 Cor. 14:5), which is why he puts a higher premium on prophecy than tongues—the one who speaks in a known language is able to edify the entire Church, whereas the one who speaks in an unknown language only edifies him/herself. The gifts the Lord has given us were given in order that we might build one another up. He did not give them so that we would only please ourselves.
“Our Lord does not so much look at the greatness of our actions, or even at their difficulty, as at the love with which we do them.” – St. Therese of Lisieux