Text: 1 Corinthians 8:1-13
This morning we will be getting back into 1 Corinthians. We are going to be in chapter 8. Before we read it, let me give you a bit of an introduction. I want to make sure you are equipped with the proper lenses to see this text as relevant. Chapter 8 begins with Paul addressing a particular cultural issue the Corinthians, like many Christians in that day, were facing, which revolved around food that had been offered to idols.
But the problem really had two layers. The first, was whether it was acceptable for a Christian to eat the food itself that had been previously offered to idols, and the second (which you will see dealt with more in chapter 10), was whether it was acceptable for Christians to participate in the pagan festivals or ceremonies where this food was being offered.
The first layer of the issue is not really a widespread problem in our modern, western culture. However the second layer of the issue, although there probably isn’t really a direct parallel for us, it hits a little closer to home. It would be something kind of like me wanting to go to a strip club just for the cheap buffet or to a brothel just for a shoulder massage. Part of what these Corinthians were essentially asking Paul is along the lines of, “Is it ok for me to go to Hooter’s just for the wings?”
Now that being said, just because food offered to idols doesn’t present itself today as a pressing moral dilemma like homosexuality or abortion for instance, this doesn’t mean Paul’s exhortation isn’t relevant to us. Maybe even the second layer issues isn’t a problem you deal with, and that is good, but don’t check out on me.
What Paul writes in chapter 8, goes much deeper than these surface issues to the issue of rights and love, and because of that, it is absolutely relevant to you personally today.
1 Corinthians 8. This is the word of the Lord.
They essentially ask him a yes or no question and He refuses to give them only what they want and instead tells them what they really needed to hear, he goes to the root. He doesn’t merely stay in the shallows of to eat or not to eat. He goes to the Corinthian’s deeper problem—to the sinful script that is playing itself out in their theater as an act staring idols and food and ceremonies and pagan idol worshippers who have become Christians.
Paul strikes at a most relevant topic for Christians of any time, not least of whom us 21st century Americans. That is the root of brotherly love and Christian liberty; that we know who our God is and that such a knowledge would inform and prescribe just how we, as Christians, are to live.
I mentioned a quote last week, but I want to say it again, the gospel isn’t the ABC’s of salvation, rather it is the A to Z of the Christian life. Now I want you to hear that, because the mindset or worldview of some of these Corinthians and consequently what they were doing, is exactly what many of us tend to believe and therefore do.
We think, “I sure am glad I’m going to Heaven when I die. Thanks God. See ya when I get there. Talk to you then. We’ll have plenty of time to catch up.” We think, “Great, now that I am saved, got that squared away, I can finish doing what I want to do. Complete my bucket list. I’ve paid my dues, now I can live my life and have my fun.”
And so Paul, because he had such great love for these believers, cuts them right to the heart using raw and brazen language (v. 2). Like Paul so often does in his writings, he means to be offensive to provoke this church to repentance and to love and good works.
vv. 1 – 3
Right from the start of the chapter, you can smell their pride. These guys are flaunting their knowledge, thinking they’re really something, like children who have just been given ballon swords.
This “knowledge” that “all of us possess” puffs up. In other words, you become full of yourself. It makes you all fluff and no substance. This is the kind of knowledge that stupid and ignorant people have. This is the kind of knowledge that many of our universities and public schools and unfortunately, even many pastors and parents are exporting to the next generation.
If this is the kind of knowledge you have, you don’t yet know as you ought to know Paul says. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God. And that is where true knowledge begins.
Paul is certainly not in any way opposed to knowledge or even implying that it isn’t important. Faithful, Bible-believing Christians need not be afraid or ever have a squinty eyed view of knowledge.
Proverbs 1:7, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”
Proverbs 1:22, “But the fool hates knowledge.”
Proverbs 2:6, “The Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.”
Colossians 2:3, “In [Christ] are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
Peter tells us to “make every effort” to supplement our faith with knowledge.
These scriptures establish it as a settled principle, that knowledge is itself good, and yet if the fear of the Lord is not the foundation, this good gift becomes empty and useless in wicked men. As a matter of fact, we see this over and over again in creation, God’s good gifts becoming empty and useless or even perverted and used as weapons. Gifts such as sex, alcohol, food, authority, and wealth to name a few. Thankfully, our misuse doesn’t invalidate or even contaminate God’s good gifts. Our misuse only condemns us. Our misuse of God’s good gifts, contaminates us.
It would be ungrateful for us to reject God’s gifts or even shy away from them simply because they can or might be misused. That would be ingratitude. Rather we should seek to employ and to enjoy God’s gifts rightly. And to do that, we must be planted firmly upon the foundation that is love. If love is not the true seasoning, God’s gifts will be found wanting and tasteless. And that is exactly what we see here. This knowledge, lacking love, is wanting and tasteless.
When you combine knowledge with ungodliness, you get arrogance and haughtiness and pride, and that is what Paul is condemning. When you have knowledge but no love, you are left with nothing but your condescending attitude that recklessly fires off wounding looks and criticisms and complaints. You are left with a worldview that elevates you and your rights to the highest priority.
We talked about this last week, when we talked about worship. These so-called Christians were so full of themselves and with doing whatever they wanted to do, they were all but saying the words, “Worship me!” They were so puffed up with pride, they were carelessly wounding their brothers around them whether they knew it or not.
Don’t think he doesn’t mean to offend such pride puffed people. Of course he does! He means for the truth to puncture their inflated egos so they come back down to reality. It is so easy for us to miss this in our politically correct, avoid-awkwardness-at-all-cost, culture. Paul essentially calls these guys stupid and ignorant and we need to take note. Sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes that is the kind of surgical precision love demands. Why? Because love builds up.
If we are to be genuine in our love for others that means we are not to be sketchy builders. We’ve probably all met these kinds of contractors. The kind you feel like you have to watch their every move because you know the moment you turn around, they are going to start cutting corners. No we are to be honest, master craftsmen who refuse to cheat.
Jesus told a parable that we should keep in mind at this point. The parable of the two men who each built houses. One builds on sand and the other builds on a sure foundation. Love builds up, but it does not just build up anywhere. Love makes sure to build on bedrock. This is why there are times that love building demands we first demolish and deconstruct.
I am working on remodeling the old 16’ camper me and my wife lived in for about a year while we were preparing to build our house. We bought it used and it was pretty rough then, and now having gotten it back after a few years, it is in even worse shape. The roof leaks and so there is lots of water damage on the inside.
What kind of craftsman would I be if I were to just go in there with some paint and wall paper and just start to cover everything up? Not a very good one! To build it up properly, I must first take away everything that is useless and rotten. Everything that is going to be in the way when I start to build it up, must be first removed.
Don’t simply take my word for it, this is exactly what your Bible teaches. Ecclesiastes 3 says, “…a time to break down, and a time to build up… [God] has made everything beautiful in its time…”
“If anyone imagines He knows something.” Paul isn’t saying we should go around in a constant state of uncertainty. He isn’t implying that we should all become post-modern relativists who claim with absolute certainty that they cannot know anything for certain. Paul, rather, is berating those who stand on nothing more than empty notions of their own imagination instead of upon the bedrock of revelation from God both in scripture and in nature.
“But if anyone loves God…” A relationship with God is the precursor to true knowledge. And why is this? The answer we will see is in verse 6. “there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things” and as we already saw from Proverbs, that includes knowledge.
“And for whom we exist.” This means not just we exist to serve Him, it means we exist because of Him. You are here today, on this planet because of God. You didn’t choose to be born. You aren’t keeping your little heart that is fueled by things like coffee and donuts, pumping the 7,200 liters of blood it will circulate today. You aren’t doing that. God is doing that.
If we love God, we are known by God, and since we are known by God, we by no means are able to remain upright and stiffed by pride. To be searched and known by God is to be seen naked and bare as we truly are, with no illusions; fragile, weak and poor; rebellious and sinful. To know—to love God, to be known by God is to have all of your pride erased and to become a new creature.
v. 4
Paul having rebuked these proud Corinthians, now confirms their argument is in fact a sound one. Idols are vain imaginations concocted by ignorant men and therefore whatever has to do with them or their ceremonies are nothing more that silly, vain charades because there is only one God.
Now there is an important point to be taken here from verse 4. And that is, being right isn’t the bottom line. Being right isn’t the only thing to consider when we find ourselves in conflict with others. No doubt being right is important and we should invest all due diligence in coming to correct conclusions. But if that is all we have in view, we utterly miss the point. To love.
Don’t forget that Paul’s beautiful prose on love, that has become all but a wedding cliche, will be written only a few pages further and those principles are no doubt in view here as well.
vv. 5 – 7
“One God…” In the Old Testament, the foundational confession is found in Deuteronomy 6:4, 5. It is known as the Sh’ma or Sh’ma Yis’ra’eil which means “Hear” or “Hear, O Israel.” Jesus Himself, in Mark 12:29 referred to this as the “most important” command. All jewish people in that day would have known the Sh’ma. The first part would have sounded something like this, “Sh’ma Yis’ra’eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.” “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
Paul is echoing this foundational doctrine here in verse 6 and is confirming the argument that an idol is nothing. There is only one true God. But, he says, not everyone knows this. Some of these Christians because they had been former idol worshippers themselves, and probably because they weren’t jewish, were apparently a little shaky on this doctrine. They were still under the assumption that there was something real going on in these ceremonies because these false “gods” were themselves, something real.
Now later on in chapter 10 Paul talks about how the pagan sacrifices were really to demons. This may seem confusing, but it doesn’t contradict what He is saying here in chapter 8, that an idol has no real existence. The reason Paul could say, “Eat the food, don’t eat the food, who cares, an idol is nothing.” And at the same time say, “These pagans are sacrificing to demons.” is because demons aren’t deities. There is only one God. So the pagans could offer all the sacrifices they wanted but it wasn’t going to benefit them at all, and especially not in the way they would have liked.
vv. 8 – 13
It isn’t what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, Jesus teaches, it is what comes out of your heart. Eat the food, don’t eat the food, the food itself does not change God’s perception of you. You certainly have the right to eat and certainly have the right to refrain for conscience sake.
On this matter, we can see a great deal of relevance. I don’t know if you have noticed but food fads are all the rage right now. Crazy food allergies are all of the sudden cropping up in rich white people all over this country. You have whole movements of Christians who are totally being consumed with debates about GMO’s, gluten, sugar, salt, alcohol, organic, non-organic, local, processed, and dyed foods.
Paul puts all of the nonsense of food legalist to rest right here. “Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do.”
But unfortunately many “Christians” don’t take their Bibles nearly as seriously as they ought, and they assume if the writers of scripture would have only known about monsanto and GMO’s and processed foods, surely they would have told us not to eat the poison. But think about it, when we do this, we insert ourselves as the authority—our opinions and our so-called “knowledge” becomes the standard we impose on everyone around us. We become just like these proud Corinthians who were lacking love.
Do you know what the Bible says about food restrictions for Christians? Don’t be a glutton. Eat your bacon and your velveeta. Drink your non-organic, hormone filled milk and your cheap beer. It isn’t what goes into your mouth that defiles you. It is what comes out of your heart, and that means food police should worry more about pride and condescension coming out of their mouths than the GMO’s or gluten or whatever going in.
“And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brothers…” You see, these weak Christians would see their brothers who knew idols where nothing, eating in the temple. Then they, not knowing as well as they ought, that there is only one God and there are no other deities to try and please, would fall back into idolatry by merely following the example they had seen in their Christian brothers. Now the “more mature” Christians, knowing what is going on are basically saying, “That’s their problem. Don’t I have the right to keep doing what I’m doing?”
Let me just say, if we are asking, “Do I have the right to ____?” or “Is it a sin for me to ____?” Then we are probably asking the wrong questions. If all we are concerned about is what we personally have the right or the freedom to do, then we are entirely missing the point, and that point is Christ. Love. The Gospel. Grace.
What this means then, is our aim must be to proclaim, in the totality of our lives, Christ and His Gospel. This is how we love. That is what it is to be a Christian. To be one who sees and ascribes ultimate value and worth to God, beyond and at the expense of everything else in our lives, be it family, spouse, children, parents, friends, job, wealth, sex, hobbies, food, drink, etc. We worship God.
Therefore, if God is seen as most worthy of our complete devotion and not just a weekend hobby or some cosmic insurance policy, then that means He is the one to whom we look to determine the aim of our life—our mission. In other words, He becomes our Lord. Remember, we are talking about the totality of our lives, because we are talking about love.
Men, you cannot genuinely love your wife for only half the week. Parents, you cannot genuinely love your children only half of the time. Church, you cannot love your brothers and sisters, just on Sundays. Love must be unabridged or else it isn’t love. Modest love amounts to indifference. Do you see that? Love is complete and total devotion.
I want you to imagine a husband and wife, newly married. Now this wife, who wants to be a good wife, turns to her husband and says, “Dear, I want you to know that I am going to follow you in every decision that you make. In our marriage, you are going to have the final say on all of the important decisions.” The husband thinks to himself, “Wow, that was quicker and easier than I thought it would be.” But the wife continues, “And of course I will be sure to let you know whenever one of those decisions comes up.” So the husband ends up with the important decisions of picking the cereal and chips.
While this may seem funny to us, unfortunately, this is the dominating attitude of many in the church. We say Jesus is Lord and then we determine which parts He gets to be in charge of. We say we love Him and then we give Him 10%. But that isn’t how it works. He is a jealous master and a jealous lover.
When you proclaim Jesus is Lord, you are laying down your rights. You are taking up your Christian liberty and this means freedom from indifference. Freedom from your old desires and affections and a freedom to do whatever your new heart should please! Freedom to truly and finally love.
In Acts there is a story of a couple, Ananias and Sapphira, who sell some land and they give the proceeds to the church. Except they lie about how much they keep back for themselves. So they put the money in the offering and Peter says to them, it was your land, you could have done whatever you wanted with it, but you lied about what you kept and tried to hide it from the church and from God. And do you know what happened next? Ananias and Sapphira, New Testament Christians, not under law but under grace, who didn’t take their life within the community—within the church seriously, who didn’t take God’s word seriously, fell down and died right there in front of Peter.
If that doesn’t make you at least a little bit afraid, you need to wake up. This story should quite frankly terrify some of us today. These Corinthians, just like Ananias and Sapphira, who didn’t care how their actions affected their brothers and sisters around them were not just being rude or inconsiderate. Paul says they, not only were sinning against their brothers, they were sinning against Christ Himself. Paul knew they could not claim to love God while there was no love for their weaker brothers and sisters.
When you love God, and you become a new creature; loving your neighbor won’t just be a good idea, it will have become your new law. I don’t mean a law like don’t speed. I mean a law like gravity or hunger. Love becomes second nature. It becomes instinctive. That doesn’t mean it will always be easy. Gravity hurts sometimes. Hunger is uncomfortable. But it will always, always be what you know. You will always know Love.
That confused former idol worshipper who is still under the assumption that if you eat the meat from the idol’s temple, you are somehow contaminated, you will love that guy enough to not just jab him with empty theology but rather embrace him with full, love-saturated, rights-sacrificing, money-where-your-mouth-is theology. And for what? Just for that guy? No! For so much more. For the sake of Christ and for the sake of His Gospel!
Are you willing to give up your reputation this morning for the sake of Christ and His Gospel? Are you willing to give up your bucket list full of shallow and temporal pleasures, for the sake of Christ and His Gospel? Are you willing to give up your money and your possessions for the sake of Christ and His Gospel? Are you willing to give up your comfort; willing to find yourself in awkward or difficult or confrontational situations for the sake of Christ and His Gospel?
You see you may have the right to keep your reputation guarded. To do everything on that shallow bucket list. You may have the right to keep all your money and build your material empire. You may have the right to avoid awkward and difficult and confrontational situations. Just like those Corinthians had the right to eat whatever they wanted. But oh, do your rights make lovely kindling for the fires of grace! Are you willing, today, to let them burn? Let them go for the sake of Christ and His Gospel in this community?
I hope you are. I want you to be. As I look out at our congregation, I can see the sparks of revival and reformation. You can mark my words, it is coming. I promise you, it’s coming. I don’t know when, but I don’t want to miss it. I hope you don’t either.
I pray the Holy Spirit would set your hearts on fire right now! To set our church on fire even today! To transform us for the sake of Christ and His Gospel. To use us and to spend us!
Please Stand and let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we ask that you would spend us. Giving up our personal rights when we as a people, especially as Americans, have been so ingrained to fight and even die in order to hoard our rights. Remind us Father of Christ our example who left His throne and came to earth to be spent for His brothers and sisters. Surely there are those here today who are being selfless in much of their lives and surely there are those who are dangerously resembling Ananias and Sapphira and the Corinthians from our text. But no matter where each of us are on that spectrum, as long as we are breathing, there is more to give and there is certainly more to do. So would you make us generous. Willing to spend our rights for Christ and His Gospel. Willing to spend our time and our money and our lives for Christ and His Gospel. We know we cannot do anything apart from the Holy Spirit that powerfully works in us, and so we ask you to strengthen us and stir us with Your Spirit. Give us wisdom and creativity and willingness to grow as we leave here today. We ask these things in the Name that is above all names, the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Like we have done for the last few weeks, we are going to sing the Doxology, and as we do, I invite you to lift your hands, but even more than just your hands, I want you to lift your eyes and your hearts to your Lord and with passion sing well. Then I am going to give you the charge and pronounce the benediction and after that you will be dismissed. Once you are dismissed, if you would like prayer or have any questions or comments, you are welcome to come forward.
Let us sing. Praise God from whom all blessings flow…
The charge is this:
Just do it. Stop worrying. Stop whining. Stop making excuses. Let go of your rights and any illusion of control that you may still cling to and for the sake of Christ and His Gospel, planted firmly on the foundation of love and burning with grace, live the life you read about in your Bibles. Love your God and love your neighbors. And then if God grants you to wake up tomorrow morning, do it again and try and do it better.
Benediction:
May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in peace and harmony with one another. That together, by the power of the Holy Spirit we may, with one voice, glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, world without end. Amen.
Go in peace.
Or here…