“These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come.” (1 Corinthians 10:11)

In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul is concerned that the Christians of Corinth will lose their faith. He is worried that some of them are so complacent about the strength of their own faith, that they are in danger of slipping into idolatry without realising the danger.

Warning Signs

Sometimes warning signs make me laugh.

On Wednesday I saw a warning sign on Broadstairs beach:

“Caution, Plant and vehicles moving!”

I could see the moving JCB digger, but I couldn’t see any moving plants.

Or here is one from when my children were younger:

“Warning free range children!”

I thought it was only chickens that were free range!

Or what about this particularly worrying sign I found online, which I hope is a joke:

“Warning: Unattended children will be captured and used for medical experiments!”

Of course warning signs are no laughing matter. They have an important purpose, to alert us to the dangers that lurk, to call us to be careful and to avoid dangers that might otherwise harm or kill us.

Warnings for the Christian

One role that the Bible plays for us as Christians, is to lay down warning signs for life. It says in verse 11, talking about the Bible stories just referred to:

“These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us…”

During the week some of our groups looked at our reading from the Bible this Sunday and submitted some questions about it. One group asked a fairly basic question based on the verse that comes just after our reading:

• What is a mature or sensible Christian? (vs. 15)

Is it someone who has been a Christian for a while? Attends church regularly? Reads their Bible a lot? Prays?

One way of answering that is to ask who would you say is a sensible driver. Probably your answer would include, someone who notices the warning signs on the road and drives carefully in response.

In the same way a ‘sensible Christian’ is someone who understands the warnings given by the Bible and lives out their Christian life taking them into account.

But many non-Christians and indeed many Christians struggle to see how the Bible fits together. Indeed, a couple of our groups raised questions along the lines of:

• How do we reconcile God’s acts of judgement in the Old Testament with the emphasis on God’s love in the New Testament?

The Old Testament is the part of the Bible that tells of the history of God and his people before Jesus came. Whilst the New Testament tells us about Jesus and the people of God from then on.

To many it feels like the Old Testament is full of God’s judgement, whilst the New Testament talks about his love. So, for example, verse 6 of our reading, which refers back to the Old Testament story says:

“Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.”

That certainly sounds like a lot of judgement!

The first thing to say is that a more careful reading of the Old Testament shows that there is a lot about God’s love, compassion and faithfulness, not just his judgement.

Also, a careful reading of the New Testament, shows that God is still spoken of as judge and Jesus more than anyone else warns people about being shut out of heaven and stuck in hell.

Secondly, love and judgement are not mutually exclusive. A parent who loves their child will punish them when they do wrong out of love, because they want them to grow up into a good person. Also, when people commit acts of evil, we will want them punished to discourage others from doing the same. We do this to protect the community at large. The punishment of criminals is done out of love for the wider community. True love has to involve judgement when confronted by wrongdoing.

Thirdly, if as Paul suggests here the acts of judgement are to serve as warnings for God’s people, then inevitably there will be more judgement at the start of the story, with God hoping that future generations will learn the lessons without having to face judgement themselves.

The God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament and that assumption is everywhere in the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus. As Christians we are not to be embarrassed by the Old Testament, but rather we are to learn from it as part of our Spiritual heritage. Which is just what Paul in his writing here wants us to do.

By linking the Christian life today, with the stories of the people of God led by Moses, he sets up a helpful parallel that can help us last as Christians and so experience the fulness of God’s love.

So let’s try to get to grips with what he is saying.

The Christian Life and the Biblical Story

Blessings for All

God Saves

Paul takes us right back to the story of God’s rescue of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. There they were oppressed by the Egyptians and forced to do hard labour and even had their newborn boys killed in an attempt to control their population growth. They were desperate to be rescued, so God sent Moses to lead them out and he sent ten horrible plagues on Pharaoh the king of Egypt to force him to let the people go.

When he finally did, God led them out by a cloud and through the Red Sea to escape from the Egyptian army. Israel were freed from being slaves and from the oppression of the Egyptians. God did that freely and lovingly for all who fled Egypt through the Red Sea.

In our reading, Paul in alluding to this story, says ALL the Israelites were baptised into Moses. By using the word, ‘baptised’ he links the story of Israel under Moses, to the story of Christians under Christ.

In a parallel way Jesus has rescued us not from slavery to a human king or power, but from the power of our own sin or wickedness and death. He did that through his death and resurrection. In baptism we are becoming one of the people who Jesus saves.

God Provides

But Paul also reminds us that once Israel were in the wilderness, on their journey to the Promised Land, where they could settle, that although it was tough and difficult, God provided for them. He did this miraculously or spiritually through the provision of a daily supply of food called Manna and by bringing water miraculously out of a rock. Again ALL the Israelites received this support freely out of God’s love for them.

Paul again links this to the Christian life, with the rather weird statement: “Christ is the rock.”  What he means is something like just as God provided water for the Israelites from a rock in the wilderness, so Christ supports and helps us as Christians through life now. Again God does that freely for ALL who come to him out of love.

Loss for Some

Paul in writing to the Corinthians does not want them to lose out on God’s blessings. So he reminds them of the warning stories from the Old Testament about those who although they seemed to have had God’s salvation and blessing, lost it because ‘they set their heart on wicked things.’

We haven’t time to explore the stories he refers to in detail, but the wickedness of their hearts was expressed in two fundamental ways.

Failure of Loyalty

But although ALL the baptised receive these blessings, many lose out. The warnings are for us not to lose out.

The first was a failure of loyalty to the God who had done so much to save them. Instead of making him their one and only God, they fell into the worship of other gods, what we call idolatry.

This leads to another question from one of the groups:

• What idolatry do we need to flee from today?

Idolatry is something that we allow to take the place of God in our lives. To become the guiding principle by which we live, to be the thing we look to for our ultimate salvation or provision.

In our world, that tends not to be idols worshipped in temples, as it was for the Corinthians Paul was writing to, but things like love of money or pursuing sexual pleasure or putting our trust in some man-made idea, organisation or leader.

At first glance they can seem more appealing, more immediate, more real even than the true and living God, but in the end the salvation and provision they offer is empty and meaningless. Only the God of Jesus Christ can truly satisfy. To abandon him, to risk his wrath and lose the good blessings won for us by Jesus is foolishness indeed.

Let us heed the warning, and remain loyal to the God who truly love us.

Failure of Trust

The second problem was to do with a failure to trust in the God who saved them and provided for them. In verse 10 it says, they grumbled. This led to another question from one of the groups:

• What’s wrong with grumbling? Is it ever legitimate for Christians to complain? (vs. 10)

Well to answer that question we need to look back at the stories of the Old Testament and see what the Israelites were getting wrong when they were grumbling.

Despite seeing the amazing rescue God had given them, they failed to believe God could provide, they looked back at their old life in Egypt and forgetting the slavery and oppression remembered the better food. They looked forward to the life in the promised land that God was leading them toand did not believe they would be able to defeat the people there at the time. So, they grumbled against God and against Moses.

This grumbling was an attitude of the heart that had fundamentally given up on trusting in God. So, yes complaining is fine for Christians, but when it becomes a heart attitude that fails to trust God, then it becomes an insult to God and a failure of faith, which is a disaster.

Why? Because it is through faith in God’s goodness, salvation and provision that we are saved. When we stop trusting in God’s goodness, then we let go of that salvation.

These then are serious warnings for all Christians. You may be baptised, you may have joined a church, you may call yourself a Christian, but true Christians are those whose hearts remain loyal to and keep trusting in Jesus to the end.

God saves us freely and baptism is a sign of taking hold of God’s act of amazing grace. We don’t have to prove ourselves to God to be saved, but we do have to remain loyal and keep trusting if we are to truly reap the blessings promised in baptism.

That sounds hard. But as it says in verse 13, God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. There will always be a way to remain loyal and trust in him that is within our grasp. But we cannot be complacent, we need to heed the warnings, we need to be sensible Christians and remain loyal to and keep trusting in Jesus.

“Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone to win as many as possible.” (1 Corinthians 9:19)

Paul is concerned to win. But he is not after the prestige of winning for himself. His concern is to win people for Christ. That is to share the good news or gospel of God’s salvation through Jesus, so that they might believe and so be forgiven for their sins, be reconciled to God and receive the gift of eternal life. When this happens, there is a sense of success for Paul and rejoicing in heaven, but the greatest reward goes to the one who has been won for Christ.

What prize are you after?

It’s great to win prizes.

I was never much good at sport, often coming last in races on school sport’s day and only being picked for sports teams when they were really desperate! I was never going to win a sporting prize at school.

But, I did discover I was pretty good at chess. I even won a prize as best West Sussex under 14 in one competition. But even with chess, I was never going to win any really fantastic prizes. When I was a Sixth Former, I was asked to play for Sussex under 18s twice. Both times I lost – once to a twelve year old! Then when I went to university, I had a friend who played for the Greek chess team. He could quite easily wipe the board with me!!

I was good at chess – but not that good! To do really well at chess or any sport, you need both abundant talent and dedicated training. It turned out I had some talent, and a little bit of training – but not enough of either to become a really top notch player!

In the NIV version at the end of the reading, Paul talks about ‘not being disqualified for the prize.’ A little earlier he talked about the prize that sportspeople of his day went for – a crown.

In Greece in the first century, there were four great sporting events that people from all over Greece travelled to. The most famous was the Olympic Games at Olympia, but the second most famous one was the Isthmus Games, which were held in a stadium only six miles from Corinth. The first readers of Paul’s letter, would have been very familiar with athletes racing against each other and other competitive sports taking place, with the athletes aiming to become top notch, to win first prize. And what they won in those days was not a gold medal like today, but a crown made up from pine leaves covered in plaster.

It was a great symbol of accomplishment and honour. But of course, it  was not a crown that lasted. The leaves would soon have withered and after a few years the crown would have crumbled.

Paul, however, says that as Christians our aim is not to win that kind of crown – one that soon falls apart. Our aim is a crown that will last forever.

What is the prize we are seeking to win? (9:27)

One of the groups who looked at the passage this week were not sure what this referred to and asked, “What is the prize we are seeking to win?” What is the everlasting crown that Paul is referring to? It’s a good question.

It may be the salvation won for us by Christ, that we will receive on the last day. Paul certainly talks about the crown in that way in other places.

Yet, Paul’s concern in chapter 9, is to win people for Christ. When he does that, they receive the crown of righteousness and become part of God’s eternal kingdom, but they also become in a sense his crown, the symbol that shows he has preached the good news of Jesus faithfully. Paul sometimes describes the churches he has founded in this way. For example in 1 Thessalonians:

“For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you?” (1 Thessalonians 2:19)

This is an eternal crown, because those who owe their faith in part to Paul’s preaching will be eternally grateful as they share a place with him in eternity!

Paul’s passion then is to gain this crown. To see men and women come to believe in Christ, to receive his righteousness and his gift of eternal life. That is what he aimed for in his life and that passion is powerfully expressed in our reading today.

Questions…

But that leads to another question from one of our groups:

Is Paul’s strategy just for those called to be evangelists or all believers?

This is another good question and to help understand the question and its answer we need to remind ourselves how chapter 9 fits into Paul’s overall argument.

In chapters 8 to 10 of Corinthians, Paul is calling on the Christians to be willing to forego their rights, in order to build up and preserve the faith of other Christians in love.

In chapter 9, he uses himself as an example of this, explaining how he has foregone his freedoms and rights in order to preach the gospel about Jesus faithfully and so win people for Christ.

Some of what Paul says about himself, will just be relevant to his own situation and role, but the more general thrust of what he is saying is relevant to us all. We too need to be willing to sacrifice our rights out of love for others and particularly in seeking to win people for Christ.

One thing Paul does towards this goal is ‘to become all things to all people’ in order to save some. That leads to another good question from one of the groups:

How do we maintain Christian integrity, whilst also seeking to ‘be all things to all people’?

First of all we need to be clear that Paul is not saying that we simply imitate people’s behaviours in every way. It would not be right for example to take up drug dealing just to get alongside drug dealers!

Rather when Paul talks here about, ‘being all things to all people,’ he is saying he is willing to forego his right to live in a way that suits his background culture or comfort zone, in order to connect with people from different backgrounds. I am going to call that behaviour Holy Solidarity and that is what he emphasises in 9:19-23.

But to do that is certainly not to let go of our integrity as Christians. In fact in 9:1-18, Paul says he refuses to go along with certain expectations for the sake of the gospel, even when he would benefit from doing so and has every right to do so. I am going to call this Holy Resistance.

It is in attending to both Holy Solidarity and Holy Resistance that we can ‘be all things to all people’  and maintain Christian integrity.

So, let’s look at those two issues and what they meant for Paul and what they might mean for us.

Holy Resistance

First of all, Holy Resistance.

In verse 18, Paul says:

“What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights as a preacher of the gospel.”

In the first half of the chapter, Paul has used a number of arguments to make clear that those who preach the gospel, the good news about Jesus, deserve to be paid a reasonable wage for doing so. As an apostle he had the right to be paid by the Corinthians whom he had spent eighteen months teaching about Jesus and God’s salvation.

However, he had chosen to forego that right and refused to be paid by the Corinthians. Why did he do that? He says so that it could be offered free of charge. Earlier on in verse 12, he said because to do so would be to hinder the gospel of Christ.

Not that Paul did not want the Corinthians to be generous with their money. At the end of the letter he mentions a collection he is making for the poor in Jerusalem.

Probably Paul was concerned about the way patronage worked in Roman cities at that time. People would offer generous donations or gifts, but they would expect loyalty, even compliance in return.

So, Paul did not want to receive financial support from the wealthy in Corinth, because he might then become in some way obliged to them and so be drawn into one faction against another or privileging the wealthy over the poor. He as a gospel preacher would be seen to be bought and belong to one particular person or group, rather than free to show concern for the whole people of God.

So, although he had the right to receive money from the Corinthians for his work, he forewent that right as an act of holy resistance against the potential manipulative control of the wealthy.

As Christians today, we also will need at times to act in holy resistance. To refuse to meet people’s expectations or to join in with what people want in order to maintain the integrity of the gospel and our witness.

In particular, although, we struggle financially as churches, we also need to be careful that in accepting money or donations, we are not pushed into relationships or behaviours that undermine our gospel witness.

That is why, we encourage all giving to be done anonymously. If I and other key leaders don’t know who is giving large amounts of money to the church, then we cannot be unduly influenced by them.

Yes, let’s pray for more money to fund what we need, but let’s also be concerned to protect the integrity of the gospel. We are at times called to Holy Resistance, even when it is costly.

Holy Solidarity

At the same time as resisting pressure to do what some expect from him, Paul also says, in verse 19 – “Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.”

Then in verse 22: “I have become all things to all people so that by all means I might save some.”

What Paul is talking about here is ‘Holy Solidarity.’ Just as Christ gave up the glory of heaven and became one of us, so we give up our rights and freedoms to come alongside those different to us.

Holy Solidarity means being willing to adapt ourselves to the culture and ways of others in order to connect with them and share the good news with them, even though it might mean taking on customs or ways that take us out of our comfort zones or what we are used to.

So, how might we go out of our comfort zones in order to help win others for Christ?

Some of the groups had some initial suggestions:

• One way may simply be on a Sunday after church, instead of rushing away or talking only to the same people as normal, to seek out and befriend those who may be new to the church, so that they can be encouraged in their exploration of faith.

• Another group suggested outside services as a way of going to where people are. This year we are going to encourage St. Luke’s and St. George’s to be more involved in the Churches Together Good Friday witness in the town centre.

• Another suggestion was to connect to people locally by showing love by meeting their needs. We are already doing that in a number of areas with a number of different groups: Gather that we heard about earlier, Cafe4All, the St. George’s community meal, Play and Praise, the potential After-School club. All these initiatives involve people giving up their own freedoms in order to help connect with people in holy solidarity, in the hope both to show them real love, but also to share the good news of Jesus with them.

• Finally, there were suggestions about how we might need to adapt our services in ways we may not like – no-one likes change, but might better enable and encourage new people to come and hear the good news about Jesus.

All of these are ways of showing holy solidarity with the world around, in order to help connect with them and so share the good news of Jesus.

In the Year of Discernment we need to consider how we might improve on these present ways of connecting and also whether God is calling us in new directions to.

Not Running Aimlessly

In the last few verses Paul compares his ministry with that of an athlete. Paul pushes himself hard, in order to win the crown just as an athlete does. He says he does not run aimlessly.

In response to this, one group asked the question:

What does ‘running aimlessly’ (1 Cor. 9:26) look like in a believer’s life?

It is to take our eyes off the prize, which is to win people for Christ. Those who come to faith partly as a result of our efforts are our eternal crown.

When we live the Christian life, but do not have our eyes on this prize, when we make no efforts or sacrifices to win people for Christ, whether playing our part in supporting the wider church witness or in our personal witness, then we are running aimlessly, we are not seeking the prize.

Let’s imitate Paul, as he imitates Christ, by being willing to forego our rights, make sacrifices, show holy resistance and holy solidarity, that together as churches in Ramsgate we might win the eternal crown of people in eternity with Christ because of our efforts.

“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” (1 Corinthians 8:1)

Paul shows that love is the eternal value that builds up Christ’s church. When we grasp this, then knowledge can be used for building up others rather than justifying our own freedoms and pride.

Constructing the Church

As Christians we claim to follow a creator God, a God who brings order out of chaos. We are called to construction not destruction. We are called to build something special – not buildings, although they have their place, but people of faith and a community of faith.

Today we are back looking at the letter of Paul to the Corinthians written in the 50s AD. It is a letter that is a plea for people to stop behaving in ways that are destructive to the Christian community and to start working to build it up.

That is what Paul saw himself doing. He says, earlier in the letter, in 1 Corinthians 3:9-11:

“For we are God’s fellow-workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. For no-one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 3:9-11)

Jesus Christ is the foundation. Out of love for us, he forego his rights as the Son of God and died a sacrificial death on the cross, in order to offer us forgiveness, a new start and eternal life. It is through faith in his work, that we find salvation and a place as one of his people, a place in his church.

His life, death and resurrection, laid the foundation for the church, a church which by His Spirit and through his people he has continued to build over Millenia and around the world.

This is a church, which as it has preached and lived out the values of Christ it has helped to construct a better world, yet also looks forward to being a part of God’s ultimate construction of a new heaven and new earth, where finally all the decay and destruction of our present world will be no more.

The Year of Discernment and 1 Corinthians 8-14

We Christians here in Ramsgate, just like the Christians in Corinth in the 50s AD are a small part of the bigger church. But we are still called to be a part of that great construction project in this place.

St. Luke’s and St. George’s are making 2024 a year of discernment, when we want to seek God’s guidance and direction for the years ahead, for how we may go about building up his church in this place.

So, over Lent, we are going to be looking together at these central chapters in 1 Corinthians, chapters 8-14, to help us as we reflect on God’s call.

What holds these chapters together is the Christian attitude of love – a love that builds up. It builds up both individual Christians and also the community of Christians, the church. But it Christian love, by its nature, is sacrificial. In particular, these chapters emphasise that love leads us to forego our rights for the sake of protecting and building up the church and others.

But these chapters also contain the flipside, warnings that when we insist on our rights and ignore the needs of others, we cause untold damage to the church and its members.

This theme is worked out across a number of different issues. Some seem obscure to us and are specific to the time and place of 50s AD Corinth, but nonetheless as we look at what Paul has to say about them, we understand more clearly this key theme of love that foregoes one’s rights to build up the church.

So:

• Chapters 8, 10 look at meat sacrificed to idols. For us that feels like an obscure issue, but the principles Paul articulates are important for us to grasp today and we’ll see how it introduces this theme of love foregoing rights.
• In chapter 9, Paul describes his own behaviour and attitudes in foregoing his rights for the sake of building up the church
• In chapter 11, he criticises those who use their spiritual gifts without concern for authority structures and those who partake in communion services without concern for the poorer among them. We are to act out of love for others, not out of a desire to make the most of our freedoms for our benefits.
• Chapter 12 focuses on spiritual gifts, but with an encouragement to use Spiritual gifts for building up others and valuing the part everyone has to play.
• Then in chapter 13, the climax of this whole section is a description of love as the eternal value.
• Finally, Paul concludes this whole section in chapter 14, by insisting that people willingly submit to order at their meetings out of a concern for the building up of others.

As we go through these chapters in Lent, we are going to try something a bit different. The study groups are going to look at the passage that will be preached on in the week before it is preached. They will reflect on it with some fairly open ended questions and in the light of their studies reflect on what God might be saying to us as churches as we seek to discern where God is leading us. Those thoughts will be fed back to the preacher, who will then use and refer to some of them in the following week’s sermon, whilst all the comments will feed into the ongoing discernment process.

That’s the plan and in choosing the sections of these chapters we are going to look at, I’ve tried to avoid the more obscure ones! However, this week, before we start that process, I want to quickly tackle the issue of food sacrificed to idols, that perhaps feels most obscure for us today.

Food Sacrificed to Idols

As we read letters like 1 Corinthians one of our difficulties is that we are listening to one side of a conversation. At the start of chapter 7, Paul says, ‘Now about the matters you wrote about…’ In other words part of the point of this letter is to respond to a letter from the Corinthians, which had clearly raised a number of issues.

Perhaps the question Paul is responding to here is:

“Was it OK to eat food that was sacrificed to idols?”

Paul’s answer is far from simple. In fact if you read chapters 8 and 10, he gives three contradictory answers:

“No, if…”  in 8:13

“No way!!” in 10:14-21

“Yes.”  in 10:25-27

Why three different answers? Probably because of three different settings.

In this passage Paul talks of two groups, ‘the weak’ and ‘the strong’. ‘The strong’ saw themselves as having superior knowledge to the weak. They were probably wealthier and better educated and maybe grasped and understood the Christian teaching more fully.

But also, as the wealthy they were probably – at least before becoming Christians – used to eating meat regularly.

There were three settings where they would have done this:

One setting was as part of idol worship. This is probably the setting Paul is referring to in 10:14-21. Paul says, this is definitely not on, as you cannot be involved in worshipping idols as well as worshipping Christ.

The idols may not be real gods, but people treat them as ‘Lords’ nonetheless. If you treat them as a real god, then you are not allowing Christ to be the one true Lord in your life. As Jesus said, when speaking about money as an idol, ‘You cannot serve both God and Money.” So, when it came to eating meat as part of idol worship, Paul says, ‘No way!’ ‘Flee idolatry!’

In contrast at the end of chapter 10, Paul is talking about eating meat at home, when it had been bought in the market place. Here the meat may or may not have been sacrificed to an idol before being sold. But as Paul accepts, what you eat does not matter to God. Food is not contaminated by being sacrificed to an idol. So, you are free to eat it in your own home, without worrying whether it has come through the temple.

However, the context of chapter 8, is a different setting again. Here it is about eating meat in an idol temple. This seems not to be as part of actual idol worship, but it was common for dinner parties and civic events to happen in temple buildings, using the meat that had been part of idol worship.

So was this situation alright? Paul does not lay down a set of rules and regulations, he is more concerned to explain key principles and values that arise from the good news about Jesus, that we are to live by. 

Knowledge puffs up and justifies rights

In the first verse, Paul says, ‘Knowledge puffs up.’

The strong felt that they were free to continue eating meat, even though most meat was sacrificed to idols in temples, because as Paul accepts they knew that idols are nothing. There is only one God. This knowledge, they felt left them free to eat whatever they wanted.

Certainly, when we come to have knowledge about God, we do discover freedom from superstitions, fears and guilt that may otherwise enslave us. We no longer need to work for some kind of salvation, by following rules or regulations, because God has done everything in Christ to win our salvation. That is wonderful knowledge to have and it is liberating.

Paul agrees with the strong. Idols are nothing. What you eat does not matter. As Christians we are free to eat meat, without worrying about it being tainted by idol worship.

BUT for Paul this is not the whole picture. If our knowledge just leads to us asserting our rights and freedoms without concern about its effects on others, then we become puffed up and arrogant. In fact, Paul concludes at the end of chapter 8, that such an attitude is ultimately destructive.

Why? Because although the strong may be confident, there is nothing wrong with eating meat sacrificed to idols in an idol temple and in their own minds can distinguish the eating of meat from idol worship, the weak, those who don’t fully grasp this knowledge, but are nevertheless Christian brothers and sisters, may be led by the example of the strong – especially if they see them eating in the temple precincts, to eat idol meat, without being able to distinguish the eating of such meat from actual idol worship. As such they are in their own minds led into idol worship, their conscience is damaged, their faith is destroyed.

Paul is saying to the strong, your knowledge may set you free, but how can you use your freedom in a way that will lead to the destruction of a brother or sister in Christ?

Love builds up and foregoes rights

So, Paul says, we have rights as Christians, but there are times that we need to forego those rights.

In verse 13, he says, that if eating meat causes a brother or sister to fall into sin. He will never eat meat again. Out of love for his brothers and sisters in Christ, he is willing to forego his rights, to avoid their destruction.

Paul, then goes on to give other examples in chapter 9 of how he foregoes his rights or freedoms in order to build up the church, the community of Christians and to avoid tearing it down. But that’s for next week!

Paul uses himself as an example, but he ultimately brings us back to Christ. In 11:1 at the end of the discussion about meat sacrificed to idols, he says, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.”

If our faith is founded on the ultimate act of love, which involved Jesus giving up His rights as the Son of God to die on the cross, for our salvation and to build God’s people, the church, then should we not forego our rights and freedoms for the sake of the protection of the faith of others and the building up of Christ’s church.

Are you about construction or freedom?

So, are you about building something eternal or about your own personal freedom?

Are you concerned with the growth in faith of those around you and careful to avoid anything that might make them fall?

What rights or freedoms do you need to give up, to help protect and build up the faith of others around you?