*There is a three-minute section of this sermon that was lost in the recording process.
Romans 14 brings us into territory that is foreign territory for many. Can it be possible for two Christians to have differences on an issue and there be something more important than simply determining who is right and who is wrong? What could be more important that that? According to Paul, there is something more important. Namely, Christian liberty and unity. Paul is not dealing with differences over central doctrines of the faith. He is not adjudicating a dispute between Trinitarians and Unitarians or between those who believe Jesus in the only Savior and those who think there are other saviors. There can be no liberty to believe heretical doctrine and there can be no unity with those who do. What Paul is addressing is secondary matters of conscience, wherein Christians agree on the moral principle, but disagree on the application. In Rome, some Christians believed that eating meat sacrificed to idols amounted to a complicit participation in idolatry. They thought the sinful motivations of the one who sacrificed it attached to the meat like a parasite and contaminated anyone who ate that meat, regardless of the eater's motivations. Other Christians believed (correctly) that meat was just meat and that the motivations of others couldn't transfer to the meat and thereby corrupt the good motivations of Christians. Paul said that the vegetarians were wrong. But that wasn't the important takeaway. The important thing was for each side to accept the other, refrain from judging the other and allow liberty for each side to work the matter out according to their own conscience.
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