Romans 14:16 Let not then your good be evil spoken of:

Labels come easy don’t they? Adjectives come so easy. It is almost as if a thing cannot stand by itself with either some sort of approval or disapproval. Those are judgments. Even high praise is a judgment. For the most part we think of good and evil as being adjectives. If that should be the case here, where is the noun? Are you the noun? Are you good? Are you evil?

Mark 10:18 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.

Jesus tells us by this verse not to use the word good as an adjective. So how should we see good?

Nehemiah 13:14 Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and wipe not out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God, and for the offices thereof.

That prayer works fine before God but we live among men. It is not God that judges our deeds here, it is mankind. If I had to break down the actions spoken of in Romans 14 to the most simple element for understanding man’s action it would be this. Is what you do the result of obedience of faith?

It is only in obedience of faith that we find God at work. His will, His work, His faith, our love response. Anything less than that is human effort.

Romans 14:13-14 Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way. 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.

This we can only do for brothers and sisters in Christ, the world does not know the truth and judges everything we do as evil. We must treat all as one for we do not know who in the world may step out of the world and into the Kingdom.