1 Corinthians 8: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul takes up the question of food that has been offered to idols. He says knowledge alone puffs a person up while love builds others up, and that although an idol is nothing and there is only one God, not everyone has that knowledge. Some believers still eat such food as if it belonged to an idol, and their weak conscience is stained. Paul warns that using your freedom in front of such a person can destroy him, and says that rather than trip up a fellow believer he would give up meat entirely.

Claim by Claim

1. 8:1
   • The subject is things offered to idols.
   • Paul says we know that we all have knowledge.
   • Knowledge puffs up.
   • Love builds up.
2. 8:2
   • If anyone thinks he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.
3. 8:3
   • If anyone loves God, that person is known by God.
4. 8:4
   • The subject is the eating of things sacrificed to idols.
   • Paul says we know that an idol is nothing in the world.
   • Paul says we know that there is no God but one.
5. 8:5
   • There are things called gods.
   • These so-called gods are in heaven or on earth.
   • There are many gods and many lords.
6. 8:6
   • For us there is one God, the Father.
   • All things are from the Father.
   • We exist for the Father.
   • For us there is one Lord, Jesus Christ.
   • All things are through Jesus Christ.
   • We exist through Jesus Christ.
7. 8:7
   • Not everyone has this knowledge.
   • Some, being accustomed to the idol until now, eat the food as a thing sacrificed to an idol.
   • Their conscience is weak.
   • Their weak conscience is defiled.
8. 8:8
   • Food does not present us to God.
   • If we eat, we are no better.
   • If we do not eat, we are no worse.
9. 8:9
   • Paul commands them to take heed that their liberty does not become a stumbling block to the weak.
10. 8:10
    • Paul poses the case of someone seeing you who have knowledge reclining at table in an idol's temple.
    • Paul asks whether the conscience of the one who is weak will not be emboldened to eat things sacrificed to idols.
11. 8:11
    • Through your knowledge the weak brother perishes.
    • Christ died for that brother.
12. 8:12
    • Sinning in this way is sinning against the brethren.
    • Sinning in this way wounds their weak conscience.
    • When you sin in this way, you sin against Christ.
13. 8:13
    • If food makes Paul's brother offend, Paul will never eat flesh again.
    • Paul's reason is so that he will not make his brother offend.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

8:1

Most meat sold in Corinth's markets, and nearly all meat served at public festivals and private banquets, came from animals killed in a temple sacrifice; only part of the animal was burned, and the rest was eaten on the spot or sold on. So a question about "things offered unto idols" was a question about ordinary shopping and ordinary dinner invitations. Where the King James says "charity" it means love, not giving to the poor. "Edifieth" is a building word: to build a person up, as one builds a house.

8:3

"Known of him" is older English for "known by him." The King James regularly uses "of" where we would say "by."

8:4

An idol is the carved or cast image of a god that stood in its temple and received the sacrifices. Saying it "is nothing in the world" is a claim about what stands behind the image, not about whether the statue exists.

8:5

In the Greek and Roman world both words were in everyday use. "Lord" was a title given to the gods of the mystery cults, and also to the Roman emperor. Anyone in Corinth who called Jesus "one Lord" was using a word his neighbors applied to many others.

8:6

The wording reworks the sentence Jewish people recited daily, from Deuteronomy 6:4: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD." The two terms of that confession, "God" and "Lord," are kept, with "one God" attached to the Father and "one Lord" to Jesus Christ.

8:7

"Conscience" translates a Greek word for a person's inner awareness of his own conduct, the faculty that passes judgment on what he has just done. "Defiled" comes from the vocabulary of ritual purity: stained, made unclean, so that the person is unfit to approach a god.

8:8

"Meat" in 1611 English meant food of any kind, not flesh in particular. The Greek word here is the general word for food.

8:9

"Liberty" is the right or freedom to act as one chooses, here the freedom to eat anything. A "stumblingblock" is an obstruction left in a path so that a traveler trips over it; the Greek word can also mean the baited trigger of a trap.

8:10

Temples commonly had dining rooms attached, and a great deal of a city's social life took place in them: trade guild dinners, family celebrations, business entertaining. To "sit at meat" is to recline at such a meal. "Emboldened" is the same Greek verb translated "edifieth," built up, in verse 1, so the word for strengthening someone is here used of pushing him into what harms him.

8:11

"Brother" was the ordinary term members of these congregations used for one another, women included; it marks membership in the group, not male sex or blood relation. "Perish" translates a strong verb meaning ruined or destroyed, the opposite of the "building up" of verse 1.

8:13

"Meat" here again means food of any kind, but "flesh" later in the same verse is the specific word for animal meat: if food trips my brother up, I will give up meat altogether. "While the world standeth" renders a Greek phrase meaning "for ever," literally "to the age."