Romans 14: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul tells the believers in Rome how to handle disagreements over what to eat and whether certain days are special. He says the person who eats everything and the person who eats only vegetables both answer to God, not to each other, so neither should look down on or judge the other. He then turns to the stronger side: even though no food is unclean in itself, they should not use their freedom in a way that damages someone whose faith is weak. The chapter ends with the rule that whoever eats while doubting is condemned, because anything not done out of faith is sin.

Claim by Claim

1. 14:1
   • Receive the person who is weak in faith.
   • Do not receive him for the purpose of disputing over his opinions.
2. 14:2
   • One person believes he may eat anything.
   • Another person, who is weak, eats only vegetables.
3. 14:3
   • The one who eats must not despise the one who does not eat.
   • The one who does not eat must not judge the one who eats.
   • God has received him.
4. 14:4
   • The one who judges another man's household servant is asked by what right he does so.
   • The servant stands or falls to his own master.
   • He will be made to stand.
   • God is able to make him stand.
5. 14:5
   • One person judges one day to be above another.
   • Another person judges every day alike.
   • Each person is to be fully convinced in his own mind.
6. 14:6
   • The one who observes the day observes it to the Lord.
   • The one who does not observe the day does not observe it, and does so to the Lord.
   • The one who eats, eats to the Lord.
   • The one who eats gives thanks to God.
   • The one who does not eat abstains to the Lord.
   • The one who does not eat gives thanks to God.
7. 14:7
   • None of us lives to himself.
   • None of us dies to himself.
8. 14:8
   • If we live, we live to the Lord.
   • If we die, we die to the Lord.
   • Whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.
9. 14:9
   • Christ died.
   • Christ rose.
   • Christ lived again.
   • Christ did this so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.
10. 14:10
    • The reader is asked why he judges his brother.
    • The reader is asked why he treats his brother as nothing.
    • We will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
11. 14:11
    • It is written.
    • The Lord says, As I live.
    • Every knee will bow to me.
    • Every tongue will confess to God.
12. 14:12
    • Each one of us will give an account of himself to God.
13. 14:13
    • Let us no longer judge one another.
    • Decide instead not to put a stumbling block or an occasion for falling in a brother's way.
14. 14:14
    • I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus.
    • Nothing is unclean in itself.
    • To the person who considers something unclean, it is unclean.
15. 14:15
    • If your brother is grieved because of what you eat, you are no longer walking in love.
    • Do not destroy by your food the one for whom Christ died.
    • Christ died for him.
16. 14:16
    • Do not let the good thing you have be spoken of as evil.
17. 14:17
    • The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking.
    • The kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
18. 14:18
    • The one who serves Christ in these things is pleasing to God.
    • The one who serves Christ in these things is approved by men.
19. 14:19
    • Let us pursue the things that make for peace.
    • Let us pursue the things by which one builds up another.
20. 14:20
    • Do not tear down the work of God for the sake of food.
    • All things are clean.
    • It is evil for the person who eats so as to cause stumbling.
21. 14:21
    • It is good not to eat meat.
    • It is good not to drink wine.
    • It is good not to do anything by which your brother stumbles.
    • It is good not to do anything by which your brother is offended.
    • It is good not to do anything by which your brother is made weak.
22. 14:22
    • The reader is asked whether he has faith.
    • Keep the faith you have to yourself before God.
    • The person who does not condemn himself in what he approves is happy.
23. 14:23
    • The one who doubts is condemned if he eats.
    • He is condemned because his eating is not from faith.
    • Whatever is not from faith is sin.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

14:1

"Doubtful disputations" is 1611 English for arguments over disputed opinions. The Greek phrase is genuinely ambiguous and has been read two ways: do not welcome him in order to sit in judgment on his scruples, or do not welcome him into quarrels about matters of opinion. "Weak in the faith" does not mean half-hearted or a beginner; throughout this chapter it is a label for the person whose conscience will not let him treat certain foods and certain days as matters of indifference.

14:2

"Herbs" in 1611 English meant garden vegetables in general, not flavorings. Meat in a Roman city market often came from animals killed in pagan sacrifice, and it was almost never butchered according to Jewish law. A buyer usually could not tell which was which, so the safe course for a scrupulous believer was to eat no meat at all.

14:3

"Despise" here has its older and broader sense of looking down on someone and writing him off as beneath notice, rather than actively hating him.

14:4

The word translated "servant" is the ordinary one for a household slave, who belonged to one owner and answered to that owner alone. An outsider who corrected another man's slave was insulting the master, not the slave, and had no standing to do it. "Holden up" is simply the older form of held up.

14:5

The days at issue were most likely the weekly Sabbath, the annual Jewish festivals, and the regular fast days. Some in the Roman congregation still marked these out; others treated every day as standing on the same footing.

14:6

"Regard" here means to treat as significant, to observe. The King James clause "and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it" is missing from the oldest surviving Greek manuscripts and is therefore absent from most modern translations, which is why the sentence is shorter in them.

14:8

"Lord" means master, the one in charge. Here it is a name for Jesus.

14:9

"Revived" in 1611 English meant came back to life, so it is not a third event after dying and rising. The oldest manuscripts say simply that Christ died and lived; the King James follows later copies that read died, rose, and lived again.

14:10

"Set at nought" is older English for treating a person as worth nothing, counting him as zero. The "judgment seat" is the bema, the raised platform in a Greek or Roman city from which an official heard cases and delivered his verdict in public view. Many early manuscripts read "the judgment seat of God" here rather than "of Christ," which is why translations differ at this point. "Brother" throughout the chapter means a fellow member of the congregation, male or female, not a blood relative.

14:11

The quotation is from Isaiah 45:23, opening with "As I live," the standard formula for an oath sworn by God in the Hebrew scriptures. "Confess" here does not mean admitting a fault; it means declaring something openly, saying out loud in public who God is.

14:13

Two images from the same world stand behind this verse. A "stumblingblock" is something left lying in a path that a walker trips over. "An occasion to fall" translates a word that originally named the baited trigger stick of a trap. The verse also turns on a play on one word: stop judging each other, and instead judge, that is, decide, this one thing.

14:14

"Unclean" translates a word that literally means common or ordinary. In Jewish usage it was a technical term for food that was not fit for God's people to eat, a question of ritual status rather than of dirt or spoilage.

14:15

"Meat" in the King James means food of any kind, not flesh in particular. "Charitably" uses charity in its 1611 sense of love, so to walk charitably is to conduct yourself in love; it has nothing to do with giving to the poor. "Grieved" here means distressed or pained, not bereaved.

14:16

The Greek does not say what "your good" refers to, and readers have taken it as the believer's own freedom to eat, as the gospel itself, or as the shared life of the congregation. "Evil spoken of" translates the verb behind the English word blaspheme, which in everyday Greek meant simply to slander someone or speak abusively of them.

14:17

"Meat and drink" again means food and drink in general. "Holy Ghost" is not a different being from the Holy Spirit: ghost in 1611 English meant spirit, and the King James translators used the two words interchangeably.

14:19

"Edify" comes from the Latin for putting up a building. To edify someone is to build him up, and the picture behind the word is of a congregation as a structure under construction.

14:20

"Meat" here again means food of any kind. The last clause is compressed in the Greek and can be read two ways: as a warning to the person who eats while his own conscience objects, or as a warning to the person whose eating trips somebody else up. Translations divide over which is meant.

14:21

"Flesh" means the meat of animals, its normal sense in 1611. Meat and wine are paired because both were routinely tied to pagan worship: portions of a sacrificed animal were sold on for food, and wine was poured out as an offering to a god before the rest was drunk.

14:22

"Alloweth" in 1611 English meant approved of or gave sanction to, a stronger word than merely permitted. "Happy" translates a word usually rendered blessed, meaning fortunate or well placed rather than cheerful. The opening words can also be punctuated as a statement rather than a question: the faith you have, keep to yourself before God.

14:23

"Damned" in 1611 English meant condemned or found guilty at a trial; it had not yet narrowed to mean sentenced to hell. "Faith" in this verse keeps the sense it has carried since verse 1, a settled confidence that one is free to act, rather than belief in God in general.