Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary 1 Corinthians 8

With the phrase “Now about,” Paul turns to another question asked by the Corinthian delegation (cf. introductory comment on 7:1–14:40). The importance of the question of “foods offered in sacrifice to idols” becomes evident when one realizes how thoroughly idolatry and pagan sacrifices permeated all levels of Greek and Roman society. In Corinth itself, there were no less than sixteen temples and shrines, some of which had dining rooms in them.

Indeed, people could hardly escape contact with the pagan practices and their influence. The meat offered on the heathen altars was usually divided into three portions: one portion was burned up, a second given to the priest, and the third given to the offerer. If the priest did not use his portion, it was taken to the meat market. Thus a considerable amount of sacrificed meat ended up in the public market, on the tables of pagan neighbors and friends, or at the pagan festivals. With such idolatry and other pagan practices dominating the life and culture of Corinth, no wonder Paul was so concerned how Christians exercised their freedom to eat meat sold in butcher shops after it had been offered to some idol and consecrated in pagan worship in the city. They faced questions such as these: Was the meat spiritually contaminated? Did the pagan god actually have an effect on the meat? Even if one did not think so, what would one’s participation do to a fellow Christian who might have scruples about this? Though Christians today do not have to deal with this particular problem, they too must face questions of how to conduct themselves in a non-Christian society.

In v.1 Paul concedes that all Christians know—at least theoretically—the real meaning about the meat sacrificed to idols. But, he implies, there is something more—some may really feel that there is something wrong with that meat (v.7). So he adds that the mere knowledge that there is nothing wrong with it inflates one to a level of false security and indifference. As a result, in dealing with this issue, love is necessary. Love takes one beyond himself to aid another; it builds up.

Paul warns against dependence on simply knowing something, since a person never knows all that ought to be known about a subject. Such an attitude exhibits a complete dependence on one’s own self-sufficient knowledge and illustrates what Paul means by saying, “Knowledge puffs up [GK 5881].”

With the essential ingredient of love, knowledge is tempered and made the right kind of discerning and compassionate knowledge exhibited when one loves God. In loving God, a person shows that he is known by God—that God recognizes him as his own and that he had the right kind of knowledge, because he is exercising it in love to his fellow Christians and to God.

The word translated “food” (GK 1111) is sometimes translated “meat,” since the subject involves altar sacrifices and the meat market. The main thing to remember in connection with such meat is that the idol before which it was sacrificed and the god it represents are actually nothing—i.e., nothing as to personal reality and power. There is only one true God in the entire universe (cf. Dt 6:4–9; 1 Kings 18:39; Isaiah 45:5).

Paul grants for argument that there are “so-called gods” in heaven and earth, such as those the pagans recognized in Greek and Roman mythology. He also mentions the many “gods” and “lords” who are called such in Scripture (cf. Dt 10:17; Psalms 136:2–3) and who in the widest sense represent rulers in the universe who are subordinate to God (Colossians 1:16). Paul is therefore teaching that the “so- called gods” of the pagans are unreal and that the real “gods” and “lords,” whatever they may be, are all subordinate to the one supreme God whom alone we recognize. To Paul, there is only “one God, the Father,” and “one Lord, Jesus Christ.” The Father is the source of all creation, and Jesus Christ is the dynamic One through whom creation came into existence. As for Christians, they live for God, the source of all, and have the power for living through Jesus Christ. So why, implies Paul, should we be concerned with idols or meat sacrificed to idols?

When Paul came to Corinth, he found a city filled with idolatry. These are the ruins of one of the pagan temples at which its residents worshiped.