Loving the Weaker Christian
Romans 14:1-4
Tonight we're
starting Romans 14. Chapters 14 down through 15:13 is the last major section in
Romans. After that we have the conclusion and final salutations. This section
that we're dealing with now is a specific problem that Paul addressed coming
out of a discussion in chapter 13 where he began to talk about the believer's
responsibility to honor government and to love others. Actually this begins in
chapter 12. I just want to take us back there for a second.
In chapter 12
we have the summary opening for this last section. It covers chapters 12, 13,
14 and part of 15. Paul gives a command, "I beseech you therefore brethren
by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy,
acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service." The word there for
service is latreia, which indicates our personal worship. The focus is
that we are saved for a purpose and that is to glorify God. We are saved for a reason
and that is to grow to spiritual maturity and to reflect the character of Jesus
Christ in our lives. Ultimately that is demonstrated when we love one another
as Christ as loved us.
As we go
through and as I've outlined the ten spiritual skills that we develop in the
Christian life, those that represent that maturity concern love. One is our
personal love for God the Father because that is ultimately the motivator
behind our advance into maturity. Our impersonal or unconditional love for one
another is second because that is a reflection of a mature grace orientation.
We love others, especially those in the body of Christ, as Christ has loved us.
That takes a tremendous amount of spiritual maturity.
The Old
Testament command in Leviticus 19:18 was to love our neighbor as yourself.
Notice the focal point in the Old Testament was to love a neighbor. Now it is
to love one another. But there is a certain parallelism there because within
the concept of the Torah a neighbor was another member of the covenant
community of Israel, assumed to be a believer. But the standard of comparison
in that command was as you love yourself.
The Bible
assumes that every human being is a self-lover. This is the orientation of the sin
nature. We're self-absorbed and we're born, coming out of the womb, loving
ourselves and developing an expertise in loving ourselves from the moment that
we are born. No one ever hates their own flesh, as Paul states in Ephesians 5
so that shows once again that the world system and the psychological
orientation that the world has, is that people have problems because they have
a low self-image. No, they don't have a low self-image. They have a problem
because they think too highly of themselves and because of that they're
disappointed in their failures. Because they're disappointed in their failures
they make it sound as if they hate themselves but the Bible says no flesh hates
himself. The Biblical truth that helps us cut through all the psychological mumbo-jumbo
is that everyone has a basic orientation of self-love. That's the pattern that
we see in the Old Testament.
In the New
Testament Jesus said that we're to love one another as He has loved us. Jesus
is the pattern for our love for one another so this is the mark in John 13:
34-35, the mark of a Christian. This is how you'll know that you are a
disciple, which is a Christian who has decided to learn and apply the Word of
God in his life. Not all Christians are disciples but all true disciples are Christians.
Becoming a disciple is an additional step or stage or phase as we begin to grow
spiritually. We come to understand that the challenge before us as a member of
the family of God is to grow to maturity.
In Romans 12
Paul introduces that we are to serve God. Part of serving God means we are
going to put His will over our will. Whether you feel like that's a sacrifice
or not, that's determined by Scripture to be a sacrifice. Instead of living for
our self we're living for God. That's Romans 12:1. In order to do that Romans
12:2 states that we're not to be conformed to this world. The word there is not
kosmos but it is the
word aion which indicates the age, the zeitgeist, the spirit of
the age. When we think in terms of the spirit of the age then we're thinking in
terms of self-absorption and self-love. So we're not to be conformed to this
world but we're to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.
Notice it's not
the renewing of our emotions. It's not the renewing of our liturgy. It's not
the renewal of our ritual. It's the renewal of our mind. Again and again in
Scripture the emphasis is on how we think. If we think the wrong way we're
going to live the wrong way. We're challenged to think according to the
Scripture. The problem that we'll see tonight with some immature Christians is
that they don't know how to think. They don't have Biblical knowledge in their
soul. But Biblical knowledge is not an end in and of itself. Biblical knowledge
or information is simply a means to spiritual growth. We are to learn the Word
of God so that God the Holy Spirit can use it in our lives to challenge us in
terms of how we live.
The first stage
is sitting where you are or sitting out in the internet area, live streaming,
or listening to some sort of recording. As you're listening you're learning the
Word of God. If you're in fellowship God the Holy Spirit is helping you to
understand it and apply it in your life. He doesn't apply it for you. Your
volition has to come into effect again. You have to choose to apply what you've
learned. It's only when we choose to apply what we've learning under the power
of the Holy Spirit, walking by the Spirit, the Spirit uses that in terms of
producing spiritual maturity and spiritual growth in our lives.
We're
transformed by the renewing of our mind as we take in the Word of God and we
get rid of the garbage in our soul from all the things we learn from the world
system, from our peers, and from others prior to our justification. After we're
saved as we're sanctified it comes as a result of walking by the Spirit and
letting the Word of God fill up our thinking and fill up our soul. The result
is that by application we demonstrate that which is good and acceptable and is
the complete will of God. That's the starting point. That's the preface to this
next section.
Then Paul
focuses on spiritual gifts. He talks about the fact that we are part of the
body of Christ. We're all members in one body. It's important to remember that.
We're members in one body. We're different but we're all unified, united
together in the body of Christ. This is what took place at the instant we were
saved when we were placed into union with Christ, 1 Corinthians 12:13. That
sets us up in terms of being one body.
1 Corinthians
12 also tells us that we're members of one another. Now that's very important
because as Americans who have come out of a tradition of a strong heritage of
rugged individualism with a strong emphasis on individual responsibility and
autonomy, we have a hard time understanding the concept of this integrated body
that is the body of Christ. We are members of one another. There is a certain
interdependence in the body of Christ where we don't function autonomously.
This is the brilliance of using the body imagery. One person may be an eye.
Another may be a nose. Another may be a hand or a foot. Each individual part
has an important function but that function is not independent of the function
of all of the other parts. There's this interdependency that takes place in the
body of Christ. We are all members of one body and members of one another.
Romans 12:5 states that as well.
Next there's a
list of some of the spiritual gifts. Then in Romans 12:9 Paul shifts his
thinking again to the principle of love for one another. He describes the
characteristics of love. Romans 12:10 says, "Be kindly affectionate to one
another with brotherly love in honor giving preference to one another." He
sets up those various "one another" commands several times in that
section. This is further developed by showing that loving one another has to do
with submission to authority, which we covered in the first part of Romans 13.
Then he comes
to loving your neighbor. Part of our love for one another has to do with our
submission to authority because to submit to authority you have to have
humility. Humility is always related to love for one another. You can't very
well love someone if you're self-absorbed and arrogant so there's a connection
there. The long section dealing with love for one another in Romans 13:9-12 is
on the front side of the section dealing with submission to authority, and then
in the section following verse 7 Paul again refers to loving one another and
what that means. The section dealing with government is bracketed by the
section on loving one another. So that section is also part of the illustration
of what it means to love one another and to carry that out in genuine
integrity.
It concludes in
terms of a reminder of how we are to walk in Romans 13:11-14 which all leads to
this section we're beginning to study now focusing on some specific issues and
some specific conflicts in the body of Christ. It's inevitable that we're going
to have differences of opinion and that we're going to run into personal
conflicts with the body of Christ. There's one reason for it and that's sin.
We're all sinners and because we're self-absorbed we're going to get out of
fellowship and we're going to come to certain issues with different viewpoints.
Now there are
issues that are absolute issues that we can't compromise on at all. Those are
issues related to first of all, salvation. Salvation is by faith alone in
Christ alone. Salvation does not involve any works, whether put on the front
side like someone who says we need to believe and be baptized or if someone
says you need to believe and join a particular denomination or you need to
believe and do certain good works. Or it comes on the reverse side where people
say that if you say you're saved and you don't have works that are in keeping
with faith, if you don't have the right kind of works that qualify or give
evidence of faith, then you didn't have the right kind of faith to begin with.
That's called lordship salvation.
I bet there's
not a person in this room who hasn't at one time or another, for some of you it
may have been many, many years ago when you were a young believer, looked at
someone and said, "How in the world can that person claim to be a
Christian when they've done such and such? How in the world can that person be
a Christian when they vote like that? How in the world can that person be a
Christian when they are a socialist? How in the world can that person be a
Christians when they are anti-Israel? How in the world can that person be a
Christian when they commit flagrant immorality?" And yet the reality in
Scripture is that what we do, whatever sins we have, whether they're sins of
belief because we're committed to wrong belief systems, whether they're overt
sins of murder, violent assault or whatever, whether they're sins of the tongue
like gossip and slander, maligning of whether it's just a mental attitude sin
of anger, resentment or any of those things, it doesn't matter. Jesus Christ
paid for every single sin on the cross.
That means sin
isn't the issue when we're evangelizing people. We don't say, "You need to
believe in Jesus and clean up your life." You can't clean up your life; only
the Holy Spirit can. That's what comes after salvation. You just need to
believe on Jesus Christ. Someone will say, "Does that mean that I can continue
to sin with impunity?" That's a nasty way to put it but yes you can. Sin
was paid for at the cross. Once you become a believer in Christ, you're going
to be in the family of God. God promises in Hebrews 12 that He is going to
bring discipline on anyone that is a member of His family. So sooner or later
God will get involved and start straightening you out. But it's not the
evangelist's job to straighten you out. It's not the pastor's job to straighten
you out. It's not other believer's job to straighten you out although there's
always a responsibility in the body of Christ to encourage and admonish one
another. That's done in appropriate contexts. Sooner or later God's going to
get a hold of you if you're a believer in Christ, and then God's going to
discipline you.
You can't
compromise on the gospel at all. Another thing we can't compromise on is the
spiritual life. The spiritual life is also based upon the grace principle. You
don't do anything to earn God's blessing. That's one of the most important things
we can get our hands around. It's so common in Christian circles today to hear
people use blessing in a lot of different ways. As a greeting they say
"God bless you." When they answer the phone or say goodbye to someone
they say, "God bless you." They use it so much it's become
meaningless. A lot of people have the idea that if they're obedient to God's
Word, then He will bless them. That's a works blessing system. What Scripture
teaches is that we are not blessed because of what we do. We are blessed
because of what Christ did on the cross.
When we're
saved, we're not saved because of anything good on our part. We're saved
because of what Christ did on the cross and His righteousness is given to us.
When God sees that we have Christ's righteousness, He justifies us and
regenerates us because we have Christ's righteousness, not because of anything
good in us. After salvation He blesses us on the basis of our possession of
Christ's righteousness. If we are disobedient, then God will withhold blessing because
it might destroy us.
An interesting
example of this is let's say you're the proud father of a newborn son. You want
everything in the world for your son. You have pretty good financial resources
and you go out and buy him a Lamborghini and you put it in his name and it's
going to be his when he comes of age at eighteen or you may put a stipulation
in there that when's he's an adult or whatever. When he's old enough to
appreciate it and properly utilize it then you will give it to him. Is it his when
he's three years old? Yes. Are you going to give it to him? No, because he will
hurt himself and a lot of other people with it. Are you going to give it to him
when he's twelve? No, because he's not mature enough to properly handle it. Is
it his? Yes, it's his. It was given to him because of his identity as a member
of the family but it's not put into his activated possession until he's mature
enough to where it doesn't destroy him.
God is not
blessing us because we're obedient. He's blessing us and He's already blessed
us with all the heavenly blessings [Ephesians 1:3]. He's only going to
distribute them when we show enough maturity to handle the blessing. He's going
to hold back because if He gives it too soon, it will become a problem for us.
So this is grace. We can't fudge on grace at salvation. We can't fudge on grace
in terms of sanctification.
The issue in
this passage is that when it comes to the Christian life there are some issues
that are definitely moral. There are some issues that are definitely immoral.
But there are some things that aren't quite moral or immoral. They are neutral.
They're not prohibited in Scripture. They're not commanded in Scripture.
They're just somewhere in-between. A term that Paul uses when we get into
Romans 14 is "doubtful things". In Romans 14:1 we read, "Receive
one who is weak in the faith but not to disputes over doubtful things." So
he's saying here that we are to receive or accept the one who is weak in the
faith but we're not to get involved in arguments that don't go anywhere, that
are non-productive, over these doubtful things.
The only point
I want to make now is that there's a category of doubtful things. Things that
are neither approved of nor disapproved of in Scripture. So how do we handle
these things? It may surprise you but there are some Christians who are really
opinionated. They have very firm opinions about whether or not Christians ought
to do or not do some of these things. It's just amazing. I grew up in a
background that was fairly grace oriented. I didn't know anyone who held to any
sort of legalism in their background. That's usually a phrase that's used even
though it's not always understood or used well.
It always
surprised me when I ran into some folks that had come from this kind of background.
This happened when I was in high school. I looked at these people like I was
looking at someone with a third eye or a horn between their ears or something.
It was very strange. Gordon Whitelock who was the founder and director of Camp
Peniel had gone through Moody Bible Institute with a man whose name was Nelson
Miles who was the President of Grand Rapids School of the Bible and Music,
which was reduced to an acronym called GRSBM. It was a school that was part of a denomination
known as GARB, the Greater Association of Regular Baptists.
That's one of
several conservative Baptist denominations that originated in the North from
the Northern Baptist denomination prior to the American War of Northern
Aggression, as I always refer to it. There was a split in the denominations
over the issue of slavery. Northern Christians did not want their mission money
supporting someone who came out of a southern Christian church as a missionary.
They thought their money would become soiled by supporting someone who might
have been connected to slave owners. So this reached pretty virulent
proportions in the late 1840's and 50's. All the major denominations,
Methodist, Presbyterian, Church of Christ, all split north and south. So you
have the Southern Baptists and the Northern Baptists.
Now the
Northern Baptists denomination went liberal fairly early, by the mid-1880s they
were already having legitimate heresy trials of seminary professors who had
slipped completely into 19th century liberalism. They denied the
inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture. They denied the virgin birth, the
miracles of Christ, the substitutionary atonement of Christ, the Resurrection,
and they denied the literal, future coming of Christ. That was just about the
essence of where they focused the battle lines. That became known as the
fundamentalist/modernist controversy. In the North you had more and more of
these modernist beliefs filtered down into the local churches.
There were a
number of groups that split off from the late 1920s to the 1930s. One of them
was the Conservative Baptist Association. They aren't very big here in the
south. One of the founders of the Conservative Association was Pastor Thieme's
father-in-law. He started that out of church in Tucson, Arizona. The GARB were the same
way. They had a lot of rules and they still do. You couldn't watch TV, except
for Gomer Pyle and one or two other shows. There were even bad new shows
censored. Now in light of the 150 channels on TV, we might not think that's
such a bad idea. But back then when you only had black-and-white ABC, CBS, and NBC and educational networks, that seemed kind of extreme
that you couldn't watch most of the shows on TV. You couldn't
go to the movies. If you went out on a date, a chaperone had to go with you and
you couldn't get within 6" of each other and many, many other rules.
Well, these
kids would come down to Texas and go to Camp Peniel as counselors. Most of the
counselors came out of Houston and came out of churches influenced by Dallas
Theological Seminary and Pastor Thieme and were grace oriented. On Saturday
night, which was our night off, we fell in a car and went to a drive-in in
Austin or somewhere and see a movie. These kids had never seen a movie before.
It was culture shock for them. There was a bit of a culture shock for us
because we'd never met legalists before. By the end of the summer they'd gotten
pretty grace-oriented; they kind of liked all this ability to do things. But
this has always been a problem in the history of Christianity because from the
very beginning, you had people who didn't really understand all the
significance of the cross in paying for our sins and they added certain kinds
of things as absolutes in terms of how Christians should live and what they
should do or not do. They would make absolutes out of things that are doubtful,
things that weren't clearly stated in the Scripture.
This has its
history as we studied in Acts. Turn with me to Acts 15. This was one of the
first problems, if not the first major problems, that the apostles in the early
Church had to deal with. I want you to notice that the issue that was coming up
was what should we do about these Gentiles. They've been unclean for centuries.
They do all of these unclean things. They eat unclean food. How can we let them
fellowship together with us? What are we going to do about these Gentiles? So
they had a meeting among the apostles that we refer to as the Jerusalem council
described here. Look at Acts 15:6, "The apostles and elders came together
to consider the matter." That means they wanted to think it through
Biblically and rationally. I want you to notice something here. They don't come
together and pray, "Lord give us revelation as to what we should do."
See, that's how lots of modern evangelicals would go about it in a completely
wrong way. God's not going to all of a sudden turn on a light in your head or
give you a new revelation to answer the problems that you face. He wants us to
think through the issues in our life on the basis of the doctrine that's in our
soul.
This is one
thing I love about the Jerusalem council. This is exactly what the apostles
did. They don't get a new word of revelation even though these guys still had
the revelatory gifts available to them. But God was showing them that this wasn't
going to be the normative procedure for decision-making in the Christian life.
Decision making in the Christian life comes from putting your thinking cap on
in terms of Scripture and getting into the Word and thinking it through in
terms of the circumstances of your life. So they had a great discussion.
In Acts 15:17
we read, "There had been much dispute." So they were going after it.
They were arguing both sides of the issue, back and forth, and after there had
been much dispute Peter rose up and gives a summary of what had happened. In
this he rehearses what happened when he took the gospel to the Gentiles with
Cornelius back in chapters 10 and 11 and he reminds them that God who knows the
heart acknowledged them by giving them the Holy Spirit just as He did to us.
When the Gentiles believed we see in Acts 11 that they received the Holy
Spirit. They didn't have to do anything. They didn't have to change. They
didn't have to get circumcised. They didn't have to submit to the Mosaic Law.
They didn't have to do anything else. It was faith alone and at that instant
God gave them the Holy Spirit just as did to the Jewish believers.
Peter goes on
to say, "He made no distinction between us and them purifying their hearts
by faith." Then he hit them between the eyes saying, "Therefore, why
do you test God by putting a yoke [the Mosaic Law was too controlling for those
who didn't have the Holy Spirit] on the neck of the disciples which neither our
fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved in the same manner as they." That Jew
and Gentile are both saved by faith alone in Christ alone. Notice it's both
based on grace.
All of this we're
going to study in Romans 14 and 15 is related to understanding grace and what
it means to be gracious to others who may have different opinions in areas that
are not important. It may even be that you're right and they're wrong but
they're wrong because they lack knowledge, they lack training, they lack
instruction. So we're going to learn how a more mature believer, identified as
a strong believer, is to exercise and show his love for a weaker brother, a
weaker believer. Now when it came to the end of the council they basically made
a summary statement which is given to us in Acts 15:19 when James says,
"Therefore I judge that we should not trouble those from among the
Gentiles who are turning to God but that we write to them to abstain from things
polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled, and from
blood." Now the reason they're asking that is not because it's inherent to
the spiritual life. The reason they're saying that is because this was a
cultural problem for the Jews and if they're going to have peace and harmony in
the synagogue then let's not practice things that are going to get our fellow
believers all upset when they don't quite understand all of the issues. So
these things did not have to do with absolutes but with things that are
relative. It's an aspect of loving one another.
Now let's go
back to Romans 14. This chapter begins with a command, "Receive one who is
weak in the faith." In other words there's a tendency and I know no one
here would ever do this when mature believers are around someone who doesn't
quite understand things the way you do and who might be immature in their faith
and they might be a little legalistic and we just don't want to associate with
them because we want to relax and enjoy life the way we understand it. We don't
want to put up with these little sniveling babies running around. You know
they're always messing in their spiritual diapers and we don't want to have to
clean up the mess.
Paul addresses this
and he's addressing mature believers. He says, "Receive the one who is
weak in the faith." This word for receive means not just accept them and
let them sit in church. Sure we're going to let them come and sit in church and
hopefully they'll get straightened out but we're not going to invite them over
for fried chicken either because we'll have a glass of wine and we don't want
to be worried about them. The word has the further idea of accepting someone
into your company or your fellowship. Now look at Romans 14:3, "Let not
him who eats despise him who does not eat." So the one who eats is the
mature believer. He understands that this issue with the dietary law is not
that big of a problem. He may just get really upset and irritated with the
immature believer who is trying to make an issue out of the dietary law.
I get the sense
from these commands that there was definitely a group, sort of a clique, within
the Roman Church that knew they were mature and understood their freedom and
they didn't want to be bothered by these messy little immature believers who
want to get involved in some kind of legalism. So the first thing Paul says is
to receive the one who is weak because apparently they weren't receiving them.
This should be an ongoing thing. It's a present imperative indicating this
should be an ongoing action.
Then he gives a
prohibition in verse three, "Let not him who eats despise him who does not
eat and let him who does not eat judge him who eats for God has received
him." That word for receive here is the same word as before, proslambano. God has
accepted him into fellowship, meaning eternal fellowship, our union with Christ
forever. So if God has accepted this little whining, messy, legalistically baby
believer who hasn't learned very much yet, so should we. Don't let the fact
that he's a bit of a problem to deal with be a reason why you don't have
fellowship with him and accept him.
Now this is an
important principle to understand for a small church. A lot of us have known
each other for a long time. Some of us have known each other too long, maybe.
I've known some of you since…I can't remember when I didn't know some of you.
We've known each other since I was an infant and maybe some here were infants
as well. So we've known each other a very long time. We have a lot of history
together. It's typical in churches where you have people who really like and
enjoy one another's fellowship to sort of develop little cliques. You enjoy the
people that you know and ones you spend a lot of time with but as a church and
as a congregation we constantly have new people to come into the church.
I'm not jumping
on the congregation because you haven't done this but just as a reminder, most
of the time this congregation is very welcoming of new people and you accept
new people very well. You're very gracious and generous in that respect. I
think there's a few cases here and there were some haven't been that way on
occasion but not as a norm. That's also understandable but we need to recognize
as a small church we don't want to run into sort of the syndrome of a small
town, where you just have a few cliques. Everyone knew each other and anyone
that's new has to be there for ten or fifteen years before they're considered
to be part of the church.
My first church
down in LaMarque had that syndrome. The mean age in that church, including all
the bed babies and the nursery was 58 years of age. There was a huge gap right
in the middle of the congregation. From 35 to 55 there were three couples and
that's because ten years before I became the pastor the church had split. The
people that were all 60 and older weren't willing to relinquish the power and
the control they'd had in that church for 30 years to their children. The
pastor had been the pastor for 40 years and he'd retired in 1974, and this
older group were still in lockstep. They weren't going to open up to anyone new
even though many of them were their own children. A huge split occurred and
everyone from about 25 to 45 left. That's why when I got there no one attended
between the ages of 35 and 55 except these three couples, two of whom had come
to the church since the split. There was a terrible example of this sort of
clannishness and cliquishness.
That was bad
enough. I won't even go into the really fun story of my very first candidating
at the first church I went to. Talk about clannish. It was in the heart of
Cajun country. It was so Cajun that one of the deacons was like Amos Moses. His
left arm was gone clean up to the elbow and his son had to translate into
French the questions and answers during the interview. That was an extremely
clannish church. I've spoken in a lot of churches over the last 40 years and
without exception, I've been invited out for coffee or lunch. I went to that
church in Oppolusa, Louisiana and I stood at the backdoor. Everyone filed out
and went and got in their cars. I didn't even know where the closest Popeye's
was so I didn't even know where to go for lunch. It was so clannish.
That's one
thing we need to avoid, any kind of appearance of excluding new people,
especially if they may not come from a similar background that we have. That's
what Paul is addressing here. "Receive the one who is weak in the
faith." Now this word weak is one of my favorite words to do a word study
on. It's one of the first words I ever really got into in terms of doing an
in-depth word study. This is the Greek word astheno in the verb form. The "a" at the beginning is like our
English negative prefix "un". It negates the main root. The root
means strength so this is someone without strength, which means they're weak.
Now word meanings do not derive from their etymology. When people do that it's
called an etymological fallacy. Word meanings come from usage. This word has
two primary uses and it's really interesting how they play out in Scripture. It
means to be weak in a physical sense in the sense of an illness. This is used
about 80% of the time the word astheneo is used in the Gospels and Acts. Jesus is healing
those who are sick. But there are a few examples in the New Testament when
Jesus says, "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak", and it's
not talking about sickness there. He's talking about a spiritual inability. So
there are a few examples where the word emphasizes a spiritual weakness, not a
physical weakness.
When you get
into the epistles and start looking at how the word is used in Romans all the
way through Jude, it reverses its primary connotation. About 20% of the uses
refer to physical illness, maybe not even that many. It usually refers to
spiritual weakness, spiritual inability, someone who's really struggling in the
spiritual life. They just want to give up and fade out. They're not
persevering. This is a major concept in the epistle of James. So the second
meaning is to be spiritually weak in the sense of being weary of obedience as
in James 5:14.
If you're
familiar with the James passage, this is a passage that usually stumps a lot of
people when they read it because it just doesn't seem to make sense to them. It
seems to be talking about healing. In James 5:13 we read, "Is anyone among
you suffering?" That sounds like someone who's ill. Later in the next
verse he says, "Is anyone among you sick?" That word for sick is this
word. To translate it sick, means the translator interpreted the word for us.
If he was translating correctly, he would have said "Is anyone among you
weak?" Then he would leave it up to the reader to discover whether he's
talking about weak physically or weak spiritually so immediately we're slanted
in the direction of talking about physical illness.
It's actually
not talking about physical illness at all. That would be like James is talking
about cooking apples all the way through to James 5:12 and then all the sudden
he switches and starts talking about how to prepare a prime rib roast. It
doesn't fit the context. He's been talking perseverance in times of spiritual
testing. The problem here is a person who's so spiritually weary that they want
to fade out. So James 5:13 says, "Is anyone among you suffering? Let him
pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing songs. Is anyone among you weary or
weak? Let him call for the elders of the church."
Now this is
written long before the pastoral epistles. It's probably the first epistle
written in the New Testament. I think that word presbuteros there should
simply be mature Christians, not an elder in a sense of an office. "Let
him call for the mature ones of the church and let them pray over him,
anointing him with oil." In some denominations they go and get oil and
they will anoint someone because they're sick. That's supposed to heal them.
It reads like
an unconditional promise. It says, "And the prayer of faith will save the
sick." That's how James 5:15 is translated so this is an absolute promise.
How many people here have prayed for someone who was sick with cancer, leukemia
or some kind of fatal illness and may have even anointed them with oil and yet
that person died? The answer you get from the healing Charismatics is that you
didn't have the right kind of faith, faith like a child. I always ask,
"Really?"
When I was born
my mother had polio. She contracted polio two months before I was born. I never
knew my mother to walk. She was in a wheelchair. She was in an iron lung because
the polio had advanced to where it had paralyzed her diaphragm and her ability
to breathe on her own. So they would put polio patients into this contraption
that would breathe for them. Somehow it had a mechanism on it that would
pressure on their diaphragm that would push in and then release and push in and
then release to help and enable them to breathe. Those ladies who are here who
have gone through natural childbirth know that one of the things required of
them is to push. You have to have diaphragm muscles and abdominal muscles to
push. My mother didn't have any. This was really a remarkable situation because
they basically would pull her out and trying to get me out at the same time.
I remember when
I was a little boy my mother had these braces that would hook into holes into
her shoes and she would put these braces on her legs and these crutches and she
did this physical therapy for years until I was nine or ten, thinking that
somehow this would reenergize these muscles. I became a believer when I was six
years old and I would pray every night that my mother would walk again. I think
when I was six, seven, eight, nine, and ten I had the faith of a child. I
believed God could do it. No qualifications entered my mind from Scripture or
anything like that. I didn't know about this promise. I just believed God could
do it.
That's not what
this is talking about and that's not a promise we have in Scripture. This is
talking about the fact that if you're struggling spiritually and you are weak
in the faith then you're to call for mature believers who can pray over you.
The word for anointing with oil is an interesting word here. It's the word aletho. Now there are
two words for anointing in Greek. Aletho and kreo. Kreo is the word from which we get our word Christos, the anointed
one, the word for Messiah. That is a ceremonial ritual term. This is the term aletho. Every morning
when you ladies get up, you go and wash your face, you anoint your face with
various creams. Some men do that as well. You don't have to do that so much in
Houston because we're in such a humid climate it keeps all of the woman just
looking young. But if you go to the Middle East where it's an exceptionally dry
climate, everyone would put oil on as part of their daily toiletry in order to
take care of their skin. This was the normative thing.
Remember in
Matthew 6 Jesus tells the disciples that when you fast, don't be like the
Pharisees and go around looking like you're fasting, but anoint yourself so
that when you're out no one knows you're fasting. They can't look at you and
say, "That guy's fasting. He hasn't had a shower in a while. He smells
bad. He looks bad. He must be fasting. He's miserable." No, Jesus says to
anoint yourself.
This has to do
with the fact that in the situation here the person who is weary in their
spiritual struggle is depressed. They're down. If you've ever struggled with
depression, sometimes you don't want to get out of bed in the morning and when
you do, you don't want to go take a shower or do anything. You just feel like
you have a heavy weight on yourself so you don't want to do those things. This
is very practical advice. The elders are to pray over him and then he's to go
take a shower.
I remember
going through some tough times at one point in my life and one of my seminary
professors would call me every morning and say, "Did you have a good
breakfast? Did you take your walk this morning?" That's this kind of
advice. You need to do those things every day and that will physically help you
to get through them. That's all that's being said here. And then the prayer of
faith will save or lift up or strengthen the one who is weary and the Lord will
lift him up and if he has committed sins he will be forgiven. If sin has
entered into his life because he's failed in times of testing, then this prayer
is appropriate. This is the background for understanding this particular word.
In Romans 14:2-3 this refers to someone who is weak spiritually and immature.
It's used that way in 1 Corinthians 8:11-12 as well. So we are to receive the
one who is weak in the faith. That is, they don't know enough doctrine to know
the truth so they're operating on a false set of standards. Now we're going to
come back next time and get into this in a little more detail to understand how
we are supposed to handle this sort of person and what the issues are for us.