Rather than have disputes and quarrels, Paul encourages us to seek to edify one another. We are not to try and please each other but are to zealously do that which is good and does not bring reproach on us. Dr. Sproul looks into Galatians and Psalm 69 for examples in these areas.

We will continue today with our study of Paul’s letter to the Romans. I hope, by the grace and assistance of God, to finish this section on our concern of love for the weaker brethren that we have been looking at for the last couple of sermons. Today, I will read what I was not able to cover last time and then into chapter 15, so I will read Romans 14:19–15:13. I ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God.

Before you hear this, let me remind you of something we always need to be aware of. It really does not matter who is preaching as long as the Word of God is heard. To listen to the reading of the Word of God, in many respects, should be enough for the soul. It is such a privilege for us to hear what God says. Hear then what He said:

Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. 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 do anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended or is made weak. Do you have faith? Have it to yourself before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith; for whatever is not from faith is sin.

We then who are strong ought to bear with the scruples of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification. For even Christ did not please Himself; but as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached You fell on Me.” For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope. Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God. Now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy, as it is written:

“For this reason I will confess to You among the Gentiles,
And sing to Your name.”

And again he says:

“Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people!”

And again:

“Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles!
Laud Him, all you peoples!”

And again, Isaiah says:

“There shall be a root of Jesse;
And He who shall rise to reign over the Gentiles,
In Him the Gentiles shall hope.”

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

You have just heard the very Word of God. Please be seated. Let us pray.

Again, our Father, we look to You for assistance in helping us to understand Your Word, helping us to receive that Word and to receive it gladly, not grudgingly, that our lives may be brought more and more into conformity with the image of Jesus, whom we serve. For we ask it in His name. Amen.

Pursue Peace

As I mentioned earlier, Paul treated this question of how we regard the weaker brother in the things that are adiaphorous—that is, things with no inherent ethical bearing, but which some people may have scruples about—as a matter so serious that he dealt with it in great length here in Romans and also in his correspondence to the Corinthian church. This question was also part of the substance of Paul’s writing to the Galatians. It was at the center of the debate in the first-century church over how the Jewish converts were to receive the gentiles, as the gospel was expanded to them and they were given full membership in the new covenant community. This was a matter of great urgency to the Apostle.

As we have seen in chapter 14, Paul reiterates the same point again and again. You may find that tiresome, but he stresses it so that we will get the point that he is communicating. So, let us look at verse 19 and the topic of peace, which I went over briefly last time: “Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food.”

First, there is a conclusion in this text that comes from Paul’s previous reasoning, and it is a call to action. It is a call to pursuit. When we pursue something, we chase or seek it not casually but with a degree of earnestness.

I remember when I was a little boy during World War II. When I was maybe three years old, the most exciting toy I received for Christmas was a metal plane you could sit in and pedal around the streets. It was called a pursuit plane. That was the first time I ever heard the word pursuit. I understood later from movies that pursuit planes had a mission to pursue, to search out and destroy the enemy. This is the action Paul is calling us to: to chase after this, to seek it diligently. What is it that he is calling us to pursue? “Let us pursue the things which make for peace.”

What is the opposite of peace? It is war. It is conflict. The people of God are not to be people who are chasing after fights, constantly looking for conflict. Rather, we are to be those who search for those things that make for peace. As I mentioned before, it is not a carnal peace, a false peace, a Neville Chamberlain kind of peace, but the peace that passes understanding, the peace that Jesus Himself left as His legacy.

You remember Jesus said, as His last will and testament: “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you” (John 14:27). It is not without reason that our Lord has been called the Prince of Peace. In fact, His ultimate mission was to bring us peace with God and reconciliation for we who were alienated from the Lord, bringing us together with Him.

Edify, Do Not Destroy

“Let us pursue the things which make for peace,” and then Paul says, “and the things by which one may edify another. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food.” Remember, he has already said that the kingdom of God is not in eating and drinking.

Notice that there is a sharp contrast between two words here in the sentences I have just read. There is the concept of edification, where Paul says that we ought to pursue the things of peace and the things by which we edify one another. Later on in this same epistle, he speaks again about those things which are done for edification. In stark contrast to the concept of edification is the negative prohibition: Do not destroy each other, or the work of God, over food. We see the concepts of edification and destruction.

Many of us have etched in our memories the vivid pictures of what happened in New York City on 9/11. We saw those planes crash into the World Trade Center and witnessed before our eyes the implosion of those magnificent buildings. We have also seen on other occasions how, when demolition work is done on large buildings, the charges are set in such a way within the structure that once they have been ignited, the building implodes instantly.

The thing I will never forget about the Twin Towers is how quickly they fell to the ground. Ever since then, there have been plans and structures for rebuilding them. But how much longer does it take to build a building than to destroy it? To edify, to produce an edifice involves building, the stark opposite of destroying.

We can see what Paul is concerned about in terms of the manifestation of love in the body of Christ and the life of the Christian community. He is saying to the people at Rome: “Look, it is a lot easier to destroy than it is to build. It is so much easier to destroy your brother than it is to edify your brother. Yet what Christ has come to do is not to destroy us but to destroy the works of the devil and the works of darkness. At the same time, He has come to build for Himself a people that will manifest His own image.” That is what we are to find in the life of the church.

We are not to be known for the way in which we are critical of each other, attacking each other and gossiping about each other. Slander, dear friends, is the principal work of Satan. That is why his title in the New Testament is “the slanderer,” the one who is destructive, the one who brings false claims against people to tear them down. What we are called to do in the name of Jesus, says the Apostle, is not to tear each other apart, but to build each other up.

Have Your Freedom Before God

“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 do anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended or is made weak.”

Paul repeats this principle, which we have already looked at intently, of being considerate of our weaker brothers and sisters. He said that if you have faith—that is, if you are not the weaker brethren, if you understand your freedom in Christ—then have it to yourself before God. If you go to the marketplace and purchase meat that has been offered to idols, do not flaunt your liberty in front of your weaker brother. Go home and have the meat. Have it in private. Have it before the Lord, who sees all things.

“Have it to yourself before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith; for whatever is not from faith is sin.” This follows what we looked at last time concerning the danger and impropriety of acting against conscience or out of a bad conscience.

Please God, Not Man

Paul continues in chapter 15 with the admonition: “We then who are strong ought to bear with the scruples of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification.”

Let me take a second to go further in the New Testament to Paul’s writing to the church in the Galatian community. Here, he uses some of the strongest language found anywhere in his epistles because the Galatians have compromised the gospel. Paul says in Galatians 1:6–9:

I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.

“Let him be anathema. Let him be damned.” That is strong language. “As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.”

Notice how Paul follows this sharp, strong warning with a rhetorical question: “For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ” (Gal. 1:10). That seems to be in direct contradiction to what I just read in Romans, where Paul talks about how we are not to be pleasing ourselves, but we are to be pleasing our brother. He says to the Galatians that if he, Paul, is trying to please to men, he cannot be a servant of God.

Paul is clearly talking about two completely different types of pleasing others. In Galatians, he is talking about a sin by which the church has been laid waste countless times in history, where the gospel of God has been compromised or distorted for the sake of man-pleasing. We know that the gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing. We know there is a built-in hostility in the heart of human beings against the truth of God. If we seek that carnal peace, by which we seek to avoid conflict at any cost, and if we seek to please men rather than God, we are enemies of the gospel. In the context of the Galatians’ struggle, Paul talks about man-pleasing as a dreadful vice, not a virtue.

Paul talks later about those who give the service of sight. We talk about lip service in our language, referring to those people who say, “Yes, I believe that,” when they really do not. But those who give the service of sight are the people who will work diligently when the eye of the supervisor or overseer is directed in their direction. Then, they work hard. But as soon as the boss leaves, as soon as the supervisor goes down another hall, then that person takes his ease and no longer gives any effort to do what is right. That is man-pleasing of the worst sort.

That is not what Paul is talking about in the passage that I just read from Romans. Rather, he says that we ought to bear with the scruples of the weak and not please ourselves. It is not trying to please people for the sake of personal gain, but we are not to seek our own pleasure to the hurt of our brothers and sisters. That is the principle of this discussion about being patient and forbearing with each other in the life of the Christian community. “Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification.”

Christ’s Zeal for the Father

Paul goes on to give the supreme model for this: “For even Christ did not please Himself; but as it is written, ‘The reproaches of those who reproached You fell on Me.’” Jesus’ pleasure was not always to do what He wanted to do. The quotation here is from the Psalms, and the Apostle refers specifically to Psalm 69. Let us look at that for just a moment. In Psalm 69:19–21, we read:

You know my reproach, my shame, and my dishonor;
My adversaries are all before You.
Reproach has broken my heart,
And I am full of heaviness;
I looked for someone to take pity, but there was none;
And for comforters, but I found none.
They also gave me gall for my food,
And for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

We see that this psalm is a psalm of messianic future expectancy. In the beginning of that same psalm, from verses 5–9, we read:

O God, You know my foolishness;
And my sins are not hidden from You.
Let not those who wait for You, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed because of me;
Let not those who seek You be confounded because of me, O God of Israel.
Because for Your sake I have borne reproach;
Shame has covered my face.
I have become a stranger to my brothers,
And an alien to my mother’s children;
Because zeal for Your house has eaten me up,
And the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me.

That is the text Paul quotes in Romans 15:3. In the broader context, the Messiah is known—as the Lord Jesus was later known—for His singular zeal for His Father’s house: “Zeal for My Father’s house has consumed Me. It has eaten Me up.” That is how Jesus is described in the Scriptures, as One who was so passionately committed to doing the will of the Father that He was consumed by it. Rather than pleasing Himself, His meat and drink was to please the Father. Therefore, the reproaches that were directed against God came upon Him.

Living for Others

Paul now directs the Romans to the supreme example of Jesus, who was willing to suffer the reproach of this world, not to please Himself, but so that His people would be redeemed and edified. How unlike our natural selfishness, where we want so much to please ourselves rather than to please others. Who among us has grace so sown in our soul that we are consumed by a passion to put others before ourselves?

I mentioned on another occasion going into a maximum-security prison in Minneapolis, Still Water State Prison. It was the most ungodly place I have ever experienced, where human beings behaved like animals. It was beastly to behold. I went in with Prison Fellowship when I was on the board of that ministry.

Another member of the board was a fellow by the name of Lem Barney, who was seven times selected All-Pro as a defensive back for the Detroit Lions. Here was a veteran of the wars of the National Football League coming into an audience that was profoundly hostile, and these rough human beings sat there listening as Lem Barney stood up and started to sing: “Others, Lord, yes, others. Help me to live for them.” You could have heard a pin drop. He sang a little children’s song that captured the essence of Christian love—that we are called to live for others.

You may know the acrostic JOY—Jesus first, others second, yourself last. That is simple stuff. You do not have to have a PhD in theology to get that message. Jesus first, others second, and yourself last. That is the recipe. That is the formula for joy. When we do what the Apostle enjoins here, seeking to please others for their edification, the byproduct for us is not loss but gain, not sorrow but joy. We ourselves are edified in that process.

The Comfort of Scripture

“For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.” I cannot pass over that: “through the patience and the comfort of the Scriptures.”

I know of nothing more comforting to the soul than the Word of God. When I am down, when my soul is cast down—and it is cast down from time to time, just as everyone’s is—in the midst of sorrows, in the midst of fear, or if I need to have my soul raised out of depression, there is no greater panacea for it than to immerse myself in the Word of God.

When Simeon saw the Christ child brought in for dedication, he sang the Nunc Dimittis because the Spirit had promised him that he would not see death until he saw the Christ child. When he saw Jesus in the arms of His mother, he sang the Nunc Dimittis: “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace . . . for my eyes have seen” not the redeemer of Israel, not the savior of Israel, but the consolation of Israel (Luke 2:29–30).

I used to trick my seminary students. I would say: “You’ve all heard the title Paraclete, which is often translated by the word Comforter. In the New Testament, who is the Paraclete? Who is the Comforter?” They would all raise their hands and say: “That’s easy. It’s the Holy Ghost.” No, it is not. I would say: “The Holy Ghost is the other Paraclete, another Comforter. When you have another of something, that presupposes there is at least one that comes before.” The primary Paraclete, the primary Comforter of the New Testament is Jesus, and He bestows comfort to His people through His Word.

People have asked me why I fight tenaciously to maintain the integrity of Holy Scripture in an age of skepticism and cynicism. I say: “You want to take away from me my comfort, my consolation? Here it is: the inspired Word of God.” When God speaks, even when He speaks in judgment, there is comfort.

I have been asked, “What’s the difference between the accusation of Satan, where he calls attention to your sin, and the conviction of the Holy Spirit?” The difference is simple. When Satan comes to accuse you, he comes to destroy you, and there is no comfort in it. When the Spirit convicts you of your sin, as painful as it may be, He will never leave you destroyed. Even in His conviction, He brings comfort. He brings consolation, never leaving us without hope, but rather leaving us with the certainty of the forgiveness that is there for us.

In this text, Paul speaks of the comfort of the Scriptures in order that we might have hope. Without the patience and comfort delivered to our hearts by the Word of God, we would be like the rest of the world: without hope. Look outside at the world that is perishing before your very eyes, and you see people parading with pride and eloquence, giving thin disguises of their sad hopelessness. If you are without Christ, you are without hope. But with Christ, you are never without hope.

Glorify God with One Mind

Paul now speaks in terms of benediction: “Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

That is what it will be like in heaven. But when we get to heaven, the saints there will be of one mind and of one voice, together singing to the honor and the glory of God. That is what the church in this world is supposed to look like.

Now we come to another conclusion: “Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God.” When I receive you, in your weakness and in your strength, and when you receive me in my weakness and in my strength, you do not just edify me. You do not just edify yourself. But when you do this, you do it to the glory of God. When I receive you, I am not just being kind to you. I am glorifying God. I am glorifying Jesus.

“Now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy.” Paul brings it back to the question he has dealt with throughout the epistle: the question of the place and function of the gentiles in the kingdom of God under the new covenant.

Paul is speaking now about glorifying God, and he says, “Christ has become a servant to the circumcision”—that is, to the Jew—“for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy.” I confirm the truth that God said to the Jew when I pour out mercy and grace to the gentiles to the glory of God.

The Power of the Holy Spirit

Paul then cites several passages from the Old Testament as he continues in Romans 15:9–13:

“For this reason I will confess to You among the Gentiles,
And sing to Your name.”

And again he says:

“Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people!”

Again, we sing the merger of Jew and gentile coming together with one voice, one mind, one Lord, one faith, one baptism:

“Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles!
Laud Him, all you peoples!”

And again, Isaiah says:

“There shall be a root of Jesse.”

This refers to someone who will come from the family of Jesse, from the seed of David, who comes centuries later—Christ.

And He who shall rise to reign over the Gentiles,
In Him the Gentiles shall hope.”

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

We see the slightest hint here of what Paul will elaborate in great detail to the Corinthians and the Galatians: the fruit of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit works in our hearts when He sheds abroad the love of Christ in us that produces the fruit of joy, peace, hope, forbearance, patience, kindness, goodness, and humility. That is what the God of all hope does when He fills us with His love in the power of the Holy Spirit. By that power I finished the text today. We will look, God willing, next time at the rest of Romans 15, beginning at verse 14. Let us pray.

Father, give us a desire to pursue peace with all men, that we may not be man-pleasers in the vicious sense but other-pleasers in the virtuous sense. May we imitate Jesus, who bore the reproach of the world upon Himself for our sake, whose zeal for His Father’s house consumed Him. Give us that zeal, that passion, that ardor in our own souls, that we may edify and not destroy. In Jesus’ name and for His sake. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.