if, on the other hand,
you show that you are Christ's servants by righteousness, peace, and
joy, you will be pleasing to God, and men will recognise that your
religion is from Him, and that you are consistent professors of it.

Modern liberal-minded brethren can easily translate all this for
to-day's use. Take care that you do not give the impression that your
Christianity has its main operation in permitting you to do what your
weaker brethren have scruples about. If you do not yield to them, but
flaunt your liberty in their and the world's faces, your advanced
enlightenment will be taken by rough-and-ready observers as mainly
cherished because it procures you these immunities. Show by your life
that you have the true spiritual gifts. Think more about them than
about your 'breadth,' and superiority to 'narrow prejudices.' Realise
the purpose of the Gospel as concerns your own moral perfecting, and
the questions in hand will fall into their right place.

In verses 19 and 20 two more reasons are given for restricting
liberty in deference to others' scruples. Such conduct contributes to
peace. If truth is imperilled, or Christ's name in danger of being
tarnished, counsels of peace are counsels of treachery; but there are
not many things worth buying at the price of Christian concord. Such
conduct tends to build up our own and others' Christian character.
Concessions to the 'weak' may help them to become strong, but flying
in the face of their scruples is sure to hurt them, in one way or
another.

In verse 15, the case was supposed of a brother's being grieved by
what he felt to be laxity. That case corresponded to the
stumbling-block of verse 13. A worse result seems contemplated in
verse 20,--that of the weak brother, still believing that laxity was
wrong, and yet being tempted by the example of the stronger to
indulge in it. In that event, the responsibility of overthrowing what
God had built lies at the door of the tempter. The metaphor of
'overthrowing' is suggested by the previous one of 'edifying.'
Christian duty is mutual building up of character; inconsiderate
exercise of 'liberty' may lead to pulling down, by inducing to
imitation which conscience condemns.

From this point onwards, the Apostle first reiterates in inverse
order his two broad principles, that clean things are unclean to the
man who thinks them so, and that Christian obligation requires
abstinence from permitted things if our indulgence tends