The community Paul has been describing in chapters twelve and thirteen is not a uniform group. It contains people at different points of understanding, with different backgrounds, different scruples, different convictions about matters the gospel has not explicitly addressed. How those differences are to be handled is the subject of the next two chapters — and the way Paul handles it reveals something important about the character of the community the gospel creates.

"Now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions" (Romans 14:1).

The weak in faith here is not a person who lacks saving faith. He is a person whose faith has not yet worked through certain implications — in this case, regarding food and the observance of days. The concrete examples Paul gives are the person who eats only vegetables (perhaps concerned about meat sacrificed to idols, or perhaps maintaining Jewish dietary customs), and the person who regards one day as more sacred than another while someone else regards every day alike.

These are matters where the gospel has not issued a command. And Paul's instruction to the stronger person — the one whose conscience is not bound on these questions — is not to win the argument. It is to receive the weaker person without passing judgment on his scruples.

The reason runs both directions. "The one who eats is not to regard with contempt the one who does not eat, and the one who does not eat is not to judge the one who eats, for God has accepted him" (Romans 14:3). Two temptations in one verse: the strong looking down on the weak as needlessly constrained, the weak judging the strong as spiritually careless. Paul rules out both. The basis is the same in each case: God has accepted the person on the other side of the dispute. If God has received him, who is the other person to reject him?

The master metaphor carries the weight of the argument. "Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls; and he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand" (Romans 14:4). The Christian is not his own master's servant. He is God's servant. When one Christian sits in judgment over another Christian's conscience on matters God has left open, he is assuming an authority that belongs to the master, not to him. The master will handle His own household.

The principle reaches its conclusion in accountability. "But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, 'As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.' So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God" (Romans 14:10–12; Isaiah 45:23).

Every person will give an account of himself — not of his neighbor, not of the brother with different food convictions, not of the one who observes or does not observe a certain day. The accounting is personal. Which means that the energy spent judging the neighbor's conscience is energy spent on something that is not actually the person's business. His business is his own account.

This does not mean everything is permitted and nothing can be evaluated. Paul will press the limits in the next passage. But it does mean that Christian community is not maintained by conformity on every matter — it is maintained by mutual reception of those God has received, and by the sober recognition that each of us answers to the same Judge.