Romans 14:23 (Following the Lord and not the Crowd)
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.- Romans 14:23
Floyd Ray Gage July 27, 2021
Paul now turns the beam of examination from how we treat others concerning our personal beliefs to how we ourselves stick to our personal beliefs. If we were to examine our faith-life, would we find that we do most of the religious things we are doing because others are watching us or because God is watching us?
The truth of the matter is that many if not all of us have at least at times done some of the religious things that we do because of “peer pressure.” We all know what peer pressure is and we usually only apply it to children and youth. The truth of the matter is that all of us can and will do things if we are not careful because others are telling us we should do them.
Our society today is built largely on peer pressure. The media plays into trying to pressure people to do things. Some jobs use peer pressure to try and get compliance from all of their employees. Peer pressure is a very real thing in our society today.
We are at a place where if we choose to do something that goes against the flow, we are condemned out of hand. We should not fool ourselves into believing that our leaders and all of the special interest groups in our world do not understand what peer pressure is and how to use it.
Advertisers have been using it for years. They build up an artificial need for something and get people to purchase it by making it normative. Groups try to get unacceptable practices under normal circumstances made into “normal practices” through the use of peer pressure.
Standing against peer pressure as a child, teen, or an adult can be a very hard thing to do. Paul knew this and he tells us that we need to examine what we choose to do or not to do and make sure that the motivation for doing it is not coming from peer pressure, but is coming from faith.
How often have we gotten into trouble or ended up where we didn’t really want to be, because of peer pressure? As a Christian, we just simply cannot follow the crowd and hope to please God. The crowd, sadly, is not often following God at all. We will find ourselves doing things that God says are wrong and even getting to the point of calling them right ourselves, if we do not examine what we are doing closely. We must use God’s Word as our measuring stick and not the loudest or kindest voices of our society.
Paul tells us that anything and everything that does not come from a place of faith is sin. This means that if we do something for any reason other than it lining up with what we know God wants us to do we are in danger of sinning.
This makes perfect sense if you think about it. If we are doing something that others are doing and we can say we are doing it because of our faith in God, we are okay. But, if we do something others are doing and we cannot say that it comes from a place of obedience and service to God, then it would be in rebellion to God, and consequently sin.
