Let not him that eateth set at nought him that eateth not; and let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him. [Eating or not eating was, with Paul, a matter of indifference; but uncharitable conduct toward a Christian brother was not a matter of indifference--it was sin. Hence the apostle interferes, not by way of counsel, but by unequivocal commandment, strictly forbidding the strong to look with disdainful eye upon the temerity of the weak, contemptuously despising him as the victim of narrow prejudice and baseless superstition; and with equal strictures charging the weak not to commit the sin of censorious judgment by ignorantly confounding liberty with license and thus unjustly condemning the strong as libertines and heretics, unscrupulous and irreverent. In modern times controversy over meat sacrificed to idols is unknown, but the principle still applies as to instrumental music, missionary societies, etc. Such matters of indifference are not to be injected into the terms of salvation, or set up as tests of fellowship. As to them there is to be neither contempt on the one part, nor judgment on the other. Baptism, however, is not a matter of indifference, being as much a divinely established term in the plan of salvation as faith itself (Mark 16:16). "It is a notable fact," observes Lard, "that the weak are always more exacting and sensitive than the strong, as well as more ready than they to press their grievances to extremes."]

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Old Testament