Page 78 which he holds. The legalist fails to distinguish between Divine commands and personal application. He universalizes his own personal standards of what is morally acceptable to God. At heart, he is a Pharisee. Consequently, he judges and condemns his fellow brethren in Christ who disagree with him. He also puts pressure on them to adopt his convictions. Paul exposes these three kinds of Christians in the above passages. I’d like to raise the standard that Paul raised. It is as follows: 1. Each person should have a personal conviction about the matter (Rom. 14:5). Another translation puts it this way: ,Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. Develop your own convictions on how to apply God’s moral will. If you can act in faith that a particular action is permissible, then go ahead with it. If you cannot, abstain from it. It is as simple as that. 2. Receive your brother and sister in Christ even though their convictions may differ from yours. The only criteria for Christian fellowship is this: Has God received this person? If God has received someone into His family, then who are you to reject them? If someone trusts in the Savior, Jesus Christ, then God has received them. 3. Do not judge your brother or sister. God’s evaluation of a person comes at the end of the construction project. We are not to judge the
If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God the Father.
J.I. Packer