1 Cor 8 – Puffed up, or built up? – sermon notes
1 Corinthians 8 – Puffed up, or built up?
Eating food that has been sacrificed to idols doesn’t seem very relevant to us today.
But behind that presenting problem are a number of ever-relevant underlying issues.
First – a bit of background.
Corinth – a temple on every corner, a god for every occasion.
Marriages, birthdays, funerals, banquets and public festivals were preceded by the sacrificing of food to the gods in order to gain their favour and protection.
Food that was left over was served in the many dining rooms attached to the temples, or sold in the market place to eat at home.
So, what are the underlying issues?
1. Knowledge has its limits
‘We know that an idol is nothing,’ v4 ‘There is no Zeus in the heavens, no Athena on the earth and no Poseidon in the sea.’
‘We know that there is no God but one,’ v4. The Shema (Deut 6:5 – ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.’). v6 puts Christ in the middle of the most sacred confession of monotheism.
‘We know that food does not bring us close to God’, v8.
Therefore, I can eat what I like.
What’s the problem?
Paul is not opposed to knowledge per se. At the beginning of the letter, he is thankful that his readers have been enriched with all knowledge. Repeatedly, he challenges them: ‘Do you not know…?’ and ‘I do not want you to be ignorant…’
But ‘knowledge puffs up’, v1.
They do not know as they ought to know, v2.
The difference between knowing God and knowing about God; between intellectual and relational knowledge.
A personal application – am I a person with too strong a desire to be ‘in the know’?
2. Conscience has its limits
V7 ‘Not everyone possesses this knowledge.’
v10,12 ‘Someone with a weak conscience.’ = tender conscience.
They are unable completely to shake off the beliefs and attitudes of their former life. They had made a clean break with idol worship; now eating idol food seems to violate that commitment. To eat idol food tempts them back into the very paganism from which they have been saved.
Consider a few scenarios:
Most of us would be happy to share, around the meal table, memories of departed family members. A Christian in China has been brought up to worship her ancestors. Should she now share in food offered in ancestor worship? If she does, will she be denying her Christian beliefs? If she does not, will it be thought that she does not love her family or respect her parents?
Most of us would agree that as Christians we are not prohibited from drinking alcohol in moderation. A relative of mine declared, a few days ago, that if her own church started serving alcoholic wine at Holy Communion, it would be over her dead body. Her father, you see, nearly destroyed his own life and that of his family by his alcoholism (until his conversion to Christ).
Most of us regard the words of the Bible as holy, but not the physical materials the book is made from. A person from a Moslem background comes into church and sees Bibles placed on the floor. ‘So that’s how much respect you have for your holy book!’
There are no rules or commandments governing behaviour in such circumstances. Only the rule of love.
3. Love has no limits
(a) Love’s purpose. Love builds up, v1 (edifies).
I saw them tearing a building down,
A gang of men in a dusty town.
With ‘yo heave ho’ and a lusty yell,
They swung a beam and the side wall fell.
I asked the foreman if these men were skilled
As the men he’d hire, if he were to build.
He laughed and said, ‘Oh, no indeed.
Common labour is all I need.’
For those men can wreck in a day or two,
What builders had taken years to do.
I asked myself as I went my way,
Which kind of role am I to play?
Am I the workman who builds with care,
Measuring life by the rule and square?
Or am I the wrecker who walks the town,
Content with the role of tearing down?
Ability vs. availability. Not making a habit of slipping in and out of a church gathering, or of watching online when I could attend in person, or of only attending when serving.
(b) Love’s motivation – these are the brothers and sisters for whom Christ died, v11. Let me not, by my pretended knowledge, injure my brother or sister, when the Saviour gave up his life for them.
(c) Love’s warning – to thus sin against one another is to sin against Christ, v12. Jesus regards acts of kindness or cruelty towards his people as acts of kindness or cruelty towards himself. Jesus to Paul: ‘Why are you persecuting me?’ Acts 9 & 26.
Application: there is no such thing as a solitary Christian.
Geoffrey Paul: ‘There is no way of belonging to Christ except by belonging gladly and irrevocably to that marvellous and extraordinary ragbag of saints and fatheads who make up the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.’