“Now we who are strong have an obligation to bear the weaknesses of those without strength, and not to please ourselves. Each one of us is to please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For even Christ did not please himself. On the contrary, as it is written, ‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Welcome back! After a lovely break to spend some time reflecting on the season of Advent together, and couple of weeks off from writing entirely, it’s time to turn our attention back to Romans and finish our journey there. Let’s get going! There is a personality type that is driven to please others. These folks think often about what the people around them might need, and are willing to bend over backwards in order to help them get it. Now, when these folks are out of balance, they can become doormats who let the world just walk all over them, but when their value is properly rooted in Christ, they can be powerful servants, extending the blessings of the love of Christ to those around them with near boundless energy and care. As much as this is a personality type, though, as followers of Jesus, all of us are called to this to a certain extent. Let’s talk about pleasing others and the example of Jesus.

While there is a chapter break before what Paul says here, he is still running in the same vein as he was throughout chapter 14. Since it has been a few weeks, let’s make sure we are all on the same page. Paul is talking about how to get along in the church when there are differences of opinions present on non-essential matters of faith and practice.

The biggest non-essential matter that mattered to the believers in Rome was whether or not it was morally permissible to eat meat that had been obtained via a pagan sacrifice. Most people couldn’t afford meat in that day. Instead, every now and then, a wealthy person would sponsor a big sacrificial offering at one of the temples that was ostensibly to please the god, but was really about showing off his wealth and keeping his clients (the people he supported with his wealth) happy. The requisite parts would be burnt in honor of the god, and the rest would be butchered up and sold in the temple marketplace for cheap. This was how the average person got meat in her diet.

For believers from out of a Jewish religious and cultural background where anything that even remotely resembles paganism was completely forbidden and rejected, this presented a real m moral conundrum. On the one hand, they didn’t have much or any meat as a regular part of their diet. On the other hand, eating this meat was to them a way to participate in the pagan offering which was to cross a big, ugly red line. In their piousness they not only refused to eat it, but they looked down on fellow believers who were so willing.

The issue was proving to be a divisive one for the church there in Rome as well as in other places around the Empire as Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church suggests. It was clearly not going to resolve itself, so Paul was going to need to weigh in on the matter. He did this in a really interesting way. He spoke to the issue directly, but he did so in such a way as to point through the issue to the broader principle at play as well as to direct the people to what mattered most: maintaining the community of faith in unity and love.

Paul’s opinion on the matter was to side with the Gentle-background believers who didn’t see any problem with eating the meat. It was just meat. Where it came from really didn’t matter. God ultimately had provided it, and the people could freely enjoy it. Their freedom in Christ allowed them to eat it with their faith rooted firmly in Him and without being pricked by their consciences at all.

But, the reality was that there were some folks else consciences were sufficiently bothered by it, who were sufficiently convinced that their freedom in Christ allowed no such thing, that for them to have eaten it would have meant their committing a sin, not because there actually was anything wrong with eating the meat, but rather because in doing so, they were willing violating what they believed to be the command of God. The sin here lied entirely with the motive behind the action, not with the action itself.

Paul spent most of chapter 14 speaking to this group. His counsel to them was to back off on the believers who were willing to eat the meat. They had no business casting judgment on them. That wasn’t their place. That was God’s prerogative. If He believed any judging needed to happen, He would take care of it. They were to learn how to bear with others who decided differently than them on disputed matters like this with graciousness and hospitality.

Here at the beginning of chapter 15 as he wraps up this long section, Paul speaks to the Gentile-background believers who correctly understood that there was nothing morally ambiguous or even simply wrong with eating the meat. Like he did with the other group, he reminded them that something more than merely their personal preferences on non-essential matters was at stake here. They needed to be ready to set aside what they wanted for the sake of others. They were, to borrow his own words to the Philippian church, to treat others as if they were more important than themselves.

“Now we who are strong have an obligation to bear the weaknesses of those without strength, and not to please ourselves.” The strong in the church need to bear with the weak. Paul goes so far as to call this an obligation. This is something those who grasp the full extent of their freedom in Christ need to do for those who don’t. They need to bear with their weaknesses, to show them patience and grace. And this isn’t just for our amusement. It’s not simply so that we can get along more peaceably in the check. The life of the church itself depends on it.

He goes on in the next verse to double down on all of this. “Each one of us is to please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.” This counsel is about as diametrically opposed to Joe the world encourages us to think as it possibly could be. What the world, what our culture constantly urged us into is a radical me-centeredness. Whatever is good for me is good. Whatever is bad for me is bad. If you are aided by it, that’s great, but it’s not our goal. If you are inconvenienced by it, that’s too bad, but it’s not our primary concern.

What Paul calls us to here, and what the Gospel calls us to more generally, is radically different from that kind of thinking. To borrow a line from another preacher, what Paul invites into is a mindset that says, “If it’s not good for him, it’s a sin; if it’s not good for her, defer.”

We are to look to do good for our fellow members of the body of Christ for no other reason than that it is good for them. We don’t do it because of anything we might get out of it. We don’t do it for any kind of recognition. We don’t do it because they’ll owe us one. We do it because it’s right. End of discussion. We do it because it builds him up in the direction of Jesus. It makes the church stronger. It makes us more like Jesus.

Sticking with the present context, one practical way this could have played out was that when these believers who understood their freedom in Christ properly were around one of these believers who did not, they voluntarily limited their enjoyment of their freedom temporarily for the sake of this weaker brother or sister. More specifically, even though they were perfectly free in Christ to eat the meat, for the sake of these brothers and sisters who did not understand that their freedom allowed it, they refrained from eating it.

And if this seems unfair to let your actions be dictated by the ignorant, that’s because it is. But the goodness and kindness and grace of God are rooted in unfairness. It is wildly unfair that we should receive the gift of life when Jesus did all the work. But God’s love is great to such an extent that with His justify satisfied by the work Jesus accomplished, He can afford to let some things that are merely unfair persist if it means that others get to share in that life and take part in the relationship He made them for in the beginning.

When we take that same kind of attitude and apply it to this situation, what we get is this: While, yes, it is unfair that some should not be able to enjoy what they rightfully could because of the misshapen consciences of those who do not grasp what is truly available to them in Christ, when we know that we will have all of eternity to enjoy the full goodness and all the good things of God’s kingdom, what is a few years of missing out on them now? We err in the direction of love and strengthening the body. We seek to please our neighbor, to build him up to the point that he better understands what his freedom in Christ really allows rather than condemning him or judging him or needlessly wrecking his conscience, pushing him into sin and away from the body, weakening the church and harming the advance of the Gospel. The one is clearly better than the other.

In doing all of this, we are standing on firm ground. We are walking in the path that Jesus Himself blazed for us in His own life and ministry. “For even Christ did not please himself. On the contrary, as it is written, ‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.'” Jesus put our needs and interests ahead of His own. Had He not been willing to do that, He would have never gone to the cross. Nothing about the cross was for Him. He didn’t need more glory. He already had all of it. He certainly didn’t want to die. His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane made that clear. He was driven there by one thing and one thing only: love. Love for us who needed Him to be our sacrificial offering, and love for the Father who called Him to make the sacrifice, knowing that life—both His and ours—and even more glory was waiting on the other side of it.

The freedom Jesus had meant He didn’t have to go to the cross. But He voluntarily limited that freedom and went to it anyway to please us and to build us up. If He could do that with His very life, surely we can do it with eating—or, as the case was here, not eating—meat. Surely we can do it with any other non-essential matter of debate where our freedom may allow one thing, but love compels us to refrain from enjoying it for the time being for the sake of another brother or sister who might be pushed from God because of our enjoyment of it. Love always comes first.