The Limits of Our Liberty, Part 2
1 Corinthians 8:4-13
One of the things that our Lord does is teach us, and He teaches us through His apostles, and we're studying one of the letters that the Lord Himself wrote through the Apostle Paul. The letter is 1 Corinthians, and I'd like you to take your Bible now in hand and open it up and look at 1 Corinthians chapter 8. This wonderful letter, written to the church at Corinth to correct many of their problems, is really the Word of our Lord Jesus Christ to us, to His church. We're in the 8th chapter, and some folks have felt that maybe the 8th chapter wasn't really that relevant to us because of the uniqueness of the problem discussed; but if you were here last week, you recall that we introduced the thought that it is indeed relevant, if not in specific, the general principle that comes out of it is tremendously important.
I suppose not many of us, if, in fact, any of us is bothered by whether we eat ham or not; but that was a big problem in the church at Rome, as indicated in Romans 14 and 15; and I doubt really whether any of us is too concerned about eating meat that has been offered to an idol. That doesn't really seem a problem in our society. I'm not too sure we'd care much if it were; and since it isn't, it's not even relevant to us; but that was a major problem in the church at Corinth. Almost all of the meat that was purchased and provided for people to eat had been offered to a God in one way or another. Some of it had been offered as a sacrifice. Three parts: one would be burned to the god, one given to the priest, the third part taken home and eaten; and if you happened to be at somebody's house, you might be eating meat offered to an idol. The priest would take his third, go out the back of the temple, and put it in a butcher shop. You might be buying meat offered to an idol; and they also believed that demons liked to get in people by getting on their food and going in that way, as we said last time.
And...and so everybody would dedicate the meat that they would butcher to a god so that no demon would get on it, and that would prevent that. So almost every bit of meat that the Corinthians would buy, would be in some way or in some time dedicated to an idol; and so this became a problem. Having been saved out of paganism, having been saved out of idolatry, the new Christians wanted to avoid any contact with that old kind of life. They felt much too strongly tempted toward it, and they wanted to run from it. It's like an alcoholic who comes to Christ, and the best way for him to deal with drink is to stay as far away as he can. Or like somebody who is a...a criminal who becomes a Christian, staying as far away from old patterns and old friends and so forth as he can. His new life is so new that he must withdraw himself and turn away from that and have nothing to do with it.
Well, the Christians in Corinth were so strongly integrated into the idol worship of the age, that when they became believers, the tendency was to wanna run from everything that even related to that and, consequently, to stay away from any meat that under any condition had ever been offered to a god. Now that raises the question the Corinthians posed to Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 8, and it introduces to us the whole subject of matters that are in that gray area. The Bible did not forbid them to eat meat offered to an idol; and it didn't tell them to do it; so it was in that middle area where they had to make a decision about whether it was right or wrong; and we call this the gray area; and there are decisions in all of our lives that fall into that category. Some have chosen to call it the area of doubtful things. That is, we don't know. We have doubts about whether it's right or wrong; and it may vary from time to time, age to age, culture to culture, people to people, state to state even.
For example, as a boy, I remember the Baptist church that I attended took a stand against smoking; and that was a big issue; and they were always telling the young people not to smoke, that it was a sin to smoke, and you shouldn't smoke, and they had all kinds of reasons for that; and...and I can remember often we would have young peoples' gatherings; and they would tell us this. We'd go to the beach, for example. We'd have a beach party, and everybody'd be playing around the beach all day; and then at...we'd be swimming, having a great time. Then at night, we'd sit down around the campfire, and somebody'd give a speech on we shouldn't smoke; and they'd point around and, "See, those people are smoking, and we'd...this is not what God," and so forth and so on. And that was a very important thing in my young years - to kind of respond to that.
Then, for a while, I lived in the south; and in the south, I found that many churches where I visited and some where I would speak when I was just starting to preach as a very young man, had, as the chief source of industry, among all of the people of the congregation, tobacco. Everybody raised tobacco; and the preacher very frequently in the parsonage had a tobacco patch in his back yard; and I would go to that church. The preacher would come to the church, flip his cigarette in the bush, and go in a preach against mixed bathing...and, you see, they believed it was a sin to run around a beach, boys and girls, you know, with bathing suits on; and I agree some cases today with the kind of bathing suits, that it would be in many cases. You know, it's something I just threw on. Looks like you almost missed kind, you know. The...the facts are that from state to state, from time to time, culture to culture, you have very different standards about what is right and wrong.
Now, the Bible says nothing about whether or not boys and girls could swim together. It says nothing about smoking, other than Rachel lit off a camel, and that has nothing to do with smoking; but the Bible...you hadn't heard that. Oh, well, you can use that now. But the Bible...the Bible says nothing about either one of those things, so in any given society, in any given culture, in any given period of time, and under any given set of circumstances, that's a decision every Christian has to make for himself; and there are factors that contribute to that decision, as have been mentioned to you in the past, last week when we shared some of the guidelines for making those kinds of decisions.
Now, these gray area things can be social issues. They can be amusements. They can be pleasures. They can be habits. They can be many, many different things that we don't need to go into, because you'll find out what they are when you face them, and you can't find Scripture to go either way, and you're trying to make a decision.
Now, how does a Christian decide to do something or not to do something that he doesn't feel is wrong, because he's looked over the Bible and definitely it's not forbidden, and he doesn't know if it's right, because he's looked over the Bible, and it doesn't say it's righteous act to do it. So it fits a gray area. It's a doubtful thing. How does he decide?
Well, there are two extremes. The one extreme is to just make a list of rules; and, you know, there are some people who really love that. They...they feel much more comfortable in the kind of institutional Christianity where somebody puts a big list of rules; and all they have to do is conform to the rule. They've never internalized their Christian life anyway. They believe everything. They've never known how it is to really walk in the Spirit, to really grow in the Spirit, to really live a Spirit-controlled life. They're living in legalism, and they want somebody to say, "Do this. Don't do this. Do this. Don't do this," and they can conform to that little set of rules and convince themselves that that's the equivalent of spirituality.
That happens frequently. There are churches like that where there aren't any principles about how to live the Christian life. There are just lists of what you can't do; and there are some people who conform to that mentality, because it's so easy; and it's such an upfront, overt statement of your spirituality to be a not-doing-this person. Now that's legalism.
One Christian became weary of the struggle, and I read this week a statement that said this. "A group of church leaders should form a list of sinful activities, so the average Christian could know at a glance what is sin and what is not, and we could just follow the list." Now, there are some problems with that. No. 1, you could never get the church leaders to agree on what the list should include; and No. 2, it would set up a horrible standard of spirituality. The spiritual ones would be the ones who did what the list said, no matter what other circumstances there were involved; and legalism would become the spiritual standard, wouldn't it? And when that happens, then you stifle liberty. You take over the work of the Holy Spirit. You ignore the conscience of a believer, and you set a false standard for spirituality and produce hypocrisy.
That's not gonna work; and, yet, there are Christians who live that way. They feel that their spirituality is based upon those areas that they do or do not do, and they believe that if they ever went to a movie, all they would do would be to get in the theater and sit down, and the Rapture would occur, and they'd have to face the Lord because they were taken at the theater. They would never dance or play cards or some Christians would never wanna sip a cup of wine or...or whatever it might be, because that would be unspiritual, and that would...that's an absolute with them...
Some of them are incredible. Some of the absolutes. It's been said by some that, if they were on the desert and couldn't get anything to drink and were dying, and someone offered them an alcoholic beverage, they would refuse it, because God would be displeased. Now, friends...that's a little much, and I'm not sure if they were on that desert and that did happen that they would refuse it. You know, you can't judge spirituality by what people don't do.
Dr. Homer Hammontree used to say, "There is a city that has 2 million inhabitants. None of them smoke, none of them drink, not one of them attends movies, none of them ever dances, none of them plays cards. Not one of them, however, has a bit of spiritual life. The city he was speaking of was the Greenwood Hills Cemetery in New York...Yeah, well, you see, what they don't do has absolutely no relationship to anything...Refraining from doing things is not spirituality. Walking in the Spirit is spirituality. That's the positive, so we don't wanna just set up lega...people ask me, say, "Why doesn't Grace Church have a list of things?" Why should we play the Holy Spirit? Why should we not let you internalize your Christian life and walk with the Spirit as the Spirit of God directs you?
I mean there was nothing Satan would love better than to hear us pray like this. Remember the Pharisee? "Lord, I thank you that I'm not like other men who smoke, drink, play cards, etc., etc., etc., like that poor sinner over there who drinks wine." You see, that kind of mentality is hypocrisy. That's Phariseeism, because that is not the standard. There are plenty of people who don't do those things, but they're not spiritual. They're dead. That's not the issue.
Now, on the other hand, you have what I call libertinism. That's the other gamut. Now, you can come to the gray area, and you can say, "Well, here's all this stuff that I could or couldn't do; and since I'm free in Christ, I'll just do it all. It isn't forbidden anyway, right? So I'll just do every bit of it; and I'm not gonna worry about it. I mean I'm free in Christ. Everything's permitted. There are no other considerations than my liberty." Is that the only consideration?
Oh, not according to 1 Corinthians 8. That's where we come. Paul says, "There is one great principle that limits our liberty, and it is the word love." You can't just say, "Because it isn't forbidden, I can do it." There's a higher consideration than that, and that is love. Love sets limits on liberty, and this is the objective of 1 Corinthians chapter 8.
Now, lemme give you the problem. Here was the potential in the city of Corinth to eat things offered to idols. The strong Christians, the mature Christians, the ones feeling their spiritual oats, were saying, "What's the diff? We're eating." They're writing Paul, and they're saying, "Hey, Paul, what about things offered to idols? We've decided that we can just eat up. We're free in Christ. Live it up. Eat whatever you want. That's our philosophy." And so Paul responds to them by saying, "There is something more important than your liberty, and that is love."
Now, the Corinthians gave Paul three reasons, and they're on your outline there, so you can follow along. Three reasons the Corinthians said why they felt they could do anything they wanted in the gray area, why they could eat meat offered to idols. Reason No. 1, "We have all knowledge, and we've studied the problem, and the Bible doesn't forbid it. Our knowledge tells us it's okay." Two, "An idol isn't anything anyway. An idol is nothing...verse 4 says...So it isn't offered to anything anyway." Third, "God doesn't care what we eat." Verse 8.
"So on those three bases, we have knowledge, and it isn't forbidden according to our knowledge of the Scripture. An idol isn't anything away, so what's the difference, and God could care less about what we eat. So because we've come to those three reasonings, we've decided to go ahead and live it up, and we're just eating away."
Now, Paul is gonna approach all three of those. Now, we... we went into the last one last time. The first one is, "We know we all have knowledge." Look at verse 1 to 3, and I'll just read it to you. "As touching things offered to idols or meat sacrificed to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. I agree with you. We study the Scripture, and it doesn't forbid it. We know that. It is not forbidden. But remember this, knowledge alone does...what?...puffs up, and love...what?...builds up."
So he says, "It isn't enough to just say you know. There's got to be more. There's got to be love. If you think you know anything...in verse 2...you really don't know what you oughta know; and what you oughta know is all about love," which he illustrates in verse 3. "You have to go beyond knowledge to love. It isn't enough to say, 'We've studied the problem, folks, and we know what the Scripture says, and it doesn't say anything against it, so let's eat.' Hey, you haven't thought about love. You may know something isn't evil. You may know that, in itself, it isn't evil. You may know that it is not something forbidden by God; but knowledge is not enough. You've gotta love. You've got..."
We say, "What do you mean by that?" You've gotta consider somebody else, how it's gonna affect them. Is this a loving act toward another brother? What if it offends him?...What if it hurts his conscience? Then you have to limit your liberty...
Paul said, remember in 1 Corinthians 13, "I know...I have all knowledge and know all mysteries and have not love, I am... what?...nothing. I'm nothing. I can't live on knowledge alone. I can't say, 'Hey, what do I care what anybody thinks? What do I care about you? What do I care how it affects you? I have liberty, and I studied my Bible. It doesn't forbid it. I'm gonna live it up.'"
Wait a minute. You haven't thought about love? Paul said, "If you do that, don't you realize that'll hurt your brother, 'cause he'll be offended?" Now let's develop that as we look at the second reason in verse 4 and pick it up where we left off. Verse 4, here's their second reason. "We know that an idol is nothing, and this is solid." Man, this is the best theology in the passage. It's just really beautiful. Look what he said. "Now, as concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is not other God but One." He says, "Look, I agree with you. In regard to this eating thing, we know this. That an idol is nothing in the world."
Literally, it says, "There is no such thing as an idol in the world. There is no such thing in the whole world as an idol." In other words, nobody's home. Those gods aren't gods at all. There's nobody there...Now this is great theology. I remember when I was in Hawaii, I was working on the Galatians commentary this week and reading that illustration I used when I taught Galatians; and I went in that Buddhist temple; and there was that little lady bowing down to this brass Buddha, great big, fat, ugly Buddha; and she was bowing down and throwing little rocks. She had like dice and rolling out little rocks; and then they would fall a certain way; and I suppose it was sort of an answer from the God how the rocks configure; but rolling out the rocks, you know, and I watched and I watched, and she would bow, you know, and all. And I kept saying to myself, "Lady, nobody's home. There is nobody there." You know, you wanna go up and knock on this stomach and say, "Here, nobody there. No, no, nobody home."
Here is this little lady bowing down to nothing, rolling out her little rocks to nothing; and there was all kinds of food at his feet. All kinds of people had brought food, and they kept putting it there. There wasn't anybody there...nothing, and that's precisely the argument of verse 4. Why not eat? There's nobody there anyway. The stuff that they bring in and offer to an idol, the idol can't respond, because there is no god there. None at all.
Oh, they think there are many gods...verse 5. "There be that are called 'gods,' they call 'em gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are "gods" many and "lords" many." According to them, they're all over the place...But to us, verse 6, "there is but...what?...one God." What's the diff? Boy, that's good theology. Man, it's good theology.
You know, Paul had preached this. He had to agree with it. Acts 19:26, I'll just read it. He says, this is, of course, in Ephesus when the riot broke out, because of what happened and burning all of their gods and everything. Verse 26, "Moreover, you see and hear that, not alone at Ephesus but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away many people, saying that they are no gods which are made with hands." In other words, there's nothing there. They are no gods. That's Paul's message.
There's a great statement on that in Psalm 115 that all of us should really know well. It's from verses, well, we'll start in verse 3. "Our God is in the heavens...now listen...Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands...now listen to this tremendous description of an idol...They have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not. They have ears, but they hear not; noses have they, but they smell not. They have hands, but they handle not; feet have they, but they walk not; neither speak they through their throat. They who make them are like unto them." That's a little bit sarcastic. They're about..."The people who make 'em are as dumb as the gods are. So is everyone who trusts in them."
You know, they're building one of those Buddhist things right down here; and they're all down there running around, bowing down to nobody. Nobody's home. The world thinks there are many gods...in verse 5...the Romans had so many gods they said that it was easier to find a God in Athens than it was a man."
Isaiah 44, and, of course, from Isaiah 40 on, you have so many great statements of the character of God; but Isaiah 44:8. It says, "Fear not, neither be afraid. Have not I told you and declared? You are even My witnesses. Is there a God beside Me? Yea, there is no God. I know not any. They that make a carved image are all of them vanity, and their delectable things shall not profit. And they are their own witnesses. They see not nor know, that they may be ashamed. Who hath formed a god, or melted and cast an image that is profitable for nothing?"
There's nobody there. Jeremiah 10:14 says the same thing. Over in the little Book of Habakkuk, an interesting statement in 2:19, "Woe to him that says to the wood, 'Awake!' To the dumb stone, 'Arise, it shall teach!' Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all within it." I love this next one, "But the Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him." There's a big difference. Nobody's home. False gods. Nobody there. No reality.
Now, the argument then is, "What's the difference if we eat meat offered to idols when the idol isn't there?" There is nobody there anyway; and that's a pretty good argument. I like it. Solid theology. They're really reiterating the Shema of Israel, "The Lord our God is...what?...one Lord." Great statement. Why hassle?
Now, later, we're gonna find out, as we get into chapter 10, that demons would impersonate the gods that they thought were there, and then convince them that there was a supernatural entity there; but the gods they thought were there weren't there. There were no true gods there. They believed that when you worship a god, when you made a sacrifice, you commune by the smoke that went off the sacrifice. You were communing with that god; and the Corinthians said, "But there are no gods, so what's the difference?" They were dead right. They were absolutely right. Their knowledge can't be argued. They just think there are many gods.
Verse 6, this great, great statement, but to us or for us the pagan religion is in verse 5. The Christian in verse 6. "But for us there is but one God...and who is He?...He is the Father. The Father from whom all things exist, and...we in Him, and...this is beautiful, look at it...one Lord...who is He?...Jesus Christ through whom all things exist and we by Him." Now, he's simply reiterating the great statement of the foundation of the Christian faith. One God. "One God, the Father from whom are all things, and for whom we exist," literally. From whom, now watch it. Here's "God the Father from whom everything comes to us and for whom we exist." God comes to us, and we come back to His presence, glorifying Him.
Now, the agency. One Lord, who is it? Jesus Christ, through whom all things exist, and through whom we exist. What is he saying? He's simply saying, God, the Source, coming to us. We going back to Him. Christ, the agency. God came to us in Christ. We go back to God through Christ. The through is the key in defining Christ. God, the ultimate and only source, and Christ, the agent.
So this is a great statement. We could spend tremendous amount of time on it, but we won't for the sake of getting the argument of the passage. He's simply saying here, "I agree with you that there's nobody there anyway. There's only one God, and that settles it, and if that's the case, man, we really might as well eat up. That's a great argument. Really a potent argument. I mean how can you argue with it? Offering something to an idol is absolutely nothing, doesn't mean anything...But Paul isn't finished. Look at verse 7. Now here's his response to their reasoning. "However, with as good an argument as that is... listen...however, there is not in every man that knowledge."
Now stop there for a second. Everybody doesn't yet have that knowledge, that...what knowledge? That idols are nothing. Now, they may have it in their heads. They had been taught the same basic truth, but they don't have an inner understanding of it. Put it this way, that knowledge has not yet been emotionally integrated into the pattern of their living. You know, you can know something in your head that doesn't really get to you yet to make a difference in your life.
Let's say you got a guy here, and he's 35 years old. We'll take an age that's right in the prime of life, and...or 36, somewhere around there. And here's this guy, and he's been living for 35 years in a pagan situation. Every day of his conscious life, fifty first could apprehend and comprehend anything. He knew there were gods. There was mother and dad and there were the people around him, and there was gods. Gods everywhere up and down the streets, all over the temples, proliferating everywhere, all over the house. They had 'em over the portals of the doors. They had 'em in the rooms of the house. They had 'em in the columns on the street. You can see some of the ruins in parts of the Roman world, walking down some of those old Roman streets. They're just strewn with statues of gods, everywhere; and so here...here's this guy, all his life, that's all he's known. He's bowed down. He's seen people give testimonials to the gods. He's seen catastrophes come and people attribute them to the gods. He's seen horrible, filthy, pagan orgies going on in the name of the gods, this whole kind of life.
All of a sudden, he becomes a Christian...and then he's saved out of this, and his commitment to Christ is so whole and so beautiful and so fresh and so wonderful and so different that he says, "Man, I don't want anything to do with that vile, evil, life with those false gods." Somebody says, "But there are no real gods there." Well, he may...he may hear that in his mind, but he'll never be able to say, without some time to mature and understand it, "Oh, yeah, that's right. They aren't there at all, are they?" No, too much involvement. Too long has he been intimate with them. Too long has he moved in and among that whole false system to...to emotionally have integrated into his attitude that there are no other gods. That's gonna take time... and that's precisely what Paul is saying.
"Yeah, it's fine to say an idol is nothing, but not everybody understands that, really. Not everybody can feel that, and you can run out and eat up all you want, but that guy's gonna go take one bite, and he's gonna say, "Ooh, this is being offered to Bacchus, that vile, rotten, despicable God," you know; and he's gonna feel guilty and sinful; and it's gonna destroy his personality. It's gonna destroy his fellowship with God. Don't do it. That's the point...
Now, the conscience of some has not yet grown up to understand the liberty. They are weak. They're immature. They're over-scrupulous. They're somewhat legalistic. They're not free to grasp their liberties, and so you don't do it...Now, the weaker brother knows there's only one true God. He knows it in his head; but he's not able to let go of a lifetime of belief. He's not able to just say, "They're not real," and really, really mean and believe it, because it's just too quick, too sudden. He has to grow into that comprehension.
And so look at verse 7. "For some, with conscience of the idol unto this hour, eat it as a thing offered unto an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled." Now notice the phrase "conscience of the idol." The word conscience is not the best translation. It should be translated one of two ways. Maybe both of them together. It means intimacy, and it means being accustomed to. Lemme put it together and read this way. "For some, who are accustomed to being intimate with an idol," you see? Some people are so accustomed to this intimate life of devotion to idols, long accustomed to this, and notice in verse 7, "unto this hour"; and here's the idea that they are just new. That they...it's just right till now that they've still been hung on this. Maybe they've been saved a little while; but, even until then, they're still holding some of those old associations and thoughts, even though they're Christian. They can't shake the feeling that an idol is something real and...and it would be wrong to do anything at all connected with idol worship.
Now watch. With this feeling, if they go ahead and, verse 7, "eat it as a thing offered to an idol, their conscience, because it is still so weak, will be...what?...defiled." Now, the man who eats...is gonna...defile his conscience if he believes it's wrong. You know what...what I mean by that? His conscience tells him, "Don't do that." That little voice in there, "Don't do that. That's...that's a part of paganism. You can't touch that. That's a part of that stuff offered to that false God." His conscience tells him not to do it; but he sees everybody do it; so he goes and does it.
You know what happens? Immediately, his conscience is defiled. What does that mean? His conscience begins to beat on him. His conscience begins to make him feel sinful. It begins to make him feel guilty. It begins to make him feel condemned. It begins to make him feel God has failed him. It makes him have hatred and resentment toward the Christian brother who set the pattern that he followed. It creates division in the body. It pushes him deeper into legalism, deeper into weakness, deeper into sorrow; and it may tempt him because, if he can't handle even the meat, maybe when he begins to indulge in that, he'll get caught up in the whole orgy that goes with the eating of the meat; and he's in a terrible situation of falling into sin, just because he violated that conscience that wasn't yet liberated.
"You're better off...says Paul...to let that guy live by his conscience, even if it's confining him." Better for him to avoid it until his conscience is liberated. Now, Romans says the same thing, and it's very explicit. Romans 14:23, listen. "He that doubts is condemned if he eats, because he doesn't eat believing." He condemns himself. The doubter goes ahead and does it; and he heaps guilt and condemnation and sorrow and bitterness and resentment and antagonism toward those who set the example for him. So if it's gonna be a problem for you, he says, don't do it; and if it's a problem for somebody around you, don't you do it, because