Oh consecrating thought, attached now, for ever, for the Christian, to every human soul which he can influence: "_For whom Christ died!_"
[Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =Do not therefore let your good,= your glorious creed of holy liberty in Christ, =be railed at,= as only a thinly veiled self-indulgence after all; [Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =for the kingdom of our (τοῦ) God is not feeding (βρῶσις) and drinking;= He does not claim a throne in your soul, and in your Society, merely to enlarge your bill of fare, to make it your sacred privilege, as an end in itself, to take what you please at table; =but righteousness,= surely here, in the Roman Epistle, the "righteousness" of our divine acceptance, =and peace,= the peace of perfect relations with Him in Christ, =and joy in the Holy Spirit,= the pure strong gladness of the justified, as in their sanctuary of salvation they drink the "living water," and "rejoice always in the Lord." [Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =For he who in this= way[241] =lives as bondservant to Christ,= spending his spiritual talents not for himself but for his Master, =is pleasing to his (τῷ) God, and is genuine to his fellow-men (τοῖς ἀνθρώποις).= Yes, he _stands the test_ (δόκιμος) of their keen scrutiny. They can soon detect the counterfeit under spiritual assertions which really assert self. But their conscience affirms the genuineness of a life of _unselfish_ and happy holiness; that life "reverbs no hollowness."
[Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =Accordingly therefore let us pursue= the interests of =peace, and= the interests of =an edification which is mutual;= the "building up" (οἰκοδομὴ) which looks beyond the man to his brother, to his brethren, and tempers by that look even his plans for his own spiritual life.
Again he returns to the sorrowful _grotesque_ of preferring personal comforts, and even the assertion of the principle of personal liberty, to the good of others. [Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =Do not for food's sake be undoing (κατάλυε) the work of our God. "All things are pure";= he doubtless quotes a watchword often heard; and it was truth itself in the abstract, but capable of becoming a fatal fallacy in practice; =but= anything =is bad to the man who is brought by a stumblingblock to eat it.[242]= Yes, this is bad (κακόν). What is good (καλὸν) in contrast?
[Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =Good it is not to eat flesh, and not to drink wine= (a word for our time and its conditions), =and not to do anything in which your brother is stumbled, or entrapped, or weakened.= Yes, this is Christian liberty; a liberation from the strong and subtle law of self; a freedom to live for others, independent of their evil, but the servant of their souls.
[Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =You--the faith you have,[243] have it by yourself, in the presence of your God.= You have believed; you are therefore in Christ; in Christ you are therefore free, by faith, from the preparatory restrictions of the past. Yes; but all this is not given you for personal display, but for divine communion. Its right issue is in a holy intimacy with your God, as in the confidence of your acceptance you know Him as your Father, "nothing between." But as regards human intercourse, you are emancipated not that you may disturb the neighbours with shouts of freedom and acts of licence, but that you may be at leisure to serve them in love. =Happy the man who does not judge himself,= who does not, in effect, decide against his own soul, =in that which he approves, δοκιμάζει,= pronounces satisfactory to conscience. Unhappy he who says to himself, "This is lawful," when the verdict is all the while purchased by self-love, or otherwise by the fear of man, and the soul knows in its depths that the thing is not as it should be. [Sidenote: Ver. 23.] =And the man who is doubtful,= whose conscience is not really satisfied between the right and wrong of the matter, =if he does eat, stands condemned,= in the court of his own heart, and of his aggrieved Lord's opinion, =because= it was =not the result of faith;= the action had not, for its basis, the holy conviction of the liberty of the justified. =Now anything which is not the result of faith, is sin;= that is to say, manifestly, "anything" _in such a case as this_; any indulgence, any obedience to example, which the man, in a state of inward ambiguity, decides for on a principle other than that of his union with Christ by faith.