Free to Serve Him

Another mystery of Christianity is that two people might have opposite views and behavior concerning a peripheral issue (not commanded by Scripture) and both are doing the right thing.

For a black and white person like me, I’ve been perplexed by the instructions of Romans 14. It says just that. One person can do one thing, another the opposite, and they are not supposed to judge one another. Both are pleasing the Lord. How can that be?

This passage is about weak and stronger believers. They have opinions about eating meat offered to idols, observing the Sabbath, and other matters of conscience. The weaker believers (from a Jewish background) feel guilty eating that meat and think their seventh day of the week is more important than other days. Others (particularly Gentiles) have no problem with Jewish ceremony and (rightly) understand their freedom in Christ from the old ceremonial laws. They feel free to eat whatever they want and consider all days the same.

Paul tells them not to judge one another. He says, “Who are you to judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls, indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand.”

Matters of conscience is God’s business. I remember hearing a story about a man who was a baseball fanatic. He neglected his family and sometimes his work to be at or watch the games. When he became a Christian, he realized that baseball had been his idol, began to feel guilty about this passion, and avoided it so he could do his duties as an employer, husband and father. One day his Christian friends invited him to a baseball game. They were shocked when he recoiled in horror and said no way. How could they do such a sinful thing?

This helped me understand Romans 14. For the new Christian, watching baseball had been a sinful thing, not that baseball is necessarily evil, but his passion for it had been. His conscience told him to stop this obsession, and even though others could do it without any guilt, he could not. But he also didn’t understand their freedom.

That understanding might happen later. I also knew a woman who had a problem with any kind of card game. This came out one evening when she came for dinner. Our small (at that time) granddaughter wanted to play a game. The woman agreed, so the little one brought a deck of cards and said, “Let’s play fish.”

The woman told her that she wasn’t very good at cards, and could they draw pictures instead? Later, she explained to me that her family had been compulsive gamblers who used cards. When she became a Christian, she steered clear of cards, but did not condemn others who wanted to play; she felt guilty herself but understood that everyone was not the same.

Strong convictions based on conscience must be given my attention. God gave conscience as a means of warning me. While my conscience can be wrong, I should still pay attention. Even if His Word is not directly forbidding something to me, I may have a sinful attitude toward whatever it is, and that sinful attitude needs my attention.

Romans 14 says, “For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. for to this end Christ died and rose and lived again, that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living.”


My focus is not to be on pleasing myself or even on appeasing my conscience. My motives should always be to please Christ. Even if I am mistaken about my freedoms involving non-sin issues, God is more concerned about why I do something (again, a non-sin something) than what it is. I can freely draw animals, write stories, make quilts if I’m doing this to please Him or to be of use to Him in some way, but if I do those things with greed for personal glory, or some other recompense, it wouldn’t surprise me if my conscience began to bother me when I do them.

Jesus is my Lord. Dead or alive, I belong to Him. Living for Him involves everything I do, including those things that are not sinful or forbidden, including daily chores. That is why I need to focus on my own issues, not be picking on or judging others. “Therefore, whether I eat or drink, or whatever I do, do all to the glory of God.”