The Big House on the Hill and the Couple Who Still Rent: Romans 14 and Judging Each Other’s Housing Choices

Listen carefully after service on any Sunday and you will hear it, usually in low voices by the car park. The deacon has finished his second storey, and somebody wonders aloud whether a man of God needs five bedrooms. A young couple have taken a thirty-year mortgage, and an older member is shaking her head because “the Bible says owe no man”. A single sister in her forties is still renting, and people wonder what she is doing with her money. A family has moved into a gated scheme, and someone mutters about hiding from the community.

Few subjects stir as many private opinions among Christians as where and how other Christians live. Houses are visible. Everyone can see the roof, the car in the garage, the grilles, the size of the verandah. And because we can see them, we feel entitled to judge them.

A church that argued about dinner

The believers in Rome were not arguing about mortgages. They were arguing about food and holy days. Some ate anything; others would eat only vegetables. Some kept certain days as special; others treated every day alike. Paul’s response in Romans 14 begins with a striking instruction: welcome the one who is weak in faith, “but not to quarrel over opinions” (Romans 14:1). Then comes the question that cuts through much of our car park talk: “Who are you to judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls” (Romans 14:4).

Paul was not saying nothing matters. Elsewhere he was fierce about idolatry, injustice and the gospel itself. But he recognised a category of questions where faithful believers, with sincere consciences, would reach different conclusions. On those matters, he told each side to stop despising and judging the other, and to let each person “be fully convinced in his own mind” (Romans 14:5).

Our disputable matters are made of blocks and steel

Many of our housing arguments sit squarely in that category. Consider a few:

• Borrowing. Some believers read “Owe no one anything except to love one another” (Romans 13:8) as a reason never to take a mortgage. Others understand it as a call to pay what is due and never default. Both are trying to take Scripture seriously.
• Size and comfort. One family builds large because they expect to house parents, grandchildren and visiting relatives. Another deliberately builds small so they can give more away. From the outside, one looks extravagant and the other looks as if they are struggling.
• Renting versus owning. For some, owning land is a deep matter of security and family legacy. Others rent for decades, perhaps because their work moves them, perhaps because they would rather not tie up savings in bricks.
• Where to live. A gated scheme, a family yard in the country, a flat in the city, a house abroad. Each carries trade-offs of safety, cost, community and calling.

There are clear wrongs in housing, of course: cheating a worker of his wages, building on land you know is not yours, exploiting a tenant, borrowing with no intention to repay. Scripture speaks plainly about those. But whether a faithful Christian may have a mortgage, a big house or no house at all is a different kind of question.

What we cannot see from the road

Part of the problem is that a house tells a very incomplete story. Consider a man who builds a large house in stages over twenty years. From the road it looks like prosperity. What you do not see is that three of the rooms are for his sister’s children, whom he has raised since their mother died, and that he has never taken a holiday. Or consider a woman who has rented the same two-bedroom flat for fifteen years. People assume she is careless with money. In fact she has been paying her mother’s medical bills, and her rent is the one fixed cost she can control.

Paul says each of us will give account of ourselves to God (Romans 14:12). That is sobering, but it is also freeing. We do not have to audit one another’s roofs. We have enough to answer for in our own.

Disagreeing without despising

None of this means Christians should never discuss money or homes. Wise counsel is precious, and the church should be a place where a young couple can ask older members, “Is this mortgage too much for us?” The difference is between counsel that is asked for and judgement that is passed from a distance. A few questions may help before we speak:

• Has this person asked for my view, or am I offering it to others behind their back?
• Is this a clear matter of right and wrong, or a matter of wisdom and conscience?
• Do I know enough of their circumstances to have an opinion worth sharing?
• Would I be willing to say this to them kindly, face to face?

Paul’s concern was always for building up. “Let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another,” he wrote (Romans 14:19). The word “edify” comes from building. It seems fitting to apply it here. Our words about each other’s homes should build the church up, not pull a brother or sister down because their house is larger, smaller, rented or mortgaged in a way we would not have chosen.

The next time the car park conversation turns to someone’s new roof, perhaps the most Christian response is the simplest one: “Thank God for it. I hope it serves them well.”

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