One of the precious freedoms of our unity that God designed is for individuals, both of whom are considered faithful Christians, to arrive at different conclusions in matters of conscience. While His command and purpose remains the same, “…that ye all speak the same thing, and there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (1 Corinthians 1:10), we are also commanded not to judge or despise those that differ from us in these matters pertaining to conscience. Paul said, “Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him” (Romans 14:3). This of course in reference to the early vegetarian Christians, convinced by tradition or perhaps other doctrines, that they were better because they ate no meat. Satan often succeeds in taking God’s perfect design and plan, and using it for an occasion of stumbling and we must be mindful of the areas for pitfalls.
One area is the failure to rightly distinguish between matters of conscience and matters of doctrine. Some adopt ‘unity in diversity’ as the overriding criteria and quote farther down in Rom 14, “Hast thou faith? Have it to thyself before God..” (vs 22) to demonstrate that doctrinal divisions can, and should, blissfully cohabit. Even the direct context of this passage is in matters of conscience and there are others that speak of the requirement to abide in the doctrine and gospel of Christ. Paul was clear on this point, “If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; he is proud, knowing nothing,…and destitute of the truth…from such withdraw thyself” (1Timothy 6:3-5). The churches in Revelation were rebuked for tolerating those who’d departed from the doctrine of Christ.
Another area of stumbling is that we simply fail to obey the command not to judge and not to despise. It’s interesting that Paul, through inspiration, characterized as ‘weaker’ those who believed for spiritual reasons that vegetarianism made them spiritually ‘better.’ However, the command not to judge and despise was directed at those on each side of the belief. In fact, there were some who were taking a doctrinal position on matters of conscience (e.g. forbidding to marry and abstaining from meats) and this teaching was judged as “doctrines of devils” (1Timothy 4:1-3) of which Paul warned Timothy. Clearly it’s a matter of choice as to whether one desires to marry or become a vegetarian, but when these permissible matters of choice and conscience are taught as doctrine, then doctrinal error is born.
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–Matthew Johnson