WHEN IT’S WRONG TO DO RIGHT

1 CORINTHIANS 8:1-13

The church at Corinth was a house divided. A number of schisms had split the church into shattered factions that were now at virtual war with one another. Instead of a spirit of love and unity, there was now jealousy and strife. One of the issues that brought about this division was the problem of eating meat that had been offered to idols.

The city of Corinth was a Greek city. The Greeks did not worship one God. They worshiped many gods. They had gods and goddesses for war, for love, for wisdom, for the sun and moon and stars, for storms, for the land and for the sea. They had a god or goddess for nearly everything.

Not only were the Greeks polytheistic in that they worshiped many gods, they were also polydemonistic, believing that evil spirits were all wound them as a regular threat. Perhaps in this one aspect they were not too far from the truth.

Many of the Greeks believed that one way in which a person could become demon possessed was through the food that he ate. According to this theory, a demon could latch onto the food and be ingested into the person resulting in a case of spiritual heartburn that was untouched by Alka-Seltzer. They thought that the only way the spirits could be removed from the food was for it to be sacrificed to a god. Therefore these sacrifices served two purposes:

• They incurred the favor of the gods.
• They guaranteed that all evil spirits had been removed from the food. If this sounds a bit foreign to you, take another look at the kosher hot dogs the next time you go shopping at your local supermarket.

There still stands today the ruins of a temple to Apollo adjoining to the agora, the central marketplace in the ruins of Corinth. The offerings that were brought to this temple were divided into two parts.

The first part was burned on the altar as a sacrifice to Apollo. The rest of the meat was given to the priests of Apollo to eat. The priests could only eat a very small part of the great quantities of meat that were brought to the temple. So they made a practice of taking the surplus across the street to the marketplace and selling it there.

In addition to this, the temple had set up a rather high-class restaurant. The temple restaurant served this meat as a part of its regular menu. Because the meat had been provided for free, it could be sold at a low price. This meat was highly valued because it had been given the blessing of Apollo and was therefore guaranteed to be free of evil spirits.

This situation gave rise to several questions.

• Is it permissible for a Christian to eat this food that has been offered to idols? Do you need to check on the pedigree of any food that you might happen to buy in the pagan marketplace?
• What should you do if you are invited into the home of a Greek unbeliever and he is serving meat? Should you ask before you eat whether it came from the temple and thereby risk offending your host?
• Many of the social functions of the Greeks were held in the temple and were catered by the servants of the priests. What should you do if you are invited to a wedding of an unbelieving friend or relative? Should you not go at all? Of should you attend but not eat anything at the reception?
• What should be your attitude toward those believers who are offended at the very idea that you might eat this sort of food?

These were not new issues. The church at Jerusalem had already dealt with some of these situations and had written a letter to the Gentile churches in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia in which they asked them to abstain from things sacrificed to idols.

Just as the people of Israel had been instructed to come out and to be separate from the heathen nations of the earth, so also these Gentiles who had become Christians were also to come out from the world system in which they had lived and to be separate from the heathen religious practices.

As Christianity had come to Corinth, the believers in Corinth came to know and believe certain key principles:

• They had learned that there is no such thing as an idol (8:4). They had come to know and to understand that the images that are worshiped by men are nothing more than lifeless images.
• They had learned that good will not commend us to God (8:8). It does not make you more spiritual to eat angel food cake.

Having come to understand these basic truths, some of the Corinthians decided that it was no longer necessary to continue abstaining from the eating of meats that had been offered to idols.

This decision caused a real storm within the church. Suddenly the Jewish element was parting company with the Gentile element so that you had the Kosher meeting of the church in one house and the carnivorous crowd gathering to worship in another place.

Certain concerned Corinthians had written a letter to Paul asking several questions that were at issue within the church (7:1). This question of meats being offered to idols seems to have been one of those issues.

Paul begins his treatment of this issue, not with whether we should eat or not eat certain foods, but with our own attitudes concerning the knowledge that we have.

There were certain among the Corinthian church who prized knowledge and academics above all else. They could cross their T’s and dot their I’s precisely when it came to matters of doctrine. Yet they had a serious problem. It was one of attitude. It was reflected in what they did with that knowledge.

Paul turns to the problem of eating of foods. He states his position on the subject. It is that idols are of no account. There is no such thing as an idol. This does not deny that there did exist graven images. Neither does it deny that they might be very real demonic forces at work in the world or even that they might not be impersonating the false gods of the Greeks. However, these are not really gods. There is only one God.

1. There is only One God: There is no God but one (8:4).

Although you might see a statue of Apollo and go into the temple of Apollo in Corinth, there is no such thing as Apollo. Though you might visit the temple of Aphrodite and see the priestess offer up a sacrifice to Aphrodite, there is no such person as Aphrodite.

There is but one God. He is identified in this verse. He is called "the Father." This designation was foreign to the Greek mind. They believed in many gods. They never imagined that they could have this kind of relationship with God. They never thought of God as their father. Their gods were to be feared because they acted in a very non-fatherly way.

2. The One God is the Creator: For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things (8:6).

This was also foreign to Greek thought. The Greeks had a god for the sea and a god for the sky and a god for the sun and a god for the moon. They had never imagined a single God who created all things. Until they heard Paul’s preaching of the gospel, He remained to them "the Unknown God."

3. There is One Lord Jesus Christ: And one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him (8:6).

This brings us to a real problem. Paul is directly contradicting the ordinance that had been set up by the Jerusalem church in Acts 15. On what basis can he do this?

I would like to suggest that the ordinance delivered in the Jerusalem letter reflected a temporary injunction during that transitional period when Gentiles were first being brought into what had previously been an exclusively Jewish church. There was no permanent moral foundation to the injunction not to eat meat offered to idols. It was given, not on the basis of a moral absolute, but on the basis of CONSCIENCE.

The Gentile converts were to see in an outward form that they were making a complete break from their former manner of life.

Perhaps I can illustrate this from an incident in my own life. When I first committed my life to Christ, one of the things that marked that commitment was a decision to change the type and style of music with which I was involved. It happened to be rock music. That is not to say that rock music is inherently evil. A C-note in rock music is the same as a C-note in classical music or in the most heavenly hymn. I gave up rock music at that time, not because there is necessarily wrong with one style of music over another, but because of the associations that it had in my former manner of life.

By the same token, the eating of meat that has been through a pagan ritual is not in itself wrong because the ritual has no bearing on reality. Meat is still meat and its chemical makeup has not changed to turn it into something that is inherently sinful. But there is still a problem. The problem is that not all men have this knowledge.

There were both those among the Jews as well as those among the Greek Christians who had trouble divorcing the idol worship in the heathen temple from the sirloin steak that sat on the table before them. For those people to go and eat meat while thinking that it was wrong would be for them to commit sin.

There is a lesson here. Anytime you do something that you feel you should not be doing, you are in sin. You are saying in effect, "I think this is sinful and contrary to what God desires, but I am going to do it anyway." In such a case, you are acting in open rebellion against God.

There is a case in which it would be wrong for a believer to eat meat offered to idols. It is in the case in which that believer thinks it is sinful.

There is also a second situation in which it would be wrong to eat meat offered to idols. This is the case in which it becomes a stumbling block to others.

Now we come to the question at hand. How can my eating meat in the temple cause my Christian brother to sin? How can my actions be a stumbling block to another? The answer is given in verses 10-12.

1. The Situation of Stumbling: For if someone sees you, who have knowledge, dining in an idol's temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be strengthened to eat things sacrificed to idols? (4:10).

Here is the case of Mort the meat-eater going into the Apollo temple restaurant and ordering roast prime rib. He is doing it with a clear conscience because he knows that idols are nothing and meat is merely meat. But as he is partaking of his meal, who should pass by but Willie Weaker Brother. Willie is also a Christian, but he still has some major problems about the spiritual qualities of the temple meat and so he has determined to become a vegetarian.

Willie looks in and sees Mort getting started on the main course and says to himself, "I think that it is still morally wrong, but if Mort is going to eat that meat, then I will do it, too." He goes in and he uses the actions of Mort to sway his own actions, still believing them to be sinful. What he has done is to involve himself in that which he considers to be sinful. The result is that his Christian life is left a shambles.

2. The Ruining of the Weak: For through your knowledge he who is weak is ruined, the brother for whose sake Christ died (8:11).

The tragedy of allowing our actions to wreck havoc and ruin in the life of a weaker believer is made all the worse because this is one for whom Christ died.

There is a principle here. It is that there is no such thing as an insignificant believer. There are no unimportant people in God’s family. If you are His, then you have great worth. You are highly valued. You were bought at the greatest possible expense. Your price tag was the life of the Son of God.

And yet, how often do we consider the less attractive believer with something less than honor, if not with downright scorn? There is a warning here. You are treading on God’s most valued possessions. You are to handle other believers with the greatest of care.

Jesus was so concerned about this problem of causing other believers to stumble that He gave the very strongest of warnings:

And whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea. (Mark 9:42).

To cause a baby believer to stumble and fall is serious business. It is not merely a sin against another believer. It is a sin against Christ Himself.

3. A Sin Against Christ: By sinning against the brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ (8:12).

If you are guilty of not showing due concern over the spiritual life of another believer, then you are sinning against Christ since you are regarding the death of Christ on his behalf as being of no consequence. If the death of Christ was significant, then those who were purchased by that sacrificial death are also significant.

4. A Resolution to Refrain: Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, that I might not cause my brother to stumble (8:13).

In summary, we need to point out that we don’t become more spiritual merely by abstaining from certain things. There are a group of people in my town who don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t dance and who don’t go to movies. In fact, they don’t do much of anything. They are the residents of the local cemetery.

The absence of activity does not equal spirituality. To be spiritual is to be in the midst of a vital and living relationship with the Holy Spirit. As we have already seen in this epistle, there are times when we ARE called to come out and be separate from certain things. But we should also take care not to make this a means of legalism.

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