The weak-in-faith Christian.

Romans 14.1-4, 22-23.

Sometimes I’m asked about a certain topic. Recently it was about Romans 14, and I figured that’s a discussion which needs something far more than a short answer. Christians use this chapter in a number of ways; typically to fight whatever they describe as legalism and hypocrisy, whether it’s actually those things or not.

The chapter begins by Paul introducing his audience—the Christians of the city of Rome, a city he’s not yet visited, though he knows a number of its denizens—to the concept of the weak-in-faith Christian. It’s one a lot of Christians skim over, ’cause we’re too busy preaching on legalism and hypocrisy. But it’s an important concept, so let’s take a minute to look at it closely. To the scriptures!

Romans 14.1-4 KWL

1Take in the weak-in-faith Christian,

not the argument-starting Christian.

2One person believes they¹ can eat everything,

and one weak-in-faith person only eats vegetables.

3You who eat everything:

Don’t scorn the one who doesn’t eat!

And you who don’t eat:

Don’t condemn the one who eats!

For God accepts them,¹

4and who are you¹ to judge another’s servant?

They¹ stand or fall

before their own master,

and they¹ will stand up

because their¹ Master can make them stand.

Lemme start by defining weakness in the faith, and I’ll define it the way Paul does at the end of this chapter.

Romans 14.22-23 KWL

22You¹ have a belief of your¹ own:

Have it between yourself and God.

You who don’t condemn yourselves¹

for what you think is right

are awesome.

23One who still doubts it’s okay when they¹ eat,

was condemned because it’s not their belief.

Everything which isn’t their belief

is sin.

Being weak in faith is not, as some Christians claim, the same thing as being new in the Christian faith. That’s a teaching I’ve heard from time to time—that these folks are weak in faith because they’re new in faith; they haven’t followed Jesus long enough to learn to be strong in faith. ’Tain’t necessarily so. I’ve known longtime Christians who are extremely weak in faith. We’re meant to grow out of it, but some of us haven’t, and at this rate never will.

What Paul’s talking about are people whose consciences won’t let them do things. That’s actually true of all of us: My conscience tells me I shouldn’t steal. So does the bible; so do the laws of California and the United States, and most countries. But what decisively gets me to not rob people is, of course, my conscience. If my conscience didn’t have any problem with it—if I thought theft was okay under certain circumstances, or that I’m somehow an exception and it’s okay for me—I might steal. Might steal a lot; theft is way easier to get away with than most other crimes. Those of you with consciences which forbid stealing, might call me a sociopath, and you’d be right if I took thievery so lightly. But as you can see, most of us have consciences which forbid the things most folks consider sin. We were raised to not sin; to recognize these sins seriously disrupt the social order; to believe God strongly disapproves. Our consciences were well-trained.

But the weak in faith: These are the people whose consciences are extra restrictive. They believe more things are probably sins. They believe there are many things Christians are forbidden to do. Not just stuff in the bible, either: Christians should do all that too, but we should also abstain from loads of things. No swearing. No drinking. No gambling. No popular music. No movies other than G-rated Disney fairy tales. No being alone with an unrelated member of the other sex. No voting for the opposition party. No, no, no—not just for them, but for any Christian, and if you do ’em you’re probably not Christian.

Yep, weak-in-faith Christians are what we’d call legalists. These folks don’t entirely trust we’re saved by grace, and focus a little too much on works righteousness.

And Paul tells us not to scorn them. Which, y’might notice, is what non-legalists typically do. Quite often we quote Romans 14 when we’re doing it. “But why dost thou judge thy brother?” Ro 14.10 KJV we’ll say, to condemn the legalists… and ignore how, in context, the verse specifically addresses us non-legalists, who are judging them for judging us, and think Paul wrote Romans 14 because he has our back. He does not. He’s telling us to stop sticking stumbling blocks in front of the legalists, Ro 14.13 because they are the weak in faith.

The non-legalists? Strong in faith. They’re not so tempted to sin, they need a few thousand bonus rules, just in case. Legalists? Super tempted. Rules against swearing because they’d swear their heads off if they could. Rules against drinking because they’d get alcohol poisoning every night if unrestricted. Rules against gambling because they’d leave every casino not just penniless, but butt naked with their thumbs broken. They can’t be trusted to be good without a ton of rules. Too immature.

And we who are strong in faith, need to have their back. So stop condemning them and help these weak sisters and brothers out!

The Humble Guest Story.

Luke 14.7-11.

At first glance this passage doesn’t look like a parable; we only know it’s one because Luke straight-out begins it with, “And he put forth a parable…” Lk 14.7 KJV If we didn’t know this was a parable, we’d think it was simply shrewd advice from Jesus; we’d even teach it as such in our churches. “Whenever you go to a dinner party, go sit at the kids’ table till the host tells you no, come sit with the adults; come sit by me. I know, I know; you’re afraid they won’t ask you to move, and now you gotta listen to kids talking all day about [thing kids are into].” (Depending on whether the preacher has little children, it’ll either be something kids really are currently into; or something kids were into years ago, and Pastor hasn’t updated his data any more than he’s updated his stash of corny “dad jokes.”)

It’s the first of five parables Jesus tells in this chapter, and the first three all have to do with dinner-party guests. This one’s the Presumptive Guest Story. There’s the Dinner Party for the Poor Story in verses 12-14, which people tend to skip because Jesus sorta tells a fuller version of it in his Dinner Party Story right after it, verses 15-24. Then his Counting the Cost Story, verses 25-33; and Unsalty Salt Story, verses 34-35.

This story is often lumped together with the other dinner-party stories and called the Parables (or Parable) of the Guests. Or the first two stories are the Parable of the Guests, and the third story is the Parable of the Dinner Party. Or sometimes this is singled out as its own parable—which it is—and made the Parable of the Exalted and Humble Guests, or they just focus on the jerk in the story and call it the Parable of the Ambitious Guest, Arrogant Guest, Embarrassed Guest, Presumptive Guest, and so forth. I prefer to focus on what Jesus wants his followers to do. So, the Humble Guest Story.

It comes right after Jesus cures a guy at a dinner party held on sabbath. After our Lord deals with the bad attitudes about helping others on sabbath—which, Jesus states, does not break sabbath; and since Jesus never sinned 1Pe 2.22 let’s not start foolishly claiming he did because he supposedly did away with the Law of Moses. But now that this controversy was put to bed—for now—Jesus has some observations to make about dinner parties. And since they’re parables, they’re actually about God’s kingdom—if you have the ears to hear Jesus.

Luke 14.7-11 KWL

7Jesus is telling a parable

to those who’d been invited to dinner

while noticing how

they’re choosing their places at table.

He’s telling them,

8“Whenever you’re¹ invited to a wedding by someone,

you¹ shouldn’t take the first place.

Perhaps someone more honored than you¹

was invited by them.¹

9And coming to you¹ and the other guest,

the one inviting you two will tell you,¹

‘Give this guest this place,’

and then, with shame,

you’ll¹ have to go to the last place.

10Instead, whenever you’re¹ invited,

go sit in the last place!

This way, whenever the one inviting you¹ comes,

they’ll¹ tell you,¹ ‘Friend, go forward!’

Then honor will be yours¹

in front of everyone dining with you.¹

11For everyone who exalts themselves¹

will be humbled,

and everyone who humbles themselves¹

will be exalted.”

You’d think first place at the table at a wedding banquet would go to the couple who’s getting married. Nope! They have their own table. Like our weddings, there were lots of tables.

“First place” at a table would usually be the place closest to the food, so you’d be the first person to dip your (hopefully washed) hand in everything. Last place would get the stuff everyone’s already touched, then licked their fingers and touched some more. Yeah, even though ancient Israelis were way cleaner than ancient Romans, hygiene back then sucked. And you can see why first place was a big deal.

Why I am not a young-earth creationist.

Genesis 1.1-5.

From time to time I’m asked whether I believe God created the universe in six days, or whether it and humanity evolved over time. My usual answer is “Yes.” I believe both.

Various Christians insist I can’t believe both. I must believe in one and reject the other. And they’re pretty insistent I gotta beleive in the six-day creation. In a literal six-day creation; God literally spent six 24-hour periods creating the heavens and the earth. ’Cause if I don’t believe this, I’m going to hell.

That’s largely why they asked me about what I believe in the first place: They wanna see whether or not I’m going to hell. If I believe as they do, we’re good. If I don’t, since I’m going to hell they want nothing more to do with me, lest I corrupt them and drag them to hell with me.

Oddly they’re not saying people go to hell for believing in evolution. There are a few extra steps in their procedure.

1. You believe in evolution.
2. Which means you don’t believe the bible’s depiction of a literal six-day creation.
3. Which means you don’t beleive the bible.
4. Which means you don’t believe anything the bible says about Jesus.
5. Which means you don’t believe Jesus can actually save you.
6. Which means he won’t.
7. So you’re going to hell.

There are all kinds of flaws in this logic, beginning with #3: Just because you don’t interpret the Genesis stories literally does not automatically mean you don’t believe the bible. Nor the gospels, nor in Jesus.

Plus it’s not even logically consistent with how Christians come to Jesus. I came to Jesus before I had ever read a bible. Likely so had you. Yeah, the truths about Jesus which we were taught, largely came from the stories in the gospels—but they didn’t have to. The first people Simon Peter preached to in Acts 2 didn’t have a written gospel. Paul wrote his letters before the gospel authors wrote their gospels. Paul did extraordinarily well at sharing Jesus without a New Testament. Because you don’t actually need a bible to share Jesus. You only need the Holy Spirit. You always need the Holy Spirit.

Requiring the bible for salvation, is elevating a book above the Holy Spirit. Yes, it’s inspired by the Spirit. Still mighty useful for explaining salvation, correcting us, and training us in doctrine and righteousness. Still a book though, and claiming it, instead of the Spirit, has the power to save, is still bibliolatry.

And anyone who says a devout follower of Jesus, who just happens to believe in theistic evolution or old-earth creationism, is going to hell for these beliefs, have elevated their young-earth creationist (YEC for short) beliefs above Jesus. That’s idolatry too. Jesus requires us to trust him to be saved; that’s all. And I do. As should you.

My firm belief is God created the universe. Doesn’t matter how. Doesn’t matter if it took him six literal days, or six ages lasting a billion years apiece. Doesn’t matter if we’re descended from lower animals… and frankly, thanks to sin and human depravity, there are no lower animals than us humans. Christ Jesus came to us to fix that, and through his self-sacrifice and the Holy Spirit’s power, humanity can now adopt the mindset of Jesus, the nature of God, and evolve to perfection. (YEC promoters hate when I say that. It’s biblical though.)

So, studying weird YEC pseudoscience for the purpose of debating an evolutionist? Massive waste of time. You won’t convince them you’re anything but a nut, and you won’t grow any more Christ-like. You’ll be another one of those smart-alecks who take pride in winning arguments, but never win any souls… and don’t win as many arguments as they imagine they do.

So if I’m okay with evolution, what’s the point of Genesis’s creation stories? Ah, good question; glad I asked it.

The prayers of a jerk.

Last week I wrote about Jesus’s Pharisee and Taxman Story, in which he compared the prayers of two guys in temple—a self-righteous Pharisee, and a taxman begging for mercy. The taxman, said Jesus, went home righteous. Lk 18.14

The Pharisee, on the other hand… well, it really depends on how you translate the Greek preposition παρ’/par’. Properly, it’s “besides,” but Christian tradition has been to interpret it as “against, contrary to,” and claim the Pharisee was not righteous.

Why’s this? Well, his works. His prayer makes him sound like a real jerk. Jerks aren’t righteous, are they?

Luke 18.11-12 NASB

11“The Pharisee stood and began praying this in regard to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, crooked, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ ”

“I don’t swindle. I don’t connive. I don’t cheat. I’m not like this collaborator with our Roman oppressors. I voluntarily give up food so I can concentrate on you. I give away a tenth of absolutely everything.” What a braggart.

Thing is, once you think about it, plenty of devout God-followers oughta be able to say the very same thing, and honestly mean it. Hopefully not with this Pharisee’s attitude, but still, as far as good works are concerned, dude was doing ’em.

The part which makes us unsympathetic to the Pharisee’s prayer is of course the very first part of it. “God, I’m so happy you didn’t make me one of the lowlifes who don’t do as I do. Thank you that I was born into this race, and for making me one of the good ones.” Yep, it’s his crappy, fruitless Pharisee-supremacist attitude. How dare he. (And hopefully our offense isn’t because we figure only we are permitted to think that way, as Christian supremacists will.)

Still, does the Pharisee’s bad attitude undo his righteousness? What does makes us righteous or unrighteous? What justifies us before God?

Hopefully we’ve not forgotten basic Christian doctrine: It’s faith. We don’t merit justification and salvation by fasting and tithing. Neither do we unearn it by disparaging others in our petty, selfish prayers. When we believe and trust God, he accounts it to us as righteousness, same as he did with Abraham. Ge 15.6, Ro 4.3 Does the Pharisee in Jesus’s story not trust God? Clearly he does—and he’s totally thanking God for making him the way he is. And yes, he’s a great big jerk about it. But he does believe God. Like it or not, this means he’s not unrighteous, no matter how your favorite bible translates Luke 18.14.

Okay, maybe he’s less righteous, as William Tyndale put it:

Luke 18.14 Tyndale

14AI tell you: this ma departed hoe to his housse iustified moore then the other.

But again: If our righteousness comes from faith not works, it bad theology to say this Pharisee isn’t righteous. Jesus does rebuke his hypothetical Pharisee for being a dick, but he never does declare him outside of God’s kingdom. For he’s not.

This oughta be some comfort to those Christians who slip up, mirror this Pharisee’s attitude, and start thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought. And even start praying that way too. We shouldn’t do that; we should certainly know better; the Christian walk should reflect humility not pride. Remember no matter how many good deeds we do, it never wholly cancels out our sins; we don’t deserve salvation. But God is gracious, so we have his salvation anyway. So be gracious as well. Be better than this Pharisee.

Suffering for goodness.

1 Peter 4.1-6.

You remember in 1 Peter 3.18, Simon Peter wrote, “Christ Jesus once also suffered for sins… so that he could bring us to God, putting us to death in the flesh and making us alive in the Spirit.” (My translation.) In today’s passage he bounces back to that idea. Jesus suffered, and in so doing conquered sin.

And y’know, if we suffer, we can kinda conquer sin:

1 Peter 4.1-6 KWL

1So, about Christ suffering in the flesh:

Prepare yourselves² as well with the same mindset.

For one who suffers in the flesh prevents sin;

2is no longer into human desires,

but the rest of the time they’re in the flesh,

is into God’s will.

3The past was plenty of time

to achieve the desires of gentiles—

living in unchastity, lust, drunkenness,

partying, drinking, breaking the law for idols.

4They’re surprised you don’t join them in these things;

in the same flood of indecency as they,

slandering you.

5They will give an account

to the One who has to judge the living and dead,

6This is why the dead are preached to:

Though they are judged by human flesh,

they may yet live by God’s Spirit.

Now yes, there are certain Christians who take this idea “One who suffers in the flesh prevents sin” in verse 1, and put it into practice in very unreasonable ways. They look for ways to suffer. They figure “Suffering builds character,” so they set out to do things in the most challenging, backwards, wasteful, ridiculous ways. They put up with abuse, instead of resisting it or getting their abusers rightly prosecuted, because they think they’re meant to suffer. They deprive themselves of healthy things, and fast way longer than is medically safe. They reject medical treatment and ordinary comforts. They whip and cut themselves. They seek out the sort of people who would murder them, because they want to be martyred.

Christians have been doing this stuff throughout Christian history. And unless they were following the explicit orders of the Holy Spirit, they were wrong to do it. Yes, life is suffering, but Jesus has conquered the world, Jn 16.33 and there’s no reason for us to suffer unnecessarily. There’s plenty enough suffering in our lives! Family and friends die, accidents and disasters happen, we lose money, we lose our health. There’s lots we can’t prevent—without adding more to it, just because we’ve fooled ourselves into thinking random suffering makes us righteous.

In context, Peter is writing about the pushback his audience got from pagans who couldn’t understand why they were no longer living like pagans—who could no longer even condone pagan behavior.

Why 𝘤𝘢𝘯’𝘵 we cure people on sabbath?

Luke 14.1-6.

One of the regular Pharisee complaints about Jesus was he cured people on sabbath. He’d even cure them right in the middle of his synagogue lessons.

Y’might know Pharisees were strict about sabbath. Y’might also know they weren’t all that strict about a whole lot of things. Like Christians nowadays, they cherry-picked the issues they cared to be strict about, based on their own prejudices and conveniences. Like us, they’d come up with loopholes in the Law of Moses which let ’em do the bare minimum. If they wanted to do a certain kind of work on sabbath, they’d easily find a pious-sounding reason which let ’em get away with it. And like many a hypocrite, they likely hated when Jesus called ’em on it—which he basically did every time he cured someone on sabbath.

Pharisee attitudes about curing people on sabbath were mixed. Life-saving procedures, like slapping a choking person on the back, was fine; like helping someone who’d just been curb-stomped by the Romans was fine. Praying for the sick was usually fine—we can always pray, and if the Holy Spirit answers the prayer and cures someone on sabbath, that’s on him, not us. (Shammai and his disciples felt this teaching was pushing it, but they recognized they couldn’t legitimately rebuke anyone for praying.)

But both these schools of thought rebuked the practice of any medical treatments on sabbath. Any of that stuff was supposed to be done Friday, before sabbath began at sundown; then held off till sabbath ended at sundown on Saturday. In that 24-hour period, you could pray, but otherwise you did nothing.

This story takes place during a dinner party. Luke doesn’t say whether it’s breakfast, brunch, lunch, or supper. But y’know, let’s just say it’s the evening meal. Let’s say it happened at 5PM—let’s even say it happened a half-hour before sundown, when it wouldn’t be sabbath anymore and nobody could object to Jesus curing this guy. Because it doesn’t really matter what time it was: Jesus is establishing the principle that it’s always right to help people on sabbath.

Luke 14.1-6 KWL

1This happens on sabbath,

when Jesus goes to eat bread

in the house of one of the Pharisees’ leaders.

People are watching him closely—

2look, a certain person who has an edema

is in front of Jesus.

3In reply, Jesus speaks to the lawyers and Pharisees,

saying, “Can one cure on sabbath,

or not?”

4The lawyers and Pharisees are silent.

Laying hands on the sufferer,

Jesus cures him

and sets him free.

5To the Pharisees, Jesus says,

“If a child or ox will fall down a well,

who among you² will not quickly pull him out?

—even on the sabbath day?”

6The Pharisees are not able

to reply to these things.

The KJV translates ὑδρωπικὸς/ydropikós, “fluid build-up,” as “dropsy.” Nowadays we call it an edema. You know those people whose ankles swell up, so they have to wear compression socks or they’ll have cankles? That. It’s not necessarily life-threatening, but it can make you miserable.

Luke says this person was ἔμπροσθεν/émprosthen, “in the face of,” Jesus. It gets translated “before him,” but he wasn’t just really close to Jesus; he was unavoidably close. Probably on purpose. In Jesus’s day, people ate dinner Roman-style, laying down on couches, and it’s entirely likely this guy’s cankles were right next to Jesus’s head. Whoever was in charge of the seating put Jesus right next to this guy.

And the rest of them were watching to see what Jesus would do. Would he break sabbath?

Well, Jesus never sinned, 1Pe 2.22 so he never did break sabbath, regardless of what your favorite dispensationalist preachers might claim. But he totally broke Pharisee customs about sabbath. Broke a lot of their customs, intentionally, because they were just godless hypocrisy. The custom about not helping the needy on sabbath?—perfect example.

The Pharisee and Taxman Story.

Luke 18.9-14.

Immediately after the Persistent Widow Story, Jesus tells this one. It likewise touches upon prayer… but it’s more about people who consider themselves devout, yet are jerks. Sometimes it’s called the Pharisee and Publican story, ’cause “publican” is how the KJV translates τελώνης/telónis, “collector of tolls, customs, or taxes.” But “publican” is an anachronism at this point in history.

Yep, it’s history lesson time, kids. Before the Cæsars took over, Rome was a republic. Not a democracy; it was an oligarchy run by patricians, the Roman upper caste. At some uncertain point in their past, the patricians overthrew their king and ran Rome collectively. Every year, patricians elected two consuls to run things; the consuls selected senators, and these senators ruled for life. But senators weren’t permitted to collect taxes, so they hired lower-rank patricians to do it for ’em. These tax-gatherers were from the publicani rank, and over time, publicani became synonymous with taxmen.

These publicans practiced tax farming: Different companies applied for the job of collecting taxes in a certain town or county, by offering the government an advance—say, x10,000. (The x stands for denarii; it’s like our dollar sign.) If they outbid everyone they got the contract, and had to pay the government the x10,000 advance. Now they had to make the money back: Collect rent, charge tolls, demand a percentage of merchants’ profits. They shook everybody down to make back that x10,000.

Everything they made beyond that x10,000, they got to keep. So the more unscrupulous the publican, the higher taxes would be, and the richer they got. Richer, and corrupt. They’d bribe government officials to get their contracts, bribe their way out of trouble if they were charged with over-taxing, and bribe their way out of trouble for any other crimes.

When Cæsar Augustus took over the senate in 30BC—that’d be about 60 years before Jesus tells this story—he took tax-gathering away from the publicans and put government officials in charge of it. He figured it’d lower taxes and reduce bribery. The publicans switched careers, and got into banking and money-lending. So, like I said, “publican” is an anachronism: Publicans weren’t taxmen anymore.

But Cæsar’s reforms didn’t fix the problem. Lazy government officials simply hired tax farmers to collect for them. Any wealthy person could bid for the job and get it. That’s what we see in first-century Israel: Wealthy Jews became tax farmers, and did the Romans’ dirty work for them. Their fellow Jews saw them as traitors—as greedy, exploitative sellouts. Which, to be fair, they totally were.

So to Jesus’s audience, a Pharisee—a devout follower of the Law of Moses—would be the good guy; and a taxman would be an utter scumbag. And now, the story.

Luke 18.9-14 KWL

9Jesus also says this parable

to certain hearers who imagine themelves fair-minded

and despise everyone else.

10“Two people go up to temple to pray.

One’s a Pharisee, and the other a taxman.

11The Pharisee, standing off by himself, is praying this:

‘God, thank you¹ that I’m not like every other person!

Greedy capitalists, totally unfair, totally unfaithful!

Or even like this taxman!

12I fast twice a week.

I tithe whatever I get.’

13The taxman, who’d been standing way back,

didn’t even want to raise his eyes to heaven,

but beat his chest, saying,

‘God have mercy on me, a sinner!’

14I tell you² this taxman goes back to his house

declared right in God’s eyes

—same as the other man!

For everyone who raises themselves will be lowered.

And those who lower themselves will be raised.”