But concerning things sacrificed to idols, we know, (for we all have knowledge knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.
The Corinthians had written to Paul with a question: could a Christian eat food offered to an idol? Before he answers, Paul weighs what we know against how we love — and asks whether being right about a thing is the same as being useful to a brother.
The chapter picks up a question from the Corinthians' own letter.
The opening words of chapter 8 are really "Now concerning." The Corinthians did not seem to know the right course to take about things offered to idols, and they had raised the matter in their letter to Paul. No such problems face us. Yet we will find the instructions given here of great value for guidance in many a problem that does face us.
The words sound like a concession. Commentators hear an edge in them.
These opening words carry a tinge of irony. Perhaps something in the way they put the question seemed to call for this rebuke, when he thought of their practical condition... Still, it is true, when said of Christians, that all have knowledge. But knowledge puffs up... Love builds up. At Corinth there was both too much knowledge and too little. Their brains were active. But their hearts were learning little of the love which alone is true knowledge. So instead of building up there was division.
The difference between swelling and building turns on how far the truth travels in a person.
Gaining knowledge has its dangers. Paul showed this in 1 Corinthians 8:1, where he writes, "knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." When the truth of God stays in the mind only, and never reaches the heart and the conscience, the danger is that it puffs a person up. But if the truth enters the heart and touches the affections and the conscience, it builds him up instead.
The knowledge Paul warns about here is knowledge of God's own word.
The Word says, "Knowledge puffs up" (1 Corinthians 8:1). It is striking that the "knowledge" spoken of here is a knowledge of the Word and ways of God. It should make us stop and think when we realise that even a knowledge of the Bible may puff us up... Someone has said that there is pride of race, pride of place, pride of face, but the worst pride of all is pride of grace.
There are two kinds of knowledge here. The difference is what each one makes bigger.
Simply as knowledge, it is worth nothing. If we look at it as knowledge that we have, it only puffs us up. It is something in me, my knowledge. True Christian knowledge unfolded something in God. Through what He reveals of Himself, God became better known, and so became greater to the soul. The greatness lay in Him, the One who is known — not in a knowledge of mine that made me greater.
Paul does not deny that the idol is nothing; he denies that being right about it is enough to decide how to act.
As the apostle examined this plea and dealt with it, he raised a point they seem to have overlooked. He fully admitted that the idol is nothing (v. 4). Yet knowledge in such matters is not everything, for knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. A Christian was to act in this matter out of care for his brother.
The one who loves God learns something that pride cannot survive.
In this passage the apostle speaks of love to God. He reminds us that a man who loves God realises more than that he knows God in some small measure. He realises that God knows him. Knowing that God knows me, and all that I have done, leaves no room for the pride that mere knowledge puffs up.
- Question — The Corinthians asked Paul about food offered to idols. His answer still guides problems he never named.
- Knowledge — Paul concedes the point. Every Christian has some knowledge; the trouble at Corinth was that they had too much of it and too little love.
- Puffs up — Truth that stops in the mind swells a person. Truth that reaches the heart and conscience builds him up. Even Bible knowledge can swell a man, and that pride is the worst kind.
- Builds up — Right knowledge makes God greater to the soul, not me greater in my own eyes. Love then decides the case, by asking what care for a brother calls for.
- Known — The rest here is not in how much I know God, but in God knowing me. No one who remembers that God knows him has room left to boast.
If any one think he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know [it].
A dispute at Corinth opens this chapter: could a Christian eat meat that had been offered to an idol? Before Paul settles the case, he tests the confidence of the men who were so sure they already knew the answer.
The dispute was practical: eating meat that had been offered to idols. Knowledge alone cannot settle a question like this.
The Apostle first shows that this is one of those important questions that knowledge alone cannot answer. Love settles it very quickly... Today, in this country, we do not face the question of eating meat offered to idols. Yet many other questions come up — for instance, whether a Christian should smoke. Some would settle such a question by knowledge, which thinks only of the harm it may do to the body. But the better way is love, which asks, "What effect will it have on my brother?"
Knowledge has a second problem beside pride. It is never complete.
People have a great thirst for knowledge. But if I chase knowledge for its own sake, it will only puff me up, while love will build up my brother. And we only know in part. So trusting our partial knowledge to settle questions will often lead us badly astray.
The verse does not say the man knows nothing. It says he does not know in the right way. The difference is how far the truth goes: into the mind only, or into the heart and conscience too.
When the truth of God is held only in the mind, and has not touched the heart and conscience, there is the danger of being puffed up. But if the truth enters the heart, reaching the affections and the conscience, it will build up instead of puffing up.
This is why the same verse lands two different ways on two different readers.
These are healthy words rebuking the unexercised and vain, and which humble the believer who feels that any little knowledge he has gained through learning only shows him that there is a vast field of divine knowledge into which his soul has hardly entered.
So a growing sense of your own smallness is not a setback. It is a mark of progress, and confidence that you have arrived is the opposite sign.
The word of God is endless. No matter what we have learned, it only puts us in a position to discover our own ignorance. When people are completely in the dark, they think they know all there is to know. But as we make real progress, we feel more deeply how little we know. At the same time we grow more patient with others who may know a little less — or even a little more. Spiritual understanding does not puff up a loving heart. It gives a growing sense of our own smallness. Where that is missing, we have reason to fear that the mind runs ahead of the conscience, and that both are far from being subject to the Holy Spirit.
The same holds for the truth you know best of all.
The very thing I know best is the thing I feel that I do not know well. If you hear someone speaking of the love of God you think, "Do I know it?" Perhaps it is the very truth you know most of, but it is so great to you that you think you hardly know it.
Not all knowing puffs up. Everything depends on who grows greater in it — God, or me.
As mere knowledge, it is worth nothing. If we look at it as knowledge we own, it only puffs us up; it is something in me, my knowledge. True Christian knowledge opened up something in God. Through what God reveals, He becomes better known and greater to the soul. It was in Him the thing known, and not a knowledge in me by which I made myself greater.
There is a safeguard against this pride, and it comes with love to God.
The Apostle speaks of love to God. He reminds us that if a man loves God, he sees not just that he knows God a little, but that God knows him. Knowing that God knows me, and all that I have done, leaves no room for the pride that mere knowledge puffs up.
- Love decides — knowledge alone cannot settle a question that touches my brother. Love can, because it asks what my choice will do to him.
- Know in part — we only know in part, so leaning on that to settle disputes leads us astray.
- Know with the heart — truth held only in the mind puffs up. Truth that reaches the heart and conscience builds up.
- Know your littleness — real progress in the endless word of God deepens the sense of how little we know, and makes us patient with others.
- Known by God — knowledge that makes God greater to the soul never puffs up. And knowing that God knows me leaves pride nowhere to stand.
But if any one love God, *he* is known of him)
The Corinthians had written to Paul about meat offered to idols. They were sure their knowledge settled the matter. Paul moves the question onto different ground. What counts is not what I know, but whether I love God — and whether God knows me.
One writer separates two kinds of knowledge. One kind makes me bigger. The other makes God bigger to me.
As mere knowledge, it is worth nothing. If we look at it as knowledge that we have, it only puffs us up. It is something in me, my knowledge. True Christian knowledge unfolded something in God. Through what He reveals, God became better known and greater to the soul. The thing known was in Him. It was not a knowledge in me by which I made myself greater. The one who loves God is known by Him.
You would expect Paul to say that the one who loves God knows Him. He does not. One commentator defends the switch and explains what "known by God" means here.
Knowledge puffs up; love builds up. We only know love in God's presence, where self is judged. But the apostle does not say that the one who loves God knows Him. He says that he is known by Him. The turn may be unexpected, and it has puzzled the critics, but it is entirely fitting. Not that the believer does not know Him, for that knowledge is eternal life. It was timely for the consciences of the Corinthians to weigh that God knows them: a serious matter, but a blessed one. The word "known" does not mean "has been made to know," and it does not mean "approved." Its ordinary meaning is the best one.
Where does this love come from? One writer traces it to its source, and weighs being known against knowing.
Those who truly love God do so by believing His own love to them. So their love is not a doubtful or uncertain feeling. Men deceive themselves by thinking that they know. God's children taste the grace of the One they trust. Knowledge is precious when it is added to this faith. But for a creature who is still sinful, though redeemed, to be known in love is better than to know. The serpent used knowledge as his first bait. The Spirit pours the love of God into the heart of the believer, and the heart filled this way gives back a portion of the love that fills it. Love is from God first, and then back to God.
This cuts pride at the root. One writer shows how much God's knowledge of me covers.
Here the Apostle speaks of love to God. He reminds us that a man who loves God realises more than that he knows God a little. He realises that God knows him. Knowing that God knows me, and all that I have done, leaves no room for the pride that mere knowledge would puff up.
There is rest here as well, and it does not rest on how much we know.
At best all our knowledge is partial. It has strict limits. We do not know anything with full and absolute knowledge. If we imagine that we do, that very fact shows we do not yet know anything as we ought to know it. But if we love God, we can be sure that He knows us. And that is the great thing.
One writer takes this a step further. Love is not only the response God looks for. It is how a person comes to know Him at all.
In the heart of the bride in the Song of Songs, and in the heart of the Christian, it is still true that love is the means and the capacity for divine knowledge. In a word, the one who loves most knows most. Mary Magdalene is a striking illustration. Peter and John had more light than she had... And yet the Lord revealed Himself to Mary... Her heart was in the right state, even though her spiritual understanding was not enlightened. That is why the Lord could come and show Himself to her.
- Source. Love to God starts on His side. The Spirit pours God's love into the heart, and the filled heart gives back a portion of what fills it.
- Shift. Paul does not say the one who loves God knows Him. He says God knows him. The ground moves from my grasp of God to His hold on me.
- Cure. God already knows me and everything I have done. That leaves no room for pride in what I know.
- Rest. All our knowledge is partial. If we love God, we can rest in this: He knows us. That is the great thing.
- Capacity. Love is the means of divine knowledge. The one who loves most knows most. The Lord showed Himself to Mary at the tomb, before those with clearer light.
-- concerning then the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that an idol [is] nothing in [the] world, and that there [is] no other God save one.
The question in front of Paul is meat offered to idols, and the Corinthians opened their case with a fact everyone agreed on: idols are not real. Paul grants the fact, then shows that a true fact, held without love, can still wreck a brother.
Paul's words go further than calling idols useless. Older translations read "an idol is nothing in the world"; one writer argues the point is that the beings the pagans imagined never existed:
The parallel in the last clause of verse 4 seems to favour translating it "there is no idol," rather than "an idol is nothing in the world." Either is legitimate in itself. It is quite true, as the prophets say, that the idols of the Gentiles are empty and powerless. But here the apostle appears to affirm that they had no existence in the world. There were no such beings as the pagans associated with their idols. Later on he shows there were demons behind them, as the law had already hinted (Deut. 32:17).
Paul does not stop at the negative. Naming the one God raises the question of where Christ stands, and one writer marks out what the apostle argues here and what he does not:
Fallen man imagines many gods and many lords in heaven and on earth. But to us Christians there is only one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ. Here the point is not to set before us the Deity of Christ. The point is how God has chosen to reveal Himself, and the place the divine Persons hold in the ways of grace towards men. The Father remains in Godhead, and God is the source of all, and all is for Him. The Son, while never ceasing to be God, has become flesh, and in Manhood has taken the place of Lord.
That truth reaches the dinner table:
Pagans may venerate many gods and lords, but to us they are nothing. We know only one God and one Lord... Since this is so, we may refuse to recognise the idols of the pagans in any way. We can treat all meats alike — whether offered to idols or not.
The Corinthians had to hold two truths together. They had grasped only one.
They had to own that the idol was nothing, and yet own that it was something to the consciences of men. Looked at in itself, as an idol, it was nothing; and the meat offered to it was what God created. But then the consciences of men got connected with demons about it... Yet knowledge only puffs up. The man who knew all this might eat this meat with a clear conscience himself. But he would stumble his brother, whose conscience was weak.
Calling the idol nothing does not mean nothing is happening. One writer points to what stands behind the image:
If the idols were nothing in themselves, the demons were a terrible reality of subtle and malicious evil. They ruined those who gave the idols reverence.
The Corinthians treated their correct doctrine as a permit. One writer weighs what knowledge is worth on its own:
Simply as knowledge, it is worth nothing. If we look at it as knowledge that we have, it only puffs us up; it is something in me, my knowledge. True Christian knowledge unfolded something in God. Through what is revealed, God, better known, became greater to the soul... As to the question itself, love decided it.
Some had turned this verse into a defence for joining the temple feasts.
Some of the Corinthians knew that an idol has no real existence, and that there is no God but one (1 Cor. 8:4). Yet they thought that, seeing this, they might sit and eat in an idol's temple. In this they were wrong, and the apostle corrects their mistake. Care for their weaker brothers should have kept them away from idolatrous rites, even from an outward share in them. But more than this, they had no business to be there at all.
- Nothing. The idol has no real existence. The beings the pagans imagined behind their images are not there.
- One. Against a sky full of so-called gods and lords, we have one God, the Father, the source of all, and one Lord, Jesus Christ. This is about how God has revealed Himself and where we stand with Him.
- Something. What is nothing in itself is still something to a weaker conscience. Behind the empty image, demons are a real and malicious power.
- Not enough. Knowledge I hold as mine only puffs me up. The knowledge that counts unfolds God and makes Him greater to the soul.
- Love decides. The fact alone never settled the question of the meat. Care for a brother did — and that ruled out sitting down in the idol's temple.