In the modern Christian world, what people eat or drink is not usually a separating factor in the church. In the early church because of the Judaic roots of Christianity, what was eaten or not eaten could divide a community of believers. Many of the Jewish Christians were still highly invested in the Jewish culture: what was acceptable for people to eat and what was not acceptable to eat; whether men should be circumcised or not; what day of the week should be set aside to honor God; what yearly festivals should be celebrated; what to do with tithes and offerings, what conventions, principles, and rituals should govern a church gathering, and the like. These traditions, conventions and cultural necessities united the Jewish people for centuries as the chosen people of God. However, now with the Gentiles and the rest of the world included in God’s chosen people, how should believers carry on in life? What is right, what is wrong were critical questions for this nascent church. Religious norms and cultural traditions were tearing at the fabric of the early Christian church. Paul in the above focus is talking about the subject of eating food as a divisive element in the body of Christ, but other traditions and cultural elements were also a problem for a diverse church, with many members originating from a variety of cultures and traditions. Of course, since Christianity spawned out of the Jewish religion, many traditional, orthodox Jewish Christians were in the early church, believing that the Jewish way of life was the correct way of living. For them, any variance of this Jewish lifestyle was a departure from God’s perfect revelation to the people of the earth, a perfect way to please God and to live a blessed life. Paul is not attacking the Jewish traditions or God’s revelation to the Jewish people, he is suggesting the way people who are in the Christian community should live. They are not to live as children obedient to a proscribed law, but they are to live as people of faith. But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin. All activity the Christians enter into in their daily lives should be done under the umbrella of faith. Remember how Peter went into a trance and when he was told to eat formerly unclean animals, he said, he could not, but the voice of the Lord said, Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” (Acts 10:15) If anything that is done is based on something other than faith in God, it is outside of God’s grace and mercy. We are children of God. He is our Abba Father, the one who knows our hearts. If we honestly with full integrity and faith eat that which was once considered unclean, we are still under God’s blessings, for we are children of his household interacting with God the Father under the auspices of total love. This relationship of father and child, a relationship of trust, carries into many other areas than just the eating of food designated as clean or unclean. The Christian life is one of faith, believing in God’s love, believing He will accept an honest heart in all of our daily activities and experiences. If anything is not of faith, originating from an honest heart, a total commitment to God, that activity, attitude, experience will be considered sinful.
If we lack wisdom or knowledge about what to do or not to do in any activity in life, we should seek God in prayer. In seeking God for anything, we should try to put aside our own personal ideas or conditioned, societal beliefs about what should be done. Of course, our own traditions and cultural norms make up our way of living, but sometimes, these conditioned ways of living have really no eternal or intrinsic value; they just help us navigate life in the flesh. James tells us to ask God; believing He will give us the answer to how to live life under his perfect authority. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do. (James 1:5-8) We are to ask God about how to live. James says that we should not waver or seek outside sources for our wisdom. He tells us that God gives generously to all who ask him without finding fault. Sometimes we have questions about our lives and whether we are even good Christians. But James says that God wants those questions, even questions about our belief in him for we will find answers. He deals with us without finding fault. God is our source of wisdom and understanding. When Jesus was going to go away, He told his disciples He would send the Holy Spirit and “He will guide you into all the truth.” (John 16:13) If we seek other sources, placing them equally with God’s direction for our lives, we will be like a person on the ocean, tossed to and fro by the waves. If we treat other sources equal to God’s words within us, we will be unsettled in our decisions, having little stability, depending on who we have listened to lastly. Otherwise, we need God’s word in us and the voice of the Holy Spirit if we are trying to decide what to eat or not to eat, or to decide the many other questions about serving God wholeheartedly. Nothing else is pleasing to God but faith in his authority, without doubting his direction for our lives. Other people that we respect can give us advice, but we still must depend on God’s word as our final source. Consequently, we need to be in prayer continually and in his written word every day. If we are going to live a Christian life respected by others, we need to know God in our lives every day and every hour.
This world does not consist merely of good or bad decisions, or of what we buy or sell, or of the people we influence. No, this world consists most importantly of following the will of God in everything we do. Whether we eat kosher food or food that comes from what we consider to be detestable is not the main question of life. The question to be answered in everyone’s life is: did he or she follow the will of God? There are things the world considers good or bad, but God considers doing his will the currency of existence. We will be judged by what we did in faith during our span of living. The Christian life is not one of rules or laws, or even of what is good or bad. If we completely satisfied every part of the Sermon on the Mount. If our lives were exemplary in every aspect of living, we would still not be acceptable to God outside of Christ. The early church had to struggle with this idea of how to be holy, righteous before God. Before Christ’s death, righteousness was earned by following the law. Consequently, the priests were more righteous that the general public because they were more careful about following the law. In the early church, because of tradition and the way people thought God judged people, the law and the Jewish principles of living were very prominent in their attitudes. But Paul cuts these ideas down to nothing. His teachings are about pleasing God by faith and faith alone. But the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim: If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:6-9) The law’s way of making a person right with God requires obedience to all its commands. If you are disobedient in one, you have violated the whole law. But the way of faith is that you do not need to bring Christ up from the dead or to bring him down to Earth. To be right with God, a person has to believe Christ has already accomplished the purpose for which the law was given. He has already satisfied the law’s requirements. Christ has once and for all fulfilled the requirements God has placed upon people’s actions and thoughts: his righteousness. Therefore, what is saving faith? For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:12-13) Our lives in every respect must be lived by faith. We are saved by our faith in Jesus Christ. We live by our faith in him. We do nothing without asking God for knowledge and wisdom about our lives. Anything else is not Christian. Again, everything that does not come from faith is sin. Praise God, we are people of faith, not right or wrong, nor good or evil. We are people who live by the very words that come out of the mouth of God. As Jesus said when He was tempted, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 4:4)
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