19 Nov Are You Weak or Strong?
Imagine a church which had done things the same way for a thousand years, and then all those people were kicked out of the city by a political decision, and a new bunch of people who thought differently kept the church going. Then the original people slowly filtered back in and there was a huge disagreement about how to run the church.
That was the church at Rome.
The Emperor Claudius expelled all the Jews from Rome, (see Acts 18:1-2) so the church was run by Gentile believers who remained. But then as Jews filtered back to Rome there were big differences about many things. Paul’s epistle to the Romans is an entire discourse given to discussing them, starting with salvation, God’s plans for the Jews and finally meat offered to idols and more. Paul labelled one group weak, and another group strong, and said that some of their differences were ‘disputable,’ that is it was actually ok to have differences of opinion, but other differences were indisputable, and they had to agree.
Both groups had strong faith, and probably considered the other group weak, but Paul actually labelled the Jews as ‘weak’ and the Gentiles as ‘strong.’ Why?
Here are two sermons on the subject of Disputable Matters. The first talks about our attitude of acceptance towards others with differences which are disputable. The second covers the dangers that exist, such as clinging to our own way when it may cause another harm.
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