Romans 14:13-23 (NIV)
Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way. As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean. If your brother is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother for whom Christ died. Do not allow what you consider good to be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men.
Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother to fall.
So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves. But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.
Paul’s concluding arguments concerning those who are weak in faith and those who are stronger is basically this: you are free in the Lord to do or to eat anything that is not forbidden by God’s commandments, but that freedom must not be exercised in such a way that it hurts the faith of those who are weaker.
Paul understood clearly from Jesus that all foods are clean if they are received with thanksgiving (Mark 7:14-23, Romans 14:1-6). But he would never eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols in front of someone for whom that meat would be a stumbling block. And he definitely would not try to persuade that weak brother that they should go ahead and eat that meat while they are still at the stage where to do so would bruise their conscience and make them feel guilty before God. All that would be unloving, and thus worthy of condemnation.
The focus instead should always be on building up one another, on encouraging and drawing each other deeper into the faith. Forcing someone to go where they cannot yet go will ultimately only cause hurt and resentment and may cause some to fall away. And the way of agape love is always other-focused, even when that focus causes us to have to limit our own freedom in some circumstances and with some people.
Father, it is easy, when we experience the freedom we have in Jesus, to begin to focus on that freedom and lose our focus on sacrificially loving our brothers and sisters in Christ (John 15:12-14). But loving them as Jesus loves us may require a laying down of some of our freedoms, and least while we are with them. And ultimately that is a small price to pay for the life of a brother or sister. Lord, fill my heart so full of your love and grace that I never hurt the heart of one of these precious brothers or sisters by focusing on my own freedom, or by pushing forward that freedom at their expense. Amen.