Lesson for June 26, 2022
The Book of I Corinthians
Chapter 8:1-13
Verses 1-6
“Now concerning things sacrificed to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies. If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him. Therefore, concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords,yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.”
The subject of chapter eight is “doubtful things.” Doubtful things are those things which are not declared to be wrong by the Bible. Doubtful things in the life of a Christian are to be governed by four spiritual laws of Christian behavior.
1) the Law of Liberty – believers have the right to do certain things which will not cause them to sin nor enter into carnality. (I Corinthians 8:4, 9) However, believers should be careful when they are around people who might be influenced negatively by something that is normally meaningless to the believer.
2) the Law of Love – believers should avoid any activity that would offend other believers and become a distraction to their spiritual growth thereby causing them to stumble spiritually. (I Corinthians 8:13)
3) the Law of Expediency – in the interest of sharing the Gospel, a believer should refrain from doing certain things so that an unbeliever is not prevented from seeing the true issue in salvation which is to believe in Christ. In self-righteous arrogance, an unbeliever often superimposes his own erroneous ideas of Christianity or religious taboos on a believer and expects them to comply with those ideas even if they are not forbidden by Scripture. (I Corinthians 9:18)
4) the Law of Supreme Sacrifice – this is the highest spiritual law of Christian behavior because it sometimes requires a believer to sacrifice legitimate activities of life in order to serve God in a certain culture or special circumstance, such as a foreign missionary. (I Corinthians 9:1-15)
Verses 1-6 deal with believers who are spiritually immature and did not yet understand enough doctrine to know that certain things that religion taught as wrong for a Christian, are not actually wrong. They had some knowledge, but not the complete knowledge regarding doubtful things. Now concerning things sacrificed to idols. The best meat in the city of Corinth was meat sacrificed to idols in the pagan temple and was sold in the marketplace. So, the question arose regarding eating it as a believer in Christ.
Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies. Having a little knowledge (of doctrine) can cause a person to become arrogant if they think they have arrived spiritually. The thing that prevents this from happening is the proper application of accurate Bible doctrine regarding love. If a believer loves God, they will exhibit that love by not becoming an offense to the spiritually immature believer.
If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him. ‘If’ is a first-class condition meaning certain Corinthian believers thought they knew a lot more than they actually did. While they had some knowledge of doctrine, they were totally ignorant of the subject which was at hand, which was “doubtful things” and how to handle it. They apparently did not know the four laws of Christian behavior, ignored them, or had forgotten them. Spiritually immature believers can easily be offended by the legitimate activities of a spiritually mature believer and become legalistic.
A little knowledge of doctrine becomes very dangerous when this little knowledge is assumed to be all of the knowledge on a subject. There are certain reasons that a little knowledge can become dangerous: 1) arrogance 2) being negative to accurate Bible doctrine and refusing to learn everything about a certain principle or doctrine.
The more accurate Bible doctrine you know, the greater your love for God. It is impossible to love someone that you know absolutely nothing about. The only source of absolute truth about God is found in God’s Word. Very few believers truly love God because very few believers ever learn enough doctrine to do so. Emotionalism, rationalism, religion, and legalism are not the basis for loving God. Until you really know a person, you are simply attracted to them. The more you get to know God, the more you will love Him. And God will recognize that love in us.
Therefore, concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one. What an idol symbolizes is not real. There is only one God. Idols are merely representations of man’s imagination of something to worship. If the idols are nothing, then the meats offered to them are nothing as well. Remember, a lot of these Corinthians came out of paganism and idolatry, and they knew that the idols are made wood, metal, and stone, and should have known that they were just material items. Therefore, they should have known that food that was offered to an idol was not contaminated.
So, Corinthians believers could eat in the pagan temple restaurant and buy their meat at the pagan temple meat market or go to the home of an unbeliever and eat meat which had been offered to an idol, without sinning. And they could do this under the Law of Liberty. But since there were believers in the congregation in Corinth who were emotional, legalistic, unstable believers with limited knowledge of accurate doctrine who were getting offended when someone went to the pagan temple to buy meat, the spiritually mature believers had to apply the four spiritual laws.
For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords,yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him. Paul was being sarcastic when he said that there were so many gods and so many lords you can hardly keep up with them. Some of these so-called gods were from the earth (wood, rocks, etc.) and some were “heavenly” (Greek deity). For example, people worshipped animals, statues, or carvings, some worshipped mythical heavenly beings and some worshipped the stars and planets. But there is only one true God. God the Father is the designer of the plan for mankind, Jesus Christ the Son is the executor of the plan, and the Holy Spirit is the revealer of the plan. And since we are in union with Christ, we have our existence in Him. (Colossians 1:13-20)
Verses 7-13
“However, not all people have this knowledge; but some, being accustomed to the idol until now, eat food as if it were sacrificed to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Now food will not bring us close to God; we are neither the worse if we do not eat, nor the better if we do eat. But take care that this freedom of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone sees you, the one who has knowledge, dining in an idol’s temple, will his conscience, if he is weak, not be strengthened to eat things sacrificed to idols? For through your knowledge the one who is weak is ruined, the brother or sister for whose sake Christ died. And so, by sinning against the brothers and sisters and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food causes my brother to sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause my brother to sin.”
Verses 7-13 refer to the Law of Love superseding the Law of Liberty. Paul had just finished explaining in verses 1-6 that the idols that pagans worshipped were not gods. So, meat sacrificed to them should mean nothing to a believer. He then gave instructions to those believers who were continuing to visit the pagan temples and ignoring the possibility of causing an unbeliever or weak believer to stumble.
However, not all people have this knowledge; but some, being accustomed to the idol until now, eat food as if it were sacrificed to an idol. Those believers in Corinth, who lacked enough doctrine to know that meat sacrificed to idols was not contaminated spiritually, knew that worshipping idols was wrong and wrongly assumed eating meat offered to an idol was also wrong. Therefore, when they ate food offered to idols, in their minds they would be worshipping an idol and it was therefore sinful to them because they were confused and feeling guilty. The feeling of guilt came because these believers were using human viewpoint thinking and not divine viewpoint thinking as they should have been. They failed to understand that idols were nothing in a spiritual sense and therefore whether a believer ate this meat or not, it had nothing to do with their spiritual life.
Paul warned those believers who were spiritually mature enough to know the truth regarding eating meat sacrificed to idols (that it was not forbidden) not to be a “stumbling block” to less mature believers by eating it. So, how does eating meat which is not forbidden in Scripture become a stumbling block? The answer to this question has everything to do with spiritually immature believers who had not become legalistic but were legitimately advancing in their spiritual lives. Those believers who had become self-righteous and legalistic, even if they had advanced spiritually to the point of knowing certain activities were not forbidden by God, were to be ignored. God would discipline them.
Paul was dealing with the Law of Liberty and the Law of Love related to spiritually immature believers who were sincerely trying to learn doctrine and how to apply it. Believers with advanced understanding of accurate Bible doctrine were to be examples for those believers who were still “weak,” spiritually speaking. If a certain activity in a spiritually mature believer’s life is viewed as a compromise of their faith by the “weak” believer, then the mature believer needs to stop doing it in front of the “weak” believer until such time as the weak believer matures in their understanding of the Law of Liberty.
So, Paul was simply saying that eating in the temple restaurant or eating meat from the pagan temple sacrifices should be avoided if it caused a fellow believer to sin. We simply apply the Law of Love and not the Law of Liberty. Intentionally ignoring the Law of Love in favor of the Law of Liberty is wrong (you sin against Christ) because it may cause a weak believer to stumble. This, of course, takes a lot of discernment from a spiritually mature believer.