Faith Baptist Church
4258 Botetourt Road
Fincastle, Virginia 24090
(540) 473-2325
We spoke last week concerning the believer’s liberty in Christ and in that message I made mention that some believers have a hard time accepting their liberty. They do not know how to manage their personal freedom in Christ yet. This soul freedom comes with spiritual maturity where you have the ability to bend without breaking. In this Christian liberty you are not guilt ridden over your past because you know the grace of God is greater than all your sin. You are also not agitated over the sins or uncertain things some Christians do. In your spiritual maturity you have learned to look to the Lord and his word for your peace, not the lives of others. This virtue love produced by God in the believer’s spiritual maturity doesn’t condone sin, but it doesn’t dwell on the imperfections of others.
Now on the other hand, we mentioned those Christians who carry their liberty in the Lord too far and abuse their freedom in Christ.
I Cor.8:1-13
There can come a time in our relationship with believers when we will offend and when we do we must be mature enough to apologize. One such example is given by the Apostle Paul. It was common in Corinth for believers to buy their steaks at a local market. The choicest steaks were sometimes sold to the market by the temples in Corinth. Meat was sometimes consumed in pagan temple celebrations and bad things went on in these temples besides offering animals as sacrifices to the gods. Prostitution, as a pagan form of worship, took place in these temples. Blasphemy against all that was holy was common in these temples. Sometimes left over meat was taken home and it was offered to guest. Sometimes the guest was a family member who was also a believer in Christ.
v.1 Paul tells us that we all know some things are bad, and are unacceptable. This knowledge (gnosis) as factual as it was, could be exercised in such a way that it could trip up the immature believer. This is why Paul says factual knowledge alone puffs up the soul, but if we exercise agape, virtue love we can speak or act toward others with God’s love, and not judge them. The more knowledgeable believer knew meat was meat regardless of where it came from; that God made the animal and no pagan ritual could change that, but the immature believer was turned off because this meat came from a pagan temple.
This awkward situation would come up when they sat down to eat at a family gathering if the meat had come through the pagan temple. For the immature believer who was more taken up with the avenue by which this food traveled than the God who created the animal for food, he was offended by this food. And for the more mature believer who knew the food was just food any way you served it, it was hard for him to turn down it down.
v.2-3 If any man thinks [dokeo - subjective knowledge] that he knows ( hoida - has all the facts in a case), he knoweth nothing (ginosko - he is still short of all the facts) he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. Some of the believers in Corinth were prejudging other believers for eating this meat offered to idols. They subjectively assumed those believers who ate this meat knew where this food came from, or that they ate it to tease them. The offended believers were the weaker believers. They thought those who ate this meat were either callused or sinful. Please understand that being the weaker believer does not mean this believer is carnal per se.
No believer whether he is a babe, adolescent or mature, is out of fellowship with the Lord if he or she has not knowingly sinned.
When the weaker believer has judged without having all the facts he is wrong though. And when we are short on biblical faith we will have a tendency to judge others without all the facts. Since some of the saints were not offended by where this meat came from, they ate it with a clear conscience.
They didn’t know it offended other believers, but this was having a negative effect on their testimony with other believers. And as ambassadors for Christ those who got their meat at the temple markets were told by Paul to stop eating this meat and not to get mad at those who were foolishly judging them.
v. 4-6 Paul said we know an idol is nothing in the world and that there is no other God but one. That Christ made the worlds including those meats offered to idols.
Paul didn’t deny the blasphemy of idolatry, but he says idols are not real, God is real.
v. 7 However, not every man understands this. Some of the Corinthian believers before salvation ate this meat following worship of these idols. This meat brought back memories and other practices not proper for godly living and when they saw non-offended believers eat this meat they thought they had gone back into their former idolatrous practices. Being weak believers, some of them were tempted to do more than just eat the meat offered to idols, but to go visit the temple prostitutes as well. So Paul said to the stronger believers who knew an idol was nothing, do not eat this meat, because doing so is confusing the weaker believer and his conscience is being defiled.
v.8-9 Paul said eating this meat will in no way advance our walk with the Lord, it will only confuse the less mature believer and cause a stumbling block to them that are weak.
When we do anything in front of a believer and we know that it offends then we are abusing our liberty; our freedom in grace in Christ. And of course sinning on our part is never a liberty, it is carnality. Paul said in Rom.6:1 that we should never sin that grace should abound. We are never walking with the Lord if we are committing known sin.
But there are things that are not wrong that offend those who think it is.
I know we are not to let others run our lives and there is the tendency on the mature believer’s part to tell the weaker believer, grow up. But this is not what the Lord wants from us. Some times as the stronger believer we have to bend with the needs of the weaker so they will not get tripped up. When they grow up in Christ they will see the difference between those things that offend God and those things that do not. Bible doctrine clarifies those things that offend God and this is another reason we need as much Bible truth taught and learned as possible, Ps.119:11.
Paul uses this example of showing virtue love as a good ambassador for Jesus Christ.
v.10-13 We do not want to see our brother or sister tripped up for whom Christ died. To knowingly wound the conscience of an immature believer and do so consistently, [present tense] is to sin against Christ.
Our goal is to edify others, not tear them down. Our liberty in Christ was never given to us as a license to sin against others. Some of the saints had, either the gall to go eat at the temple restaurant knowing it offended some, or to unconsciously go there to eat, which if the weaker believer saw it he might partake of more than a choice steaks.
Gal.5:13 “For brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love [agape] serve one another.”
Virtue love mixed with humility and spiritual maturity is the key to understanding our liberty in Christ. When God gives you an inch of liberty, please do not take a mile. Christian liberty is given is grace, but our liberty is not critical to our happiness as Christians. It is our relationship and our growing personal fellowship with the Lord that brings about our inner happiness. It is never about what we can or cannot get away with.