Romans 14:1-12

New Testament for Everyone

The weak and the strong

14 Welcome someone who is weak in faith, but not in order to have disputes on difficult points. ² One person believes it is all right to eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. ³ The one who eats should not despise the one who doesn’t, and the one who doesn’t should not condemn the one who does—because God has welcomed them.

⁴ Who do you think you are to judge someone else’s servants? They stand or fall before their own master. And stand they will, because the master can make them stand.

⁵ One person reckons one day more important than another. Someone else regards all days as equally important. Each person must make up their own mind. ⁶ The one who celebrates the day does so in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, does so in honor of the Lord, and gives thanks to God; the one who does not eat abstains in honor of the Lord, and gives thanks to God.

The final judgment is the only one that counts

⁷ We none of us live to ourselves; we none of us die to ourselves. ⁸ If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, then, whether we live or whether we die, we belong to the Lord. ⁹ That is why the Messiah died and came back to life, so that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

¹⁰ You, then: why do you condemn your fellow Christian? Or you: why do you despise a fellow Christian? We must all appear before the judgment seat of God, ¹¹ as the Bible says:

¹² So then, we must each give an account of ourselves to God.