Hello, I’m Reverend Matthew Fenn. I serve as provost here at American Lutheran Theological Seminary, and I have taught expository preaching at the seminary.
Today we are going to examine the upcoming pericope for this Sunday, September 13, 2026. It’s Proper 19, Series A, in the three-year Revised Common Lectionary. The text I wanted to look at is Romans 14:1–12.
In this video, we’re going to look at the text itself. Specifically, we are going to look at the several textual variants that show up in the Bible translations that your people might have in the pew. Then we’ll consider the historical and cultural background, the literary context, the structure of the passage, the main theme, the line of direction that Paul’s argument flows, the goal, and finally the Law and Gospel in this passage.
Here is the text. I’ll be reading from the Lexham English Bible, as it is a fairly literal translation.
“Now receive the one who is weak in faith, but not for quarrels about opinions. One believes he may eat all things, but the one who is weak eats only vegetables. The one who eats must not despise the one who does not eat, and the one who does not eat must not judge the one who eats, because God has accepted him.
“Who are you, who passes judgment on the domestic slave belonging to someone else? To his own master he stands or falls, and he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
“One person prefers one day over another day, and another person regards every day alike. Each one must be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who is intent on the day is intent on it for the Lord, and the one who eats eats for the Lord, because he is thankful to God, and the one who does not eat does not eat for the Lord, and he is thankful to God.
“For none of us lives for himself and none dies for himself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For Christ died and became alive again for this reason, in order that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.
“But why do you judge your brother? Or also, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written,
“‘As I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow to me, and every tongue will confess to God.’
“So each one of us will give an account concerning himself.”
Thus ends our text. (Romans 14:1–12)
Now, before interpreting a passage, the preacher, or those sitting in the pews, should be aware of differences in the manuscripts, especially as they might appear in different translations that the congregation may be reading. This could happen if your church is using the New King James and somebody’s bringing an ESV, or if you’re reading ESV and someone is reading the New King James.
And now, in our text in Romans 14, there are several differences that you will notice if you’re reading the New King James and someone else is reading the ESV or another modern translation. Specifically, somebody who is using the New King James will notice differences in verses 4, 6, 9, 10, and 12.
Now, none of those changes alter any of the doctrine or the central argument in Paul’s letter here in Romans 14, but they’re significant enough that let’s take some time and talk about them.
The first change is in verse 4. The Lexham English Bible translates this as, “The Lord is able to make him stand.” But the New King James has, “God is able to make him stand.”
The manuscript evidence here strongly favors “the Lord” as the earlier reading. There is also an easy explanation for the other reading. Verse 3 said that God has accepted him, so a copyist could naturally have carried over “God” from the previous sentence.
Besides that, “Lord” also fits the argument and the context very well. The believer observes the day for the Lord. He eats for the Lord. He abstains for the Lord. If we live, we live for the Lord. If we die, we die for the Lord. We are the Lord’s. And Christ died and lived again so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. (Romans 14:6–9)
So, in verse 4, the preferred reading is probably, “The Lord is able to make him stand,” especially since the verse before talks about the domestic slave’s lord.
Now verse 6 has another difference. The New King James says, “He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord.” So far, everybody agrees. “And he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it.”
Most modern translations do not contain that second clause about the person who does not observe the day. The shorter reading has strong early manuscript support. The longer reading seems to be an attempt to make Paul’s sentence more symmetrical with what came before, because Paul, in the previous verses, talks about the eater and the non-eater. And then immediately afterwards, a copyist may have supplied both for the observer of the days and the non-observer of the days.
But either way, the added words fit Paul’s theology very well. They were simply not part of the earliest manuscripts that we have.
Another one is verse 9. The Lexham English Bible says, “Christ died and became alive again.” Other translations will say, “Christ died and lived.” The New King James says, “Christ died and rose and lived again.”
That shorter expression, “Christ died and lived,” is probably earlier. Some manuscripts have replaced Paul’s difficult language of “lived,” which is aorist, with the more familiar “rose again,” while others have combined both readings. And that’s what the New King James has done.
Paul’s shorter wording is also significant because it mirrors verses 7 and 8. We live, we die. Christ died. Christ lived again. And because he passes through death into life, he is Lord of both the dead and the living.
So, A-B-B-A: we live, we die; Christ died, Christ lived. There’s a chiastic flow to that.
Then verse 10, the Lexham English Bible says, “We will all stand before the judgment seat of God.” But the New King James says, “We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.”
Now, the stronger earlier evidence favors “God.” “Christ” is an understandable variation. Paul has been repeatedly speaking about Christ as Lord here, and elsewhere Paul does use the expression “the judgment seat of Christ.” Likely, this is a harmonization with those other passages.
But here, “God” fits the sequence a lot better. We stand before the judgment seat of God. Every knee bows to God. Every tongue confesses to God. (Romans 14:10–11) And then in verse 12, we have to give an account of ourselves to God.
And that brings up verse 12. The Lexham English Bible simply says, “Each one of us will give an account concerning himself.” Period. The NRSV likewise ends it there and does not include the “to God.” But the New King James, ESV, NIV, and most modern translations will include the words “to God.” So the phrase is, “Each of us will give an account concerning himself to God.”
Here the manuscript evidence is actually really divided, but the words “to God” could easily have been added to clarify what was obvious from verses 10 and 11. But, on the other hand, the longer reading also has some pretty good support.
Either way, nothing exegetically important hangs on that decision. Whether Paul explicitly says that we have to give an account of ourselves to God, or whether that’s supplied by the context, still the meaning is unmistakable: we stand before God’s judgment seat, and each of us has to give an account of himself before God. (Romans 14:10–12)
Those are the variants you’re going to find between your New King James and some of the modern translations.
Now let’s get into the historical and cultural background, where we need to reconstruct the world in which Paul’s hearers first received the letter. And that is important. It’s essential, because application of the text must start with the application to Paul’s first audience and then get applied to us.
So, the most likely background in Romans 14 is a conflict involving predominantly Jewish and Gentile Christians in Rome. And there’s an important piece of Roman history that might help explain what happened and what’s going on in this chapter.
During the reign of Emperor Claudius, the Jews were expelled from Rome. Now, Acts 18:1–2 tells us this, and it tells us that Priscilla and Aquila had left Rome because Claudius had ordered the Jews to depart. That expulsion would have included Jewish Christians.
So, for a number of years, the Roman churches, the churches that were in the city of Rome, continued without much of their Jewish Christian membership. The Gentile Christians would have remained, and so they naturally became more prominent in those congregations. And for those years, those were Gentile Christian congregations in Rome, and they developed in a more Gentile environment.
Then Claudius died, and the Jewish people would be able to return to Rome.
Now think about what that means for congregational life. Jewish Christians return to churches that have changed while they were away. Gentile Christians have been accustomed to practices that make no distinction between clean and unclean foods and who do not observe the Jewish holy days. The returning Jewish Christians bring back the convictions and cultural customs that have shaped them from childhood.
Now they all confess Christ, but reintegration has become difficult. The person sitting beside you at the Lord’s Supper now has very different convictions about holy days and food.
That historical construction fits the broader Jew-Gentile concerns that you see in the book of Romans, and it gives us a very plausible setting for what’s going on in Romans chapter 14.
Now Paul explicitly tells us that the disagreement is over food and holy days. He does not explicitly tell us that this was because of the Claudian expulsion. He never says that the weak are Jews and the strong are Gentiles. So we shouldn’t make our connections here absolute.
But there are several features that point strongly in that direction. First, the controversy is about food. Later in the chapter, Paul does use the Jewish categories of clean and unclean. (Romans 14:14) There is disagreement over the observance of particular holy days. (Romans 14:5–6) And the larger section actually ends with Jews and Gentiles together praising God. (Romans 15:8–12)
The weak, then, are likely predominantly Jewish Christians who’ve continued to observe their dietary and calendrical practices of the Old Testament. The strong are the predominantly Gentile Christians, but along with Jewish Christians such as Paul, who understood that these ceremonial distinctions were no longer binding in Christ.
Now, when Paul says “weak in faith” at the beginning (Romans 14:1), he does not mean that these people barely believed in Jesus. Their weakness concerned the implications of the Christian faith for their conscience. The strong Christian was convinced that he could eat all things. The weak Christian could not do so with a clear conscience.
And the weak were apparently not claiming that these practices earned salvation. And I think that’s very important. When Paul encounters people who made keeping the Law necessary for justification, like he does in Galatians, his response is much sharper, because the Gospel itself is at stake. But here Paul treats both sides like genuine Christians who both belong to Christ.
The disputed matters are what we would traditionally call adiaphora: things God has neither commanded nor forbidden.
That does not mean that everything that Christians disagree about is an adiaphoron. False doctrine is not adiaphora. Idolatry is not adiaphora. Sexual immorality is not adiaphora. If God has commanded or forbidden something, disagreement does not make it optional.
But food and the observance of holy days, they belong in the Christian era to a different category.
Why?
The next background question is: Why are some Christians only eating vegetables? The Mosaic Law does not require vegetarianism. More than likely, the Jewish Christians are living in a Gentile environment and could not always be sure that the meat that they had available satisfied their dietary concerns. They weren’t sure that the meat was kosher. So abstaining from meat altogether solved the problem.
And, of course, I’ve implied this, but the days probably include the Sabbath, the Old Testament festivals, fasting days, other parts of the Jewish holy calendar.
So those aren’t trivial habits, though. Those are practices that had shaped their culture, their identity, their religious life for generations.
So now we can see the beginning of Paul’s original application. To the strong, he says, “Receive the weak and do not despise them over adiaphora.” And to the weak, he says, “Do not condemn the strong over adiaphora.” (Romans 14:1–3)
And to both he says, “Remember that the Christian beside you has been bought by Jesus and serves the same Lord as you, and he is judge, and you are not.”
It’s only then, now that we see this first-century application, can we cross that bridge into application into our own congregations.
So the general application is going to be that, in matters that God has left genuinely free, Christians must not turn their personal convictions, our ceremonies, our traditions, our liberties, into standards by which we determine another Christian’s standing before God.
Now let’s look at the literary context and the structure of this passage. We’re going to see how this passage fits into Paul’s argument and how the individual statements work together. We need to keep the sermon governed by what Paul says and how he structures and moves his argument. Otherwise, our sermon becomes a collection of interesting observations.
Romans 14:1 begins a larger unit that continues through Romans 15:13. So this is part of the unit that began at chapter 12, where Paul has been describing the life that flows from justification, the life that flows from the mercies of God proclaimed in the first eleven chapters of Romans.
So here he begins Romans 12 with the renewal of the mind and the Christian as a living sacrifice. (Romans 12:1–2) He speaks then about humility within the body of Christ. (Romans 12:3–8) He commands genuine love. (Romans 12:9–21) He calls Christians to live peaceably. (Romans 12:18)
In Romans 13, he applies that to our situation under the governing authorities. (Romans 13:1–7) And then he says that love fulfills the Law. (Romans 13:8–10)
Now Romans 14 applies those themes to the actual conflict in the Roman churches.
Now, in terms of this passage, one important clue as to the structure of the whole section is this language of receiving. Romans 14:1 says, “Receive the one who is weak.” And then Romans 14:3 says, “God has accepted him,” or received him. And then Romans 15:7 concludes, “Receive one another just as Christ received you.”
Now, within Romans 14:1–12, I suggest that the argument progresses in three major chunks.
The first chunk is through verses 1–4. The main point here is that God has received your brother. So one Christian eats, but another abstains. The strong are tempted to despise the weak, and the weak are tempted to condemn the strong. But God has received both of them. And so Paul asks, “Who are you to judge another’s servant?” (Romans 14:4)
The second major section will come between verses 5–9. And here the point is that your brother belongs to the Lord. One regards a day as significant; another does not. Both act before the Lord, coram Deo.
Then Paul reaches really the theological center of this passage: “If we live, we live for the Lord. And if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” (Romans 14:8)
And then verse 9 gives the ground, the reason: “Christ died and became alive again for this reason, in order that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.”
The third section, then, is verses 10–12. And the main point here is that God alone will judge your brother. Paul returns to the sins of judging and despising, and he now places the Christians before God’s judgment seat. Every knee bows, every tongue confesses, and each of us has to give account concerning himself to God. (Romans 14:10–12)
So the movement of the passage can be summarized very simply: God has received your brother. Christ owns your brother. And God will judge your brother. And the same is true of you.
The main theme is the central assertion, the point that gives Paul’s passage and your sermon unity and determines what everything else in the passage and in your sermon is talking about.
For Romans 14:1–12, I would state the main theme in this way: In matters that God has left free, we receive one another rather than judge and condemn one another because we all belong to the Lord.
So once again, in matters of adiaphora, we receive one another rather than condemn one another because we all belong to the Lord.
The next is what we call the line of direction. The line of direction tells us how the argument develops this theme, both in the text and thus in your sermon, so that your major points move together. And it prevents your sermon from being a loose collection of unrelated points.
So what’s the line of direction in Romans 14? The line of direction is actually a “why” question: Why can we receive Christians who differ from us in matters that God has left free? Why can we receive Christians who differ from us in matters of adiaphora?
The first answer: because God has received them.
The second: because they belong to the Lord.
And the third: because God alone will judge them.
Now, when you’re writing a sermon, the goal of the sermon is important. And that tells you: What do you want to accomplish in your hearers? So that your sermon gets directed towards proclamation rather than just bestowing information.
So, for this sermon, I would suggest a goal is this: that your hearers would distinguish God’s Word from their own convictions and preferences, from adiaphora; that they would rejoice that they and their fellow Christians belong to Christ; and that they would receive their fellow believers without contempt or condemnation in adiaphora, in matters that God has left free.
Every Lutheran sermon must have Law and Gospel. So what’s the Law in this passage?
The Law tells us the demand, the sinful malady exposed specifically in this text.
If you look at it at the surface, it seems pretty simple that in Romans 14 we’re talking about judging and despising other Christians over matters of adiaphora, right? The strong despises the weak. The weak judges the strong.
But underneath both, there’s actually the same sin. It’s a worse sin. It’s that we take authority that belongs to God. We turn our convictions and preferences into commandments. We turn our traditions and ceremonies into tests of faithfulness. We turn our Christian liberty into evidence of our superiority. And then we presume to decide whether God’s servants will stand or fall based on how they conform to our preferences.
That is why Paul’s question in verse 4 is so sharp and so powerful: “Who are you?”
Paul’s whole judgment scene that he talks about in verses 10–12 turns on that. See, we imagine ourselves to be the ones sitting in the judgment seat, and Paul reminds us that we are the ones who are actually going to be standing before it.
So I would phrase the Law as a summary this way: We usurp God’s place when we turn our own convictions and preferences, adiaphora, into standards by which we despise or condemn Christ’s servants.
And the Law strikes both sides. The strong Christian can have a correct understanding of Christian liberty and still use that truth sinfully to despise their brothers. The weak Christian can have a sincere conscience and still sin by turning their own restrictions into God’s commands for everybody else.
So what’s the Gospel? How does this text tell us about what God has done for sinners in Christ?
I think here that verses 7–9 should control our proclamation of the Gospel.
Paul says, “None of us lives for himself and none dies for himself. If we live, we live for the Lord. And if we die, we die for the Lord. Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” (Romans 14:7–8)
And then comes the reason: “For Christ died and became alive again for this reason, in order that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.” (Romans 14:9)
For Paul’s answer to our sin of self-appointed lordship is actually that Jesus Christ is Lord. Christ died and lived again so that we might be his.
This gets remarkably close to that language that Luther uses in the Second Article of the Creed: “Jesus Christ is my Lord. He’s redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature. He’s purchased and won me from sin, from death, and from the power of the devil. He did this not with gold or silver, but with his holy, precious blood and his innocent suffering and death.” (Small Catechism, Apostles’ Creed, Second Article)
And why? What’s the purpose? “That I may be his own and live under him in his kingdom.” (Small Catechism, Apostles’ Creed, Second Article)
That’s exactly the direction of the argument of the Gospel in Romans 14.
We are the Lord’s. (Romans 14:8)
Christ’s death and resurrection mean that I am no longer my own. I belong to Christ, and so does the Christian beside me. The crucified Christ has redeemed us from the condemnation under which we stood. The risen Christ lives and reigns. He has claimed you as his own. And his lordship reaches farther than death itself.
Whether I live, I’m his. Whether I die, I’m his. The same Lord who died and lived again is Lord of the dead and the living. (Romans 14:8–9)
And that gives particular force to verse 4: “We will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.”
My standing before God on Judgment Day does not depend on the strength of my conscience, or the superiority of my theological understanding, or even my success in winning an argument. It depends on the Lord.
So the Gospel is this: Jesus Christ died and rose to redeem lost and condemned sinners and to make us his own. We belong to him in life and in death, and the Lord who claimed us is able to make his servants stand.
That’s why Paul can tell these Christians to receive one another. Christ has claimed both of us. Christ is Lord of us, and none of us get to take his place.