Romans 14 - Introduction

to Romans 15:13. One subject is before the Apostle's mind throughout the whole of this section the relations of “the strong” and “the weak” in the Church at Rome. It is connected in a variety of ways, which are felt rather than expressed, with what precedes. Thus it is pervaded by the same sense of the supreme importance of mutual love among Christians which characterises chaps. 12 and 13. It makes use, in much the same way as chap. Romans 13:11-14, of the impending judgment (Romans 14:10), to quicken the sense of individual and personal responsibility. Possibly, too, there is a more formal connection with chap. 13. Paul has been warning against the indulgence of the flesh (Romans 8:14), and this prompts him, by contrast, to speak of those who by an inadequate appreciation of Christian liberty were practising an “over-scrupulous asceticism”. There has been much discussion as to who “the weak” and “the strong” respectively were. The weakness is weakness in respect of faith; the weak man is one who does not fully appreciate what his Christianity means; in particular, he does not see that the soul which has committed itself to Christ for salvation is emancipated from all law but that which is involved in its responsibility to Him. Hence his conscience is fettered by scruples in regard to customs dating from pre-Christian days. The scruples in question here were connected with the use of flesh and wine, and with the religious observance of certain days (whether as fasts or feasts is open to question). Possibly the persons indulging such scruples were Jewish Christians, but they need not have been. They were certainly not legalists in principle, making the observance of the Jewish law or any part of it an essential condition of the Christian salvation; otherwise Paul, as the Epistle to the Galatians shows, would have addressed them in a different tone. Further, the Jewish law does not prescribe abstinence from wine or from animal food; and there is no suggestion here, as in 1 Corinthians 8, that the difficulty was about food that had been offered in sacrifice to false gods. Hence the influence at work in the Roman Church in producing this scrupulosity of conscience was probably of Essene origin, and akin to that which Paul subsequently treats with greater severity at Colossae (Colossians 2:16). At Rome the scruples were only scruples, and though there was danger in them because they rested on a defective apprehension of Christianity, they could be tenderly dealt with; at Colossae they had grown into or adapted themselves to a philosophy of religion which was fatal to Christianity; hence the change of tone. But though “the weak” need not have been Jews, the scruples in which their weakness was expressed, had so far Jewish connections and Jewish affinities; and it is probable, from the way in which (chap. Romans 15:7-13) the discussion of the relations of the weak and the strong passes over into an exhortation to unity between Jew and Gentile in the Church, that the two classifications had a general correspondence; the weak would be Jews or persons under Jewish influence; the strong would be Gentiles, or persons at least who understood the Gospel as it was preached to the Gentiles by Paul.