1 Corinthians
Chapter 8
Overview
Paul addresses a practical conflict among the believers in Corinth: whether they may eat food that has been offered to idols. Meals connected with local temples were part of ordinary social life, but believers understood them differently. Some knew that idols had no real power; others still associated such food with worshiping those idols. Paul moves beyond the question of what people are free to do and asks how their choices affect others. Knowledge can make a person feel important, but love notices who might be hurt. Sometimes freedom shows its strength by choosing restraint.
1Now about food offered to idols: we know that “we all have knowledge.” Knowledge makes people proud, but love builds people up.
2Anyone who thinks they know something does not yet understand it as they should.
3But anyone who loves God is known by God.
4So, concerning the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence in the world and that there is no God except one.
5There may be many so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth. Indeed, people recognize many “gods” and many “lords.”
6But for us there is one God, the Father. Everything comes from him, and we live for him. And there is one Lord, Jesus the Messiah. Everything came into being through him, and we live through him.
7But not everyone understands this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat this food, they think of it as an offering made to an idol. Because their conscience is vulnerable, they feel morally stained by eating it.
8Food will not bring us closer to God. We gain no advantage by eating it, and we lose nothing by not eating it.
9Be careful, however, that your freedom does not cause those with a vulnerable conscience to fall into wrongdoing.
10Suppose someone with a vulnerable conscience sees you, who have this knowledge, dining in an idol’s temple. Won’t that person be encouraged to eat food offered to idols, even though they believe it is wrong?
11Then your knowledge destroys that vulnerable fellow believer—the very person for whom the Messiah died.
12When you sin against fellow believers in this way and wound their vulnerable conscience, you are sinning against the Messiah.
13So if food causes a fellow believer to fall into wrongdoing, I will never eat meat again, so that I do not cause that person to fall.