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To whom do I answer? Is it the minister, my wife, my boss, or my children?

It is a simple answer. I will be held accountable to my Master Jesus. That is, it. I am not accountable to others. I am accountable to Jesus.

And his standard is all about love. Will he find me faithful?

 One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Master [Lord]. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Master, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Master and gives thanks to God. 7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 For if we live, we live to the Master, and if we die, we die to the Master. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Master’s. 9 For to this end the Messiah [Christ] died and lived again, that he might be Master both of the dead and of the living.

Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will stand before the judgement seat of God.

ESV (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Romans 14:5–10

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There is no good reason to judge or to disdain a fellow follower of Jesus. So, Paul supplies a reason to do neither:

  • For we will all stand before God’s judgment platform. Paul wrote Romans from Corinth, Greece.
  • So, his having stood before the judgment platform of the Roman governor Gallio in Corinth (Acts 18:12–17) probably sparked the foregoing statement.
  • “We … all” stresses that not even Paul will be exempt from God’s judgment.

Since God will judge all of us Christians, none of us should presume to judge another Christian on nonmoral issues such as diet and holy days. (That moral matters require judgment by Christians, though, see 1 Corinthians 5.)

And since as Christians we will all stand before God’s judgment platform, none of us should dare disdain a fellow Christian because of disagreement on nonmoral issues. Paul now supports these points with an Old Testament quotation and draws a conclusion from it.

Source: Robert H. Gundry, Commentary on the New Testament: Verse-by-Verse Explanations with a Literal Translation (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2010), 620.

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