The Weaker Sister and Brother in Christ

There are a plethora of believers among us on read.cash who have not been discipled due to our slothfulness. They are mere babes stuck on the milk of God's word when they should be feeding on the meat of his divine revelation to us.

Freedom

We who have trusted on Jesus for our salvation by faith alone are freed from the law of sin and death. We are not bound by the religious ordinances observed by the Jews. Nevertheless, we should be careful unless we wrongly believe we do not sin by using our freedoms that harm weaker brothers and sisters in the Christian faith, not to mention other faiths.

Not only should we pray, but we should ask God's forgiveness when we use our freedoms that harm the conscience of other people. Paul spoke about this very thing with respect to food and beverages.

"Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall" (1 Corinthians 8:13, NIV).

Peter's vision

Peter had been warned that everything was clean in God's eyes, having a dual meaning regarding both food and regarding the cleanliness of the Gentiles, the latter being the primary meaning (Acts 10:9-16, NIV).

Some Jews preached following the dietary laws after one was saved, but Paul reminded them that the Gentiles did not have the law. If a Jew wanted to follow the Old Testament laws, s/he was free to do so, but to harm a Gentile's faith by placing unnecessary burdens on them was unwarranted.

Weaker believers

Now keep in mind that we can offend weaker believers or new believers to the point that they depart from the faith. Some might argue that they never believed to begin with but that is an legitimate argument for another time.

Bible teacher Ray Stedman said that "the favorite indoor sport of Christians is trying to change each other." We should teach them rather than judge them for what they do or not eat, as in the context of Romans 14 to 15:13.

Furthermore, Paul said, "Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters" (Romans 14:1, NIV). The entire chapters are well worth reading because they are about what is clean and not unclean.

Disputable matters

Let's have a look at some examples of disputable matters. In the context of food, we are free to eat or drink anything we please. However, we must be wise when choosing foods when we eat with other people.

For example, if we were eating with a Jewish or a Muslim person, we certainly would not eat shellfish or pork. Yes, we could eat it because of our freedom, but we would be sinning.

We certainly would not serve a Jew food that was not kosher, either.

Believing Jews may choose to eat kosher foods or not, however. And Christians will often differ over matters of conscience and of their freedoms in Christ, too. To each his own!

Now if you as a believer want to abstain from alcohol (a wise choice) you may; likewise, Christians can drink providing they do not get drunk. "Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18, NIV). Now if I drank a beer in front of someone who abhors alcohol, would I not be sinning? Yes, of course! The same goes for any food.

An extension of the teaching

This teaching may be extended to most anything. For example, let's say we wanted to catch a new film at the cinema and were lined up to buy tickets to an "R" rated movie. Now suppose in this example that two new believers came by in the mall or wherever and saw us standing there in line. I'll let you figure it out.

The same goes for idle talk, television programming and video games. I'm confident you can think of other practices that we take for granted as well.

Now we should try to change a person's thinking by way of discipling them and helping them grow in the faith. This is the calling of all of us who are more mature in the faith.

We should also point out errors in essential doctrinal matters and false teachings. Only when a believer is growing in God's word and his or her faith is increasing will their faith grow along with ours.

So let's do this, let's not judge a person regarding what they eat or drink. And let's not offend other believers or those of another faith by sinning because of the foods or drinks we enjoy in our freedom.

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