“Knowledge” and meat offered to idols…

Corinth had idols.

The three main ones were:

Aphrodite

Apollo

Poisidon

😏 Apparently the gods liked going around in the buff.

There certainly was a lot of…em… “appreciating the human form.”

In the Corinthian Church there were people who had “knowledge” about what was up with “the gods.”

• The statues are just statues. They aren’t alive. Meat offered to them doesn’t get demon possessed or anything. It’s perfectly safe to consume.
• There are real spiritual beings (demons, fallen angels, principalities, powers, spiritual wickedness in the heavenly realm). But we don’t worship those beings and they have no power over the one who is in Christ.

There were people in the Church who did not have this knowledge. As far as they were concerned, Aphrodite, Apollo, and Poisidon were real, and if you ate food that had been offered to them, you were as good as worshiping the idol.

Paul calls the people who are all nervous about accidentally ingesting idol-meat “weak.” And that’s interesting because today we might think that a person who was super scrupulous about anything even three degrees removed from worldliness as “a strong Christian.” The people who are nervous about being “contaminated” are not strong Christians. They are weak. And they tend to be legalistic.

However….

Just because these stronger Christians know that they will not catch a demon or lose their salvation by eating a hunk of beef that was held up before a piece of carved marble and perhaps given a 5-second chant, doesn’t mean they should do it.

This issue of “meat offered to idols” becomes a kind of metaphor for anything that is a bit of a gray area; not necessarily sinful in itself but could cause another believer to sin by violating his convictions. Today it includes things like:

• Drinking alcohol (not drunkenness)
• Standards of dress (within reason)
• Content in entertainment (profanity, violence, sex etc) or even having a tv
• Dancing
• Lotto tickets, gambling
• Secular Music
• Sugar, caffeine, junk food
• Tobacco, nicotine
• Financial investments and purchasing from retailers that sell or promote evil things
• Cultural/Holiday observances (Christmas trees, Easter bunnies, Halloween)

You won’t find black and white commandments about these specific things in scripture, like “Thou shalt not listen to secular music except for instrumental pieces.” Some classical composers were notorious sinners. Is it wrong to listen to their music? Is it a sin to eat junk food? It does harm your body. So do cigarettes. How much skin is too much skin to show? Can Christians drink a glass of wine? Two? Is dressing up for Halloween ok if you dress as an Oompa Loompa but not a vampire?

How do you do what’s right without an exhaustive list of rules?

Well, there is a rule. Paul gave it to the Galatians.

“For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.””
‭‭Galatians‬ ‭5‬:‭14‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Love is the rule.

Many Christians have convictions about these things. And with good reason. These are things that could open a door to evil.

When I was a teenager I had a job sitting with an elderly woman. She didn’t need a nurse but she didn’t need to be left alone either. So her daughter paid someone to be with her around the clock. She was a tiny, frail, wisp of a woman who had an unchanging routine.

• Breakfast: two fried eggs 🍳, two strips of bacon 🥓 (crispy), one slice of toast with I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! one cup of instant coffee with three spoons of sugar, and a glass of milk
• TV (Gunsmoke and game shows)
• Occasionally try to make a phone call and talk to the operator ☎️ whom she called “Sarah”
• Lunch: two fried chicken legs 🍗🍗, corn, mashed potatoes, a slice of bread with I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!, and a glass of milk. 🥛
• TV 📺 (Don’t be late for Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie)
• Afternoon medicine 💊 and a walk up the street if the weather was nice
• Read a chapter of the Bible
• TV 📺 (A&E Movies, random things)
• Dinner: a sandwich and a glass of milk
• Bedtime

😐 A tiny wisp of a woman ate all that?

Every day.

One afternoon she had just finished her Bible reading from the enormous white family Bible she kept on a side table. The TV was on. I have no idea what the show was. She shuffled from her Bible-reading chair back to her tv-watching spot on the sofa. She got comfy and said,

👵🏻 “Some people say it’s a sin to watch television. But I don’t think so.”

And just at that moment – I lie not – the woman on the screen had the clothing torn from her and was standing there without a stitch for about 2 heartbeats.

Is it a sin to watch television?

Are there some things that are “not helpful” (1 Cor. 6:12)?

Yes. You might not be tempted by a single serving of alcohol. But what about the former alcoholic who is across the table?

If Joe has a personal conviction not to gamble, but his Christian pal regularly buys Lotto tickets to scratch off at lunch break, what does that do? Might it make Joe despise his Christian brother? Might Joe give in and violate his own conscience? That’s a real problem. His Christian pal isn’t necessarily splitting Hell wide open with a few Powerball tickets, but are either of them getting closer to Jesus? Probably not.

Perhaps there’s a better question than “Is it a sin?” Perhaps we should ask if it’s helping us all get closer to Jesus or not.

I remember our Bible College President admonishing the students on Monday mornings when several showed up bleary-eyed, downcast, and “looking like you were baptized in pickle juice!” He knew that some of them had been up late watching movies of questionable content. “How can you expect to have the Victory on Monday morning when you spent the weekend filling your head with garbage?!” (Most of his statements sounded like they ended with an exclamation point.) “If you spent more time on your knees in prayer and in the Word of God, and less time watching ungodly movies you’d walk into class with the Victory!” (When he said “Victory” it always sounded capitalized.) “You’d have a spring in your step instead of looking like When the Saints Come Dragging In! I’m telling you students, you get ahold of your flesh! You grab that thing by the scruff of the neck and you tell it to turn that mess off and get to bed. And then get up in the morning and get to prayer! Don’t you let the Devil win!”

Just because I am free to do XYZ, does not mean I should.

We’re not done hearing about meat offered to idols. Paul is going to write to the Romans about it too.

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Chapter 9

If anyone has “knowledge” of his freedom in Christ, it’s Paul. One of his freedoms would be to receive financial support from the people he has given his time to disciple. It’s more than a freedom, it’s actually only right.

“In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.”
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭9‬:‭14‬ ‭ESV‬‬

But Paul CHOSE to not exercise his freedom so he could never be accused of abusing his authority as an apostle, (9:18).

Paul is an example of what it looks like to

LIMIT my LIBERTY out of LOVE.

And that’s what he’s asking the Corinthians to do for one another. But they have to choose to do this. Could Paul command them and give them a long list of do’s and don’ts? That’s not really the point of being a new creation in Jesus, though, is it?

Paul talks about the various ways he has limited himself willingly for the sake of winning the lost and building up the church.

“For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.”
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭9‬:‭19‬-‭23‬ ‭ESV‬‬

This is what it means to “lay down your life” for the Gospel. Paul adjusted his behavior and limited himself even though it was not required of him. Could he eat shrimp? Sure. He knew he could order the shrimp platter and it would not undo his salvation. But if eating shrimp created a barrier to faith for the Jews he was trying to reach for Jesus, then he would skip the shellfish and order the lamb chop instead.

This is what it looks like

to remove ourselves from the center

and put Jesus there.

We don’t demand rights. We can accommodate others; and not in a slavish, co-dependent way, but with freedom. It takes a truly free person to live in that balance.

Paul knows a group of people, that the Corinthians know very well, who are also in the habit of limiting themselves: The Isthmian Athletes.

😐 Did they forget to put on their shorts?

No. The athletes in the ancient world competed naked.

😳

Only men were allowed to compete or watch.

The Isthmian Games were as big a deal as the Olympics and were hosted just outside of Corinth in the 2nd and 4th years of the Olympiad. Even when the Romans had destroyed the city, the games continued.

Like the ancient Olympics, athletes competed in wrestling, pancration (basically MMA fighting), horse racing, chariot races, and boxing. But the Isthmian Games included competitions in music and poetry in which women could compete. And one ancient sports commentator recorded an event called oisoleven which was an early form of Snooker played with pottery balls.

There is even a record of the famous philosopher Plato competing in the Isthmian Games and winning in wrestling.

Olympic athletes train for years. They are up training before dawn. They adhere to strict diets. They don’t do life like normal people. You can’t do normal-people stuff and just wind up in the Olympics out of sheer talent. It takes discipline. And no one makes the athletes do this. It’s something they WANT to do. They CHOOSE to put their bodies through punishing routines for a chance to win.

Back in Paul’s day, the athletes didn’t win gold, silver, and bronze medals or a contract to do endorsements for granola bars or sneakers. Back then they won a “perishable crown” of pine needles because pine was sacred to Poisidon. They might also be given free meals for life, a pension, and tax-free status.

🤓 Free food and no taxes? I bet people today would be willing to compete for that!

😏 They’d probably even be willing to compete naked.

“All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize.”
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭9‬:‭25‬ ‭NLT‬‬

If athletes can give up sleep and dessert and Big Macs and make themselves do sit ups and push ups… if they willingly choose to limit themselves to win a crown of pine needles, how much more should the saint be willing to give up the comforts and conveniences of the flesh in order to win souls to Christ; an eternal prize?

No one is going to make us do this. We have to make ourselves do it. Like our Bible College president said, “You get ahold of your flesh! You grab that thing by the scruff of the neck and you tell it to obey the Lord!”