Delivered January 29, 2012
It is sad to say, but the American Church is not known for its spiritual maturity. As far as the worldwide Body of Christ is concerned it is clearly the richest materially, but the same can not be said spiritually. Churches in third world countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia – even though they tend to be much poorer and often suffer persecution – they are in many ways more healthy than Western churches. Yet the West, because of its political, economic and military might, and its access to the media, is usually seen as the face of Christianity in the world.
About ten years ago I first read the book “Revolution in World Missions” by K.P. Yohannan, the founder & president of Gospel for Asia, one of the best independent mission organizations in the world. Yohannan is an Indian and his mission organization works mostly in India and neighboring countries. In the book he talks about his first visit to America to raise funds for his fledging mission. He saw the material opulence of churches in the American southwest, especially in Texas, and he literally cried over the spiritual poverty he saw in the American church. It reminded him of the Laodicean church in Revelation 3. Jesus says to it: “You say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.”
The church in Corinth in Greece in the first century was such a church. When you read Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians and you get a picture of a church that is a mess. In the first chapter they are squabbling over which religious leader they like best. Some aligned with Paul, others Cephas (Peter), others Apollos, others take the high road and say they follow Christ, but in fact are just as divisive as the other groups. Paul speaks to them in chapter three saying, “1 And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able….” In the famous love chapter 13 he says, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” When the apostle Paul visited the church in Corinth, he was the only adult in the room.
In America the big churches and the famous pastors selling the most books and making the most money are not necessarily the most mature churches. In fact in my experience, the bigger and wealthier the church is (generally speaking) the spiritually poorer and less mature it is. No wonder so many people reject the gospel and ridicule Christianity as an option for their lives, when the megachurches, megapastors and megadenominations with their megabucks are paraded across television sets and newspapers as the prime examples of Christian spirituality! If that were truly what Christianity is, then I would reject it also. Today in our passage the apostle Paul is trying to tell anyone in the Corinthian church who will listen how to act like an adult in a spiritually childish world. Hopefully we can learn something from it this morning. He makes three points in these thirteen verses.
I. The first is Love over Knowledge. Verses 1-3 “Now concerning things offered to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. 2 And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. 3 But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him.” There was a controversy in the Corinthian church over food. Much of the meat bought in the marketplace in ancient Corinth had originally been used as sacrifices in the pagan temples. Some Christians did not think that it was right for a Christian to eat such meat. They thought it was religiously contaminated or that by buying this meat they were condoning pagan worship practices. So there was a division in the church over this matter. Paul uses this example to put forth an important principle: that love is better than knowledge.
He is talking about spiritual knowledge here, not academic knowledge. People can also be arrogant because they think they are intellectually smarter than others, but that is not what he is talking about. He is speaking of people who think they are spiritually more knowledgeable than others. Some people thought they knew more and knew better. Paul knows exactly what this is all about because he used to be a Pharisee, a group that considered themselves the most knowledgeable and spiritual people around. To these super-spiritual people who thought they were so much better and more spiritual than others, he gives this admonition: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” Christians who think they are the most spiritual are in fact the least spiritual. They have too high an opinion of themselves. They are all puffed up in their spiritual pride.
There was a group at that time that later would be called the Gnostics. They prided themselves on their gnosis, the Greek word for spiritual knowledge. They considered themselves the best of the best, the spiritual top 15, the truly enlightened ones. They looked down on regular Christians as ignorant and unsophisticated. They thought they were the only true Christians. Paul describes these gnostics as being puffed up. And he calls them to embrace love more than knowledge.
He says in verse 2 “And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know.” It is a great principle. You can tell the most spiritually mature people by how humble they are. The greatest Christians I have ever known in my life have not been the pastors of the big churches, denominational leaders, or seminary professors. They are not the religious experts who travel around giving lectures, workshops and seminars. The most spiritual folks I have known have been regular church folks. Some of them have had very little education, but they had a deep humble sincere faith. They never thought of themselves as better than anyone else; in fact it was just the opposite. But they were the true saints.
Paul tells us what true spiritual knowledge is in verse 3, “But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him.” It is not what we know, but that we are known by God. It is not how much biblical, theological and spiritual knowledge we have in our heads. It is all about loving God and being known by God. Notice he does not even talk about knowing God, but being known by God. People can even get arrogant about knowing God. “I know God and you don’t.” “No, I know God and you don’t!” Pride puts us into that frame of mind! It is all about loving God. “But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him.”
II. Let’s go on to the second section now, verses 4-6 “4 Therefore concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one. 5 For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), 6 yet for 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 through whom we live.” Here Paul gets back to the issue at hand and uses it again to put forth another important spiritual principle. The first was about knowledge versus love. This one is about gods versus God.
The practical issue was that this meat in the butcher’s booth at the marketplace had been sacrificed to the various gods and goddesses worshipped by the Greek populace. The people in the church were fighting over whether or not they are allowed to eat it. Paul shakes his head at them as if they were children and says in affect, “What’s the problem? These gods are not even real! You are arguing over gods who don’t even exist.” He says in verse 4 “Therefore concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one.”
There is only one God, and therefore we don’t have to get into a fight between religions. We certainly don’t have to fight and kill over it the way Islamic jihadists do, shouting “God is great!” God is great enough to take care of himself. The more we argue against something that is not real, the more it becomes real in people’s minds. Our job is not to get into the argument that “my religion is better than your religion. My God is bigger than your god. My God is better than your god.” Hear how childish that sounds? It sounds like children arguing on the playground: “My dad can beat up your dad!” “My God can beat up your God.” If we get into arguments like we are just demonstrating immaturity.
My job as a preacher is not to argue or fight about God or gods. It is to proclaim the God I know and his gospel, to testify to the Savior that I love and who loves me. Paul goes on to say in verse 5, “For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), - here he is acknowledging that there are various religious beliefs in many different gods, but he tells us not to get sidetracked into those fruitless arguments. He goes on in verse 6 (the NRSV puts it better than most translations): “yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.”
I could preach a whole sermon just on that one verse! It is so rich! The one true God is the Father. I know people can argue about that too; people get bent out of shape when Christians use the masculine pronoun for God. Let’s not get caught up in that squabble, even though that is a very popular sideshow these days in mainline denominations. It is just another way we get caught up in that spiritual knowledge trap. We are saying, “My understanding of God is better than your understanding of God! My words for God are better than your words!” Let’s not go down that road. I call God Father because Jesus used it and taught us to use that name. For me it means that God is personal; that is the point. God is not an impersonal force or power. God is a Person. In fact God is richer in personhood than our language can communicate, so we have to talk about God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
III. So far we have seen Paul talk about knowledge versus love, and gods versus God. Now we see him talk about Rules versus Liberty. In verses 7-13 he gives the Corinthian Christians some guidelines to make decisions on issues like the food in the market sacrificed to idols. That is not an issue for us, but we have other issues and his guidelines can help us. There are three of them.
1. One is Conscience. He speaks of the role of conscience in decision-making. There were people in that church whose conscience would not allow them to eat of that food. Verse 7 ‘for some, with consciousness of the idol, until now eat it as a thing offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.” Paul is saying, “Fine. If your conscience won’t let you eat it, then don’t eat it.” But he goes on to tell these people, “Don’t judge others for eating it.” He says in verse 8 “8 But food does not commend us to God; for neither if we eat are we the better, nor if we do not eat are we the worse.” There are some matters – not all matters but things like this – where it is simply a matter of personal conscience. Follow your conscience, but don’t judge others for following their conscience.
2. The second guideline he gives is Freedom. The apostle Paul is a champion of spiritual freedom. He came out of a Pharisaic tradition that placed huge legalistic burdens on people, and he did not want to see that happen in the church. Throughout his letters Paul describes how God has set us free from the Law to follow the Holy Spirit who will lead us according to the will of God. That is the way Paul sees this food issue. He thinks the people who won’t eat the meat have a weak conscience, and he says so. He does not want Christianity to get into food laws. No food is unclean. No people are unclean. Freedom is to be our guide. But it is not unrestrained freedom. As Paul says elsewhere, we do not use our freedom in Christ to become a slave to sin. It is a responsible freedom.
3. This is the third principle. In his passage he tempers our freedom in Christ with another principle, which is our responsibility to others. He says in verse 9 “9 But beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are weak.” He goes on to say not to flaunt our liberty in such a way that it will offend our brothers and sisters. He says in verse 11 that we cannot use our freedom in a way that will hurt others. Verse 11 “because of your knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?” He says in verse 12 that if we live in such a way as to ignore the affect our behavior has on others, then “when you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.”
In other words, we are responsible for how our actions affect others. I am responsible not just for my actions before God; as your pastor I am responsible for how my behavior affects you. That is why there is no such thing as a part time pastor. Likewise you are responsible for how your behavior affects others. There is no such thing as a part time Christian. You are responsible for how your actions affect people in your church, in your family, how they affect young people who become aware of your actions, how they affect the way the church is viewed by people in this community. We are not our own. Paul writes two chapters earlier in this same letter: “19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
We are free. Christ has set us free. “Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” Free from petty religious rules and laws. But we are not free from Christ. We are free in Christ. We are free for Christ. We are free for God as it says in this passage “for whom we exist.” This is mature Christian living - to live in love, to live in truth, and to live in freedom in Christ, for Christ.
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