Unity in Christ: Navigating Personal Convictions Together

Legalism, in the end, of course, becomes guilty of denying the great doctrine of justification by faith only because if you say that what makes a man a Christian is that he doesn't drink or he doesn't smoke or he doesn't eat meats and so on, well then you are saying that a man is justified by works and not by faith. [00:02:39]

There is always the danger, the tendency indeed, in some people in the Christian church to go beyond the Lord himself and to invent rules and regulations and tests which cannot be justified by the scripture. Now, this is, as I say, a most important matter because people make themselves and make others oftentimes very unhappy by doing this kind of thing. [00:06:00]

The Pharisees were always challenging our Lord about things like this. He'd healed a man on a Sunday. They said you shouldn't do that; that's a work. Or when the disciples were picking out grains of corn, you remember, passing through a cornfield on the Sunday, they objected to that and so on. He saw that it was the spirit of the Pharisee, that it was legalism, and so he got his liberty. [00:09:00]

The whole emphasis of the scripture is upon the spirit that our object should not be to exclude people but to invite them and to rejoice in their coming, and everything is to be done in a spirit of love and in a spirit of charity. Now, this is the Apostle's way of dealing with it here. [00:19:17]

The Christian must do everything he can to avoid giving offense. This seems to have been the teaching of the early church. Here were these Jews; they'd become Christians, yes, but as we've already seen, they were not clear about these things, and the Apostle says we mustn't offend them. [00:28:05]

If a man professes this faith, if a man says, I see that I am a sinner, that I am completely hopeless, that my works are useless, I rely only on the fact that the Son of God has died for me and for my sins, I have nothing else to rely upon at all, if a man makes that confession, God has received him. [00:32:42]

We are all sinners, and we are all guilty before thee. We bless thy name that it is thy grace that covers us. We see how we condemn ourselves in condemning others, and we know that we are all saved by grace, that there is none righteous, no, not one, and that we are all equally saved by grace through faith. [00:41:38]

Let us be careful that we do not refuse people whom God has received. Now, don't forget the principle. There are certain things that are absolute. There's no discussion about them. We're not dealing with them. We are dealing with things that are indifferent, and the danger we've got to avoid at all costs is that we put manmade regulations into a central position. [00:40:17]

The Apostle Paul was guilty of contradicting himself in connection with these very matters. Now, here, you see, he seems to say, and we shall see it more clearly as we go on, he seems to say that these matters are indifferent. That's his whole argument, and he appeals for charity. [00:20:02]

The Apostle argues, can any man forbid water that he should not be baptized? And then he's more or less taken to task for this. So you find in Acts 11:17, he says here to the people at Jerusalem, for as much then as God gave them the like gift as he did to us who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, what was I that I could withstand God? [00:38:40]

The Apostle shows that there is a danger in connection with both those attitudes. The danger of the stronger brother is to despise the weaker brother, but the danger of the weaker brother is to judge the stronger brother. Sometimes the weaker brother judges the stronger brother even to the extent of suggesting that he can't be a Christian. [00:01:39]

The Apostle is saying here to the weaker brother, don't you refuse to receive that man. Don't you judge that man. Don't you say that that man is not a Christian because he eats meat. God has received him, and if God has received him, you've got to receive him. [00:38:40]