Speaking Evil of Your Pork Rinds

“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)

Food and Drink #3

“I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean. ¹⁵ But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died. ¹⁶ Let not then your good be evil spoken of: ¹⁷ For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost” (Rom. 14:14-17).

Once we are baptized, the Lord Jesus summons us all to partake of the bread and wine. Apart from this, the Christian faith has no food laws. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Because the carnal man (when he is being religious) loves food laws, he keeps trying to smuggle back in what the Lord Jesus fulfilled. Notice that Paul here knows that no food is unclean in itself, and that it was the Lord Jesus who persuaded him of this. If a man with a weak and tender conscience believes it to be unclean, then it is certainly unclean for him (v. 14). He ought not to partake of it—Paul does not want any believers sinning against their own conscience. But neither would he want them publishing best-selling books on what a “Bible diet” is supposed to look like. And in the meantime, the man with a robust conscience ought not to exercise his liberty in such a way as to stumble a weaker brother (15). To swing your dietary liberty around on the end of a rope is to cause others to speak evil of your pork rinds (v. 16). And then Paul comes to the principle. The kingdom of God is not a matter of meat and drink. After the bread and wine, no food laws whatever. Instead of fussing about the menu, Paul exhorts believers to prepare a true meal indeed—righteousness, peace, and joy (v. 17). The Holy Spirit is not trying to get us to worry about what is in our food, with long, pious, pinched faces. His work is somewhat different.

This teaching—that there is nothing unclean in itself—was originally given in the context of some believers who were still keeping the dietary restrictions given to Moses, but which were fulfilled in Christ. In other words, if this applies to food restrictions for which there were a lot of verses in the Old Testament, how much more would it apply to spiritual food restrictions that some best selling author made up out of his own head?

The issue for Paul is not what one eats, but how. The issue is not what is on your plate, but rather who is sitting on either side of you.