Romans 14:1-12 Commentary

For millennia, Christians have professed Christ “will come again to judge the living and the dead.” But some of Jesus’ friends have struggled to reconcile that assertion with our profession of God’s saving grace. How and why, some of us wonder, will God judge those whom God has already graciously rescued?

Earlier commentaries (https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2017-09-11/romans-141-12/ and https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2020-09-07/romans-141-12-2/ and https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2023-09-11/romans-141-12-3/) offered possible approaches to the proclamation of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. Preachers who feel the Spirit prompting us to take another “route” might, however, choose to view the text through the lens of judgment.

After all, the theme of judgment doesn’t just pervade this text. It also basically brackets Romans 14:1-12’s proclamation of the gospel. While it begins with Paul’s call to “accept” our fellow Christians whose faith is “weak,” the ground of that call is verse 4’s “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant?” The apostle then ends this Sunday’s Lesson with verse 12’s “Each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.”

The issue of Christian judgment is as current as today’s social media posts or denominational headlines. Yet it had a specific context for Rome’s Christian readers of Paul’s letter. That revolved around appropriate responses to God’s amazing grace.

Specifically, some Christians’ faith allowed them to “eat anything.” Other friends of Jesus ate “only vegetables.” Yet both groups were judging each other’s dietary practices. So neither those whose faith was strong enough to eat anything nor those whose faith limited their diet had a “corner” on judgment of and contempt for their brothers and sisters in Christ. They were equal opportunity dispensers of criticism of their fellow Christians with whom they disagreed on what Paul calls in verse 1 “disputable matters” [dialogismon*].”

That scourge continues to afflict Christ’s 21^st century church. Relatively few of our sources of disagreement revolve around things like Sabbath observance and dietary practices. Now some of our disputes revolve around things like immigration and creation care, as well as ordination and human sexuality.

Jesus’ friends on both sides of these debates usually assume we have the right interpretation of God’s will for our lives together as fellow citizens and siblings in Christ. Both sides are sometimes eager to publicly share our views and sometimes harshly criticize those who don’t share them.

Preachers who wish to explore Paul’s condemnation of such divisiveness might begin by helping our hearers to think about some of the apostle’s terms. In verse 1 he refers to dialogismon (“disputable matters”). The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translates this as “opinions.”

Most Christians have historically recognized and agreed on the essentials of the faith as they’re contained in, for example, the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. But we have a variety of strongly held opinions about how to interpret God’s Word’s address to more debatable issues.

Of course, Christians seem to argue almost endlessly about just what is “disputable” and what is essential to our faith. That’s a reason why preachers want to help our hearers think about some of the terms Paul uses for Christians’ reactions to those differences.

In verse 1 the apostle rejects “quarreling” [diakrises] about “disputable matters.” This Greek term contains an element of the kind of passing of judgment that echoes throughout this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson.

The Message interprets those who quarrel as people who jump all over our fellow Christians every time they do or say something with which we don’t agree. The New Living Translation (NLT) paraphrases verse 1 as Paul rejecting those who argue with our fellow Christians about what they think is right or wrong.

The apostle echoes his rejection of such arguing in verse 3’s “treating with contempt” [exoutheneito] Jesus’ friends whose interpretations of the Bible differ from our own. The NRSV translates this as “despise.” Each conveys the sense of “looking down on” people who disagree with us on debatable matters. Paul rejects any attempt by Christians to view Jesus’ followers with whom we disagree as somehow less beloved by God than us.

In verses 3 and 4 Paul twice refers to Greek terms whose root word is krino (“judge”). Christians may not, he insists in verse 3, “judge” [krineto] those whose opinions differ from ours. Nor may we, the apostle adds in verse 4, “judge” [krinon] our brothers and sisters in Christ’s whose opinions on debatable matters are different from our own.

Paul isn’t condemning healthy disagreement about these issues. Nor does he reject a humble and respectful examination of Christians’ opinions. What he condemns is a kind of rejection that carries with it a condemnation of the opinion holders. There is room for loving disagreement about disputable matters among God’s adopted family members. The apostle leaves no room for questioning another’s faithful reception of God’s amazing grace.

After all, those whom we’re tempted to condemn are, by God’s grace, the Lord’s “servants” (4). No image-bearer of God is another image-bearer’s master. God is, for Jesus’ sake, Lord. As a result, God’s servants take our marching orders not from our fellow Christians, but from God. We are, what’s more, accountable to God alone.

On top of that, as Paul adds in verses 7-8, none of us live either for each other or “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.”

Jesus’ friends don’t live, first of all, to honor or please other people. We do everything to serve, honor and please God. As The Message paraphrases these verses, “It’s God we’re answerable to – all the way from life to death and everything in between – not each other.”

It’s that “answering to” God to which Paul more fully turns his attention in verses 10-12. There he insists “We must all stand before God’s judgment [bemati Theou].” In writing this, Paul implies human judgments are often deeply flawed. God alone makes no mistakes in judgment. So it’s neither God’s image-bearers’ right or place to judge our fellow image-bearers. That solemn responsibility belongs to God alone.

As the apostle goes on to quote Isaiah 45:23 as saying, “‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow [kampsei] before me; every tongue will acknowledge [exomologesetai] God’.” Christians often see this as reference to the universal, worshipful outcome of God’s return to unite heaven and earth.

But Paul sees it as also referring to God’s final judgment. He suggests while people may choose to resist God’s judgments on this side of the new creation, no one will be able to resist them at the end of measured time. Each of us will fully submit ourselves to God. We will all acknowledge God’s lordship.

The apostle concludes this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson by insisting in verse 12, “each of us [hekastos hemon] will give an account [logon] of ourselves [heautou] to the Lord.” Preachers can admit these are not easy words to understand. We also want to look at them through the lens of our own faith tradition.

The Message removes some of the sense of God’s final judgment from its paraphrase of verse 12 by interpreting Paul as concluding, “Mind your own business. You’ve got your hands full just taking care of your own life before God.” The NLT’s paraphrase has a more eschatological flavor: “Each of us will have to give a personal account to God.” The NRSV simply translates verse 12 as meaning, “Each one of us will be held accountable.”

Preachers might choose to say little more about that accountability than the following things. No human being will be exempt from God’s final judgment. Both God’s adopted children and enemies will one day stand before God’s judgment seat.

Every image-bearer of God will, what’s more, have to answer to God for both the good and bad things we’ve done. We won’t be able to hide anything or hold anything back. After all, God knows us so well that God knows even our sins about which no one else knows.

On top of that, that revealing will not result in God’s dearly beloved people‘s eternal condemnation. No matter what else it provokes, God’s final judgment will prompt our shouts of joy that God has already forgiven our sins.

Finally, at God’s final judgment our gratitude for the work of Jesus will only be enlarged by its reminder that Christ lived, died, and rose again that we might be forgiven of every one of our failures to love God above all and our neighbor as ourselves. At Christ’s return God will graciously remind God’s adopted children that God’s unconditional love for us is greater than even the mountains of sin we’ve accumulated over our lifetime.

So Christians can stop looking down on and judging our fellow Christians. We can, instead, continue to look “up” to the heavenly realm to beg God, “Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus.”

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment includes Marmeladov’s drunken prospective for divine forgiveness at the end: “When [the judge] has finished with everyone, then he shall say to us: ‘And ye also,’ he’ll say, ‘come forth! Come forth ye winebibbers, come forth ye weaklings, come forth ye profligates!’ And we will all come forth and stand there unashamed. And he shall say: ‘Ye are swine! Ye have the beast’s image and stamp on you; but come ye also!’

And the wise … and the judicious shall say: ‘Lord, why dost thou receive these men?’ And he shall say: ‘I receive them, O wise [and] … judicious ones, because not one of them ever considered himself worthy of it . . . .’ And he shall stretch forth his hands to us, and we shall fall at his feet . . . . and weep . . . . and understand all!”