His Perfect Love

Guest (Male): Today on His Perfect Love: Dealing with doubtful things. This is His Perfect Love. The word goes out. It's what real love looks like in truth and faith. This is His Perfect Love.

One of the difficulties we face as Christians is the differing views on the so-called gray areas or liberties. Or maybe you've noticed not every Christian shares the same convictions as you, but that doesn't mean we should be dividing over it.

We're about to continue in the book of Romans today on His Perfect Love. As we do, we are reminded that while God's commands are to be obeyed, one of them is to not condemn our brother or sister who practice their God-given liberties or have different convictions than we do. Here is Pastor Matt VanderVen.

Matt VanderVen: I'd like to invite everybody to please open their Bibles to Romans chapter 14 this morning. Verse one: "Receive one who is weak," underline that there, "weak in the faith. We'll come back and talk a little bit more about that, but do not dispute over doubtful things." He begins the first verse in a very important way; he borders what this is all about.

As I opened in my introduction, I mentioned we don't compromise. It's not uncommon, maybe after first service this morning, I had someone come up and say, "Pastor, I'm struggling with understanding the legalism or the aspect of when is it right to put aside my... What if someone's offended because yesterday we had our cleanup day and we were cooking hamburgers and hot dogs? What if somebody's offended because we had hamburgers here? Does that mean that we don't, as a church, have hamburgers anymore?"

Again, it all comes down to our belly. No. But it came up and it was a relevant point. What is Paul saying here? He starts right out by making sure that we understand not to dispute over doubtful things. Things that are up for doubt, things that may be contention points. This isn't talking about scriptural matter of facts. There are many things that we will not in any way turn a blind eye to. The centrality of Jesus Christ, the humanity and divinity.

Certainly, we're never willing to appease a brother or a sister to make them feel more comfortable; we're not willing to change or ignore scripture to do that. Certainly, that's not what we see and it's not biblical. He bookends this for us. Paul says, "The things I'm talking about now, the things that are weak," again, those that are a form of legalism here without cause in the faith, "those are the things you're not to dispute over." Because these are doubtful things, these are legalistic things. But these other things, we don't compromise. So, he ringfences this for us.

"For one believes he may eat all things." That's me. If I can see it, I can eat it. I'm all about that. I'm on that diet. "But he who is weak eats only vegetables." Now, this is an interesting way that Paul starts out. Generally, you don't want to start with people that way, like, "Hey, you're really weak." We want to play to people's strengths. Paul's like, no. You see, he begins with looking at the maturity of the believer.

He's using that term weakness in regards to maturation or maturity here, and in some ways, he's very clearly tying it back to what was going on 2,000 years ago in the church in Rome. You had Jews, you had Gentiles, you had converts that way. What they were fighting about much of the time was meat that was sacrificed to pagan idols.

It had become a big contention in the early church. We'll read about it in 1 Corinthians 8 here in a minute. But that is what Paul's dealing with because you have three different groups of believers there. He's speaking to believers, but for their whole lives, many of them were Jewish. They had only eaten kosher food. They had never turned around and killed something. "Hey, go grab that pig because it looks good. Put the apple in its mouth. Let's eat it." That was foreign.

They got saved, they believed in Jesus Christ, but there were some things that still hadn't been worked out of their heart through sanctification, that God had made these things, they were clean, and they were able for them under the new covenant, under the liberty of the new covenant. And so Paul's coming back and he's saying, "Look, yes, someone that maybe is a little bit more immature, a little bit more weak, may not eat these things. They may eat vegetables only."

I'm not trying to divide here if you're a vegetarian; that's not the point. This is the spiritual application of this. Paul's going to bring that out more. But that's what he's talking about. He's describing that weakness. Again, I don't have a problem if you're a vegetarian. I mean, if you like carrots, I'm going to eat cow. I think it's great that you love carrots, and I hope you think it's great that I love cow. But we're not trying to divide. He's going to unify. He's going to unify under the things that matter, not the things that we would divide over.

Look in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 8, please. 1 Corinthians chapter 8, we're going to look at verses 1 through 13. Remember, it's not about appealing to the carnality of man or woman, for that matter. These are spiritual things. 1 Corinthians 8: "Now concerning these things offered to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies." So he points out to the fact that he understands that believers in Christ, we have a knowledge.

We've been given a new covenant in the blood of Jesus Christ. We understand that. In part of that, we also had the Jerusalem Council weigh in. We know that all things are made clean for us to eat. Besides that, we have liberty in pretty much everything that way when it comes to a dietary perspective. We don't have to not have a certain kind of meat or a certain kind of vegetable or anything like that.

So he's saying you have the knowledge, you understand this. He was speaking to the church at Corinth, actually where he had written this letter to Rome, to the Romans there. He was saying you all have been trained. He was there a year and a half with them. You know this, you have this understanding. He goes, "But don't get cocky. Don't get arrogant. Because this knowledge can cause you to get prideful."

What can pride turn into? You could turn around and start to judge your brother. The same brother that you once were. You could turn around and say, "You can't eat meat. What kind of Christian are you? You're still stuck on the vegetables of life?" You could yourself become legalistic. That's what he's saying there. He's actually warning them. They could become legalistic even though they're not the weaker vessel. They themselves can put that on and they can make a brother or sister feel horrible because of that.

Rather than drawing them to a maturation or maturity through discipleship, he warns them. He says, "Look, love. If it's done in love, love will edify. Love joins, love builds up. Love doesn't tear down or break apart." That's what he says. "And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know."

Now, as we get older, isn't that true? The older we get, the more we think we know, we realize we know nothing or less. But when we were young, when I was 17 or 18, I knew everything. I could have written books and I knew everything. It was going to be... And then as we get older, we realize the more we learn, we realize there's so much more we could and there's... We really don't know as much as we think we do. It's humbling. It should be humbling.

Unfortunately, some as they get older, they think the more they know they're right in everything. But others with humility realize, "Wow, I know less than I did a year ago." And as you get older and older, some of that's because we forget more and more, but it happens. "But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him." He's saying, but if you know God and you love God, you know this.

"Therefore concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world and that there is no other God but one." He appeals to the common sense of the man. He's saying if you took and I made something out of a piece of pottery or a piece of clay or something out of metal and I was taking it and I was working and I was fashioning something like that, and I formed something and I designed that I'm going to then worship that...

Certainly, it's something I formed out of my hand. There's nothing significant spiritually of that object. It's sort of silly in some ways to build something with our hands and then begin to bow down and worship the thing we just built. It's sort of foolish, actually. Well, he's drawing their attention to that. He's saying, "Look, there's these men and women and they're going and they're sacrificing this meat to these idols that you know full well they've imagined them in their minds. You know there's only one true God."

Why are you getting so caught up in it that you're going to turn around and go, "I can't eat that meat"? He's saying dinner's on. He's like, you know it's someone's imagination, so why are you going to let it trip you up? That's what he's saying. He's speaking to the common sense or practicality of the man to say, you basically watched them form it. You watched them either carve it out of rock or make it out of the dirt or they did something with it and they formed it and now they start bowing down to it. And you're going to turn around and actually believe and not eat the meat that they're sacrificing to this imaginary God?

He's saying that's foolishness. Why would you give any cause to that? He says, "No, you eat. There's no other God but one. For even if there are so-called gods," he's placating it, "whether in heaven or on earth, as there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, whom are all things, and we for Him, and the one Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things and through whom we live. It's all Jesus."

If I turned around and fashioned a donut god right now out of donut and put some really cool glaze on it because you got to have Krispy Kreme glaze or something like that, put the glaze on it and I turn around and say, "Worship the god of the donut." You all would laugh at me. Well, you'd leave and then you should. Number two, you'd laugh at me. And number three, some of you ought to pick up and grab that donut and eat it because that's good eating, especially if it's got that Krispy Kreme glaze on it.

You get my point. You're going to turn around and you're going to look at it. He's saying look, you know these things. They're through whom we live. It's all about Jesus. Don't put something in a place of prominence where it doesn't belong, including legalism. Don't turn around and elevate your idea or ideology over someone else's so much so that if they are that weaker vessel because they're struggling and they haven't got to that place of sanctification where they're willing to lay those things down.

Maybe traditions of the way they grew up. I grew up Roman Catholic, and growing up on Fridays during Lent, we were not allowed to eat meat. You weren't allowed to have meat. If you would have asked me why at the time when I was younger, before I was saved, I really couldn't tell you why. It's what we did. It was tradition. It was what we did. Italian family as well; it's what we did. We just didn't do it.

As I got older and I got saved, I had a brother that came up to me one day and he says, "Would you like a meatball and pasta?" which to an Italian boy, that's like saying, "We're going to eat." You don't walk away from that. So I'm sitting down and I'm like, "I don't know, it's Lent. I can't have meat." And he's like, "Why?" And I said, "I just can't do it and my mom's going to get mad." I don't know why; I can't answer that question for you.

But honestly, in my heart, I began to think, "Why?" And so I started looking and I started studying and I went back through the scriptures and I said, "Is there anything like that under the new covenant?" The person that did this was so gentle. His name was Tim. He was so gentle with me. He didn't come back and go, "What are you, a fool? What do you mean you're not going to eat the meat? This is good meat. You could eat it, it's a meatball. You like meatball, what are you afraid of?"

He didn't in any way put me down. He wasn't disparaging. He was loving. He says, "But where do you find that? Hey, you have a Bible, right?" because I had been newly saved at that point. I said, "Yeah, I do have my Bible." He says, "Let's open your Bible." I start opening the Bible. Obviously, we didn't find anything. I kept going through. I said, "I don't know why I can't have meat." There's nothing scriptural.

What did I do? Whether I meant to or not, I had elevated a tradition to God's law. I didn't know I was doing it. I didn't set out to do it. And if that gentleman had come and he tried to aggressively attack me... I mean, this was 20 plus years ago or more. I probably would have been distanced by that. I would have been turned away. I would have pulled away. Maybe it would have put a distance between me and God because I might not have received that right.

But because he was gentle and he was full of love, when he approached me that way, I searched out the scriptures. I wanted to know, and I wasn't afraid or embarrassed to say, "You know, I don't know why, Tim. I can't answer that." And as I discovered in scripture it wasn't there, I realized, wow, how many other things have I done that with in my life? How many other things had I elevated traditions or things that I grew up with to the place of God's word in my heart?

You see, that's what Paul wants us to understand is liberty, yes. Love, yes. And so we continue reading. He says, look, you know they're so-called gods, they've made it up. There's one God, Father, all things through Him. "However, there is not everyone in that knowledge." Some don't know this, verse seven. "For some with consciousness of the idol until now eat as things offered to an idol, but their conscience being weak is defiled."

He says now, you know what happens? You then turn around and tell them and all of a sudden their conscience defiles. They think they're defiled now because of that because they didn't know the liberty they had in Christ. And he does, he calls them weak again. We read it in Romans and it is a maturation, but he's using it in the term of legalism to represent someone who is stricter with a legalistic action without cause.

"But food does not commend us to God, for neither if we eat are we better, nor if we do not eat are we worse." He's going to make this point; it's not about the food. It's not Jesus plus something. "But beware lest somehow this liberty of yours becomes a stumbling block to those who are weak." That's an important verse; circle that, please. Because he's going to make that point in Romans over and over again.

Just because you have the liberty to do something, if you're going to invite someone over for dinner and you know for whatever reason they're vegetarian, you don't know the reason. You can't judge or assume. Maybe it's got nothing to do with a tradition or something; maybe it's a dietary issue. Maybe there's something where they can't process or they have an intolerance to meat. Maybe it doesn't make them feel well.

A lot of us might be joking going, "Okay, great. Well, fine. You don't want cow, we'll have pork. Okay, it'll be fine." What do you mean meat? "No, okay, you don't want that kind of meat, then we'll have lamb." Because meat to meat, meat. Well, if it's not that kind of meat, it's got to be a different meat. Well, no. What if we made them a vegetable souffle or something? I don't know, vegetable lasagna. And you have them over for dinner and you sit there and you talk and you find out, oh, they don't have a dietary issue but maybe they just never knew.

And what a beautiful way God opens the door through love to be able to show through discipleship and love that you can draw them back to scripture, just like Tim did with me 20 plus years ago. He was so gracious in the way he handled it. I'll never forget it. And we're living epistles, known and read by men and women. That's what the Bible says. Our lives, our testimonies, how we treat others, how we love them; these are all examples of really how we love Christ. Paul's going to tell us that, actually.

So he says look, it doesn't make it better or worse. You actually, if anything, you can be a stumbling block. "For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol's temple, will not the conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to eat those things offered to idols? And because of your knowledge, shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died? But when you thus sin against the brethren and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ."

When you allow this, you're actually sinning against Christ. Your horizontal actually attributes to your vertical relationship. "Therefore if food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble." He says look, I've got liberty to eat meat. We all do. We're under the new covenant. But at the end of the day, if we have a weaker brother or sister and they're stumbling because of something, do we turn around and, if we know they don't eat meat, go, "We're going to make you a meat pie. You're going to eat as much of it"?

How'd that work with the children? You have children, right? And you force them to eat something. How's that work with them and you're just shoving it on down? It has a way of coming back up. Some of you have kids, you know what I'm talking about. You don't turn around and say, but then what do you do? You get creative. "Oh, here's the choo-choo," or, "Here's this," and next thing you know, it's good and they're good. "Oh, I end up liking it. Oh, great." Because it wasn't forced upon you. You weren't Bible-thumped with it. It was done in love.

As a mother or a father looks to their little one and they gently, lovingly put this before the child and the child ingests, "Oh, this is okay. This is good. This is good." And I think it's a perfect example. Look at Colossians in your Bible. Turn to Colossians chapter 2. Let's look at verse 16. The reason I'm bringing in Colossians is because he's going to make quite a big deal about judging. It's very important.

He's going to say we don't have the ability to judge. In the book of James, it always tells us we're not to be respecters of persons; we're not to judge one another. That doesn't mean the premise in Timothy where he says, "Hey, you're to exhort, rebuke, correct." It doesn't mean we're to not honor that. But look what it says here in chapter 2, verse 16: "So let no one judge you in food or in drink or regarding a festival or a new moon or a sabbath," even the day you preach or worship, "let no one judge you in regards to this."

He says let no one judge you in this. You see, some Christians think there's nothing wrong with meat or, some think it's a burning issue. In Paul's day, this was a burning issue. Maybe it wasn't a spiritual reason, like I said; maybe it was an issue of dietary. Augustine, in somewhere around 354 to 430 AD, said in regards to this idea: "In essentials, we must have unity. Non-essentials, we must have liberty. But in all things, we must have charity." That's love.

I'll say it again: "In essentials, we must have unity." The centrality of Christ as an example, His divinity and His humanity. We all must have unity. "Non-essentials, we must have liberty. But in all things, we must have charity." We must have love in all things. I'm certain that those that would be weak according to the scripture aren't walking around going, "I'm weak." I don't think they know. They may not understand.

Remember, sanctification is a process. It's something that God does in us. It's not something that we can work out. It's not something we get to control. It's something that when we yield our lives, God does the work in us. He says, "I will begin and finish the work that I began in you." It's God that does it. And we have to be surrendered to allow God to work in our hearts that way. But if we try to micromanage God, it's not going to work.

It's not going to work. We're actually going to be taking back control and holding on too tight. And if you've ever tried to release something for somebody that's trying to hold on too tight, what happens? To get it open, what do you need to do? Break it. And there's a term in the Bible we often use, potter, Jeremiah. What happened to the clay when it was reformed? It had to be broken so that it could be built back up for the purpose God uses.

And many times in our Christian walk, in our lives, we will be broken many times. Not always because of pride but because of refinement, because of shaping, because of use for the purpose, for the season He's called us in. We all have multiple seasons, multiple use that way. So, it's important to look at these individuals that Paul's referring to as weak. We're not to pity on them. We're not to look at them as though they don't, they may not know, they may not understand.

You see, legalism has a way of making us think that we're stronger and entitlement almost, a pride, as though we're stronger and they're less because they can't keep, they're weaker because they can't keep the same rules or whatever. And that's just legalism. That's all that is. It's just us comparing ourselves to somebody else to make ourselves feel better, to somehow build ourselves up. And that's not what Christ wanted here.

Guest (Male): Well, thanks for joining us today for His Perfect Love. You can hear this study from Pastor Matt VanderVen again when you visit hisperfectlove.org. Catch up on what you may have missed in Romans at hisperfectlove.org. Look for us on oneplace.com and most of the major podcast platforms.

The Calvary Chapel Harrisburg mobile app is another great way to listen to Pastor Matt's messages shortly after they're delivered. We can help you get started when you visit hisperfectlove.org. His Perfect Love is made possible through the support of listeners just like you. Together, we can bring the truths of God's word to the radio every day. You can make a donation at hisperfectlove.org.

Pastor Matt would like to hear from you. Tell us the station you listen to and what you're getting out of this study in Romans. He would be so encouraged. Email us there at the website hisperfectlove.org.

Men, mark your calendars for the Men of Calvary Conference 2026 at Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore. Join us on Saturday, September 19th for a powerful day centered on the theme "Unity in Faith," based on Ephesians 4:12-13. Connect with other men through worship, biblical teaching, prayer, fellowship, and encouragement as we grow stronger together in Christ.

The conference will be held at Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore, 28 North Locust Point Road in Mechanicsburg. Registration is just $20 and includes breakfast and lunch. Register today at ccharrisburg.org. That's ccharrisburg.org. Men of Calvary Conference 2026: United in faith, strong in Christ.

Then we'll come back to our study of Romans next time on His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt. See you then and God bless. This is His Perfect Love. His Perfect Love is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore.

Let the word go out, the perfect love of Christ to shine. Our lives will show I am my beloved's and He is mine. Every heart is in His hands, we'll never stop reaching out. This is His Perfect Love. The word goes out. This is what real love looks like in truth and faith. This is His Perfect Love.