1 Corinthians 8:13

The church in Corinth was divided over meat that had been offered to idols. Corinth was a wealthy Roman port and provincial capital with a mixed population and many temples, among them temples to Aphrodite, Apollo and Poseidon. Animals were sacrificed there, and the meat left over was sold in the public market, the macellum, or eaten at feasts held in the temple precincts. A believer could meet it at the market, at a feast, and even at a private meal.

Paul opens the subject in 1 Corinthians 8 with the words “Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth” (1 Corinthians 8:1). He agrees with those who know “that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one” (1 Corinthians 8:4), so for a believer who understands this the meat is simply food. Then he adds that some lack this knowledge, and their weak conscience is defiled when they eat (1 Corinthians 8:7).

Many in the church had come to Christ out of a lifetime of idol worship, and that life had taught them that such a meal was an act of worship and communion with a god. For them the line between eating food and taking part in the old rites was blurred, and eating this meat, above all in a temple, felt like going back to idolatry or betraying their new faith. Jewish believers may have had scruples of their own, rooted in their food laws. Others had grasped that idols are powerless, and they ate freely. Paul’s answer runs through 1 Corinthians 8–10, and these five verses bring chapter 8 to its point. The knowledge of the strong is true, and love decides how it is used.

Liberty becomes a stumblingblock when a believer uses a real right in a way that trips up a weaker brother, and verse 9 warns against exactly that. “But” is dé, a small connective that can join, continue or contrast, and here it turns from what the knowing believer may do to what his freedom can do to someone else. “Take heed” translates blépō, to look, used here as a command to watch carefully and think ahead. “Lest by any means” is mḗpōs, which voices a real fear that the very freedom they prize could do harm.

The word for liberty, exousía, means authority or right, and it also covers plain power or ability. Paul grants the right in full and then sets a limit on how it is used. “Become” is gínomai, to become or come into being. Freedom in Christ is good, and in careless hands it can come to be something else. Paul asks for freedom used in love, and at times love will lay a freedom aside for a brother’s sake.

A stumblingblock, próskomma, comes from a word meaning to strike against. It is something in the path that makes a person trip and fall, and Paul uses the picture for whatever leads another believer into sin or doubt, sets him back in his walk, or makes him act against his conscience. “Them that are weak” translates asthenéō, to be feeble or lacking strength, the same verb that stands behind “the weak brother” in verse 11. These are believers whose understanding is still incomplete and whose faith is tender and easily swayed.

Paul gives the same rule in Romans: “judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way” (Romans 14:13). Later in this letter he puts it as a principle for all of life: “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth” (1 Corinthians 10:23–24). He asks the Philippians, too, to look “every man also on the things of others” (Philippians 2:3–4). Liberty is a gift to be stewarded, and its measure is the good of the brother beside us.

Paul pictures a believer “which hast knowledge” at a meal in an idol’s temple, with a weaker brother watching. The knowledge, gnōsis, is the act of knowing, and here it means the understanding that an idol is mere wood or stone, powerless, and that there is one true God. “Sit at meat” is katákeimai, to recline, the usual posture at a feast. The eidōleîon is an idol’s temple, an image-house. The place matters, because a meal inside the temple was far more closely tied to the worship of the god than meat bought in the market, and to a sensitive conscience it looked like taking part in that worship. “If any man see thee” puts the weight on the example that is set. What the weak brother watches is what he will copy.

“Shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened” is a question that expects the answer yes. The conscience, syneídēsis, is the inner moral awareness that judges our thoughts and actions, accusing or excusing. “Weak” here is asthenḗs, the adjective from which the verb of verses 9 and 11 is formed.

“Emboldened” is oikodoméō, to build, and figuratively to build up or edify. It is the verb behind “charity edifieth” in 1 Corinthians 8:1, and here Paul turns it with a sad irony. The strong believer’s example does build the weak brother up, and what it builds is the confidence to eat eidōlóthyton, “those things which are offered to idols”, while his own conscience still says it is wrong. He acts against his conviction, defiles his conscience, and sins against God. Paul gives the same warning in Romans: “For meat destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are pure; but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence” (Romans 14:20–21).

“And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?” The strong believer’s knowledge, gnōsis again, is true in itself, and here it becomes the means of another’s ruin because it acts without regard for him. “Perish” is apóllymi, to destroy fully, to perish or to be lost. Paul again asks a question, and the answer it expects is that such a thing is unthinkable.

The last words carry the weight. Christ gave his life for this weak brother, and God values him at that price. The strong believer is asked only to give up a meal. Paul says the same in Romans: “Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died” (Romans 14:15). Jesus himself warned, “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6–7). Paul later sums up the whole matter of eating and drinking: “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Believers are members of Christ’s body, so a wound given to one of them is felt by the Head. Paul uses “sin” twice in verse 12, first for the wrong done to the brethren and then for the wrong done to Christ. The verb, hamartánō, is the common word for sinning, and at root it means to miss the mark. A strong believer may think of his meal as a harmless use of freedom, and Paul calls it sin.

“Wound” is týptō, to strike or beat, a word for physical blows used here of a conscience. A weak conscience, syneídēsis as in verse 10, is struck when it is pushed to act against its own convictions, and the blow leaves guilt, confusion and distress.

Then comes “ye sin against Christ”. Paul calls the church “the body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:27), with Christ as its Head, so harm done to a member is done to him. Jesus taught the same: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40). When he met Saul, who was persecuting believers, he asked, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” (Acts 9:4). The weak brother belongs to Christ, and Christ takes the wound as his own. This is why Paul tells the Galatians, “use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another” (Galatians 5:13).

“Wherefore” is dióper, “on which very account”, and it draws Paul’s conclusion from all he has said. “Meat” in the KJV means food of any kind, and the Greek brōma is a general word for food, used especially of foods that Jewish law allowed or forbade. Here it is the food offered to idols. Then Paul goes further and speaks of eating “flesh”.

“Make my brother to offend” is skandalízō, from skandalon, a trap or snare. It means to trip someone up and so lead him into sin, into falling away, or into acting against his conscience. In the KJV, “offend” carries this older sense of causing someone to stumble and fall.

The phrase “make my brother to offend” stands twice in this verse. Adelphós is a brother by birth or, as here, a fellow believer, and the repetition keeps that family bond before us. “While the world standeth” renders eis aiṓn, from eis, “into”, and aiṓn, “an age”, so “for the age” or for ever. It is a strong hyperbole for a resolve meant to last for good. The closing “lest” is hína mḗ, “in order that not”, and it states his purpose: to keep from being the cause of a brother’s fall.

Paul turns from “thee” and “ye” to “I” and “my”. He offers himself as the living example of what he teaches, and his readiness to give up a lawful thing lends weight to his words. In Romans he says it again: “It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak” (Romans 14:20–21).

Paul’s call to lay down liberty for a weak brother follows the pattern of Christ himself. Christ, “being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant”, and he became obedient to death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:5–8). Paul writes in Romans, “We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves”, and he gives the reason: “For even Christ pleased not himself” (Romans 15:1–3). Jesus said that he “came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45), and Paul writes that God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

The weak brother of verse 11 is one of those for whom Christ did all this. Christ gave up far more than a meal for him, and the strong believer who lays down a right for that brother’s sake is walking in his Lord’s steps. The cross itself is a stumblingblock to some, as Paul says early in this letter: “Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness” (1 Corinthians 1:23–24). That offence belongs to the gospel. What verse 9 warns against is a stumblingblock of our own making, laid in a brother’s path by the way we use our freedom.

Our freedom in Christ is real. He has set us free from the bondage of the Law and from superstitious fear, and Paul himself knew that an idol is nothing. These verses show what that freedom is for. God values every believer at the price of his Son’s death, and Christ takes a wound given to the weakest of his people as given to himself. Knowledge of the truth is a good gift, and in this passage love governs how it is used.

The questions in our churches today are different ones: entertainment, social media, alcohol, fashion, political stances, even the way we argue about theology. A believer newly delivered from drink who watches a mature Christian drink freely may be drawn back into it, and then that freedom has become the stumblingblock of verse 9. Paul’s words in verse 13 meet such a case directly, because his brother’s walk with God mattered more to him than his own right to eat. Spiritual strength in this passage is shown by laying a right down for another, as Paul resolved to do and as Christ did for us.