Paul steps into this argument by name. 1"We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves." Not you who are strong. We. Paul had every credential to stand outside the dispute and adjudicate it from a distance, and instead he puts himself inside the very group he is about to instruct.
The word behind "bear" is the one Paul uses elsewhere for carrying a physical load. It is a call to pick someone up and carry them as you would carry something heavy that belongs to another, treating a person's struggle as a weight taken onto your own shoulders.
2"Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up." The target is pleasing him for his good, edification aimed at growth. Paul asks the strong to aim their freedom at someone else's growth.
Then the reason this is possible at all, Christ did not please himself. Paul reaches for a line from one of the psalms, a lament originally addressed to God, and applies it to Christ. The psalm is Psalm 69:9, whose first half John applies to Jesus cleansing the temple (John 2:17). The insults meant for someone else landed on him. Every instruction in this letter about bearing another person's burden traces back to that one act, the reproach that should have fallen on us fell on Christ, who did not spend his life protecting his own comfort.
Paul pauses to say why he keeps reaching back into an old psalm for a New Testament church. 4"whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope." Scripture was written ahead for this moment too, so that a church struggling to bear with each other's weaknesses could find patience and hope in words written centuries before any of them existed.
5"May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus." He has already told the weak in chapter 14 to act on their own conscience, so what he prays for is a shared center, "in accord with Christ Jesus," a common orientation strong enough to hold two groups together while they still disagree about smaller things.
6"that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." The whole argument, back to the first believer who ate meat and the first who abstained, was about whether a divided church could still lift one voice in praise. Discord muddies that voice. Bearing one another's burdens, as Christ bore reproach that belonged to someone else, is what lets a church that disagrees on smaller things still sing in tune.
Whose weakness are you tolerating from a distance and not carrying? Pick one this week and move under the load.
Prayer
Father, thank you that Christ did not please himself, and that the reproach we deserved fell on him. Teach us to bear one another's weaknesses as he bore ours, carried. Grant us a harmony that does not require agreement on every small thing, grounded in Christ Jesus, so that whatever still divides us we might glorify you with one voice. In Jesus' name, amen.