“Whatever you believe about these things, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves. But whoever doubts stands condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith, and everything that is not from faith is sin.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the lessons many state curricula seek to teach students early on in their education process is how to differentiate between facts and opinions. Of course, such an effort is deeply worldview dependent, and so parents should be actively engaged with those lessons at home to make sure they are properly supporting or else tuning interference if their states curriculum has been primarily shaped by a worldview position they don’t support. That all being said, the effort is worthwhile in the abstract. One reason for this comes out in what Paul writes here at the end of Romans 14. Let’s talk about facts and opinions on sin.

So, let’s start with this: Is sin objective or subjective? That’s a bit trickier to answer than it perhaps seems at first glance. On the one hand, some things are always sinful. Murder is a sin every single time. Having sex with someone to whom you are not married is always sin. Bearing false witness is sin without exception. There aren’t circumstances in which theft is justifiable. That is all objective.

On the other hand, different cultures define precisely what those things are differently, so it would seem that there could be some amount of gray at play here. Still, however a particular culture happens to define them, they are always considered morally out of bounds, so maybe things are more black and white than we’d like to imagine.

Let me also add this: those things aren’t sinful simply because they are all mentioned in the Ten Commandments. In fact, they’re not morally out of bounds for followers of Jesus because they are prohibited by the Ten Commandments at all. Those don’t have moral authority over us because they are part of the old covenant that was fulfilled by Christ and replaced with the new covenant. Instead, they are to be considered sinful because they are all violations of Jesus’ command to love one another the way He loved us.

To put that another way, those things are sinful not because of some seemingly arbitrary command (which isn’t actually nearly as arbitrary as critics might allege), but because they are all failures of love. They are all violations of God’s character. Anything that puts us out of sync with God’s character is sinful. This is because all such acts, in whatever form they happen to take, all flow from the same prideful well that sees us denying God’s sovereignty and authority in favor of our own. Refusing to accept God for who He is is prideful unbelief, and that’s always sin.

So again, it seems like sin is objective. It is a fact, not an opinion. But then, seemingly flying in the face of this is what Paul says here.

For the last couple of weeks, we have been working through Paul’s instructions for how to get along in the church when we are divided in opinion over some non-essential matter of doctrine or ethics. The example Paul has consistently used throughout this exercise is eating meat that was obtained from a pagan sacrifice, but there are many other things that could be substituted in for that without changing Paul’s point in the slightest.

The way to get along when we are divided over which approach or position on one of these issues is right is to remember that our opinion on the matter doesn’t determine our salvation. Neither does it determine our opponent’s salvation. We can agree to disagree and still walk away as brothers and sisters in Christ. This takes great humility and graciousness, but the church won’t last for long without it.

Offering some final thoughts here, Paul says that “whatever you believe about these things, keep between yourself and God.” In other words, if you are just going to fight about it, don’t talk about it. If you are a partake in whatever it is, limit your partaking while around this other believer with a weaker grasp of the full scope of their freedom in Christ. On the other hand, if you are an abstainer, don’t judge your brother or sister for partaking in whatever it is. That’s God’s job, and we can rest assured He will do it well. If you are hopelessly divided, avoid the subject for the sake peace, and keep working together to see God’s kingdom advanced rather than getting stuck on a minor point of disagreement.

That seems like it should be fairly obvious, but it needs to be heard because too many in the church are ignorant of it, and this makes doing life together vastly more difficult than it might otherwise have been.

Right here at the end of the chapter, Paul focuses in on the folks who are operating from a position of weakness as far as the broader matter is concerned. That is, he’s talking to the folks who are not comfortable eating the meat. His extra attention to them here at the end is because they are the initiators of the problem here in their inability/refusal to embrace the fullness of their freedom in Christ. Check this out.

“Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves. But whoever doubts stands condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith.” Let’s pause right there. Paul is in other words saying, “Listen, if you don’t think eating that meat is okay to do, don’t eat it. You don’t have to make a big deal about it. Just don’t eat it. If you don’t think it’s okay and do it anyway, you are violating your conscience; you are not living then from out of your faith in God and His command and character. You are instead living out of your sinful desires to fit in with the people around you. That’s a problem.”

What kind of a problem is it? The sinful kind. “…and everything that is not from faith is sin.” What is that supposed to mean? It’s a little tricky to understand at first, but I already hinted at what Paul means. Anything we do that is not motivated by our belief in God, His character and command, His sovereignty and authority is sinful. It is sinful because if it is not motivated by those things, then it is motivated by our belief in the sovereignty and authority of someone or something else. Well, there’s a word for actions or behaviors that are motivated by our belief in the authority of someone or something other than God: idolatry.

In other words, if these weaker brothers and sisters who didn’t believe it was morally acceptable to eat meat that had been obtained through a pagan sacrifice actually ate the meat because they wanted to fit in with everyone else around them, they would be guilty of the very sin they were accusing their brothers and sisters who correctly understood that it was just fine to eat that meat of committing.

Okay, but how could eating the meat be sinful for them by not for the other group? Because in eating it, they would have been willfully going against what they sincerely believed was God’s character and command. Their sin would not have been in their actions, but in the attitude that led to them. That is, the thing they did wasn’t wrong; the reason they did it was wrong. Motivations, as it turns out, matter as much, if not more, than our actions.

So, what does this mean for our question about whether sin is objective or situational? The answer is a little of both. It is objectively wrong to violate God’s character and command. There will never be a set of circumstances in which that is an okay or right or justifiable thing to do. God is totally sovereign over His creation, and that will never waiver or change. And there are some things that always violate His character and command in whatever form they take.

But there are many more things that don’t and yet which we are not personally or culturally okay with for one reason or another. On these matters, if a person sincerely believes that to participate in such an activity would be a violation of God’s character and command, whether or not the activity actually does so becomes largely irrelevant. For that person to do that thing would necessarily involve their willful violation of their truncated understanding of God’s character and command. Because of this, their doing whatever it is will be sinful for them, again, not because the act itself is inherently sinful, but because the will behind it is.

This bring us to the real point of Paul’s teaching here for us. Sin always begins in the will. The action of sin is always a function of the willful desire to do something that violates God’s character and command. And, by the way, I keep phrasing it like that on purpose. Someone might argue that if something isn’t specifically mentioned in the Scriptures as sinful, then it can’t be considered sinful. But that’s just not the case. The Scriptures don’t exhaustively mention everything that could be a sin. But that’s because sin isn’t primarily an action first. It is a desire to violate God’s righteousness and holiness and sovereignty – that is, to violate His character.

Because sin begins in the will, if you are able to genuinely and sincerely do something to the glory of God, it isn’t going to be sinful. I might not like or agree with your doing it, but if your conscience is perfectly clean on the matter – keeping in mind that the heart is deceitful above all else and a world of evil such that if you are just “following your heart” Disney-style, you are probably not doing the right thing – you are likely on solid ground, and can proceed without worrying about what I think. My opinion doesn’t ultimately matter. Nor does anyone else’s. Now, if everyone else around you is questioning the wisdom and morality of your decision, that may be a tip off that you need to reconsider your thinking about it and reevaluate whether or not you are really doing it to the glory of God, but if you do and you still are, you are free to proceed.

As the Westminster catechism says, our chief purpose is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. There are a myriad of ways to do that. Not everyone will agree on all of them, and that’s okay. That cultural diversity is something God knowingly allowed to flourish to His glory. When we are gathered together in the church, though, we need to be sure we are practicing hospitality and generosity of spirit with one another. We need to lean into humility and maintain a learning posture when we engage with people who think differently than we do on non-essential matters of the faith. And where we just don’t agree on some non-essential matter, we can amicably agree to disagree, recognizing that there are multiple ways to bring glory to God, and He delights in our pursuing all of them. When we glorify Him (and only Him) together in spite of our differences, the church is made stronger, the Gospel is proclaimed louder, and God’s kingdom advances farther. That’s what it’s all about it.