Food Offered to Idols

Now concerning food offered to idols…

1 Corinthians 8

One key problem afflicting the Corinthian church was pride in their wisdom and knowledge. The Corinthian believers were prizing eloquence of speech and understanding in spiritually unhealthy ways. In our verses today, the Corinthians took pride in their knowledge that false gods have no existence but, they drew the wrong conclusion that it was all right for Christians to take part in the meals associated with worship in pagan temples. Also, they were pressuring other believers to join them in these cultic feasts. It was wrong for them to take part in the worship meals of the pagans for two reasons. First, it does not show love to other Christians. Second, to take part in such meals is actually to become “participants with demons.” Paul’s focus is on the eating in pagan temples as not showing love to other believers. How is this not showing love? Because, Paul says, not all believers understand the truth that the pagan gods have no real existence as gods. They “eat food as really offered to an idol.” Less mature believers who had a past association with idolatry had not yet taken to heart the fact that the gods they formerly worshiped were not true gods. Since they lacked this knowledge, eating meals in pagan temples was an intentional act of worship directed to a false god even though that god had no existence as an actual god. This defiled their consciences, causing them to believe, when eating in the temple “restaurant”, they had fallen into intentional acts of idolatry. Paul notes that food in itself is indifferent. What we eat makes us no better or worse off before the Lord. So, there is a good deal of freedom in what we consume. Yet, it is possible to take advantage of this freedom in a way that hurts other believers. The “stronger” Corinthians were doing this, probably even forcing the “weaker” Christians to eat in pagan temples as a way of overcoming their beliefs that pagan gods were really gods. The thought was that if these “weaker Christians” could freely eat, they would see that no worship was taking place. But, the exact opposite was happening. However, they were going about it in the wrong way and actually leading the weaker believers into false worship. This reminds us that while good intentions are important, they are not enough. We must seek to know God’s Word so that we will do things with the right intention and in the right way.

Source: S C Ball November 1, 2023