[Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =You--the faith you have,[243] have it by yourself, in the presence of your God.= You have believed; you are therefore in Christ; in Christ you are therefore free, by faith, from the preparatory restrictions of the past. Yes; but all this is not given you for personal display, but for divine communion. Its right issue is in a holy intimacy with your God, as in the confidence of your acceptance you know Him as your Father, "nothing between." But as regards human intercourse, you are emancipated not that you may disturb the neighbours with shouts of freedom and acts of licence, but that you may be at leisure to serve them in love. =Happy the man who does not judge himself,= who does not, in effect, decide against his own soul, =in that which he approves, δοκιμάζει,= pronounces satisfactory to conscience. Unhappy he who says to himself, "This is lawful," when the verdict is all the while purchased by self-love, or otherwise by the fear of man, and the soul knows in its depths that the thing is not as it should be. [Sidenote: Ver. 23.] =And the man who is doubtful,= whose conscience is not really satisfied between the right and wrong of the matter, =if he does eat, stands condemned,= in the court of his own heart, and of his aggrieved Lord's opinion, =because= it was =not the result of faith;= the action had not, for its basis, the holy conviction of the liberty of the justified. =Now anything which is not the result of faith, is sin;= that is to say, manifestly, "anything" _in such a case as this_; any indulgence, any obedience to example, which the man, in a state of inward ambiguity, decides for on a principle other than that of his union with Christ by faith. Thus the Apostle of Justification, and of the Holy Spirit, is the Apostle of Conscience too. He is as urgent upon the awful sacredness of our sense of right and wrong, as upon the offer and the security, in Christ, of peace with God, and the holy Indwelling, and the hope of glory. Let our steps reverently follow his, as we walk with God, and with men. Let us "rejoice in Christ Jesus," with a "joy" which is "in the Holy Ghost." Let us reverence duty, let us reverence conscience, in our own life, and also in the lives around us. [231] Τὸν μὴ (not οὐκ) ἐσθίοντα: the μὴ gives "non-eating" as not merely a fact, but a _condition_, about the man. [232] Read δυνατεῖ ηὰρ ὁ Κύρος. [233] Probably the negative limb of ver. 6. is only an explanatory gloss, not the words of the Apostle. [234] Read καὶ. [235] There seems to be a broad and intelligible difference between the Sabbath-keeping _of the Jewish law_ and the Sabbath-keeping _of man_; the enjoyment and holy use of the primeval Rest for man and beast. We take it that _that_ duty and privilege is not in question here at all. The "weak" Christian was the anxious scholar of the Rabbis, not the man simply loyal to the Decalogue. [236] Read ἀπέθανε καὶ ἀνέζησε.