Making Sense of 1st Corinthians CH8

I want you to think about the rights you have that are important to you. The rights you have as an American. The freedoms you have as an American—as a Texan. What comes to mind?

I want you to think about the things you are free to do as a Christian. What liberties does your understanding of the Gospel and Bible give you? Maybe you look at other denominations or other Christians—people who aren’t as enlightened as you are—and you think, “someone needs to tell those narrow-minded, legalistic, pietists that Jesus came to set them free, not to put them in chains.”

When you hear someone say “hey, last time I checked it was still a free country!” What does it make you think of?

Whatever things just popped into your mind during this little sermon introduction—for you, that’s what I’m talking about today. I’m talking about those rights and freedoms. If you’re doing it right, this sermon should jack with you today, like on a personal level. It should mess you up. Come on, it’ll be fun. But it’s only going to happen if you keep applying it to the rights and freedoms you just thought of. We need to hold those kinds of things very loosely and let God’s Word define what we should do with them.

Here’s my big idea: It seems to me that too many Christians are trying to either appear to be kind, sensitive, compassionate, understanding, socially aware—at the expense of letting God's Word define reality. Or, they’re holding onto their rights and freedoms as Americans—or theologically savvy know-it-alls—at the expense of letting God’s Word define how they should use those rights and freedoms to love their neighbor. It's the age-old problem of allowing culture to inform theology rather than theology informing culture.

But you need to self-diagnose. Hold Scripture up like a mirror. Don’t make me have to point out the obvious things that everyone else in your life has already noticed. 

Think about our little church: Is there anyone in our congregation that you think flaunts their freedoms and their rights—they don’t seem to care how it affects anyone else? Or what anyone else thinks about it? What they say, what they do, what they wear? I’m pretty sure we can all think of someone. Probably different people depending on what our particular pet peeves are. But I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about you. Don’t be looking down the aisle at the person you think needs to hear this. Apply this to yourself.

Whatever freedoms or rights we think we have, as followers of Jesus we’re supposed to use those things to help people know He loves them so much He gave His life for them. We can’t ever use our freedoms or rights to push people away from Him, from the Gospel.

I hope I have your attention. Let’s pray:
Father in heaven, be good to your servants,

    So that we may live and obey your word.

Open our eyes to see

    the wonderful truths in your instructions.
Even when they are hard to hear. AMEN

1st Corinthians chapter eight, verse one:

Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that “We all possess knowledge.” But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God is known by God. 

Food sacrificed to idols. It was a big deal in the early church. Did Christians have the freedom to eat meat that had been offered in ceremonies at pagan temples? In their day, a lot of community meals took place in the banquet halls of those temples. You couldn’t be part of the Roman world without being invited to some meal where there was a statue of Zeus or Dianna or one of the gods. It’d be like trying to find a Chinese restaurant that doesn’t have a statue of Buddha. If you were going to have anything to do with the culture—politics, or the Olympics, or entertainment, or even just buying meat at the market—you were going to have to deal with this. Everywhere you went and everything you did was going to involve meat that had been sacrificed to idols.

They had written a letter to Paul and asked him some questions. This was one of the questions. They must have worded it something like this, “Since we all know that the Roman gods aren’t really gods at all, is it okay to eat meat that had been offered to them? It’s okay, right?”

So Paul starts with a quote from their letter.

“We all possess knowledge.”

Let me tell you about knowledge. Knowledge puffs up. Knowledge makes us proud. Arrogant. Nowadays people like to celebrate pride, but pride is never spoken of in the Bible as a good thing. It’s the opposite of humility. It’s the opposite of love. Paul says,

“Knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know.”

If you ever start to think you probably know all you need to know about a particular subject—that’s a pretty good indication that you don’t. As someone once said, “Sometimes I think I know but I know better.”

Just because a person has a big brain and a lot of knowledge doesn’t guarantee they’re going to have the right attitude toward their favorite freedoms, rights, and liberties. Paul’s warning is that the more you think you know, the more likely it’s going to warp your heart into a pride-shaped distortion of the truth. The Lord wants His church to build each other up as a community—and that can only happen when Christians stop being selfish and love each other.

Love is never about what is good for us. Love is always about what we can do for others.

How did God show that he loves you? By dying for you. He had the right to not do that, you know. He did it anyway. That’s what Paul is getting at with the next line:

“But whoever loves God is known by God.”

Compared to the person who thinks they figured it all out on their own— Paul says the one who loves God is known by God. It’s all grace. God loved you first. Whatever love you have for God is a direct result of Him loving you. In other words, you didn’t figure out this God thing with your giant brain, God found you and loved you, it’s the only reason you’re in this family. A little humility goes a long way.

So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that

“An idol is nothing at all 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 all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. 

The first part of Paul’s answer to their question about whether or not they’re free to eat idol meat was the contrast between “knowledge” and “love.” On one hand, we KNOW it’s just food. But on the other hand, knowledge without love doesn’t build anyone up.

His answer also has some massive implications about Jesus. He quotes a couple of commonly known truths: “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and “There is no God but one.” The first quote echoes the Psalms and the prophets when they mock the lifeless idols of the heathen nations. The second quote was Israel’s foundational creed, the Shema’ “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one!” Every Jew recited this in the morning and afternoon. It was part of the worship in the synagogues. They were also very important confessions of the church—to renounce all the pagan gods and affirm the One True God.

He calls the pagan gods “so-called gods.” They’re not really Gods. There is only one God. Later he’s going to explain that all the pagan gods are actually demons. So, they’re not “Gods” but they’re not exactly nothing. There are many gods and lords but none of them are God.

Then Paul says one of the most extraordinary things that has ever been said about Jesus—I don’t want you to miss this. He says,

“Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.”

This is a restatement of the Shema’. “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the LORD is one.” But he says it like this:

There is only one God: The Father FROM whom all things came—He’s the one we live FOR. And there is only one LORD, Jesus Christ, THROUGH whom all things came, and THROUGH whom we live.

Paul just added Jesus to Deuteronomy 6:4. He just added Jesus Christ the Lord to the basic creedal confession of who the One True God is. 1st Corinthians 8:6. You might want to write that down.

As Christians, we only know one Lord and God. This is what it means to be Christian. Hear O Israel, The Lord our God is One, He is Jesus Christ the LORD!

So, what does this have to do with the subject at hand? Paul goes on:

But not everyone possesses this knowledge. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do. 

It’s true. Food is food. We ought to be free to eat it without thinking about false gods. The problem is, a bunch of the people in the church of Corinth used to worship those false gods. They used to go to those banquets and take part in the feasts hoping to get some blessing from eating the magic food. There was still a little lingering superstition in some of them. They couldn’t separate the idea of meat that had been sacrificed to idols from sacrificing meat to idols.

None of us are ever completely free from the emotional and psychological pull of our old life, not as long as we’re still on this side of heaven and the resurrection. Not completely. We need to have some humility about this. 

Some of them, in their pre-Christian lives, used to eat in the pagan temples, eating idol meat was part of their worship. So they felt like they were being unfaithful to Jesus when they did it now.

Others were like, “Come on man! Get over it. It’s just meat. There’s nothing wrong with going to the Olympics at Zeus Stadium and having a demon hot dog and a couple of beers!”

Verse 9:

Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall. 

When missionaries first went to Papua New Guinea, they used traditional musical instruments like the kundu drum in their worship services. There was absolutely nothing wrong with using a kundu drum—it’s just a drum. But the people, who had used it in witchcraft and ancestral worship, had a hard time hearing its peculiar sound and not being reminded of the voice of the spirits and all the demonic things of their old life. Later generations of New Guinea Christians were able to use the drum in church, though, because they had never used it in pagan weirdness.

When I first became a Christian, I had over three hundred records of my favorite rock music. There came a point that in order for me to grow as a Christian, I had to get rid of them all. I spent a few years listening to nothing but Christian music. It was something I needed to do. Eventually, I grew in my faith to the point where I could listen to that music again without it being a problem—other than the expense of having to buy all those records again. Thank God for Columbia House Record Club!

When the subject of meat offered to idols is brought up, sometimes people compare it to drinking. Some people in the Church, especially in the US, have demonized alcohol. A lot of Christians have been taught that drinking is a sin.

The Bible doesn’t say drinking is a sin. Drunkenness is a sin—but so is gluttony. Drinking too much is wrong—so is eating too much. Finishing a bottle of Jack Daniels when you’ve had a bad day isn’t good. But it isn’t any worse than eating a gallon of Blue Bell Homemade vanilla when you’re sad. I say this as a person who might be tempted to do both on any given night. Ha.

My point is that even though Christians are free to drink and free to eat ice cream—we’re not free to flaunt our freedom and hurt people.  

If a person has abused alcohol. Maybe they’re an alcoholic, and their drinking hurt their family and friends and career. It’s not cool to offer them a beer—or drink in front of them without asking. We don’t want to be the reason they’re tempted to start a pattern of self-destructive behavior again, right?

Paul’s talking about not hurting the weaker brother.

And the weaker brother or sister might say something or they might not. That’s why you have to examine yourself with your rights and freedoms. Be careful not to rub them in people’s faces.

Paul’s basically saying, “Of course there’s nothing wrong with eating idol meat. The Baby Back ribs at the House of Athena are to die for! But I’d rather never eat meat again than risk causing anyone to stumble. Causing someone to fall back into their old life. Tempting someone to not believe the Gospel.”

He’s not a vegan. He’s clearly very fond of meat. But he’d rather eat vegetables than possibly push someone away from the Lord. 

Could you say that? Not just about meat, but about whatever rights and freedoms you were thinking about earlier. Would you be willing to never do those things again if it would help someone from being confused about the LORD?

Let me just say, it doesn’t seem like it to me. It seems like most people these days are so worried about their personal freedoms and rights—as Americans, as Christians, as Texans, as Lutherans, whatever—that everyone can pretty much go to hell if they think for a minute that I’m going to give up my personal rights and freedoms! As if our personal rights and freedoms are the most important thing in the world.

Focus. Keep applying this to yourself. Not other people. Not politics. I’m not talking about any of that, I’m talking about you. The freedoms and rights that you might be rubbing in people’s faces.

It’s not okay. When you sin against people this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. So, if your personal freedom causes your brother or sister to fall into sin, you need to be willing to never enjoy that freedom again.

True Christian freedom isn’t for you, it’s for the people in your life. You might be free to do whatever that thing is, but you’re also free not to do it. That’s the point of freedom.

Here’s a few examples that affect NewChurch directly: Are you free to skip church on any given Sunday? Yes. Is it good for your brothers and sisters in the church? No. It is discouraging and makes it easier for the rest of us to blow off church next time. Is it good for your kids? No. They’re going to grow up seeing church as a low priority, non-essential aspect of life. 

Here’s a big one: Are you free to post inflammatory comments on social media? Of course. Is it good for the witness of the Body of Christ to the unbelieving world? No. It only confirms their suspicions that Jesus has nothing good to offer them. 

Are you free to walk into church late and leave as soon as possible afterward without talking to anyone? Absolutely. But it certainly doesn’t help this to be a welcoming, encouraging, friendly place, does it?

The guiding principle for how we use our rights and freedoms has to be Christian love. Love that builds up. Knowledge can puff up, especially knowledge about Christian liberties—because it’s so easy to think we’re better than the unenlightened. It’s so easy to justify whatever we want to do by thinking we have the right to do it. 

When we cause fellow Christians to stumble we sin against Christ. The church is His Body. What we do to Christians, we do to Christ.

When we heard the Gospel of Jesus and began to believe, we were called out of our old lives. You have been called out of your old life. The things you used to worship—money, sex, patriotism, politics, sports, music, materialism, fashion, guns, video games, leisure, whatever—all these new gods, who are really just old gods in new disguises—they’re all meat that been offered to idols. Rights and freedoms. Are you free as a Christian to enjoy these things? Do you have every right to do it? Sure. Maybe. But not if it pushes people away from you—you are the people of God, the church. Not if it tempts someone to return to the grip of their former life. Not if it causes anyone to sin against Christ. Not if it pushes people away from Jesus.

You have been set free from your old life. You have been set free from the power it had over you—free from the penalty and wages of sin. But your freedom isn’t only for you. You’ve been set free so you can worship God and love people. AMEN.

I am aware that some might feel like I went beyond preaching and started meddling today. I pretty much feel that way every time I open the Bible. How does Hebrews put it? “Cutting between soul and spirit, joint and marrow.” Also, there’s another aspect of what Paul is saying here that I only hinted at—with my examples of the kundu drum and record collection. The goal of the church isn’t to keep weaker brothers and sisters weak. The goal is to help them get stronger. Paul’s not done talking about this meat sacrificed to idols thing, it’s going to come up some more before we’re done with 1st Corinthians. So, everything I said about not flaunting our rights and freedoms in ways that push people away from Jesus is very important—but the goal is not so they can stay weak. The goal is to help them get strong enough that those things won’t bother them anymore.

Father in heaven, You are always good to us, even when You discipline us. Especially when You discipline us. We need to take Your Word to heart—all of it, even the parts that are hard for us to hear. Like where You tell us that Your grace is sufficient for us. That we are no condemned because of Jesus. Help us to live in THAT reality and invite the world to join us. AMEN