Paul introduces the issue of food offered to idols and immediately contrasts knowledge and love. Knowledge by itself can inflate a person with pride, but love builds up. True knowing is inseparable from humble relationship to God.
1 Corinthians 8:1-3
1 Now concerning things sacrificed to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.
2 But if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he doesn’t yet know as he ought to know.
3 But if anyone loves God, the same is known by him.
Paul affirms the theological truth that idols have no real existence as gods and that there is only one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ. He reframes Christian monotheism christologically.
1 Corinthians 8:4-6
4 Therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world, and that there is no other God but one.
5 For though there are things that are called “gods”, whether in the heavens or on earth; as there are many “gods” and many “lords”;
6 yet to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we live through him.
Paul explains that not all believers possess the same settled conscience on the issue. Some, because of former idolatrous habits, still experience eating such food as spiritually entangled, and their conscience is defiled. Food itself does not determine standing before God.
1 Corinthians 8:7-8
7 However, that knowledge isn’t in all men. But some, with consciousness of the idol until now, eat as of a thing sacrificed to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.
8 But food will not commend us to God. For neither, if we don’t eat, are we the worse; nor, if we eat, are we the better.
Paul warns the knowledgeable believers not to let their freedom become a stumbling block to the weak. Exercising liberty in a way that wounds a brother’s conscience is sin against Christ. Paul concludes that he would rather never eat meat again than destroy a brother for whom Christ died.
1 Corinthians 8:9-13
9 But be careful that by no means does this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to the weak.
10 For if a man sees you who have knowledge sitting in an idol’s temple, won’t his conscience, if he is weak, be emboldened to eat things sacrificed to idols?
11 And through your knowledge, he who is weak perishes, the brother for whose sake Christ died.
12 Thus, sinning against the brothers, and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.
13 Therefore if food causes my brother to stumble, I will eat no meat forever more, that I don’t cause my brother to stumble.