From R.C. Sproul’s lecture ‘The Tyranny Of The Weaker Brother’.
If a person has a scruple I do not share and it is a scruple unto the Lord, then I have to bend over backwards to be caring and not flaunt my liberty in their face. I should do the act that is indifferent but offends another believer in private. Our freedom in Christ is not an autonomy whereby we can do anything we feel like doing. It must always be accompanied by a charitable sensitivity toward those who have scruples.
But what happens when weaker brothers want to elevate their personal scruples to a level of a moral standard for Christianity or when they want to require it of all those who want to be members or officers in the church? Here the weaker brother becomes the legislative brother and begins to take a personal scruple and bind the consciences of people, destroying Christian liberty. The question is what do you do and how do you discern the identity of the weaker brother?
We have to be very sure that the standards we impose on others in the church are biblical standards and not our own scruples. Some ministers have required their elders to sign a pledge never to consume alcohol for any reason, even wine. But this would violate the qualifications of Paul and Jesus, who both drank the beverage. The same minister will say that they can make the rule because first-century wine was not alcoholic, but that is a false assumption. Jesus was not called a wine-bibber (Matt. 11:19) because he drank Welch’s grape juice. To assert that first-century wine was not alcoholic is the imposition of an American cultural norm out of a desperation to maintain a non-biblical position on alcohol. There is no doubt a vehement prohibition of drunkenness in Scripture, but not a condemnation of the proper consumption of alcohol.
In conclusion:
Once a person with a scruple tries to make his scruple the rule of the church, then he must not allowed to enforce a law where God has set us free.
These principles of matters indifferent and the stronger and weaker brother are easy to grasp, but applying them takes a lot of wisdom. We must apply the gospel wisely and in love so that we might be patient with those young in the faith, but at the same time we cannot let the weaker brother impose his view on others. Do we impose rules and regulations in our churches where God has left us free? We must be careful not to do this for the sake of Christ and His little ones.
Read detailed notes of the whole lecture.
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