1 Corinthians 8:
7 But not everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled.
7 But not everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled.
8 But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.
9 Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak.
9 Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak.
10 For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol's temple, won't he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols?
11 So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. 12 When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.
13 Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall.
We don't have the problem today of eating food sacrificed to idols; but we do have the problem of "weak faith" and "weak conscience." I want to explore this briefly.
What is "faith?" Is it a means to an end? Some Christian teachers teach that it is. They see faith as something you accumulate and, when you have sufficient faith, then it becomes usable. There is a reason for this idea, since there are numerous verses in the Bible that might suggest this. Some even take this so far as to believe that our words have a creative ability to change things. You speak faith to something and, if your faith is big enough, that thing will obey you. The problem is, it usually doesn't work. The truth is, faith is a small thing, like a mustard seed, that can accomplish big things. Faith is just faith. It is static by itself. But God is dynamic and will respond to faith ~ but not always. Why? Because our motives can be misdirected: greedy, envious, vengeful, proud, to name a few. Or, God does not respond for other reasons: it is not necessary, it is not in his plan, it is not his will.
The real meaning of faith is confidence. Faith does not have any goal, of itself, other than trust. Mature faith is like that of Job who said, "Though God slay me, yet I will trust him." That helps us to understand the testing of faith or "trials of faith." All of us experience this. Our faith really matures more when God isn't answering prayer than when he is.
Results are only one dimension of prayer, and not the most significant. The main goal of prayer is communion and relationship. And it is in this area that faith grows and becomes strong, not weak. Our journey should develop our faith.
So, as we see in Paul's statements above, in our relationships with other believers we have those who have "strong" faith and those who have "weak" faith. There are certain earmarks of weak faith: a legalistic attitude, a lack of understanding and knowledge, and a predisposition to being offended by someone else's actions. Thus, we can see that, in the church today, there is a lot of weak faith, and often in people who have been following Christ a long time. But experiences, even negative ones, should make us stronger.
Strong faith has developed like the muscles of a weight lifter, through exercise. Our faith experiences the pain of development and ultimately gets stronger. Thus, we gain in "knowledge"; that is, we understand God more clearly than our weaker fellow believers. We understand, in the instance above, that food sacrificed to idols is nothing. We don't have a superstition about it. We can eat anything, really, without polluting our spirit.
But, as I said, those with weak faith are easily offended. They compare themselves with those with stronger faith than they and conclude that the stronger person is weaker. Thus they are more easily offended by the stronger person's understanding of his liberty in Christ. So Paul remarks that the stronger person should be careful not to offend the weaker person, possibly derailing their undeveloped conscience and diverting them off the path of faith. This, Paul says, is not the path of love.
Those who lead in the church have to, by virtue of their responsibility, walk more circumspectly than those who don't lead. They may have to not take advantage of certain freedoms they have in order to be patient with those in their care that are developing slowly. But this is also simply a principle. Overly cautious leaders then can fall into the trap of weak faith themselves.
The best mode for all of us, weak or strong, is to develop a transparency and humility that says "we do not yet know what we ought to know." Strong faith is characterized by these things, actually. The person develops to the point they no longer take themselves too seriously. That doesn't mean they don't take God seriously. But they identify with the struggle of life more closely: they understand that no matter how well we develop, we are all in the same boat together. We are all desparately in need of the grace that comes through Christ only.
I think the Body of Christ, the "church", is going through a hard maturing process in these days. There are forces in the world we may not be aware of that are growing us. We have what the world needs and yet the world is rejecting what we exhibit that it doesn't need. The greatest gift we can give anybody is faith in Christ: nothing else can do what that one thing does. Nothing else is so precious. That alone separates us from all other religion, and that alone makes us "holy" or separate. We belong to Christ and he is our new identity.
But we should be aware that faith grows or matures. We should not remain in a static babyhood of legalism and negativity. And we who attain maturity should realize that we have a responsibility to model a mature Christian faith for those who are mired in weak faith yet think of themselves as strong, like a teenager that knows more than his or her parents. Good stuff to think about. But what is Paul's message? "Grow up, Corinthians."
We don't have the problem today of eating food sacrificed to idols; but we do have the problem of "weak faith" and "weak conscience." I want to explore this briefly.
What is "faith?" Is it a means to an end? Some Christian teachers teach that it is. They see faith as something you accumulate and, when you have sufficient faith, then it becomes usable. There is a reason for this idea, since there are numerous verses in the Bible that might suggest this. Some even take this so far as to believe that our words have a creative ability to change things. You speak faith to something and, if your faith is big enough, that thing will obey you. The problem is, it usually doesn't work. The truth is, faith is a small thing, like a mustard seed, that can accomplish big things. Faith is just faith. It is static by itself. But God is dynamic and will respond to faith ~ but not always. Why? Because our motives can be misdirected: greedy, envious, vengeful, proud, to name a few. Or, God does not respond for other reasons: it is not necessary, it is not in his plan, it is not his will.
The real meaning of faith is confidence. Faith does not have any goal, of itself, other than trust. Mature faith is like that of Job who said, "Though God slay me, yet I will trust him." That helps us to understand the testing of faith or "trials of faith." All of us experience this. Our faith really matures more when God isn't answering prayer than when he is.
Results are only one dimension of prayer, and not the most significant. The main goal of prayer is communion and relationship. And it is in this area that faith grows and becomes strong, not weak. Our journey should develop our faith.
So, as we see in Paul's statements above, in our relationships with other believers we have those who have "strong" faith and those who have "weak" faith. There are certain earmarks of weak faith: a legalistic attitude, a lack of understanding and knowledge, and a predisposition to being offended by someone else's actions. Thus, we can see that, in the church today, there is a lot of weak faith, and often in people who have been following Christ a long time. But experiences, even negative ones, should make us stronger.
Strong faith has developed like the muscles of a weight lifter, through exercise. Our faith experiences the pain of development and ultimately gets stronger. Thus, we gain in "knowledge"; that is, we understand God more clearly than our weaker fellow believers. We understand, in the instance above, that food sacrificed to idols is nothing. We don't have a superstition about it. We can eat anything, really, without polluting our spirit.
But, as I said, those with weak faith are easily offended. They compare themselves with those with stronger faith than they and conclude that the stronger person is weaker. Thus they are more easily offended by the stronger person's understanding of his liberty in Christ. So Paul remarks that the stronger person should be careful not to offend the weaker person, possibly derailing their undeveloped conscience and diverting them off the path of faith. This, Paul says, is not the path of love.
Those who lead in the church have to, by virtue of their responsibility, walk more circumspectly than those who don't lead. They may have to not take advantage of certain freedoms they have in order to be patient with those in their care that are developing slowly. But this is also simply a principle. Overly cautious leaders then can fall into the trap of weak faith themselves.
The best mode for all of us, weak or strong, is to develop a transparency and humility that says "we do not yet know what we ought to know." Strong faith is characterized by these things, actually. The person develops to the point they no longer take themselves too seriously. That doesn't mean they don't take God seriously. But they identify with the struggle of life more closely: they understand that no matter how well we develop, we are all in the same boat together. We are all desparately in need of the grace that comes through Christ only.
I think the Body of Christ, the "church", is going through a hard maturing process in these days. There are forces in the world we may not be aware of that are growing us. We have what the world needs and yet the world is rejecting what we exhibit that it doesn't need. The greatest gift we can give anybody is faith in Christ: nothing else can do what that one thing does. Nothing else is so precious. That alone separates us from all other religion, and that alone makes us "holy" or separate. We belong to Christ and he is our new identity.
But we should be aware that faith grows or matures. We should not remain in a static babyhood of legalism and negativity. And we who attain maturity should realize that we have a responsibility to model a mature Christian faith for those who are mired in weak faith yet think of themselves as strong, like a teenager that knows more than his or her parents. Good stuff to think about. But what is Paul's message? "Grow up, Corinthians."
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