If your brother is distressed by what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother, for whom Christ died.
If a brother is grieved by what you eat, love has already stopped being the animating force; do not use food to destroy someone for whom Christ died.
This verse names the cost of careless liberty: a life for whom Christ died is being hurt.
13Therefore let us stop judging one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way. 14I am convinced and fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean. 15If your brother is distressed by what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother, for whom Christ died. 16Do not allow what you consider good, then, to be spoken of as evil. 17For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. 18For whoever serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men. 19So then, let us pursue what leads to peace and to mutual edification. 20Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to let his eating be a stumbling block. 21It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything to cause your brother to stumble. 22Keep your belief about such matters between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves. 23But the one who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that is not from faith is sin.