Weaky Weakerton

I normally don’t like getting technical in my blogging. It is not my purpose for being here. I like to blog about the practical and leave my personal exegesis in my Word files. It makes for more interesting reading and deals with the “so what” factor in my Biblical study. It helps me personally apply my own study. However, due to the powder keg I opened on this blog and in my non-Intel processor life with the “weaker brother” post, I am going to take a few keystrokes to deal with who is the weaker brother. If you have read Garry Friesen, then you may have seen this outline before. I did not borrow his outline. He just happens to have agreed with me and the text.

Who is the weaker brother?
According to Romans 14 and its parallel passage, 1 Corinthians 8, what makes a brother/sister weak is several things. First, he is weak in faith. I think a great word for the faith talked about here would be conviction, the conviction that what one does is right and his personal convictions that drive him to live a righteous life. Romans 14:1, 23 specifically point this out. As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. 23But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

Second, he is weak in knowledge which is a direct cause of his lack of faith. "However not all men have this knowledge" (1 Corinthians 8:7). The lack of knowledge Paul is referring to here is speaking of ignorance; specifically, the knowledge that the sacrificial meat had been sacrificed to a god that didn’t exist. It had been sacrificed to nothing. In this area, they were weak because of ignorance.

Now the third point is what separates the weaker brother from the legalistic brother. It is also what I believe to be the hinge from which this argument swings. We must understand this point to understand what Paul was talking about in these passages and to apply them correctly. The brother is weak in conscience. As Friesen put it, “essentially that means his conscience is overly sensitive, condemning him for things that Scripture declares are permissible.” He is not convinced/faithed in his own mind. Looking to the stronger brother for guidance he may follow the stronger brother’s example to do something that violates his conscience. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will not the conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to eat those things offered to idols? (1 Corinthians 8:10) It was not a sin to eat the meat. The sin was for a man to do something he thought to be wrong. He has sinned, but eating meat wasn’t his sin. His sin was going against his own convictions about the sacrificial meat.

Who is not the weaker brother?
For clarification, let’s go back one more time and look at who the weaker brother is not.

• He is not limited to any new or immature believer. This reasoning is not found in these passages.
  
  
• He is not any Christian who tries to apply his personal conviction in a universal way. This brother has knowledge.
  
  
• He is not simply a brother who disagrees with me and gets angry because he thinks I have sinned. This brother is legalistic, and has not violated his own conscience.

Conclusion
"A weaker brother is a Christian who, because of the weakness of faith, knowledge, conscience and will, can be influenced to sin against his conscience by the example of a differing stronger brother." Robin Maxson

If this is true, and I believe it is, then this passage is not strictly speaking of eating and drinking. If that were the case, it would be an irrelevant passage in our culture today unless I was caught eating chicken at a Mormon potluck. At any time in the right situation, we could all become the weaker brother if we were influenced by a brother we esteem to violate our own conscience.