Freedom and Responsibility

Reading

1 Corinthians 8

Introduction

It’s a bit of an understatement to say that life, at times, can be quite challenging. Particularly, perhaps, when we encounter change or something out of the ordinary.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I went to Bruges for a few days. It’s a beautiful place, and we really enjoyed our visit to a different country, but there were a few differences we had to contend with.

• We were envious of the quality of European trains in comparison with ours: they were clean, spacious, comfortable, smooth, and on time.
• The money’s different, so you’re never quite sure how much something really costs.
• They drive on the wrong side of the road, so you have to take extra care when crossing over.
• The whole place is overrun with bicycles, and cyclists think nothing of threading their way, at speed, through milling crowds. I even had to pull Hilary out of the way of one who bore down on us shouting, “Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!” through snarling teeth

We heard last week about marriage and singleness. Getting married is a bit like moving to a new country. There are lots of adjustments to make.

• We knew a recently-married couple who had a disagreement about dirty washing. He was used to putting it in the washing machine; she wanted it in the laundry basket.
• And then there’s the eternal problem of the position of the toilet seat.
• As someone once said, ‘When you’re married you have someone who’ll stand by you through all the problems you wouldn’t have if you’d stayed single.’

Becoming a Christian is a huge change. You’re moving to a new world! You’ve been rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought into the kingdom of light.

It’s an exciting, challenging voyage of discovery as you learn what God is like, what pleases him, and realise that a whole lot of stuff from your old way of life has to change.

The believers in Corinth were encountering just this situation for themselves. Just as a reminder of their situation, Corinth was an important hub in the ancient world. It was:

• a Roman colony and the administrative capital for the region it was in;
• at the crossroad of important land and sea trade routes, which made it very prosperous but also a melting pot for all manner of pagan beliefs;
• overshadowed by the temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and the sexual promiscuity of the city was notorious, even by the standards of the day.

Despite all that, Paul, over a period of around 18 months, established a thriving church, made up of some Jewish converts but mainly former pagans.
 

Perhaps you can imagine the huge reorientation Christian converts were facing, given the society they were embedded in. They had problems and lots of questions. So, after Paul had left, they wrote to him about various issues, and much of 1 Corinthians is Paul’s response to their questions.

The Issue

Today, we’re looking at Paul’s response to their question about eating food sacrificed to idols.

Now, this would perhaps be an issue for us if we lived in India, but it doesn’t seem very relevant in the 21st century United Kingdom. The Corinthians were perhaps hoping for a yes or no answer, but Paul’s response embodies a principle that applies in all kinds of circumstances where individual freedoms and personal responsibilities come into conflict.

So, what gave rise to the question?

In Corinth, pagan people took animals to temples to be sacrificed in worship to their idols. The priests made the sacrifice and the meat was served to the worshippers. The temples were popular places to eat. If there was surplus meat, the priests sent it to be sold in the market, a place where Christians bought food.

Some Christian believers thought you should have absolutely nothing to do with such food; others thought it was OK as long as nothing identified it as having been sacrificed to an idol; some, who’d been used to eating in temples in their pagan past, would’ve been confused about what was right or wrong for them now.
 

Paul develops his response through a series of contrasts, the first of which gives us a hint of the direction He’s heading in.

1-3: Knowledge cf Love

Paul puts it like this:

‘We all possess knowledge.’ But knowledge puffs up… Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know.’

 

Knowledge is a wonderful thing that enriches life. I read Physics at university, so my head got stuffed with a whole pile of knowledge. Perhaps that seems impressive, but it doesn’t help you much (and I’ve forgotten most of it anyway!).

[Blow up balloon and hold it]

Here’s my head, stuffed with knowledge.

And, however much I may have studied, my knowledge is incomplete and faulty. There’s always more to learn, and things we’re certain of can turn out to be wrong. Around the start of the 20th century, much of physics was turned on its head by new and startling discoveries.

There’s every chance that could happen again!

[Release balloon]

So much for what I know!

[Hold up brick (which has the word LOVE embossed on it]

My good friend X has lent me one of his very precious bricks. It reminds me of you! We’re all bricks in God’s temple. Each of you is a brick with LOVE written on it.

Unlike the hot air in my balloon, this brick is solid, dependable, and durable.

... knowledge puffs up while love builds up.

With Love we can build. If I love my neighbour as I love myself, that’s good for my neighbour. It builds my neighbour up.

In his letter to the Galatians, who had their knowledge about law-keeping and circumcision in a mess, Paul wrote,

The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

Knowledge alone isn’t enough – even perfect knowledge; love shows the better way. 

[Put brick down with LOVE to front]

4-6: Idols cf God

Paul affirmed some of the knowledge the Corinthian believers held to:
 

… we know that ‘An idol is nothing at all in the world’ and that ‘There is no God but one.’

 

Much is said in the Old Testament about the futility of idols: they’re not real gods, they’re just fashioned lumps of wood or stone or metal—they can’t hear, they can’t see, they can’t do anything. 

But Paul reminds the Corinthians and us that God the Father is the origin of everything, he made all this vast universe; he’s the one we live for, who gives us purpose. 

And Jesus was the Father’s agent of creation, and the one who gives us life. 

Every day, devout Jews would’ve recited the Hebrew Shema, which begins: 

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength …

 

That phrase, ‘the LORD is one’ carries the sense that the LORD is the only God.  I’m sure Paul taught that fundamental and foundational truth in Corinth. And here in the passage, the point is made:
 

Idols count for nothing and God is all-in-all.

7-8: Fact cf Conscience

These facts being the case, what difference does it make that a piece of meat has been offered to an inanimate object? In verse eight Paul makes it quite clear that eating or abstaining from food makes no difference to our relationship with God. He can’t love us more, and he won’t love us less!

So, the Corinthian Christian armed with this knowledge can eat with a clear conscience, whatever the source of the meat. And in chapter 10, where Paul revisits this issue from a different angle, he says:

Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for, ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.’

But not everyone was armed with that knowledge. For some, eating food sacrificed to idols was just plain wrong; the meat is tainted in some way.

Now, if you know something is sin, you know you shouldn’t do it.

If you believe something is sin (although, actually, it isn’t), then you also shouldn’t do that. If you act contrary to your conscience (even though it’s not actually wrong), your kind of saying, ‘I don’t really care what God thinks about this.’

When I became a Christian at the age of 17, I soon discovered a lot of unwritten rules about what Christians shouldn’t do: don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t dance, don’t go to the cinema or theatre, etc.

When I went to university and mixed with Christians from different backgrounds, I was puzzled by behaviour of some of them. They did some of the things I believed were sinful.

Had I followed their example at the time, I probably would’ve had an almighty guilt trip. I’m very good at beating myself up.

Alternatively, having apparently got away with it, I may have found it easier to do something that actually is wrong. And once you’ve taken one step—who knows where it may end?

As it happens, the sin I fell into was not doing something I thought was wrong but passing judgement on the others!

As my faith and understanding grew, I learnt to recognise the rules that were just legalistic human rules: some of the knowledge I held was wrong!

In case you’re wondering, none of them was eating food sacrificed to idols, but the principle Paul sets out here applies more broadly than to just this one issue.

Doing a genuinely OK thing can create a stumbling block for someone else who thinks it’s wrong.

9-13: Rights cf Righteousness (Freedom cf Responsibility)

Imagine you’re a Corinthian. You know there’s nothing to an idol, and eating food that may have been sacrificed to it can’t harm you. So, you’re quite happy to eat it. In fact, you have a right to eat it if you want to.

And this is where knowledge puffs you up! You know your rights! But if you always insist on your rights there’s a real danger that you could harm someone else whose conscience you know is more easily bruised.

Paul uses a strong word:

So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge.

If they know it’s sacrificial meat, and see you eating, and it’s a problem for them, they may think, ‘It’s OK. I can do this.’ So they eat it too, and then suffer the agony of a guilty conscience.

Or, being emboldened by their action, they may think it’s OK to eat at temple feasts, and they end up getting get entangled again with idol worship.

But in chapter 10, Paul makes clear that Christians cannot participate in worship at pagan temples because what the pagans were actually worshipping were the demonic powers behind the idols.

In the end, it would have been better for them, and you, if you’d abstained from eating. Paul says,

When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.

Love, Paul tells us, builds up, and he ends the passage with,

Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.

To be clear, Paul isn’t declaring himself a vegetarian. He’s saying:

• Love doesn’t engage even in a legitimate action when offence is possible.
• Love will lay down its rights rather than cause harm.
• Because (1 Cor 13:7) ‘Love always protects.’

 

We are called to be Christ-like.

• Who had more rights than Jesus?
• Who could have called for 80,000 angels to save him from the cross?
• Who laid down his very life for his friends?
• Who bore our sins in his own body on the cross?
• Who said, ‘Love one another as I have loved you’?

Apparently, Bob Dylan once said, "I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom."

In Christ we have incredible freedom. But we are accountable for how we use our freedom.

Being right is never more important than doing right.

Summary

• Knowledge alone isn’t enough; [pick up the brick] love shows the better way.
• Idols count for nothing and God is all-in-all.
• Doing a genuinely OK thing can create a stumbling block for someone else who thinks it’s wrong.
• Being right is never more important than doing right.

The answer to the Corinthians’ question seems to be, In principle, it’s OK but whatever you feel at liberty to do, always consider the consequences for others. Let sacrificial love guide your actions.

In chapter 10, Paul puts it like this:

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble …

And with the supreme example of Jesus in our minds, let’s end this sermon with prayer.