Transcript

There were four brothers who left home, went to college, and became successful physicians, lawyers, and other professions.

They prospered well. Some years later they got together and had dinner around Christmas. And during the course of the meal they discussed the gifts that they had given to their elderly mother that year, who lived far away in another city.

The first brother said, “I had a big house built for Mama.” The second said, “I had a $100,000 theater built into that house.” The third stated proudly, “I had my Mercedes dealer deliver her a SL600.”

The fourth said, “Now you all listen to this, you know how Mama loves reading her Bible, and you know that she can’t read it anymore because she can’t see very well.

“Well I met up with this pastor who told me about a parrot who can recite the entire Bible. It took 20 pastors 12 years to teach him every verse.

“I had to pledge to contribute $100,000 every year for 20 years to the church to get that bird. But it was worth it. Mama just has to name the chapter and the verse and the parrot recites it.” Well, the other brothers were impressed.

After the holidays, the mom sent out her thank-you notes to each of the boys. She wrote to the first son Milton, “The house you built is so huge and I live in only one room, and I have to clean all of it. But thanks anyway,” she says.

To the second son she wrote, “Daniel, you gave me an expensive theater with Dolby sound, whatever that is. It could hold 50 people, but all my friends have passed away. I’ve lost my hearing, I’m nearly blind, and I’ll never use that thing. But thank you for your gesture, just the same.”

In the card to the third son Marvin she wrote, “I am too old to drive. I stay home. I even have my groceries delivered. So I never use that big car. But the thought was good. Thanks Marvin.”

To her fourth son she wrote, “Dearest Donald, you were the only son to have the good sense to give a little thought to your gift. The chicken was delicious.”

Speaking of food, Paul deals with this subject in 1 Corinthians 8 which teaches us about balancing our freedom in Christ with our responsibility to show love to others.

1 Corinthians 8:1-3: “Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know. But if any man love God, the same is known of him.”

The question in this chapter deals with meat sacrificed to idols but the broader application is what should be our guidelines and our actions regarding things that are a gray area, meaning issues that the Bible does not speak plainly about what is right and wrong.

In Paul’s day, there were two sources to buy meat: the regular market and the local pagan temples. Animals were sacrificed at these temples, and their meat was offered to their gods and idols on pagan altars.

Some of this meat was burned in honor of the god. Some of the meat was sold at the temple, and you could even sit and eat it there as verse 10 shows us.

Some of it was given to the priests, who, if they didn’t want or need their portion, would sell it at either the temple or the marketplace.

So at the temple, meat offered to idols was available. And at the marketplace, both meat offered to idols and meat not offered to idols were available.

Meat sold at the temple was cheaper than at the marketplace, and so some believers in Corinth saved money by purchasing this cheaper meat sold there.

There was this issue of choice of what meat was permissible to buy and eat, but in addition to this was the issue of believers being served meat purchased at the temple meat market when they were guests in someone’s home.

Were they committing idolatry by eating this meat? Some were against eating meat offered to idols and others did not have any problem with it.

How about you? If you lived back then and you could have bought meat cheaper at a temple where the animal had been offered to an idol, would you have done it? Some of you might say yes; some might say no way. But neither answer is wrong.

This looks like a fight over steak or roast beef. One group said, “Don’t eat it! It’s unclean and wrong!” The other said, “Looks all right to me, and it tastes good too!”

But there was more to it; it was a doctrinal issue. The believers who cried, “Unclean and wrong” were saying that any animal offered to a pagan deity bears the taint of idolatry.

The believers who said, “Tastes good,” were saying that pagan deities aren’t real, so it doesn’t matter if we eat it, and whatever was offered to an idol can’t be polluted.

What you find in this chapter is that Paul doesn’t take sides. Instead, he said, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up,” and his interest was that the Church show each other love, and not cause a brother or sister in Christ to stumble.

In verse 1, Paul wrote, “Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge,” knowledge about this subject that is. Things offered until idols was not a subject about which the Corinthians were ignorant, and they all had their opinions.

The Corinthians also had knowledge of their freedom and liberty in Christ, and again each and all had their beliefs concerning things offered unto idols.

Earlier in Corinthians, Paul had written of this liberty that “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient,” or profitable.

God has given the Church great liberty in Christ, but our liberty can be misused. As Galatians 5:13 reminds us, “For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.”

Paul did not want the Corinthians’ knowledge to lead them to become proud rather than loving toward others. As Paul said, “Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.”

Knowledge is important in the Christian life. We need to know God’s Word, but knowledge that stands alone is incomplete. Knowledge without love produces pride because it can delude one into a sense of superiority.

The words “puff up” mean to inflate, cause to swell up, to blow up. So you could render this phrase that “Knowledge blows up, but love builds up.” Knowledge without love can be a weapon that destroys others rather than builds them up.

One can be strong and mature in knowledge but weak and immature in love. One can know the Word of God well, but not apply it to their hearts and lives.

It’s about balance. To have knowledge without love or to have love without knowledge are both equally a problem. Knowledge with love, knowing the Word AND applying it is the goal for the believer.

Paul’s point in this chapter is that it’s one thing to have knowledge of one’s liberty in Christ and to practice it, but knowledge in itself is not a sufficient guide in this matter of meat because love takes into consideration the weaknesses of a fellow believer’s faith.

So it must be about both knowledge and love, and Paul shows that the love that builds others up is to supersede one’s practice of their liberty.

Paul added that “if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.”

Someone has defined knowledge as “the process of passing from the unconscious state of ignorance to the conscious state of ignorance.”

If one thinks they have mastered the Scriptures or mastered any subject in it, they can count on the fact that they have not. A mature believer recognizes how little he or she does know.

The more we know, the humbler it can make us, because we know that we do not know completely and that there is always more to know, grow in, and understand in God’s Word.

What the apostle is saying is that if one supposes that he knows anything of divine matters without love, he has not yet known and understood as he ought to know.

We must subject what we know in God’s Word to love. Knowledge with love opens true understanding and nearness with God, a closer relationship with Him, and love for Him.

God knows them that love Him, Paul says. And the person who loves God has real knowledge. And loving other believers stems and issues from our love for God.

If we are to treat believers with an edifying love, we need to know God and love God and then love them with the love of God.

1 Corinthians 8:4-6: “As concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one.

“For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.”

Concerning the eating of foods that were offered in sacrifice to idols, Paul says, “we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one.”

An idol is not real. Since there is one God, then anything else that is called a god is not one. Idols are not competing gods. The stone, precious metal, or wood is real, but it is just a representation of a god that is a myth and the figment of man’s imagination.

These fake gods exist only in the minds of their worshippers and not in reality.

Isaiah 37:19 says, “And have cast their gods into the fire: for they were no gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone…” (cf. Jer. 16:20).

If meat is offered to Zeus, there is no Zeus. Idols are nothing, and the meats offered to them mean nothing and are inconsequential as well.

Idols and the things sacrificed to them have no spiritual nature or power in themselves. There is not a god in and behind any idol back then or now, but there are satanic, spiritual forces at work in idolatry.

As Paul wrote a couple of chapters later in this letter, “But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils” (10:20).

The idols themselves are nothing, as they are just wood, stone, and metal, the danger with idolatry lies in the demons behind the scenes working to deceive.

Paul says “that there is none other God but one,” but in the minds and imaginations of many, he wrote there are many “that are called gods.”

Some of these gods were supposed to live in heaven, and others here on earth. There are many different mythological gods and lords that the world has fabricated, worships, and is in bondage to.

“But to us,” Paul contrasts, “there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.”

While the world has its polytheism and belief in many gods, believers are monotheistic, and we know that there is ONE true God and ONE true Lord.

An idol is nothing, Paul said in verse 4, but the one, true God is everything. The gods that idols represent are not real, but the God revealed in the Word is real.

And all creation derives its existence from the source and working of the one God, and our purpose in life is found in living for Him and His glory.

1 Corinthians 8:7-8: “Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some with conscience of the idol unto this hour eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled. But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse.”

Some believers in the Corinthian church felt free to eat the meat that was offered to idols based on their liberty in Christ and their knowledge that idols are nothing.

But for others, they did not have that knowledge and understanding of liberty and the nothingness of idols and idol worship. They had consciousness of the idol.

For them, to eat the meat would have been done with the thought that this had been sacrificed to the idols. When these brethren ate meat that they knew had been offered and sacrificed to idols, it grated on and upset their conscience.

It was not just meat for these believers. To them, it was as if they were, in a sense, participating again in the paganism they had left behind when they trusted Christ.

And Paul said that “their conscience being weak is defiled.” Their conscience was weak, not because their conscience didn’t work, but because it overworked and they put stipulations on themselves that weren’t necessary.

Their conscience was still operating on the idea and knowledge that there was something to idol worship that contaminated the meat and made eating it wrong. And thus, their weak conscience was defiled. A defiled conscience is one that has been disregarded and transgressed, resulting in guilt and shame.

But Paul teaches that “meat commendeth us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse.”

In other words, one isn’t more spiritual if you know idols are nothing and you know you have a personal freedom to eat meat sacrificed to idols and you do it. But also, no one is less spiritual for abstaining from eating meat sacrificed to idols. One didn’t gain anything by eating the idol meat, and one didn’t lose anything by refusing it.

What we do or do not choose to eat, does not make us more or less pleasing to God. Food is spiritually neutral. In our relationship with God, we are no better or worse if we partake or abstain from eating certain foods.

The one who ate meat sacrificed to idols did not make their relationship with God better and it did not result in His blessing, and also the one who abstained from it did not harm or worsen their relationship with God and it did not result in His disapproval.

Like the writer of Hebrews says, “Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein.”

1 Corinthians 8:9-13: “But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumblingblock to them that are weak.

“For if any man see thee which hast knowledge sit at meat in the idol’s temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols; And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?

“But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.”

Under grace, it is not wrong for a believer to eat pork. And I’m thankful for that. With the change in dispensations, Paul tells the Church, “For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving.”

However, it was wrong for one to eat pork under the law of Moses, which prohibited it. Today, a believer is at perfect liberty to partake of pork chops, pulled pork, barbecue ribs, ham, pork roast, and best of all, bacon.

However, say a Jewish person under grace gets saved and comes out of Judaism. They might still struggle with this rule. He or she might feel that it is still wrong to eat pulled pork for dinner or bacon for breakfast.

It may take time for him or her to understand and come to live in the full enjoyment of their liberty in Christ or they may never eat pork.

A believer could possibly hinder one like this in their spiritual growth, by flaunting their understanding of our liberty today under grace and purposely eating pork in front of them.

That’s what Paul’s teaching is about here.

In this chapter, Paul says that while there is liberty to eat meat offered to idols, there is nothing to gain with God by doing so, and there might be much to lose if, in so doing, we cause a brother or sister in Christ to stumble.

This is where love must come in. Love limits our liberty.

There is nothing wrong with eating the meat offered to idols, and there is also nothing wrong with abstaining from eating the meat offered to idols.

When something becomes wrong in this scenario, is when a believer’s knowledge and practice of liberty causes one who does not have the same understanding and whose conscience is sensitive against doing so to stumble in their faith.

The practice of our liberty under grace can trip others up in life. But God does not want us to be a stumbling block and cause His people to stumble in their faith due to our insensitive actions. Instead of causing other believers to stumble, in love, we are called to edify one another and build each other up.

In verse 10, we see that those who were mature in their knowledge of idols and liberty, who knew that the idols and the meat sacrificed to idols were nothing, that they were eating the meat hot off the altars and sitting at the temple to eat it.

They saw idolatry for what it was. They did participate in the pagan practices of the temple, but in their liberty and faith they could associate with pagan people and eat a juicy steak at the temple with a completely clear conscience. And this was not wrong.

Where it became a problem was “if any man see thee…sit at meat in the idol’s temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols.”

These brethren had not yet come to a place where they could say, “This is just meat, and it tastes good!” In their minds, it was still connected to false worship of false gods, and it violated their conscience to eat it.

The problem with a brother with a weak conscience seeing another brother in Christ dining at a pagan temple, Paul says, is that he might be “emboldened” to join in and eat meat offered to idols and be encouraged to do what his conscience condemns.

The believer who has a firm grasp on his liberty but does not use that liberty with care and love may give the weaker believer boldness to run the red light of their conscience.

The knowledge of one’s liberty was not to be the only factor that determined whether one ate that idol meat or not.

Love for a brother in Christ that their partaking of it might bother or hinder in their walk was the additional and important factor to consider. In love, we are to always consider what effect our actions might have on others in the Church.

Paul asked, “And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?” The word “perish” means to be ruined, destroyed, or rendered useless.

This is not speaking of the loss of a person’s eternal salvation, but rather that we can ruin or destroy the working of God in another’s life, impeding their spiritual progress, adversely affecting their service for Christ, or even causing them to slip back into a lifestyle they had left.

Paul really drives it home when he adds, “for whom Christ died.” That is how we are to view our brothers and sisters in Christ, as those “for whom Christ died,” as those who are deeply loved by Christ, whom He shed His blood for and purchased, and belong to Him.

And if Christ loved that brother enough to die for him, then we are to show him love by not putting any stumbling block in his way and not doing anything that might hinder his walk with the Lord.

And causing a brother to stumble is more than just an offense against him, Paul pointed out in verse 12, it is an offense against Christ, it is to sin against Him. What hurts one of the members of the Body of the Christ, hurts the Head of the Church as well.

Paul then gives a very personal conclusion in light of these things, and he stresses the priority of love by it.

Paul puts himself in the place of the person who might cause another brother to stumble, and he shows the extent he would go to never bring harm to another’s spiritual walk, showing how far he would go for the sake of others out of love.

He did not demand that believers relinquish their rights or liberties, but he illustrated how he would apply these principles in his own life.

And he says that if eating meat caused pain or harm to a brother’s spiritual life, Paul said he would eat no meat as long as the world stands, that he would rather abstain from eating meat forever!

He did not say, “I’ll eat less meat,” or “I’ll sneak some meat when no one is looking.” In grace and love, he said he would not eat meat ever again if that is what it took to help another brother and not cause him to ever stumble.

The important thing to him was not his own rights, nor his own comforts or things he enjoyed, but the spiritual well-being of believers. Paul chose to operate on a higher principle than knowledge. He operated on the highest principle of love.

Although the subject of meats offered to idols is not a problem for most believers today, the principles which the Holy Spirit gives us in this section are valuable for this entire age.

There are many things in our current world today, which, while not expressly forbidden in God’s Word, might still cause believers with a weak conscience to be offended.

Our culture strongly promotes our personal rights. But we need to remember that there is something more important than exercising our rights in the liberty we have under grace. That something is the work of God in the life of another believer.

Our actions in the Christian life are never to be based only and solely on what we know to be permissible for ourselves.

Out of love, we also need to take the further step of carefully considering how this will affect others in the Church, and then do what is best for them, not us.