Bible Reading for June 10 – I Corinthians 8:1-13

You may remember when Vice-President Pence was condemned for his prudery when he refused to meet in private with any woman other than his wife. Or maybe you’ve expressed frustration with someone who steadfastly refuses to drink alcohol. It’s easy to become impatient with those who we consider to be overly fussy about matters of conscience. It’s easy to think that they should just get over it and come around to our way of thinking.

But as Paul points out in today’s passage, that’s not really the loving thing to do. Now, the particular situation that faced him is not one we are likely to encounter: the question of whether Christians should eat meat that had previously been symbolically offered up to a statue of a false god, and then subsequently sold in the meat market. Paul agrees with the Corinthian Christians that because such idols were as phony as the false gods they represented, there was nothing magical that happened to such meat, so there was really no good reason not to eat it.

But the problem was that many of the Corinthian Christians had in fact come out of such idolatrous traditions. Some thus continued to believe that meat that had been involved in such ceremonies really did somehow connect those who ate it to the idol to which it had previously been offered. And so, even though they believed something that wasn’t actually true, it would still have been a sin for them to eat such meat. That’s because doing something that expressed what they considered to be union with a false god would in fact have been a betrayal of their real relationship with the One True God.

Paul’s conclusion was that Christians who knew better, Christians who didn’t have any qualms about eating such meat should nevertheless forego eating it – not because they themselves thought it was sinful, but to avoid offending the consciences of those who still had a problem with it.

So, let’s try to translate this idea into a more modern situation. What if another Christian really did think that drinking alcohol was a sin, was somehow an act of rebellion against God. Or what if he had come out of a life of worshipping alcohol, looking to it to give him comfort and solve his problems. And what if were to see you, someone he knew to be a Christian, taking a drink. Instead of understanding your view that drinking is a matter of Christian liberty, maybe he would come to the wrong conclusion – that it is okay for Christians to commit sin in such a way. Maybe your drinking in public would thus cause him to do something he considered to be rebellious and wrong. So maybe you shouldn’t do that, regardless of your own views on the matter.

In sum, the Christian thing to do is to let the weakness of others put boundaries on the way we exercise our Christian liberty. So today, let’s not only seek to avoid what we consider to be sin. Let’s also seek to avoid placing stumbling blocks in other Christians’ way. For that’s really the only way to love one another.

I Corinthians 8:1-13

Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up.
2 If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.
3 But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.
4 Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.”
5 For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth– as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”–
6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
7 However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.
8 Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do.
9 But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.
10 For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols?
11 And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died.
12 Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.
13 Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.