Instructions to both weak and strong
One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7 For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. 8 If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.
Don't forget: 1) a previous emperor had forced Jewish people to leave Rome, but now some were back. Some were Christians. Their presence in mostly Gentile congregations was tricky.
That is, 2) the Gentiles in Rome had never been under Jewish ceremonial laws. The Gentiles had been eating pork all along, but for them now to do that in the presence of Jewish Christians or to put pressure on Jews to join them in a meal including “unclean” foods would have strained their congregational ties.
In cases such as these, the Gentile, comfortably making full use of Christian liberty by eating anything and everything, was in a manner of speaking more mature than the Jewish Christians who still had reservations. Hence the Gentile was the strong brother who needed to be considerate of his weaker brother. The difference was one of degree of maturity, not presence or absence of saving faith.
Paul summarizes such a situation when he says, “One man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables.”
The situation as described held the potential for either of two problems. The strong Gentile, cheerfully eating anything, could easily look down on the hesitant Jew as being something of a spiritual wimp. Paul cautions against that: “The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not.”
The Jew, on the other hand, could look disapprovingly at the Gentile who heedlessly helps himself to everything on the menu, and complain, “He shouldn’t be doing that! Eating ceremonially approved foods is more God-pleasing than partaking of those other things.” Hence the Jew could easily become critical and improperly judge the Gentile’s actions.
To such a weak brother Paul says, “The man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him.”
With his closing observation “for God has accepted him,” Paul comes to the heart of the matter: God doesn’t care what you eat. You may have reservations about oysters on the half shell, or snake steak, or chocolate-covered caterpillars, but God hasn’t forbidden such fare. Each believer is God’s “servant,” and if God as “master” is satisfied, “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.”
From the example of foods, Paul now moves on to another area: special sanctity of one day over another. It seems logical in the Jewish-gentile setting Paul is dealing with to think of the change in worship days from the Sabbath Day to Sunday. Here too Jews had lived for centuries under the strict regimen of the ceremonial laws, which prescribed six days of labor and the seventh, the Sabbath, as the day of rest, on which no work was to be done. All of that changed when God sent his sabbath rest in the person of Jesus Christ. Believers in Christ were now free to choose a new day of rest and worship, as they did in moving their weekly worship service from Saturday to Sunday in recognition of the Lord’s resurrection. But again, making that change took some time, and it required the adjustment of some people’s thinking.
Without using the terms weak and strong, Paul alludes to differences of opinion that prevailed in the two groups when he says, “One man considers one day more sacred than another.” Either choice is acceptable. The only requirement is that the advocate of that day be fully committed in his mind to doing this to the glory of God. “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord.”
Just as in verse 4 where Paul indicated that the basis for the commonality between all believers is that all are God’s “servants,” so here he calls attention to our common status of “belong[ing] to the Lord,” whether in life or in death. “For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.”
The universality of death particularly suggests to the apostle yet another commonality between us and our fellow Christians. We will all individually have to give an account of ourselves to our just and holy God. In view of the great day of our own reckoning, how foolish it is to get all worked up about judging our brother! Reinforcing that sobering thought with words from Isaiah, Paul writes, “For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. It is written: ‘“As surely as I live,” says the Lord, “every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.”’ So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.”