The book of Romans expounds as much on how we bear with one another in love as it does on the doctrine of justification. In this episode of You’re Not Crazy, Ray Ortlund and Sam Allberry delve into this important section of Paul’s letter, considering matters of conscience, how to love the weaker brother, and what it means to be convinced in our own minds. They also celebrate the beautiful diversity of Christ’s church and the important call to delight in our differences.
Recommended resource: One with My Lord: The Life-Changing Reality of Being in Christ by Sam Allberry (Crossway)
Transcript
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Sam Allberry
If I’m doing something, just because the person I look up to is telling me to do it that isn’t my own genuine faith.
Ray Ortlund
We don’t ultimately answer to one another. I will give an account to him of how I’ve lived in this life, and he will tell me his assessment and my opinion on that great and final day will count for zero.
Sam Allberry
This is you’re not crazy. I’m Sam Albury, I’m with my dear friend, Ray Ortlund.
Ray Ortlund
Great to be with you, Sam.
Sam Allberry
Thank you so much for joining us. We love this opportunity to spend this time with you. We don’t take your time for granted, particularly for those listening who are younger pastors, we we so esteem you and the work you’re doing. If we’ve read the Bible correctly, then you really matter.
Ray Ortlund
Yes, and that’s why this podcast is called you’re not crazy, because sometimes in pastoral ministry, we are strongly tempted to think I’m crazy, to be doing this. And so we Sam, and I just want to say to you, thank you for following the call of Christ. Thank you for sticking your neck out. Thank you for doing the right things. Thank you for staying faithful. And you’re not crazy to put Jesus first.
Sam Allberry
We are, as you will know if you’ve been listening along, working our way through Romans 12 to 15, and today we’re beginning Romans chapter 14. We’re looking at verses one to 12, but really this is the start of a whole larger discussion that lasts a chapter and a half in Romans 14 and 15, where Paul is talking about how we bear with one another, how we receive and welcome one another. We need to get our heads around that. The fact that Paul gives so much time to this shows that this is this is not a small issue. Paul spends as much time on how we bear with one another as He did on justification.
Ray Ortlund
I’m so struck by that Sam that Paul in the way he budgets his writing of Romans, spends about as much space and time talking about getting along together in our churches as he spent explaining the doctrine of justification by faith. That’s amazing. Apparently, that doctrine, which is sacred and precious to Paul and to us, that doctrine creates and calls for a relational beauty that deserves the same authority, urgency and attention in pastoral ministry.
Sam Allberry
Well, to borrow from language you’ve used before. Ray, if we’re not giving attention to that relational beauty, we are un preaching the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Because if we all come to God on the same basis, we don’t get to look down on each other. We don’t get to discard each other. And so this business of bearing with one another, not passing judgment on one another, welcoming one another is all evidence of the truth of justification by faith alone. It’s showing that we really, we really live this. Now, to get into this ray, I want to ask you a question, what is the most culturally unfamiliar environment you have found yourself in?
Ray Ortlund
Well, I remember going to some concerts in the late 1960s which were extremely comfortable. I went to here. I saw the Beatles, I saw Jefferson Airplane. I saw three dog night. I saw Fleetwood Mac. But uncomfortable in a way, it’s almost embarrassing as I look back on that salmon what I was comfortable with then, but what I was uncomfortable with sometimes in church settings where the protocols of liturgy and so forth were so specific that I was afraid to step on a landmine say the wrong thing, not not follow those protocols. Very particularly that was uncomfortable. How about you?
Sam Allberry
Well, I’ve been in situations like that where I’ve certainly felt very uncomfortable. I was thinking more in terms of feeling culturally unfamiliar somewhere I did a mission trip many, many years ago, I was only in my mid 20s, to Thailand and went to a to visit some church planters in a very remote, mountainous tribal region, and spent a few days with them in this little village which had electricity, but not much else. And I didn’t know the language. I didn’t know anything. Thankfully, I had these hosts who could steer me through some of it, but I just remember interacting with people in the village thinking I’d have no idea all the cultural cues are so unfamiliar to me, and I was realizing I was offending people, left, right and center, just by existing. I just didn’t know what I was meant. To do, how I was meant to carry myself, house, meant to sit, all of those things I mentioned that right? Because some some differences among us are more visible and more obvious, and we kind of, we make allowance for that, and we brace for it, and we try and work around it. If we find ourselves in a church where there’s ethnic diversity, we kind of with we’re attuned to that. Doesn’t mean we always handle it perfectly, but we’re kind of aware that that’s something we need to bear in mind and factor in. Similarly, when we have a wide range of of ages or wide range of economic backgrounds, we sort of make adjustments in our in our mind. Paul is talking in these chapters about another aspect of difference that tends to be more subtle, and it’s what he calls the weak and the strong. Do you want to help us understand who Paul is talking about in that categorization?
Ray Ortlund
He says in chapter 14, verse one, as for the one who is weak in faith, not an unbeliever, not necessarily even a new believer, but one who is weak in faith. Welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. So here we’re talking about how we get along when we have different opinions. I wonder. Let me set it up this way. Tell me what you think. You can disagree with my opinion. Okay, we have first order doctrines. Is the Triune God really there? Or is that a construct of our own imaginations? Well, if I believe that the Triune God is there, that’s that’s a Christian essential. I can’t be a Christian without believing that at the next level, am I going to be Presbyterian or Baptist, or Anglican or Lutheran, whatever? That’s a secondary level. It’s an important doctrine, but it’s going to locate me in a particular kind of church. Then with, let’s say I’m Presbyterian, just for the sake of discussion, within a Presbyterian Church, there are going to be differences of opinion about all kinds of things, such as your you’re mentioning and and we, we walk into church, not just as Christians, not just as Presbyterians or Baptists or whatever, but as human beings with this sort of bundle of each of us is kind of a package deal, and we walk in with lots of opinions as well, and sometimes we bump up against each other at the level of opinion in such a way that even though we’re Christians, even though we’re denominationally well located, it’s hard to get along. Yeah. So that’s what I think Paul is talking about in and it’s of urgent pastoral relevance, obviously.
Sam Allberry
Yeah. And there’s a there’s a particular historical background to this, because Paul is, you know, that the issues he talks about in verse two, one person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables, he talks about certain days as well that people want to observe and others don’t. It seems likely Paul is referring to people who’ve converted from from Judaism and are still bringing some of those Jewish sensibilities into their Christian faith and feeling like they should be observing aspects of the law that no longer are binding to Christians, which is, I think, is why Paul frames it as weak versus strong. Because Paul goes on to say, later on, we’ll get to this that, you know, the Christian has freedom to eat whatever he wants. Jesus has declared all foods clean. Paul is clear about his own position. There’s obviously some people have the problem with a conscience that isn’t sensitive at all, an under sensitive conscience. But there are, there can be an issue where people have consciences that are very sensitive about things the Bible says are okay. One example might be Christians today, who would, who would believe that, as a matter of conscience, no believers should drink or use alcohol? You could imagine, if someone has come from a background where there’s been a lot of alcoholism, a lot of alcohol abuse, that would be a really understandable position for them to be in. So think, how could, how could a Christian use alcohol?
Ray Ortlund
But it’s not an absolute biblical issue.
Sam Allberry
It’s not a biblical prohibition, but it’s where someone has a very tender conscience. And so this, this seems to be the kind of dynamic Paul is talking about here, how we how we respond, because the temptation would be for the for the more mature Christian, just to think, Oh, come on, get over it. Stop being overly fussy here, here’s a drink. Take it. Have it. Let me show you that it’s fine. And there might be a temptation for the RE Christian just to think everyone else is being a complete pagan. So there’s there’s the potential for tension. Paul begins and ends this whole section with the command to welcome. Uh. Romans, 14, verse one, welcome him, the one who is weak in faith. Romans, 15, verse seven, therefore, welcome one another. So how we how we receive each other within those differing sensitivities and differences really matters, and it’s a way to put the gospel on display.
Ray Ortlund
And as I understand it, Sam, the whole letter of Romans funnels down to these very issues. His primary purpose is not to instruct us in the doctrine of justification by faith, wonderful though that is, but the touchdown Paul wants to score is the church in Rome, happy together, both strong and weak, both confident and tender hearted people coming together, welcoming one another, rejoicing over one another, letting their differences go and uniting around Christ. Now, as I understand the back story to be this, as I recall, in the year 49 Jewish people, not just Jewish Christians, just Jewish people, were were exiled from Rome for political reasons. And then with the death of Claudius, and I think 54 they were allowed back in well, the churches had presumably been planted by and led by Jewish believers in Jesus initially, but when they left town, the churches didn’t stop and go on hold for five years. So now you can imagine how awkward a congregational meeting would be in in the year 55 for example, and in and and the the churches had changed. While those Jewish leaders had been out of town, the culture of the church had changed, the customs, the allowances, the feel, the vibe. Someone said that culture is not what we see, it’s what we see with and every church has a culture. So these churches have changed. Now the Jewish people have come back with understandable expectations that they’re going to return to their influence and so forth. Well, you can imagine that in a congregational meeting, one of the Jewish leaders, former leaders, says, Stand up and says, Well, back in my day, we never did it like that, and a Gentile leader stands up and says, Well, while y’all were out of town, we kept the home fires burning here, and it would have been tense.
Sam Allberry
Yeah, yeah. Are there BLT sandwiches at the church picnic, things like that?
Ray Ortlund
Yes. So Paul teaches the great doctrines of the gospel to help these highly diverse and understandably, and I don’t mean this in a disparaging way, opinionated Christians, because we all are yes, come together and rejoice over each other. I am so struck that here in chapter 14, verse three regarding the so called weak Christian, the more tender conscienced Christian, it says God has welcomed that Christian.
Sam Allberry
Yeah, it’s interesting that he, he starts it this way round, let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains past judgment on the one who eats for God has welcomed him. So both of us are dealing with people that God has welcomed.
Ray Ortlund
And if God has welcomed you. Sam, who do I think I am to stand aloof?
Sam Allberry
Yeah, it’s it’s so easy, isn’t it? RO, I feel this bubbling up in my own sinful heart, where I I have a category of that kind of Christian that I’m tempted to roll my eyes at. And it this, this, this Pierce is my my heart reading this now that actually there’s no Christian I should be kind of like, oh, that you wanted them kind of thing, because if that is someone God has welcomed through the shed blood of Christ, then I’m actually demeaning the shed blood of Christ if I was refusing that person, or aloof from them or keeping a distance from them.
Ray Ortlund
So what we’re talking about here is not a matter of manners and mere niceness. It’s a matter of honoring Christ and His finished work on the cross. It’s a matter of believing the Gospel with a whole heart and letting its implications move out and create beauty in this world. Sam, it seems to me, one of the burning issues of our day is, how on earth are we touchy human beings going to get along? Yeah, that is at the forefront of everyone’s concern in our culture right now.
Sam Allberry
And the answer looking around us is we just don’t get along. And if the church is not displaying a different answer. Yeah. Well, we’ve used this language before. Ray, but Paul is locating this in the category of orthodoxy. It’s where the gospel, rather hits the relational road. Are we actually going to believe the gospel at the level of treating the welcome Jesus has given to sinners so seriously that actually it reshapes our own posture.
Ray Ortlund
Sam, I love that I believe in that I feel the urgency of that. And what Paul accomplishes here in Romans 14 and 15 is he gives people space to have opinions about these he doesn’t say stop thinking No, because he says down here in verse five of chapter 14, each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. So we’re entitled. We have every right to believe as we believe in in this area of mere opinion. Yeah, but we have no right to separate from each other because of those opinions. Yeah. So for example, here’s an ideal church scenario, if I’m tracking with the Apostle Paul here, sitting in the front row of a church. And I, I saw this at a manual and just enjoyed it for during my ministry there. Here’s Okay, so here’s a here’s a student with orange hair and piercings and and and his whole demeanor bespeaks a very sort of cutting edge, trendy kind of persona. Sitting next to him is a middle aged real estate broker in a suit and tie. Sitting next to him is an African American social activist who is exerting powerful influence in the city to open doors for minorities. Sitting next to her is a 10 year old kid who is doodling on a piece of paper during the sermon and so forth. You just have this fascinating variety of human profiles, interests, cultures, concerns and so forth, and they are all welcomed by God, and they actually like each other.
Sam Allberry
And if I, if I don’t, welcome someone, God has welcomed, what I’m saying is, I know better than God. I’ve got better standards in him. I’m struck, right? You mentioned verse five there, where Paul says each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. That must mean that you can’t just have second hand opinions, where you think, Well, I I believe this because I like so and so and so and so believes this part of our responsibility is, is to come to our own mind, to think it through for ourselves. And it’s very easy for us to inherit opinions on all these sorts of things, isn’t it, because we have our particular leaders that we follow, writers, authors, whatever it is, maybe just someone in the church that we look up to, it’s easy to have other people do our thinking for us, and to think, well, you know, whatever, whatever Don Carson said, I’ll believe, but to think actually, no, we’ve got to be fully convinced. In his own mind, all of us have been given that dignity and agency and responsibility to think as Christians for ourselves.
Ray Ortlund
What a great point. I’d not thought of it that way, Christianity does not suppress thinking. Christianity arouses and stimulates thinking.
Sam Allberry
And it’s, you know, I’d love to, I’m sure your son, Gavin, with some of the debates he’s had with with Catholic thinkers, where they sometimes lament the individualism of us Protestants. But it seems to me from a verse like this, we we do have an individual conscience that we are to exercise. And so one, one response to these differing sensitivities and sensibilities within a church might be for the leader to say, well, listen, I’m just going to this is the line, and everyone’s got to follow the line, and then that will resolve it. You could kind of resolve it by fiat, but Paul is saying that everyone has to be convinced in their own mind if I’m if I’m doing something, just because the person I look up to is telling me to do it. That isn’t my own genuine faith.
Ray Ortlund
You know, Sam, I wonder if the next great awakening will because each Great Awakening we’ve seen has featured different emphases and different glories of God, I wonder if the next one will be and will emphasize delighting our delighting in differences, as opposed. Too. Sam, what grieves me, what I’ve seen over the last decade or so, the last 10 or 12 years, is true hearted, good hearted, conscientious Christians unable to stick together as friends. But Paul talks about bearing with one another here in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wonderful book, life together. He has, in the the chapter on ministering to one another, he has a whole section on bearing with one another. He points out how the Bible repeatedly refers to to Christ as bearing our sins, bearing with us. The Gospel moves us away from being explosive, easily detonated, touchy, to being absorbent, cheerfully absorbent, because God has welcomed us. We don’t know better than God. Who should be included, yeah, and and we also believe in the perseverance of the saints. We believe in the Endless Love of God. Nothing will ever separate us from His love. In Jesus, Christ, our Lord. Chapter Eight, verses 31 to 39 What if Sam, you and I and every listener, what if we make it a life goal, by God’s grace, from now on, we will stop losing friends in so far as it lies within our power, we’re going to stick together from now on, in
Sam Allberry
Verse six, having told us to have our own our own mind. Paul says, The one who observes the day observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. I’m struck by that, that when I encounter someone who does have a different opinion to me on some of these things, and again, that can be challenging. That can be, yeah, that can be challenging to our unity and our ability to get along, even if I think their opinion is unnecessary or unfounded or they’re being over sensitive on something the Bible gives us freedom on, I am still to to love the fact that they’re doing that for the Lord. Oh, good. So even if they’re, they’re kind of maybe causing Ruckers saying no Christian should ever watch that TV show, whatever that might be. And I think, well, you can’t say that. You can’t bind other people to that. That’s that’s not something that the scriptures have given us clear teaching on. But I am to think they’re doing that in an in an earnest, sincere desire to honor the Lord, and I can give thanks for that. So even if I don’t share their opinion, I can share their their orientation, and I can affirm their desire to honor the Lord. That’s good, even if the conclusion is not the conclusion I’ve come to in what that looks like.
Ray Ortlund
Yeah, he connects it in verses seven, and following, he’s with the Lordship of Christ. He says, None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lords. For to this end, Christ died and lived again that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. The Lordship of Christ doesn’t make us less tolerant of one another, but more tolerant of one another. Revering His Lordship, and I’m so struck as well Sam that these sort of low level debates that we have, these little disagreements and clashes we have about mere opinions. Paul connects that consideration all the way up to the very highest and most glorious doctrine, the Lordship of Christ over the whole of life and over the whole body of Christ, such that whether we live get beyond debating whether we live or die, we will keep in reverent mind the Lordship of Christ over all.
Sam Allberry
It’s interesting. He says in the next verse, verse 10, why do you pass judgment on your brothers, or you, why do you despise your brothers? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. And it’s as if Paul was saying, having established and reminded us of the Lordship of Christ, our judging of each other is, I mean, we’re back in Romans two land. It’s, it’s another form of rebellion. It’s denying. It’s effectively saying, I can be Lord of this little area.
Ray Ortlund
I’m humbled by that. I’m so struck by that we don’t alt. Ultimately answer to one another. He says verse 12. So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. I will give an account to him of how I’ve lived in this life, and he will tell me his assessment. Now I of course, bring it all under the blood of Christ. He is my only hope. But it is also true simultaneously that we bear a solemn responsibility before the Lord, but not ultimately toward to each other. So that overly conscientious, hyper conscientious Christian whose heart is given to Christ will be strongly and warmly commended by God, and my opinion, on that great and final day will count for zero.
Sam Allberry
Ray I’m stricken. I’m sure many pastors will resonate with this, with with those who are weaker in the faith. They they can often tend to be the ones who generate more more discussion and elders meetings than than other people. They’re often pushing against something or writing emails to the church leadership. And hours of elders meetings can be, can be taken up with discussing some of these kinds of fractious issues, and it’s it can be tempting for us, therefore, as Paul warns us, not to to to despise people who have these opinions, have these consciences that are more tender than they might need to be.
Ray Ortlund
And my own weakness, of course, is that those are the people in church that I tend not to like, just to be blunt about it, and yet this clearly says God has welcomed them. So God is stretching me as a Christian, as a man, as a pastor, stretching my heart, not narrowing my heart, but strongly stretching my heart out to sympathize with and respect and even begin to like Christians who otherwise I would consider and even dismiss as merely high maintenance.
Sam Allberry
There’s so much to think about, Ray, but thank you for sharing that we all need the Lord’s help. Each of us will give an account of himself to God. That is what ultimately matters, is the sincerity of every Christian heart before God.
Ray Ortlund
So let’s give each other space to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.
Sam Allberry
Wherever you’re listening, The Lord be with you as you do that you.
Sam Allberry is a pastor, apologist, and speaker. He is the author of 7 Myths About Singleness, Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With?, What God Has to Say About Our Bodies, and, with Ray Ortlund, You’re Not Crazy. He serves as associate pastor at Immanuel Nashville, is a canon theologian for the Anglican Church in North America, and is the cohost of TGC’s podcast You’re Not Crazy: Gospel Sanity for Young Pastors.
Ray Ortlund (ThM, Dallas Theological Seminary; MA, University of California, Berkeley; PhD, University of Aberdeen, Scotland) is president of Renewal Ministries and an Emeritus Council member of The Gospel Coalition. He founded Immanuel Church in Nashville, Tennessee, and now serves from Immanuel as pastor to pastors. Ray has authored a number of books, including The Gospel: How The Church Portrays The Beauty of Christ, Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel, and, with Sam Allberry, You’re Not Crazy: Gospel Sanity for Weary Churches. He and his wife, Jani, have four children.