Text for the Week: Developing a Conscience

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 8:1-13

¹Now concerning meat that has been sacrificed to a false god: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes people arrogant, but love builds people up. ² If anyone thinks they know something, they don’t yet know as much as they should know. ³ But if someone loves God, then they are known by God.

⁴ So concerning the actual food involved in these sacrifices to false gods, we know that a false god isn’t anything in this world, and that there is no God except for the one God. ⁵ Granted, there are so-called “gods,” in heaven and on the earth, as there are many gods and many lords. ⁶ However, for us believers,

There is one God the Father.
        All things come from him, and we belong to him.
And there is one Lord Jesus Christ.
        All things exist through him, and we live through him.

⁷ But not everybody knows this. Some are eating this food as though it really is food sacrificed to a real idol, because they were used to idol worship until now. Their conscience is weak because it has been damaged. ⁸ Food won’t bring us close to God. We’re not missing out if we don’t eat, and we don’t have any advantage if we do eat. ⁹ But watch out or else this freedom of yours might be a problem for those who are weak. ¹⁰ Suppose someone sees you (the person who has knowledge) eating in an idol’s temple. Won’t the person with a weak conscience be encouraged to eat the meat sacrificed to false gods? ¹¹ The weak brother or sister for whom Christ died is destroyed by your knowledge. ¹² You sin against Christ if you sin against your brothers and sisters and hurt their weak consciences this way. ¹³ This is why, if food causes the downfall of my brother or sister, I won’t eat meat ever again, or else I may cause my brother or sister to fall.

Questions

1. What does Paul mean in verse 2 that people who think they have knowledge truly lack knowledge, and how do we avoid this mistake?
2. After seemingly speaking ill of having knowledge, Paul seems to switch and malign those without the knowledge of idols?
3. What is Paul trying to say about the nature of God’s judgement in this passage?
4. How does love relate to knowledge in the case of eating meat sacrificed to idols and how can we apply that lesson to the world around us today?

Background

Related Scriptures: Acts 15:22-35, 21:18-26

It is probable that the only place (or one of the few places) the Corinthians could get meant was in the various pagan shrines which served as places of worship and butcher shops.

The phrase “we all have knowledge” is probably a slogan in Corinth and Paul’s comments are meant to contrast the Corinthian way of thinking with the Christian way of thinking.

True knowledge for Paul is not the accumulation of data but the knowing of person’s and understanding of how to love all.

It is possible that the “strong” Christians also represent the wealthy and the “weak” the poor

For more background watch my video here

Reflection

“We all Know” are extremely dangerous words and those that speak them are often overlooking something. This is true of the Corinthian church and why Paul addresses them about the meat they are eating. Paul’s words in verse 1 “We know that we all have knowledge “ are probably quoting the Corinthians own idea. The Corinthians “all know” that the deities worshipped in the various pagan shrines around their city are false and that when they eat the meat from those sacrifices it is just meat. This is probably true, intellectually, if you had polled the Corinthian believes of the 60’s AD there would probably have been few if any who would have said the shrines in Corinth were offering sacrifices to legitimate deities. So why was this an issue? Why couldn’t everyone just agree that the meat sacrificed in shrines and then sold to the people was just meat?

One of the reasons Christians come to various convictions is because we are always trying to hold in tension our freedom in Jesus and our commitment to being completely above reproach. There are any number of grey areas in our Christian walk and we are each assigned the duty of navigating our own walk with God. Our life experiences, our reading of Scripture, and our general understanding of the world outside the church all factor into how we navigate these grey areas. For the Corinthian Christians there were two main camps when it came to food, some seemed to eat the meat from the shrines freely, while others completely abstained. Some we know saw their freedom in Jesus leading them to recognize that they were not participating in the cultic worship at the shrines and so they could eat the meat because they did so honoring God as the creator and giver of meat. Others, though, seemed to think that being seen in the shrine or eating the meat from the shrine was tacitly condoning the practices of the shrine. To eat the meat sold by the shrine was to fund it and all of its functions that were clearly opposed to God.

Paul himself seems to be on the side of the what he labels the “strong Christians” those who are able to stand in the freedom of Christ. That is interesting because he understands their logic and agrees with it and yet he puts more pressure on them to change their habits. Paul does this because the Christian faith is not based on intellectual knowledge it is based on relational knowledge. That idea stands behind this passage as Paul says you might know the basics of Christian theology and what is allowed and not allowed but you do not know your brother and sister and what bothers them. Paul tells the Corinthians that this is a matter of conscious and while we might think of conscious as knowing “right and wrong” Paul means it as—being attentive to one’s obligation to loved ones. Paul tells the Corinthians to act not in accordance with their freedom in Christ but in ways that build one another up, that is limit their own freedom to help other Christians grow. He is saying to the “strong” that they are strong enough to live in Christ’s freedom on this issue but do not expect everyone to be and if you know that your brother or sister struggles with this level of freedom, then you need to stand with them. Your conscious should prick you because you are not living up to your obligation in loving that person.

Paul’s words to the weak Christians are somewhat limited, but presumably he would want them to grow into the freedom Christ offers. But to those who are comfortable in the freedom of Christ he is very insistent that they should be aware of how their knowledge of and indulgence in their freedoms can harm those trying to follow Jesus. We today are in little danger of being confronted by the dilemma of eating meat sacrificed to idols but we can ask ourselves in what ways we are living in freedoms that harm those we worship and commune with and how we can adjust our lifestyle so that we can support others in their journey of faith. We should recognize that our conscious is not simply there to tell us we have done something wrong in terms of our relationship with God, our conscious is to tell us we are making life in Christ more difficult for brothers and sisters.