THE BOOK OF ROMANS
Lesson 33, Chapters 14 and 1
In Romans chapter 14 we again encountered an issue that simply will not go away: the issue of
kosher eating. Thus in verse 14 of chapter 14 we read this:
CJB
Romans 14:14 I know- that is, I have been persuaded by the Lord Yeshua the
Messiah- that nothing is unclean in itself. But if a person considers something unclean,
then for him it is unclean;
Although Western gentile Christianity has tried to solve the matter by declaring simply and
succinctly that the Levitical dietary laws have been abolished for Christians, some cleaver
reconstruction of certain New Testament passages was needed to try to validate that
questionable position. So when we look at the oldest New Testament manuscripts ever found
(all of them written in Greek) we find discrepancies from what we find in most English Bible
versions when it comes God’s dietary laws. Interestingly the KJV tends to stay more true to
the original Greek in its rendering of words concerning eating and diet, and so sometimes it
tells a different story…..but not always. Let me give you an example.
Acts 10:11-15 KJV
11
And (Peter) saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had
been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth:
12
Wherein were all
manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and
fowls of the air.
13
And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat.
14
But Peter
said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.
15
And
the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not
thou common.
Notice in this passage in Acts that the word “common” is used to describe something that
Peter said he has never eaten, and that God said that Peter should not call common what God
has cleansed. You will not find the word “common” in most standard English translations or in
the CJB; instead the word “unclean” is used. So why the discrepancy? It is because the Greek
word that is translated “common” in the KJV, but “unclean” in almost all English translations,
is koinos; however koinos means ordinary and common and not “unclean”. There is a
separate Greek word that means unclean, and it is akathartos. Akathartos is not used here.
So why, when it comes to the discussion of food, do English Bible translations change the
meaning of koinos from common to unclean? Clearly it is because a certain doctrinal agenda
is being taught that doesn’t necessarily agree with the plain Scripture reading so some
adjustments to the Scriptures had to be made to make the words fit the doctrine that kosher
eating has been abolished for Christians.
So what does “common” mean when it applies to food? Before we delve into that I want to
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throw out a question that I’m sure many of you might be asking at this moment; why does Tom
Bradford address the issue of kosher eating so regularly? It is because I have noticed that
within Western culture and especially within Western Christianity the issues of dietary
restrictions and Sabbath are among the most difficult to deal with. It isn’t that hard for
Westerners to understand and obey God’s biblical moral standards that make murder,
stealing, and lying wrong. However we simply don’t like the idea of being told what we can eat
and what we can’t, or what day we should set aside to cease our regular work or if we are
obligated to do and not do certain activities on the Sabbath. Somehow the concepts of a God
designated Day of Rest and of God regulating our food such that some foods are permissible
and some is prohibited goes against our values of individualism and personal choice. After
many decades of life and my personal experience with God I have learned a valuable lesson; it
is that those areas in our life of which we demand God keep His hands off are the ones He
may well meddle in the most. Why? It is for our benefit; obedience to Him in all areas of our life
is the forgotten element of our relationship with the Lord in modern Christianity.
As much as I love democracy, the Kingdom of Heaven is not democratic and God is not the
President of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is a theocracy with but one absolute ruler who
established Himself as that ruler: Yehoveh. We don’t get to vote in our relationship with God.
We have no right or mechanism to establish new divine rules or abolish established ones. He
gives us no options when it comes to morality, although He gives us wide latitude in matters of
preference. God has made eating and Sabbath matters of The Law and thus they are moral
issues; not issues of personal preference. He has made clear rules and regulations about what
we should and should not eat, and about what day we are to set apart as holy and different
from all the other days of the week.
Therefore let me be clear: is it wrong to disobey God’s laws concerning diet and Sabbath?
Yes it is. Is it sin to disregard God’s regulations about what we eat and what day we set aside
as the Day of Rest? Yes it is. And I can tell you from personal experience (and I have heard
the same from so many other Believers) that after you have accepted Christ as your Lord and
Savior, and then you also make the decision to obey God in all areas of your life including diet
and Sabbath, an entire new world of intimacy and relationship with the Lord opens up. Why?
Because obedience is God’s love language. It is an oxymoron to say you love God but in the
same breath make it clear that you won’t obey Him in certain areas of your life and lifestyle
that you wish to continue to control according to your own standard. As I have pointed out
before: God originally gave Adam and Eve only one rule; and interestingly that rule concerned
their diet. They could eat everything God gave them for food except the fruit from one
particular tree. The Scriptures acknowledge that the prohibited fruit was edible, beautiful, and
tasty.
Genesis 3:1-7 CJB
CJB
Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any wild animal which ADONAI,
God, had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You are not to eat from any
tree in the garden'?"
2
The woman answered the serpent, "We may eat from the fruit of
the trees of the garden,
3
but about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God
said, 'You are neither to eat from it nor touch it, or you will die.'"
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4
The serpent said to the woman, "It is not true that you will surely die;
5
because God
knows that on the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like
God, knowing good and evil."

6
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it had a pleasing
appearance and that the tree was desirable for making one wise, she took some of its
fruit and ate. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her; and he ate.
7
Then
the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked. So they
sewed fig leaves together to make themselves loincloths.
The very first law God ever gave to mankind He gave in the Garden of Eden….before there was
a Law of Moses or a Hebrew to obey it….and it concerned food. What we eat matters to God
and has since Creation. And since it matters to God naturally Satan is going to interfere and try
to get us to go against what the Lord wants. It rubbed Eve the wrong way that God restricted
her from that gorgeous fruit; it must have seemed pointless and unreasonable. Because of our
inborn evil inclinations we carry with us that same attitude about food that Adam and Eve had;
we demand total freedom to choose as we please. If we like the taste and it doesn’t physically
harm us, then we feel as though we should have the right to eat it. Just because some of the
Early Church Fathers were deceived, and because the Church in general remains deceived on
this matter, doesn’t mean you have to be. Remember: the rules of kosher eating are found in
the Holy Scriptures, primarily in Leviticus chapter 11, and they don’t amount to great deal. The
food rules that Judaism follows include much more than God requires and even Yeshua
Himself railed against those extra rules. So this is why I speak so regularly about kosher eating
and about Sabbath.
So back to the issue of what common means as it applies to food. It is important to understand
that in the Torah the term “common” is not used in reference to food. Food is basically divided
into two categories: permitted and prohibited. And then the permitted food is divided into two
categories: ritually clean and ritually unclean. So the use of the term common by Paul creates
a real challenge in trying to discern what he means by it. Surely it doesn’t mean unclean
because there was an everyday Greek word for unclean that we regularly find used in the
Bible. My best educated guess is that because the Synagogue and Judaism had taken firm
hold in the lives of Jews well before Paul’s day, certain terms had their meanings altered to
reflect conditions of the times. I think “common” is one of those altered terms and it reflects
the difficulties of proper eating for the vast bulk of Jews who lived among millions of gentiles in
a predominately gentile world. I also think that in the NT era the word “common” referred to
food (probably mainly meat) that is on the list of permissible foods as found in the Torah, but
because Jews in the Diaspora more often than not had no hand in the raising, butchering, and
handling of the food they could never be sure if it had been done according to God’s laws. If
any of that was done improperly it could render the food unclean. And depending on how pious
a Diaspora Jew was, the details of the food handling were either extremely important or not
important at all. Thus for many Jews they ate only vegetables so that kosher issues were
removed and they could be certain that they ate nothing that they shouldn’t.
Let’s pause now and re-read the last several verses of Romans 14.
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RE-READ ROMANS 14:14 – end
We’ve discussed verse 14 with the pertinent info being that the word unclean doesn’t actually
appear here. However the principle Paul speaks of “nothing is common of itself” means that
food has no intrinsic condition. That is, no food is automatically created holy; no food is
automatically created common; and no food is automatically created unclean because of its
chemical makeup. Pig meat doesn’t have some evil genetic quality about it that makes it
prohibited for food while cow meat has some good genetic quality about it that makes it
permissible for food. Rather the issue is obedience by God’s worshippers to whatever the Lord
ordains. This fact was long recognized by the Rabbis and I’d like to quote you a rather
interesting narrative from the Pesikta de-Rab Kahana, which was created as early as the 5
th
century and is essentially a series of Jewish religious homilies.
A heathen questioned Rabban Johanan be Zakkai, saying: The things you Jews do
appear to be a kind of sorcery. A heifer is brought, it is burned, is pounded into ash, and
its ash is gathered up. Then when one of you gets defiled by contact with a corpse, two
or three drops of the ash mixed with water are sprinkled upon him, and he is told, “You
are cleansed!” Rabban Johanan asked the heathen: “Has the spirit of madness ever
possessed you?” He replied: “No”. “Have you ever seen a man whom the spirit of
madness has possessed?” The heathen replied: “Yes”. “And what do you do for such a
man?” (The heathen said) “Roots are brought, the smoke of their burning is made to
rise about him, and water is sprinkled upon him until the spirit of madness flees”.
Rabban Johanan then said: “Do not your ears hear what your mouth is saying? It is the
same with a man who is defiled by contact with a corpse; he, too, is possessed by a
spirit, the spirit of uncleanness, and, as of madness, Scripture says, I will cause false
prophets as well as the spirit of uncleanness to flee from the Land”.
Now when the heathen left, Rabban Johanan’s disciples said: “Our master, you put off
that heathen with a mere reed of an answer, but what answer will you give us?” Rabban
Johanan answered: “By your lives, I swear: the corpse does not have the power by
itself to defile, nor does the mixture of ash and water have the power by itself to
cleanse. The truth is that the purifying power of the Red Heifer is a decree of the Holy
One. The Holy One said: I have set it down as a statute; I have issued it as a decree. You
are not permitted to transgress my decree. This is the statute of the Torah.
So holiness, commonness, and uncleanness have nothing to do with the substance of the
object or the creature; they only gain such status as the Lord deems it. And if, as says Rabban
Johanan, God says pig meat is not food for you, then it isn’t. If God says chicken is food for
you, then it is. There is nothing more to it than that; however as much as we humans might
question why pork is forbidden but chicken is permitted, we have no right to do anything but
obey. Here in Romans 14:14 the issue is the “commonness” of some kind of edible item thus
meaning (according to Paul) that it should not be eaten as food. But interestingly the rationale
and the point for Paul’s injunction about food has less to do with obedience to the Torah food
laws and much more to do with loving your neighbor as yourself. Paul’s injunction is that we
are to respect the other person’s stance on such matters and not make it a bone of contention
that causes division. He is in no way saying it doesn’t matter; but rather that it is up to God,
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and not to a fellow Believer, to judge that person for not obeying the kosher food laws.
But now notice verse 15: it continues the subject by speaking of your brother (your fellow
Believer) being upset by the choice of food you eat. Thus by eating food that you know upsets
your fellow Believer (I’m assuming this means eating it in the presence of your fellow Believer)
you are going against the fundamental principle of loving your neighbor. Who is Paul speaking
to in his letter? Most often it is said that this is aimed at Believing Jews for being especially
rigid about food by maintaining kosher eating standards and thus when gentiles see them eat a
restricted diet it upsets the gentiles; but that is exactly the opposite of what these words say. In
fact simple logic asks why would gentiles be upset with Jews because Jews only ate certain
foods? So it is not an issue of what Jews eat, but what they don’t eat. Further, nothing a Jew
eats would upset a gentile, even if that gentile thinks that restrictions don’t apply to him.
Rather the upset occurs when it is gentile Believers who eat things that Believing Jews
consider common or unclean (and thus forbidden) that is the issue. It is gentiles Paul is
admonishing by saying that what they eat may be upsetting their brothers in Christ who are
Jews who eat kosher. So, says Paul in verse 15, gentiles don’t let your unrestricted eating
habits (of eating things that upset those who eat kosher) destroy someone for who the Messiah
died (that is, another Believer). To destroy in this context means to offend. Thus gentiles
should honor Jews’ convictions by eating kosher in their presence in order to show them
respect and not offending them. One can only imagine the contentious issues of diet when
gentile Believers began to be saved and especially at first joined Jewish synagogues.
Verse 16 is a bit cryptic but here’s how we should take it. Paul is talking to those on one side
of the issue in verse 15, and then to those on the other side of issue in verse 16. So to
paraphrase these two verses to help us understand better let’s try this: On the one hand don’t
let your eating habits, gentiles, offend fellow Believers (Jew or gentile) who eat kosher. But on
the other hand, kosher eaters, don’t let your devotion to eating kosher (a good thing) be turned
into something bad by demanding that your fellow Believer eat kosher because to do so
violates the overriding principle of loving your neighbor. And then in verse 17 Paul says this is
the case because the Kingdom of God is not based on wooden, mechanical instructions about
what you eat or what you drink such that it can cause divisions among Believers. Rather the
Kingdom of God is based on the righteousness, peace and joy given to us by means of the
Holy Spirit.
So here is the application for us in modern times: yes, Believers, God does instruct us to eat
Kosher. But if you don’t first have the Holy Spirit in you, and you feel no conviction to follow
God’s dietary laws, then to do so anyway is pointless and especially so if you do it only as an
outward show. At the same time if you are saved, and you do have the conviction to obey
God’s dietary laws, then not only should you do so but you should not judge or ostracize other
Believers who have not come to that same conviction. Why is this? Because the spirit of God is
not one of slavery to the Law, but one of devotion to the Law out of love and gratitude for the
Law’s creator. Thus while I fully believe that following God’s dietary laws are for all Believers,
I will not make or end relationships with fellow Believers based on whether or not they, too,
hold that same conviction. At the same time, those Believers who have no conviction to obey
God’s dietary laws need to honor my convictions should they invite me over for a meal. It is a
two way street and never should we get into battles with one another over kosher eating. And
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Paul says in verse 18 that if we will go forward with this type of attitude then this is the proper
service of worship to our Messiah because it pleases God and it also allows others to see us
(as Messiah’s representatives) in a good, proper, loving light that well represents our Savior.
It can only be that the issue of food and drink was a contentious one among the Roman
congregation (a mixed congregation of Jews and gentiles) that Paul spends so much time on it.
And Paul says that of all things to not battle over, it is this. But then we are thrown another
typical Paul curve ball in verse 20 when he says that all things are clean (and indeed he uses
the Greek word for clean, kathartos), but at the same time no one should cause anyone else
to fall away from Messiah due to food. What does he mean here? Naturally Western
Christianity claims that Paul says that because of Christ, the food laws are gone and now
every edible thing is OK for Believers to eat. And yet that doesn’t fit with what Paul says here
and in others of his epistles. In fact, the wording says that ALL things are clean; that is, this
statement although it includes food goes beyond food such that the entire principle of clean
and unclean has been abolished as it applies to anything at all. That would make sense
because otherwise we have Paul saying that the principles of clean and unclean remain but
they now apply to everything but food. However this can’t be right either because Paul talks
about the need to be cleansed in a number of his epistles. One of the more well known of his
statements in this regard is found in 1Corinthians.
1Corinthians 6:9-11 CJB
9
Don't you know that unrighteous people will have no share in the Kingdom of God?
Don't delude yourselves- people who engage in sex before marriage, who worship idols,
who engage in sex after marriage with someone other than their spouse, who engage in
active or passive homosexuality,
10
who steal, who are greedy, who get drunk, who
assail people with contemptuous language, who rob- none of them will share in the
Kingdom of God.
11
Some of you used to do these things. But you have cleansed yourselves, you have
been set apart for God, you have come to be counted righteous through the power of
the Lord Yeshua the Messiah and the Spirit of our God.
But then there is also this from the John the Revelator:
Revelation 21:22-27 CJB
22
I saw no Temple in the city, for ADONAI, God of heaven's armies, is its Temple, as is
the Lamb.
23
The city has no need for the sun or the moon to shine on it, because God's
Sh'khinah gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.
24
The nations will walk by its light,
and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it.
25
Its gates will never close,
they stay open all day because night will not exist there,
26
and the honor and splendor
of the nations will be brought into it.
27
Nothing impure may enter it, nor anyone who does shameful things or lies; the only
ones who may enter are those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
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So clearly the issues of obedience and of clean and unclean (ritually pure and ritually impure)
continue into the Messianic age and we should not take Paul as meaning that the status of
unclean has been abolished. So what does he mean? Considering his Jewishness, that he is
an educated Pharisee, what he has said throughout Romans, and that he lived during the era
of Judaism, Tradition and the Synagogue, then I think those several factors are the necessary
context for interpreting what Paul means by “all things are clean”; and he means that nothing
is created by God as unclean. At Creation God did not create unholy or unclean substances or
creatures or things. That is, inherently the physical substance of every created thing is
acceptable to God since He’s the one who did the creating. We know this because it is
recorded in Genesis that God looked over everything that He created and pronounced it as
“good”. However the spiritual and ritual status of unclean can be and is assigned by God to
some things under some circumstances for His own good reasons. This status, however, never
changes the physical make-up of a person, animal or object itself (in some magical way). A few
minutes ago I read you an excerpt from an ancient Jewish document that said essentially the
same thing. So Paul is but stating what was an accepted spiritual principle among Jews that all
things are created inherently clean, even if some are later deemed unclean (and therefore
unusable) by God for ritual purposes.
Nonetheless, says Paul to finish up this section, these issues (what we eat and what we drink)
should not be the cause of making a fellow Believer to stumble due to religious arguments
within a congregation. And since trust is the standard God uses to determine our salvation,
then it is on account of this trust and nothing else that we are to make the decision to eat
according to the Torah food laws. We should not eat kosher because of being brow beaten; not
because of thinking that somehow we are more pious or have more merit for doing so; and not
simply to conform to others in our group. However this same trust that leads us to eat
according to God’s food laws also compels us to be respectful and loving to Believers who
don’t.
Let’s get a glimpse of Romans chapter 15 before we close for today.
READ ROMANS CHAPTER 15 all
Once again we have to mentally set aside the chapter divisions that give us the sense that the
former subject has ended and a new subject as begun. This is because the first verse of
chapter 15 is based entirely on what Paul has previously said in chapter 14. That is, the “so”
to begin the chapter means “because of the principles I have just taught you”. And Paul says
that because of these principles “we” who are strong must bear the weaknesses of those are
not strong. It is important that we pick up on the fact that Paul includes himself as part of the
strong because he uses the term “we”. So which side of the kosher eating issue did Paul fall
on? The side that says kosher eating is abolished, or the side that says it continues on? In
order to know we have to look elsewhere in the New Testament to learn about Paul and how
he conducts himself. Listen to how he describes himself as he stands on trial before King
Agrippa.
Acts 26:1-5 CJB
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CJB
Acts 26:1 Agrippa said to Sha'ul, "You have permission to speak on your own
behalf." Then Sha'ul motioned with his hand and began his defense:
2
"King Agrippa, I
consider myself fortunate that it is before you today that I am defending myself against
all the charges made against me by Jews,
3
because you are so well informed about all
the Jewish customs and controversies. Therefore, I beg you to listen to me patiently.
4
"So then! All Jews know how I lived my life from my youth on, both in my own country
and in Yerushalayim.
5
They have known me for a long time; and if they are willing,
they can testify that I have followed the strictest party in our religion- that is, I have lived
as a Parush.
Pharisees were super strict about the Torah food laws, even adding some burdensome
traditions that made it even stricter. As a Pharisee Paul of course followed their dietary rules.
And earlier in Acts when Paul was on trail standing before Governor Felix he said this about
himself:
Acts 24:14 CJB
14
"But this I do admit to you: I worship the God of our fathers in
accordance with the Way (which they call a sect). I continue to believe everything that
accords with the Torah and everything written in the Prophets.
Paul believes everything written in the Torah. The food laws are part of the Torah. Was Paul a
liar? Did he “believe” everything in the Torah, but he only obeyed some of it? If that is the
case, I don’t know why we would listen to anything the man has to say. And earlier yet Paul
said this:
Acts 22:3 CJB
3
"I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city and
trained at the feet of Gamli'el in every detail of the Torah of our forefathers. I was a
zealot for God, as all of you are today.
Paul was either lying or telling the truth in these 3 statements (and a few others to this same
effect). He either remained a highly trained, strictly Torah observant Jew or he was being a
hypocrite and a phony (which, by the way, some of the Early Church Fathers say he was
deceiving others by living one way and teaching another way but he can be excused for it
because he did it for the good of spreading the Gospel). Paul of course was no hypocrite as he
went to great lengths to prove when he went to meet James, Jesus’ brother, in Jerusalem and
went into the Temple to pay the vow offerings for him and several other men. Paul followed the
Torah food laws as a Believer. And as he said to begin Romans 15, he (as part of the “we”) is
what he considers “the strong”. So clearly by Paul’s definition it is the strong who eat a
kosher diet; not the weak as it is often taught.
So in continuing the theme of the strong and the weak Paul says it is self-evident that it is the
strong that must bear the weaknesses of the weak. I say self-evident because if the weak
could bear their own weaknesses they wouldn’t be weak! He adds in verse 2 that we should
“please” our neighbor and choose our actions according to what is best for him. This of course
is just another way of stating the love your neighbor as yourself principle that Yeshua and the
Rabbis say the entire Torah stands upon and upon which Paul has based most of the Book of
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Romans. Here is the thing: while what Paul is calling for is for the strong to take the
responsibility to lovingly care for the weak, it is also a test of faith for the strong. It is anything
but human nature for the strong to want to help those weaker than themselves. Rather more
typically the strong want to dominate and impose their ways and doctrines upon the weak. The
strongest man who ever lived was Yeshua and He spent His life being a servant to others,
giving every ounce of His life for the good of the weak. He is our example. As He said: He
came to minister to the sick, not to the healthy. Just as Jesus shouldered our burdens (for we
are all weak compared to Him), the strong among us are to help shoulder the burdens of the
weak among us. And let’s remember: we’re talking here about the strong in the faith versus
the weak in the faith. Those who have more trust are to help those who, for the time being,
have less trust. Nonetheless the weak do have trust, they are saved because of that trust, and
they are just as valuable to the Kingdom of God as are the strong of faith.
We’ll continue with chapter 15 next time.
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