Weak and strong believers
14
📚✭Receive the one who is weak in the faith, but not to dispute about doubtful matters. 2 📚✭For one believes that he may eat everything; another, who is weak in the faith, eats only vegetables. 3 📚✭The one who eats everything should not look down on him who does not eat, and the one who does not eat should not judge the one who eats, for God has received him. 4 📚Who are you who judges another person’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will surely be caused to stand, for God is able to make him stand.5 📚✭One man thinks one day is above another, someone else thinks every day is the same. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. 6 📚He who regards a day as special, regards it so to the Lord, and he who does not regard a day as special, does not regard it so to the Lord. He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat, does not eat to the Lord, and gives God thanks✭. 7 📚✭For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. 8 📚For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.
9 📚✭For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and the living. 10 📚But why do you judge your brother? Or why do you put your brother down? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. 11 📚For it is written,
As I live, says the Lord,
every knee will bow to me,
and every tongue will confess to God.
12 📚So then every one of us will give an account of himself to God.
13 📚✭Therefore, let us no longer judge one another, but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block or an obstacle in his brother’s way.
14 📚I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that no food is unclean in itself. But to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. 15 📚But if your brother is grieved by the food you eat, then you are not behaving in a loving way. With your food do not ruin one for whom Christ died. 16 📚Let not then your good be spoken of as evil. 17 📚For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. 18 📚For he who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God, and approved by men.
19 📚Therefore, let us follow after the things that make for peace, and things with which we can build one another up. 20 📚For food do not demolish the work of God. All food is indeed clean, but it is evil for that man who eats giving offense. 21 📚It is good not to eat flesh, or to drink wine, or to do anything that causes your brother to stumble or be offended or be made weak.