Romans 14:1-6, 10
Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations. For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him. Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand. One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks…
But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): We have in this chapter an account of the unhappy contention which had broken out in the Christian church…It was not so much the difference itself that did the mischief as the mismanagement of the difference, making it a bone of contention. Those who were strong, and knew their Christian liberty, and made use of it, despised the weak, who did not. Whereas they should have pitied them, and helped them, and afforded them meek and friendly instruction, they trampled upon them as silly, and humoursome, and superstitious, for scrupling those things which they knew to be lawful: so apt are those who have knowledge to be puffed up with it, and to look disdainfully and scornfully upon their brethren.
JOHN NEWTON (1725-1807): There is a principle of self, which disposes us to despise those who differ from us, and we are often under its influence, when we think we are only showing a becoming zeal in the cause of God.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): We must remember that men who are equally honest may differ.
THOMAS MANTON (1620-1677): Where men are right in the main, and give diligence to know God’s mind, there will be mistakes in lesser things. All have not parts alike, and gifts and graces alike; and therefore there is some variety of opinions and interpretations of Scripture among the godly wise. Every man is not so happy to be so well studied, nor hath that ability to understand, nor so furnished with acquired helps of arts and tongues, nor such a degree of the Spirit. There is a difference in age, growth, and experience, among good men; some are babes, and some grown in years, in Christianity.
MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546): Give men time. I took three years of constant study, reflection, and discussion to arrive where I now am, and can the common man, untutored in such matters, be expected to move the same distance in three months?
WILLIAM JAY (1769-1853): Many religious people are blamable here…They want to effect everything at a stroke. They forget their own ignorance and slowness when God began to deal with them. They forget Him who does not despise the day of small things. They forget Him who said to His followers, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now,” John 16:12.
THOMAS GOODWIN (1600-1679): Yea, further, some of them were censorious, and judging all others rashly that were not of their minds.
MATTHEW HENRY: Those who were weak, and durst not use their Christian liberty, judged and censured the strong who did [use their liberty], as if they were loose Christians, carnal professors, that cared not what they did, but walked at all adventures, and stuck at nothing. They judged them as breakers of the law, condemners of God’s ordinance, and the like. Such censures as these discovered a great deal of rashness and uncharitableness, and would doubtless tend much to the alienating of affection.
ANDREW FULLER (1754-1815): Hence arise debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults. Thus the sweets of society, both civil and religious, are embittered; and, instead of the ills of life diminishing, they greatly accumulate in our hands.
THOMAS MANTON: Censuring is a pleasing sin, extremely compliant with nature.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: It is a self-righteous spirit. Self is always at the back of it, and it is always a manifestation of self-righteousness, a feeling of superiority, and a feeling that we are all right while others are not. That then leads to censoriousness, and a spirit that is always ready to express itself in a derogatory manner. And then, accompanying that, there is the tendency to despise others, to regard them with contempt.
JOHN NEWTON: Yea, I would add, the best of men are not wholly free from this leaven; and therefore are too apt to be pleased with such representations as hold up our adversaries to ridicule, and by consequence flatter our own superior judgments.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: It seems to me, further, that a very vital part of this spirit is the tendency to be hypercritical. Now there is all the difference in the world between being critical and being hypercritical…The man who is hypercritical, which means that he delights in criticism for its own sake and enjoys it. I am afraid I must go further and say that he is a man who approaches anything which he is asked to criticize expecting to find faults, indeed, almost hoping to find them. The simplest way, perhaps, of putting all this is to ask you to read 1 Corinthians chapter 13. Look at the negative of everything positive which Paul says about love. Love “hopeth all things,” but this spirit hopes for the worst; it gets a malicious, malign satisfaction in finding faults and blemishes. It is a spirit that is always expecting them, and is almost disappointed if it does not find them; it is always on the look-out for them, and rather delights in them. There is no question about that, the hypercritical spirit is never really happy unless it finds these faults. And, of course, the result of all this is that it tends to fix attention upon matters that are indifferent and to make of them matters of vital importance.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): If we really believe a truth, we shall be decided about it. But certainly we are not to show our decision by that obstinate, furious, wolfish bigotry which cuts off every other body from the chance and hope of salvation and the possibility of being regenerate or even decently honest if they happen to differ from us about the color of a scale of the great leviathan. Some individuals appear to be naturally cut on the cross; they are manufactured to be rasps, and rasp they will. Sooner than not quarrel with you they would raise a question upon the color of invisibility, or the weight of a nonexistent substance. They are up in arms with you, not because of the importance of the question under discussion, but because of the far greater importance of their being always the Pope of the party.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): As we grow older we have less patience with those who demand that others must adopt their interpretation of Scripture on all points.
MATTHEW HENRY: Well, this was the disease, and we see it remaining in the church to this day; the like differences, in like manner mismanaged, are still the disturbers of the church’s peace.
