Romans 14:16 Let not then your good be evil spoken of:

Labels come easy don’t they? Adjectives come so easy. It is almost as if a thing cannot stand by itself with either some sort of approval or disapproval. Those are judgments. Even high praise is a judgment. For the most part we think of good and evil as being adjectives. If that should be the case here, where is the noun? Are you the noun? Are you good? Are you evil?

Mark 10:18 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.

Jesus tells us by this verse not to use the word good as an adjective. So how should we see good?

Nehemiah 13:14 Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and wipe not out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God, and for the offices thereof.

That prayer works fine before God but we live among men. It is not God that judges our deeds here, it is mankind. If I had to break down the actions spoken of in Romans 14 to the most simple element for understanding man’s action it would be this. Is what you do the result of obedience of faith?

It is only in obedience of faith that we find God at work. His will, His work, His faith, our love response. Anything less than that is human effort.

Romans 14:13-14 Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way. I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean.

This we can only do for brothers and sisters in Christ, the world does not know the truth and judges everything we do as evil. We must treat all as one for we do not know who in the world may step out of the world and into the Kingdom.

Genesis 45 Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him; and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren. And he wept aloud: and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard. And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence. …

The story of Joseph is a great story about the perception of identity. His brothers had one perception about who Joseph was in relation to his place in the family and the observations of the treatment of the father towards him. Siblings do not make it easy on a child if they perceive favoritism. Jacob had twelve children born to him by four women. Jacob’s true love was Rachel, and Joseph was the first born of that love. I doubt Joseph’s brothers gave that any consideration in their perception of Joseph.

His brothers had opportunity to come to know Joseph for who he truly was, but ignored the signs of that identity because of the jealousy and hatred they felt. Likewise Jacob’s love for Joseph was not bound in who Joseph was but rather what his mother meant to him. None of them looked at Joseph for who Joseph truly was.

Psalm 44:21 Shall not God search this out? for he knoweth the secrets of the heart.

God knows you. Even if no one else sees you for who you are.