Rom 14:15 For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. By what you eat, do not destroy the one for whom Christ died."In the context of Jewish faith, "destroy" means to cut off from the covenant community (Deut. 28:21, 45, 48, 51, 61, 63). To encourage behavior that weak believers' consciences forbid is to encourage them to act against their conscience, a serious and dangerous act."
That's from my ESV Reformation Study Bible.
I think it's a pretty scary concept. We can lead a Christian to their demise as a Christian? To me what this means is that we can be the instrument God uses to uncover someone as a false convert, and that's a bad thing. Hmm.
How is it possible that we can show that a brother in Christ who has been called by God was a false convert (and therefore not called by God). I think until I hear a better explanation of this verse I will just say it's one of those things of God that is out of my understanding.
There are two kinds of instruments that we can by used by God as:
Instruments of grace
and
instruments of judgment.
We should, in love, look for daily opportunities to share the gospel with unbelievers so that that they might be saved. We should not cause our brothers in Christ to stumble, and stumble so greatly that they could even be destroyed or somehow be removed from their covenant relationship with God through Christ.
We need to encourage one another and not get down to the level of bickering over subjects on which God has not spoken.
-Gage
4 comments:
I'm trying to wrap my mind around this post because I don't quite understand what you are saying.
This is what I understand from that verse:
To cause a brother or sister in Christ to stumble (to do something against their conscience) is bad and it will weaken their faith even more. This is talking about true believers.
If a person is a false convert that means they are not actually believers and it is absolutely our duty to point out their actual sin (not just what they believe to be sins) and share the Gospel with them and show them that they were never saved to begin with.
"In the context of Jewish faith, "destroy" means to cut off from the covenant community (Deut. 28:21, 45, 48, 51, 61, 63). To encourage behavior that weak believers' consciences forbid is to encourage them to act against their conscience, a serious and dangerous act."
My interpretation of this is that each person knows where they have to place their own boundaries. Say like I'm okay with having a glass of wine, but my friend who is a newer christian (weak believer?), feels she should not have even one drink, I really shouldn't try to persuade her to have 'just one' because "I" feel it's okay, even though she would be going against her own conscience.
That's what I'm getting out of it.
understand that, but my question is how can we "destroy" a Christian? The meaning of "destroy" seems to be "kick someone out of their relationship with God". If we can lose our salvation then Christ's sacrifice is insufficient. I believe that if you're saved once your saved forever. That's such an amazing promise. Christ died for all our sins, past and present. So how can a Christian be "destroyed"?
I don't think it's necessarily that we kick them out of their relationship with God, it's that we help to bring about their downfall. And yes, we only need to be saved once and we're covered for eternity, but we also have to follow God's rules, at least to the best of our ability. We're gonna mess up, but the fact that we repent and receive God's mercy and forgiveness is what matters. If we just go off the deep end, and figure, "Hey, I've been saved, now I can do whatever I want and not worry about it", that's not gonna work because we would be taking what we want and putting it before what God wants for us.
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