For[240]—the word takes up the argument at large, rather than the last detail of it—if for food's sake your brother suffers pain, the pain of a moral struggle between his present convictions and your commanding example, you have given up walking (οὐκέτι περιπατεῖς) love-wise. Do not, with your food, (there is a searching point in the "your," touching to the quick the deep selfishness of the action,) work his ruin for whom Christ died.
Such sentences are too intensely and tenderly in earnest to be called sarcastic; otherwise, how fine and keen an edge they carry! "For food's sake!" "With your food!" The man is shaken out of the sleep of what seemed an assertion of liberty, but was after all much rather a dull indulgence of—that is, a mere slavery to—himself. "I like this meat; I like this drink; I don't like the worry of these scruples; they interrupt me, they annoy me." Unhappy man! It is better to be the slave of scruples, than of self. In order to allow yourself another dish—you would slight an anxious friend's conscience, and, so far as your conduct is concerned, push him to a violation of it. But that means, a push on the slope which leans towards spiritual ruin. The way to perdition is paved with violated consciences. The Lord may counteract your action, and save your injured brother from himself—and you. But your action is, none the less, calculated for his perdition. And all the while this soul, for which, in comparison with your dull and narrow "liberty," you care so little, was so much cared for by the Lord that He—died for it.
Oh consecrating thought, attached now, for ever, for the Christian, to every human soul which he can influence: "For whom Christ died!"
Ver. 16.
to
Ver. 18.
Do not therefore let your good, your glorious creed of holy liberty in Christ, be railed at, as only a thinly veiled self-indulgence after all; for the kingdom of our (τοῦ) God is not feeding (βρῶσις) and drinking; He does not claim a throne in your soul, and in your Society, merely to enlarge your bill of fare, to make it your sacred privilege, as an end in itself, to take what you please at table; but righteousness, surely here, in the Roman Epistle, the "righteousness" of our divine acceptance, and peace, the peace of perfect relations with Him in Christ, and joy in the Holy Spirit, the pure strong gladness of the justified, as in their sanctuary of salvation they drink the "living water," and "rejoice always in the Lord." For he who in this way[241] lives as bondservant to Christ, spending his spiritual talents not for himself but for his Master, is pleasing to his (τῷ) God, and is genuine to his fellow-men (τοῖς ἀνθρώποις). Yes, he stands the test (δόκιμος) of their keen scrutiny. They can soon detect the counterfeit under spiritual assertions which really assert self. But their conscience affirms the genuineness of a life of unselfish and happy holiness; that life "reverbs no hollowness."
Ver. 19.
Accordingly therefore let us pursue the interests of peace, and the interests of an edification which is mutual; the "building up" (οἰκοδομὴ) which looks beyond the man to his brother, to his brethren, and tempers by that look even his plans for his own spiritual life.
Ver. 20.
Again he returns to the sorrowful grotesque of preferring personal comforts, and even the assertion of the principle of personal liberty, to the good of others. Do not for food's sake be undoing (κατάλυε) the work of our God. "All things are pure"; he doubtless quotes a watchword often heard; and it was truth itself in the abstract, but capable of becoming a fatal fallacy in practice; but anything is bad to the man who is brought by a stumblingblock to eat it.[242] Yes, this is bad (κακόν). What is good (καλὸν) in contrast?
Ver. 21.