Romans 14:2

One man hath faith to eat all things: but he that is weak eateth herbs.

Thus, it is plainly a vegetarian scruple that Paul was dealing with; and there is no evidence, as some fancy, that they had become so merely by the efforts to avoid eating meat sacrificed to idols; because, in many private situations, no such problem would have been involved. It goes without question that they were wrong in making such a dietary thing into a religious matter; but they had evidently done so. Paul taught that "every creature of God is" good for food (1 Timothy 4:1-5), and Jesus himself had made "all meats clean" (Mark 7:19). The nature of the weakness of those brethren is thus inherent in the fact that, either through ignorance or prejudice, they had not received the teaching of Christ and his apostles on the matters in question. This was a serious weakness; but, in fairness, it must be noted that the apostles themselves had difficulty receiving the full light on this question. Peter, for example, long after Pentecost, still insisted that he had never eaten "anything common or unclean," indicating that be still kept to the scruples of Judaism (Acts 10:14). It has always been an easy error for people to fall into the notion that they might attain heaven on the basis of a certain kind of diet.