1 Corinthians 10:23-11:1
OK folks. Let’s start with a little memory test: fill in the blank in the following statement. _______. It's What's for Dinner" The answer: “Beef. It's What's for Dinner" was an advertising campaign launched in 1992 by the National Livestock and Meat Board. The campaign was established through television and radio advertisements that featured actor Robert Mitchum as its first narrator, with music from the Rodeo suite by Aaron Copland. The initial campaign ran for 17 months at a cost of $42 million. After the death of Mitchum in July 1997, Sam Elliott read the voice-over. The website BeefItsWhatsForDinner.com was launched in 2002 as a resource for how to prepare and enjoy beef.
Interestingly, meat became a hot topic for church members in the ancient city of Corinth. Some of the folks – probably the Jewish Christians – considered it a sin to eat meat that was slaughtered as a sacrifice to an idol. They felt strongly that the meat was contaminated by association. Other believers took a more pragmatic approach and considered meat to be meat, no matter the circumstances under which it was slaughtered. Whether it was a priest or a butcher that prepared the cuts, it didn’t matter to them.
For us, these verses in Corinthians identify a problem we encounter from time to time in various forms; how do we resolve an issue that is not directly covered by Scripture? Take cloning for example. Jesus never spoke to the issue of cloning, so we have no direction from His teaching. When there is no biblical law to apply, we are left with biblical principle and freedom to take opposing views without any moral difference between one side or the other. Today I hope to identify a principle we can use when such disagreements arise.
Love trumps liberty.
1. The principle: Liberty is subject to love. (10:23-24)
This is an important point in this epistle: not all things that are ALLOWED are going to be GOOD or BENEFICIAL for everyone. People disagree about morality (what is GOOD), but whether something is helpful (BENEFICIAL) ought to be a bit more obvious. The word translated here as BENEFICIAL means to build someone up, to “edify,” to help them become more mature. To put it another way: “Liberty is not license.” and “Having the right doesn’t make it right.”
Paul is here repeating a quotation of the Corinthians he first used in 6:12: YOU SAY, “I AM ALLOWED TO DO ANYTHING” – BUT NOT EVERYTHING IS GOOD FOR YOU. AND EVEN THOUGH “I AM ALLOWED TO DO ANYTHING,” I MUST NOT BECOME A SLAVE TO ANYTHING. In chapter six he dealt with a sexual sin so grievous even the immoral pagan Corinthians were offended.
Though dealing with two separate issues, Paul used the same principle: “You may think you have complete freedom to do as you like, but all freedom has boundaries.” Two boundaries: In chapter six, a boundary on freedom is sin and slavery to anything that is not of God. In chapter ten, another boundary is what causes a fellow believer, one with a weaker conscience, to sin.
In His New Covenant, Jesus revoked the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament. For example, we are free to observe or not observe the dietary laws handed down to Moses. However, there are two limits to our liberty: One, can’t turn our liberty into law for others. What we choose to do as part of our conscience we can’t demand other people do the same. Two, we can’t act in liberty if we know that action will offend the conscience of someone whose conscience is still bound up in legalism. There are better ways to handle them.
One test of morality is motive: do we do things for self-gratification or do we do them to do GOOD for others? We need to prioritize the rights of others before our own rights. Writing in Romans 15:1-2, Paul made this point in a slightly different way: WE WHO ARE STRONG MUST BE CONSIDERATE OF THOSE WHO ARE SENSITIVE ABOUT THINGS LIKE THIS. WE MUST NOT JUST PLEASE OURSELVES. WE SHOULD HELP OTHERS TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT AND BUILD THEM UP IN THE LORD.
The STRONG believer, the one who has the liberty, must take responsibility for the WEAK believer and their sensitivity to conscience, and avoid giving them offense as much as possible. Here in 1 Corinthians, Paul is concerned about the believer’s witness to outsiders; he doesn’t want side issues to cause a person to reject the messenger giving the message of life in Jesus Christ. In Romans, Paul was concerned about keeping the peace and unity that is supposed to make Christian fellowship obviously different – and better – than any other kind of fellowship. In both cases, those who know better have a greater responsibility to DO BETTER.
2. An application of the principle: consider your host. (10:25-30)
The word SO indicates Paul is now going to apply the principle set forth in the previous verses. Paul sided with the practical people in the church, especially when they were eating behind closed doors in their own homes, where there was no chance of offending others, he advised them to eat what they liked. (25-26) “Meat is meat,” he advised. There is no morality in the food itself. He quoted Psalm 24:1 as evidence that God created the world to serve the people of the world. Any respectful, well-intentioned use of things in the world is permissible as it is in line with God’s will as was expressed at creation (Genesis 1:28-31).
The word MARKETPLACE (markello) is used only here in the Bible and refers to a specific spot in the city of Corinth, a street of vendor stands that was built by the wealthy for use by the common people. There was nothing in the appearance of meat that had been butchered in worship of an idol that would distinguish it from meat butchered for common use. A vendor could mix cuts from temple and non-temple sources or not bother to identify their origins. However, one possible way to know the difference between temple and non-temple meat was that after a major pagan holiday, the market would be flooded with temple meat, driving the price down, making it affordable to common folk.
Jews and Jewish Christians who still followed Old Testament kosher laws would have been the most sensitive to this issue. They would be more likely to care where the meat came from.
Verses 27-29 are a kind of case study, a “What if...?” situation where you are eating in someone else’s home. How does your freedom in Christ apply when you are a guest? In most first-century homes, meat was a luxury meal, not something consumed daily. So, we can assume this is a feast day or invitation to a wealthy person’s home.
In the first scenario (v. 27): You’re invited to a meal in an unbeliever’s home. Rather than offend them and lose a hearing for the Gospel, eat and don’t bring up the subject of the meat’s origin. This is Paul’s version of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
The second scenario (vs. 28-29) is not a specific situation, it might come up in the company of believers or non-believers. Whoever mentions the idol-worship origin of the meat, for whatever purpose, has thereby flipped the script. The situation has changed. It is no longer a simple matter of hospitality. Attention has been placed on the meat. In such a case, Paul’s advice was DON’T EAT IT. Now the reason to abstain is not some kind legalism, but as an act of grace, done to avoid violating anyone else’s conscience. Being loving and gracious like Jesus may occasionally require you to put your own conscience in neutral. It may also require you to temporarily set aside the normal ethical convention of eating what’s set before you. Matters of conscience are situations like this where normally equal principles or freedoms contradict one another.
Outside the parenthesis in the text, Paul asked a pair of rhetorical questions that would be posed by someone taking the practical position but not caring about a MATTER OF CONSCIENCE. These questions argue in favor of freedom to eat what is received by an innocent and thankful heart. The questions reinforce the fact that a person should not surrender their freedom to a point of law, especially to one that does not exist. HOWEVER, they should surrender their freedom to avoid offending a brother whose conscience is limited, sensitive, and easily offended. Here grace causes us to give up our rights so we can have a witness by avoiding giving an offense.
Verse 30 explains verse 26. As God has put all creation at our disposal, everything is, under the New Covenant, fit to eat. What Paul advised is voluntary, not legalistic, and based on putting a higher priority on the well-being of the other person, the unity of the church, and the necessity of grace, especially to facilitate witnessing.
3. The point of the principle: do everything for God’s glory. (10:31-32, 11:1)
God is glorified when we show grace to one another. Every activity, no matter how mundane, must have as its objective giving glory to God. The summary of the truth of this passage, “Love trumps liberty,” particularly refers to our love for God. If we truly love God, we place it as the highest priority of life and seek it ahead of our self-satisfaction. Self-righteousness has no place in the church and is not love for God.
“Love trumps liberty” is a biblical principle, not a law. One of the inherent problems with laws is that there will always be situations where there are exceptions and situations where there are contradictions. It is far better for us to make ethical decisions based on principle. It requires more thought and the occasional compromise, but is a more mature and Christ-like approach to moral living. Flexibility, tact, gentleness, humility, sensitivity, thoughtfulness. and anticipation are virtues that are required to live out the grace of Jesus, bringing glory to God. However, with the Spirit’s help, we’ll find grace is a better way to live.
Love trumping liberty will result in grace being shown to everyone, including those outside the Church. It is an extraordinary level of grace that seeks to avoid giving an offense, if possible. In the Greek, OFFENSE is a military term for scouting. The military commander who does not scout the territory ahead of his forces takes an unnecessary chance of being surprised. What Paul is arguing for in verse 32 is to be so gracious that you think ahead to what might offend someone and try to avoid that thing. (See Romans 12:18.) By thinking ahead and avoiding offense, you avoid causing a problem that may keep that person from receiving Jesus as their Savior. With a little forethought, we can avoid creating stumbling blocks that confound our witness.
Paul offered himself as an example of this behavior based on his following the example of Jesus. The word IMITATE in this case means to reproduce the teaching and way of life of the person being imitated. In this way, we make Jesus “real” to the people to whom we are witnessing. One of the best ways we can learn is by imitating what we see trustworthy, spiritually maturing people do. That’s true today. In Paul’s situation, where written communication was extremely limited, oral teaching and personal memory are the chief ways of passing along the faith. As long as Paul followed Christ, it was a good idea to imitate his spiritual life as well as learn his teaching.
Love trumps liberty.
In this passage, Paul has done an inspired job of letting the air out of a pious-sounding but false notion that people or objects can be guilty by association. This is simply not a biblical belief.
Unfortunately, lots of people have beliefs that are more superstition than Scripture. Today’s passage sets forth an example. The way Paul dealt with the issue sets forth a principle of how to navigate situations where another person’s legalism conflicts with our liberty.
The issue of meat offered to idols was a hot button issue in the Corinthian church. Paul plainly said in vs. 25-26 that eating meat offered to idols was not a sin. However, in vs. 27-30, he said that eating meat offered to idols when you know it will offend and provoke someone else’s conscience, then it BECOMES a sin.
Here we see in a practical, everyday situation why Jesus reserved His harshest criticisms for legalists and hypocrites. One of the things that characterizes such people is insensitivity to others. Their self-righteousness permits them to be uncaring about anything other than what they’ve decided is “right.”
This principle is also demonstrated in a much more serious situation – literally life or death – that happened during Jesus’ ministry. As recorded in John 7:53-8:11, some Pharisees and their cronies hoped to entrap Jesus. They brought before Him a woman caught in adultery and, in front of a crowd of people, asked Jesus what He thought about the requirement of the Law that she be stoned.
Jesus dispersed the crowd by offering a stone to the first person who never sinned. When all the disqualified people had gone, he instructed the woman to sin no more.
The legalists wanted blood. Jesus wanted more. The legalists technically violated their own Law in staging this confrontation. Jesus got them to search their own consciences and be honest about the results. The letter of the Law of Moses may not have been satisfied that day, but the spirit and the law of love were perfectly observed. The woman was brought into the middle of that mob under the threat of death but she walked away because of life-giving grace.
RESOURCES:
Beef anecdote found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef._It%27s_What%27s_for_Dinner#:~:text=%22Beef.,the%20creative%20guidance%20of%20VMLY%26R, retrieved on 20 January 2025.
William Baker, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol. 15, 1 Corinthians, 2009, pp. 150-154.
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