Free Enough to Say No

We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. — Romans 15:1

Into the Word

Yesterday Peter came down the stairs. Today the question is what the strong are supposed to do once they get to the table.

Paul’s argument does not stop at the chapter break. Romans 15 opens with the same strong and weak still at the same table, and it is there he says what the strong are for. But he had already shown it in his own life. He had written to Corinth, a city with a similar fight over meat, and his position there was as clear as it is in Romans:

Meat is meat. An idol is nothing (1 Corinthians 8:4). And then, in the same breath: if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble (1 Corinthians 8:13).

Never. Not “for now” or “when the weak are watching.” A man free from all took the freedom he had just defended and set it down for life.

We tend to measure freedom by how much it lets us do. Paul measured it the other way. A freedom that must be used is not freedom. It is compulsion in better clothes. The proof that Paul was free was that he could say no to himself, and did.

The Verb Means Carry

Back in Romans 15, Paul tells the strong what their strength is for. We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak.

“Bear with” in English sounds like patience, putting up with someone. The Greek is more physical. The verb is bastazō (βαστάζω), to carry, to take a weight onto yourself. It is the word for carrying one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2). It is the word Paul used when he said he carried on his body the marks of Jesus (Galatians 6:17). And it is the word John chose when Jesus walked out of the city carrying His own cross (John 19:17). Paul is not asking the strong to tolerate the weak. He is asking them to pick up what the weak cannot lift and carry it.

So the strong are not the ones who can eat the most. They are the ones who can carry the most. Paul makes the pattern explicit: For Christ did not please Himself (Romans 15:3). He had already shown what that looked like. Christ, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant (Philippians 2:6–7). The One who had every reason to stay at the top got lower instead. The strongest Person who ever lived used His strength to take the weight of others onto His shoulders. That is what strength was always for.

“Still Praying Before Meals?”

A pastor I know told me about a dinner from years ago. A senior scholar he deeply respected, a man of large laugh and large heart, took him to a fine restaurant to mark a milestone in his life.

The food came, and the younger man bowed his head to give thanks. The older man watched, then called him by name. “You still pray before meals? God knows everything. He doesn’t need you to say it. Just eat.” Then, half teasing: “Are you doing that because you’re weak?”

“I always pray like this,” the younger man said. “God is great. But He also cares about small things. He would know my thanks without my saying it. But when I say it, I think He looks at that small thing and calls it beautiful.”

The scholar did not press him. They ate and talked for two or three hours. As they were parting, the older man said, “Your prayer before the meal stayed with me.”

Notice what did not happen. The strong man did not roll his eyes. He did not say, “What is that?” He could easily have looked down on the habit. He honored it instead. Paul’s instruction fits the scene exactly: Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains (Romans 14:3). And the one called weak did not apologize for his practice or hide it. He kept it, without shame. Paul has a word for that too: The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God (Romans 14:22). Not as a secret, but as something that does not need an audience to be real. When a conversation goes like that, both the speaker and the listener are mature. There is nothing left to fight about.

The Habits That Hold Us

That evening also corrects a mistake the strong are prone to. “Why fuss over such small things? God knows anyway. Everything is free now.” Forcing ritual on people is one error. Declaring all ritual gone is another, and it is the error of the strong.

We think we keep our habits. Over time it turns out our habits keep us. Bowing our heads before a meal, opening the Bible before the day begins, keeping an hour for prayer when nothing feels spiritual: these are not the fruit of a so-called strong faith. They are often what keeps a faith alive long enough to become strong. Most of us have seen the other outcome. Someone dismisses the small disciplines as beneath him, and some years on there is nothing holding him up.

Paul knew this. He still bound himself: I will never eat meat. A man who was free from all chose a rule, and it did not make him weak. It made him safe to be around.

Before We Move On

The weak keep their practices because those practices keep them. The strong can do without, or think they can. That is precisely why the burden of peace falls on the strong. Whoever can carry more is asked to carry more.

So the question for those of us who consider ourselves free is not what we are allowed to do. It is what we are willing to carry, the way Christ carried a cross and Paul carried his brother’s conscience, and what small things we have dropped along the way that were holding us up. I have been sitting with both questions this week.

Paul could eat anything. He looked across the table, put the meat down, and picked up his brother.

---

Original source: Free Enough to Say No — Bible Portal Insights

Want to read more? Visit Bible Portal Insights.