14:16
Now Paul is not saying that eating any food was wrong, in fact he agrees that we can eat anything, at least in principle. However, if we use our “freedom” in an unwise way it will not do any good at all, not to others, not to ourselves. We may cause others unnecessary distress, and our “flaunting” of our freedom may just result in conflict, doing no good at all.
14:17
“For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking”. We so easily get focused on the wrong things, we will attach great importance to something that is really of little importance. Why do we do this? There can be many reasons, but one can be self-justification. Our rebellion against God claimed we can manage without Him, so we long to prove that we are righteous in our own right, we long to justify ourselves. We cannot do this, as Paul has argued strongly in the earlier parts of Romans, but if we make something such as food rules or observing a certain day we can do that. So we make this food rule the be all and end all of religion and so feel justified in our own eyes, fooling ourselves that it also makes us justified in God’s eyes. Churches should beware, individuals should beware, whenever some rule is made the standard by which we judge righteousness. The Romans were entirely missing the point, as all so easily do.
Conversely, the kingdom is a matter of “righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”. It is about the righteousness that was won for us by Christ on the cross. That brings us peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. This is not just warm feelings for ourselves, but right attitudes towards others, genuine love and concern for their well-being and progress in the Lord. We are declared righteous through the blood of Jesus shed on the cross, so we have nothing to prove to God, Christ has proved it all! We have true peace with God, we have no need to manufacture it. We have true joy, not a false joy of having proved ourselves better than someone else.
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