Diversity of social practices

In the Wednesday night class I teach at the Alamo church, we have been paddling our way through a verse-by-verse study of the epistle to the Romans. We are nearly upon the distant shore and we reached last night the deep waters of chapter 14 where Paul discusses "disputes over doubtful things." I have heard several lessons in my time on this passage, but as I was reading in preparation for class and as our class discussion of the section continued, I made an observation that hitherto I had never before noticed: the disputes mentioned in Romans 14 have nothing at all to do with the corporate body of believers as they meet in the assembly and everything to do with the social customs practiced privately by individual Christians. In this case, it was the eating of all things versus the eating of only vegetables or the celebrating of holidays that were no longer binding but fine to celebrate as part of ethnic heritage. People still bind and loose these type issues on one another today and, worse yet, attempt to bind and loose them on entire congregations and the entire fellowship of believers.

Isn't it strange how congregations divide, split and rail against each other because of the private actions of one or two members? Certainly, the private lives of members reflect upon the church body as a whole (Paul says as much in this chapter, "none of us lives to himself or dies to himself...," etc.), but we also need to bear in mind that while I may not have a full and healthy fellowship relationship with one brother in Christ because of his private actions that does not taint the whole body of believers who may (or, in fact, may not) agree with him on his private opinion he practices in matters of "doubtful things."

Paul says it best in Romans 15:7 when he states simply, "Receive one another just as Christ also received you..."

Not living for self,

-Will