How does the Apostle meet the trying case, which must have crossed his own path so often, and sometimes in the form of a bitter opposition from those who were "suffering from weakness in their faith"? It is quite plain that his own convictions lay with "the strong," so far as principle was concerned. He "knew that nothing was unclean" (ver. 14). He knew that the Lord was not grieved, but pleased, by the temperate and thankful use, untroubled by morbid fears, of His natural bounties. He knew that the Jewish festival-system had found its goal and end in the perpetual "let us keep the feast" (1 Cor. v. 3) of the true believer's happy and hallowed life.[235] And accordingly he does, in passing, rebuke "the weak" for their harsh criticisms (κρίνειν) of "the strong." But then, he throws all the more weight, the main weight, on his rebukes and warnings to "the strong." Their principle might be right on this great detail. But this left untouched the yet more stringent overruling principle, to "walk in love"; to take part against themselves; to live in this matter, as in everything else, for others. They were not to be at all ashamed of their special principles. But they were to be deeply ashamed of one hour's unloving conduct. They were to be quietly convinced, in respect of private judgment. They were to be more than tolerant—they were to be loving—in respect of common life in the Lord.
Their "strength" in Christ was never to be ungentle; never to be "used like a giant." It was to be shewn, first and most, by patience. It was to take the form of the calm, strong readiness to understand another's point of view. It was to appear as reverence for another's conscience, even when the conscience went astray for want of better light.
Let us take this apostolic principle out into modern religious life. There are times when we shall be specially bound to put it carefully in relation to other principles, of course. When St Paul, some months earlier, wrote to Galatia, and had to deal with an error which darkened the whole truth of the sinner's way to God as it lies straight through Christ, he did not say, "Let every man be quite assured in his own mind." He said (i. 8), "If an angel from heaven preach any other Gospel, which is not another, let him be anathema." The question there was, Is Christ all, or is He not? Is faith all, or is it not, for our laying hold of Him? Even in Galatia, he warned the converts of the miserable and fatal mistake of "biting and devouring one another" (v. 15). But he adjured them not to wreck their peace with God upon a fundamental error. Here, at Rome, the question was different; it was secondary. It concerned certain details of Christian practice. Was an outworn and exaggerated ceremonialism a part of the will of God, in the justified believer's life? It was not so, as a fact. Yet it was a matter on which the Lord, by His Apostle, rather counselled than commanded. It was not of the foundation. And the always overruling law for the discussion was—the tolerance born of love. Let us in our day remember this, whether our inmost sympathies are with "the strong" or with "the weak." In Jesus Christ, it is possible to realize the ideal of this paragraph even in our divided Christendom. It is possible to be convinced, yet sympathetic. It is possible to see the Lord for ourselves with glorious clearness, yet to understand the practical difficulties felt by others, and to love, and to respect, where there are even great divergences. No man works more for a final spiritual consensus than he who, in Christ, so lives.
Incidentally meantime, the Apostle, in this passage which so curbs "the strong," lets fall maxims which for ever protect all that is good and true in that well-worn and often misused phrase, "the right of private judgment." No spiritual despot, no claimant to be the autocratic director of a conscience, could have written those words, "Let every man be quite certain in his own mind"; "Who art thou that judgest Another's domestic?" Such sentences assert not the right so much as the duty, for the individual Christian, of a reverent "thinking for himself." They maintain a true and noble individualism. And there is a special need just now in the Church to remember, in its place, the value of Christian individualism. The idea of the community, the society, is just now so vastly prevalent (doubtless not without the providence of God) in human life, and also in the Church, that an assertion of the individual, which was once disproportionate, is now often necessary, lest the social idea in its turn should be exaggerated into a dangerous mistake. Coherence, mutuality, the truth of the Body and the Members; all this, in its place, is not only important but divine. The individual must inevitably lose where individualism is his whole idea. But it is ill for the community, above all for the Church, where in the total the individual tends really to be merged and lost. Alas for the Church where the Church tries to take the individual's place in the knowledge of God, in the love of Christ, in the power of the Spirit. The religious Community must indeed inevitably lose where religious communism is its whole idea. It can be perfectly strong only where individual consciences are tender, and enlightened; where individual souls personally know God in Christ; where individual wills are ready, if the Lord call, to stand alone for known truth even against the religious Society;—if there also the individualism is not self-will, but Christian personal responsibility; if the man "thinks for himself" on his knees; if he reverences the individualism of others, and the relations of each to all.
The individualism of Rom. xiv., asserted in an argument full of the deepest secrets of cohesion, is the holy and healthful thing it is because it is Christian. It is developed not by the assertion of self, but by individual communion with Christ.
Now he goes on to further and still fuller statements in the same direction:
Ver. 7.
For none of us to himself lives, and none of us to himself dies. How, and wherefore? Is it merely that "we" live lives always, necessarily, related to one another? He has this in his heart indeed. But he reaches it through the greater, deeper, antecedent truth of our relation to the Lord. The Christian is related to his brother-Christian through Christ, not to Christ through his brother, or through the common Organism in which the brethren are "each other's limbs." "To the Lord," with absolute directness, with a perfect and wonderful immediateness, each individual Christian is first related. His life and his death are "to others," but through Him. The Master's claim is eternally first; for it is based direct upon the redeeming work in which He bought us for Himself.
Ver. 8.
Ver. 9.
For whether we live, to the Lord we live; and whether we be dead (ἀποθνήσκωμεν), to the Lord we are dead; in the state of the departed, as before, "relation stands." Alike therefore whether (ἐαν τε οὖν) we be dead, or whether we live, the Lord's we are; His property, bound first and in everything to His possession. For to this end Christ both died and lived again,[236] that He might become Lord (κυριεύσῃ, not κυριεύῃ) of us both dead and living.