Romans 14:18Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

All will marvel in you not so much at perfection as at peace and concord. Everyone will receive benefit from the latter good through you, but no one from the former.

Here he hints that the perfect reproached the weak out of vainglory. If you wish, he says, to become an object of admiration for people, then move them to admire you not so much by perfection as by peace and the other virtues. By these one should serve and please God, not by eating pork indiscriminately.

For whoever serves by these things of which I have spoken is well pleasing to God and approved by men, that is, because he does not give scandal to his brother.

What does it mean that the one who is pleasing to God is worthy of approval from men? It means that he has received the gift through which he stands worthy before God.

For this is what the God of all requires from us, and this also brings benefit to men. Here one should also note that the Apostle called service to Christ a work pleasing to the God of all. If serving Christ is a work pleasing to God, then honoring Christ is likewise pleasing to God. Therefore whoever undertakes to blaspheme Christ and diminishes His dignity does what is displeasing to the God of all.

Some, boasting of their freedom and making use of the absence of Church regulations concerning fasting, ate everything. They even ate what others considered forbidden and unclean, and by this they repelled them from themselves and even from the Church. The Apostle instructs such people not to grieve their brethren (v. 15), not to give occasion for their faith to be blasphemed (v. 16), not to destroy the work of God, that is, the unity of the Church (v. 20), not to eat to the scandal of others (ibid.), and not to scandalize the brethren (v. 21). In all this there is a direct rebuke of the Stundists. It is all the more severe because the fasts they reject and openly violate are now not a remnant of Judaism, but an age-old institution of the Church of God.

Third, in order to remove griefs and scandal for weak brethren, love requires that in matters morally indifferent one should rather adapt oneself to their views than proudly insist on one's own (Rom 14:13-21). "Let us no longer judge one another. Rather judge this, that no one put a stumbling block or cause of offense in his brother's way. If your brother is grieved because of food, you are no longer walking in love. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink," that is, it is acquired independently of what a man eats or drinks, "but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. All things indeed are pure, but it is evil for the man who eats with offense. It is good neither to eat meat nor drink wine, nor to do anything by which your brother stumbles, or is offended, or is made weak."

Having said that food is not an essential matter, the Apostle indicates wherein the essential matters of Christian life consist: holiness, mutual concord, and spiritual joy. All the care of Christians must be directed toward these chief matters of Christian life, since in them the Kingdom of God is found. It gradually takes up its dwelling in the hearts of Christians as they advance in attaining the blessings indicated. Therefore, if anything at all, including difference over food, becomes a cause of violating someone's holiness or peace, and instead of joy implants division, grief, and the heaviness of enmity, it must in every way be set aside. By such difference the inward establishment of the Kingdom of God within us is destroyed.

This is how you should serve Christ the Lord. This is what is essential in Christianity, not eating one thing and not another, or eating everything without distinction. Even this may have its place, but not as the chief thing; it is an addition. But how does he say, "serve," when righteousness, peace, and especially joy are the fruit of the grace of the Holy Spirit? Grace is given. Yet what grace produces and bears as fruit in us is not the work of grace alone, but also of free will. Grace works together with labor and zeal, and then there is spiritual fruit. Strive for righteousness, and with the help of grace you will become righteous, not outwardly, but in the heart.