God condemns him is actually a perfect passive tense in Greek (literally “he has been condemned”), which must be taken with God as the agent of the action. When he eats it, though not an actual part of the Greek text, must be introduced in order to explain the circumstances under which the man is condemned. Because his action is not based on faith is literally “because not from faith.”

The first sentence of verse 23 may cause difficulties in translation because of the complex relations between clauses, consisting of a substantive clause, a content clause, a principal clause, a temporal clause, and finally a clause of cause. In some languages the final clause may even be followed by still another clause of cause as a restructuring of the expression based on faith. In some languages it may be preferable to combine the clauses about what he eats and when he eats it—for example, “but if a person has doubts when he eats certain kinds of food, then God condemns him,” “… says he has done wrong,” or “… judges this as wrong.” The final clause may be restructured as “because faith did not cause him to do what he did” or “because what he did, did not come from his faith.” It is essential in translating a term for doubt to make it clear that doubt is simply about whether or not to eat certain foods—not doubt concerning God himself.

The final sentence of verse 23 may likewise be recast as a conditional: “And if we do anything without faith, then it is sin.” In fact, in this context it may be satisfactory to translate faith as “confidence that what we do is right”—for example, “and if we do anything without the confidence that it is right, then it is sin.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Romans. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1973. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .