1
Corinthians 8
Vs. 6-7: “Yet for us there
is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him;
and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him. However not all men have this knowledge…”
Paul is
confronting the Corinthian Christians about their disunity again. This time it
seems the disunity arose because the Corinthians consider themselves more
knowledgeable and wiser than they do other people. Paul has dealt with them
about this issue before. The example Paul speaks to them about is the act of eating
food offered to idols. Is it head knowledge that should lead when we interact
with people or heart knowledge?
Knowledge,
solely as knowledge for knowledge sake is worth nothing. Knowledge without the
acknowledgement that all knowledge comes from God makes one boastful and proud,
arrogant. This knowledge does nothing for others except possibly put others
down, beneath one’s feet in the knowledge holders mind, actions, and attitude.
Knowledge acknowledged as being from God carries with it the love by which God
imparts/shares the knowledge. This is true knowledge, that which shares not
only the head knowledge/information, but shares the love from which it was
derived, for the purpose of sustaining and improving life and for showing God’s
love and care of humanity. Knowledge without this love is, as Paul later says, “a
noisy gong and a clanging symbol” (1 Corinthians 13:1).
This passage
appears to be about food offered to idols, and for the moment in which Paul is
speaking to the Corinthians, this was an issue. The underlying lesson though is
the acquisition of knowledge, the holding of knowledge, and the implementing of
knowledge upon our fellow human so that they know they are not as knowledgeable
or so that they are caused to falter in what they believe. The attitude in which
this is done is not love or care for our fellow humans. God’s knowledge, as we
saw in chapters 1-3 of 1 Corinthians is wiser than that of humans. His strength
is stronger that humans. His power is stronger than humans are. He exercises
all of these in means of love toward us because He created us to be in a love
relationship with Him. Since true knowledge comes from God, to withhold the
love, which was also a part of true knowledge, when applying knowledge corrupts
the knowledge and drops the value of it to the levels of humanity. It makes it
not as pure and useful as God intentioned. The attitude of the human who uses
knowledge without love affects/corrupts its use so that it becomes a prideful
thing that reduces the value of the other human(s) to which it was aimed.
Paul uses the situation
of a follower of Christ eating meat that was offered to idols. For Christians,
we know there are no other gods; therefore, the meat is uncorrupted. However,
for a person who is either not a Christian or is a new or weak Christian,
eating meat they considered sacred puts a wedge or stumbling block between you
and them, and you as the Christian, lose credibility so that they will listen
hesitantly and with ambivalence anything you may say about the true God. Your
knowledge, though the head knowledge is correct, has lost its heart value and
has become only as great as the person revealing the knowledge. The love that
the knowledge was originally imbued with was not shared because the person
eating the sacred meat did not care to concern themselves with the god-believing
person’s culture and ideas of faith.
As believers
in Jesus Christ who have received His love, forgiveness, and salvation, we
cannot allow ourselves to run over people with our newfound freedom from the constraints
Satan put upon us while we walked with the world. We must recognize continually
that Jesus came to us in love and we must meet the people of the world with
love. Jesus imparted the knowledge of God’s plan for salvation for humankind by
words and by the extreme action, giving up His life to die for us. We cannot
ignore nor negate this when we live in the world. That would mean we are not
living as Jesus lived here on earth. We must at all times live our freedom in
and through the love that comes from the Jesus' sacrificial living and dying
for our salvation. You see, if God had only “known” how to save us and had not
acted upon it, He would have shown Himself to be without love. We know this is
not true of God. One of the strongest characteristics we see in God is His love.
It is through this love that so many people throughout history have been drawn
to God. Because of His love, which is His character, He created us. Because of
His love, He had mercy upon humanity many times over the millenniums. Because
of His love, He provided a final way for all of us to come into a perfect,
sinless relationship with Him. This Way was through the life, death, and
resurrection of His only Son, Jesus Christ. God did not divorce love from
plan/knowledge. His plan was made because of His love.
With this
example, when we divorce love from knowledge, we are saying that our plan is
better that God’s plan. We are saying that we know best. The result is that we
alienate ourselves from other people with our arrogance. We alienate others
from God with our flawed wisdom. What did Paul say? “For since in the wisdom of God the world
through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the
foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe” (1 Corinthians
1:21 NASB). It is only when love is the reason that knowledge has power. It is
only when love is the motivator that knowledge is true knowledge and wisdom. Love
was the reason God created us. Love was the reason that God made another plan for
humankind to be in a relationship with Him. Paul goes on to say in 1
Corinthians 1:27-30,
God has chosen
the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak
things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things
of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that
He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God. But by
His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and
righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is
written, "LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD. (NASB)
When we interact with others and when we
impart our knowledge, we have a question to ask ourselves first; am I speaking to
be heard and thought to be knowledgeable? If our motivation is to build
ourselves up in the eyes of others, love of humankind is not our goal. We have
put love of our ourselves higher than our love for God or others. In 1
Corinthians 13, Paul tells us what true love is.
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous ; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly
; it does not seek its own, is not provoked,
does not take into account a wrong
suffered, does not rejoice
in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth ; bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.
Love never fails; but now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love. (vs. 4-8a, 13 NASB)
If we truly as
living as Christians, we should be living with a heart knowledge. It should be
evident in the way we interact with people. Our heart and God’s heart should be
one and be visible as we speak and act in this world. If love is not in our
knowledge as we act and speak, we are sinning against and harming others. We
are also hindering their belief in God by providing a “stumbling block”
(chapter 8:9). When we sin against another human, we are sinning against
Christ, too (vs. chapter 8:12). We each must come to the point where we
consider if what we say or do is imparting the love of God along with knowledge.
If we are not considering the other person’s being and place in this world, we
are not interacting with them in love. We could cause them to stumble in their
search for God or in their growth as a Christian. The old saying carries some
truth; it is more important to see and hear a person in their situation, since
we have two eyes and two ears, than to speak, since we have only one mouth. The
question then is am I relating with others just to be seen as more
knowledgeable or as one who loves them and wants to impart true knowledge and
wisdom, which comes with love from God?
