Romans 14:1-13

¹There are some Christians that are not sure if it is right or wrong for them to do some things, but don’t worry. Let people like that be in your church. And don’t argue with them about whatever they think they have to do.

²It’s like this, some people believe that God will let them eat all sorts of food, but other people are not so sure, so they only eat vegetables.

³People that eat all sorts of food can’t think that they are better than the others. And people that only eat vegetables can’t tell the other people that they are wrong. God is happy with both sorts of people, those that only eat vegetables and those that eat everything.

⁴So you can’t tell anybody else they are wrong. God is their boss, not you. So only God can tell them if they do good or go wrong. And he can help them to keep on doing good.

⁵Here is another thing. Some people think like this, “Some days are special for God and the rest are not.” Other people think, “Each day is the same as every other day.” Each of us has to make up his own mind about this.

⁶Those that make one day special do so to give respect to God on that day. And those that eat all kinds of food do so to give respect to God. They say thank you to God for that food. And in the same way those that don’t eat some sorts of food do so to give respect to God. They say thank you to God too.

⁷None of us is his own boss. We belong to God and he is our good boss all the time that we are alive, and he is still our good boss after we die.

⁹Remember that Jesus died and then became alive again. So now he is the good boss of people that are alive and also the boss of people that are dead.

¹⁰So then it is God, not you, that can tell other Christians that they are wrong. You can’t think that you are better than any other Christian. No. We’ve all got to stand in front of God one day. Then God will tell each of us the things that we did right and the things that we did wrong.

¹¹Like we read in God book, “God says, ‘This is for sure. Everybody will get down on their knees in front of me to give respect to me. And everybody will say that I’m really good, the only great God.’”

¹²This means that one day every one of us will have to face God and tell him all about everything that we ever did.

¹³So we have to stop being like judges. We have to stop telling each other, “You are wrong.” Instead of that we have to make sure that we help other Christians, and make sure we don’t do anything that makes them go wrong.