I suspect that many of the questions and concerns from the Corinthian church came from a good place. We can easily write them off as the bad guys but they weren’t. Paul is not addressing apostates or false teachers but a real, young., alive, messy church that shows signs of having the Holy Spirit’s presence and power within them. They may have been divided, self-centred and proud but there seems to have been a genuine desire in some of their questions to seek God’s glory and honour.
Think about what you eat (v18-22)
Paul asks his readers once again to consider Israel and their experience. Remember that the Israelites had been in effect baptised and shared a spiritual meal together through the Exodus, crossing the Red Sea and the provision of manna in the desert. However, they had been drawn into idolatry, getting involved in pagan feasting and orgies. They were eating the idol meals. This was a warning to the Corinthians as they thought through their life in Corinth.
God’s people had to choose, would they honour, glorify and fellowship with God or with demons. Sacrifices offered to idols were not in themselves anything, they didn’t have special magical powers. The idols were just idols. However, because idols represent worship turned away from the true and living God to false gods, idol worshippers in effect worship demons. That’s what the idols represent.
So, the Christians were not to be careless in this matter. They were not to go out of their way to eat food offered to idols. This sent a message to others and to God himself that they didn’t care about his glory.
We don’t tend to live in the same kind of world. Where our food has been offered to first isn’t an issue for most of us as we buy it down at the supermarket. However, there will be some in our multi-ethnic cities who will have more specific questions about food that has been ritualistically slaughtered and the implications. There is going to be some specific advise for them coming up. However, the primary point here is that even in our small, every day decisions we need to be thinking about whether our actions by what we eat, read, watch, wear etc signals a priority of glorifying God or someone else. This is because nothing is truly neutral. If we are not glorifying God then we are glorifying someone and Paul warns that the alternative is demonic.
Think about others (v23-33)
The Corinthians have been emphasising their freedom and verse 23 looks like one of their statements. They are free to do anything. Paul agrees that they are free but they should only use that freedom to do what is beneficial for the church. To be sure, everything is the Lord’s and so even meat offered to idols still belongs to him, so they don’t need to worry about checking if food has been sourced from the Temple sacrifices. Eating idol meat without realising it is not going to somehow infect them. It’s not a hidden route to demon possession.
However, if you are eating with other Christians and are made aware that the food was first offered at the temple, then you shouldn’t eat it. This is out of concern for the others with you because it may trouble their conscience. We glorify God by our love and care for one another.
Every thing that we do should be for God’s glory and a significant element of how we glorify God in our actions is the affect that what we do has on others.
Conclusion
Whilst Paul deals specifically with food issues here, he helpfully sets up a more general framework for our day to day ethical decisions about what we will wear, eat think, do, read, watch, say. This will help us in decisions about what to include in a church service and in our life decisions about work, studies and housing too. Will my decision help me to glorify God or cause me to stumble? Will my decision help or hinder others as they seek to live for Christ and glorify him?
Faithroots 