1 Corinthians 8:2

“Now as touching things offered unto idols” opens a new subject, and the wording shows that Paul is answering a question the Corinthians themselves had raised. The thing in question is eidōlóthyton, something sacrificed to an idol. This verse begins a long section of the letter. Chapter 7 dealt with marriage and singleness. Chapter 8 lays down the principle, chapter 9 gives Paul’s own example of giving up his rights for the sake of the gospel, and chapter 10 warns against idolatry itself.

Corinth was a busy, cosmopolitan port, a centre of trade and of pagan worship, with temples to gods such as Aphrodite, Apollo and Poseidon. Animal sacrifice was part of that worship, and portions of the meat were sold in the public market, the macellum, or eaten at temple feasts that were also social occasions. For believers who had come out of paganism, the question met them every day. Some understood, as Paul says a few verses later, that “an idol is nothing in the world” (1 Corinthians 8:4–6), and they felt free to eat. Others had a weaker conscience. For them, eating such meat could stir old associations with idol worship, defile their conscience and draw them back toward what they had left. Paul will ask those who know better to use their freedom with care for these weaker believers (1 Corinthians 8:9–13), but first he sets out the principle that governs it all.

“We know that we all have knowledge” is a real concession. The word is gnōsis, from ginōskō, knowing or knowledge. Here it is the understanding that idols are false gods, so that food offered to them is unpolluted by the offering. Paul grants that the Corinthians have this knowledge, and in a sense every believer has it. Then he weighs it.

“Knowledge puffeth up.” The verb physióō comes from a root meaning to blow, and it means to inflate, and so to make proud. Knowledge pursued for its own sake, or used to show that we stand above others and may do as we please, swells a person the way air swells a bag. He comes to think much of himself and little of others, and the church divides. The knowledge itself is good, and the danger lies in what it does to a person when love is missing.

“But charity edifieth.” Charity is agápē, love, affection or goodwill, and in the plural the same word named the church’s love-feasts. It is the love that seeks the good of another, whatever that person’s weakness, the love Christ showed and the love Paul praises above every gift in 1 Corinthians 13. To edify, oikodoméō, is to build, and figuratively to build up. Love builds up the brother or sister in front of us and the church as a whole, strengthening, encouraging and helping each one grow. The two pictures stand side by side, something blown up with air and something built.

This sentence is the thesis of all that Paul says about Christian liberty. Believers are free in Christ, and that freedom is bounded by love, which puts the spiritual good of others ahead of our own rights. He spends a whole chapter of Romans on food and conscience (Romans 14:1–23) and says there, “But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died” (Romans 14:15). He tells the Galatians, who were called to liberty, “by love serve one another” (Galatians 5:13), and the Philippians, “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others” (Philippians 2:3–4). The same concern for building up the body runs through his teaching on spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12. Spiritual maturity is measured by how we love, far more than by how much we know.

Verse 2 turns to the person who is sure of his knowledge. “If any man think” uses dokéō, an ordinary verb meaning to think, suppose or seem. The verb itself is neutral, and the warning comes from what Paul goes on to say. “Any thing” is tìs, any, so the claim could reach any matter at all, though here the matter is idol food. The first “knoweth” is eídō, to know a thing as a fact.

Paul’s verdict is that such a person “knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.” “Yet” is oudépō, “not yet”, which marks his understanding as undeveloped and still short of where it should be. The second and third “know” are ginṓskō, to know, come to know, perceive or understand. “Ought” is deî, an impersonal verb meaning “it is necessary” or “one must”, which covers what is a matter of duty, and “as” is kathṓs, “just as” or “even as”. Together they say that there is a way a person must know, and the one who is proud of his knowledge has yet to reach it.

There is irony here. The man who thinks he has grasped the matter shows by his pride that he has missed what matters most about it. Knowledge held as one ought to hold it is humble, aware of its limits and joined to love, so it shapes the way a person treats others. Later in this letter Paul says plainly how partial our knowledge is: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Proverbs gives the same warning, “Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil” (Proverbs 3:7). Paul tells every believer in Rome “not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly” (Romans 12:3), and he asks the Philippians to “let each esteem other better than themselves” (Philippians 2:3).

Verse 3 turns the whole matter around. “But” is dé, a connective that here marks the contrast. Paul has been speaking of what we know, and now he speaks of loving God and being known. Love here is the verb agapáō, to love. Loving God is a devotion of the will that puts him first and desires to obey him, the response the greatest commandment asks for: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matthew 22:37).

“The same” is hoûtos, “this one”, pointing back to the man who loves God. “Is known” is ginṓskō again. The verb itself means to know or understand, and its commonest use is simply having information about something. Here God is the one who knows, and the love that comes before gives the word a fuller sense. “Of him” is hypó, which marks the agent of the passive verb, so God is the one doing the knowing. God knows everything about everyone, and this is a particular knowing of the one who loves him: he recognizes that person as his own, approves him and holds him in relationship with himself.

Paul might have said that the one who loves God knows God. He says that he is known by God, and so he moves the weight from human achievement to God’s grace. Our standing rests on God’s knowledge of us more than on anything we know of him, and his knowing is worth more than any human praise or learning.

Christ had all knowledge and wisdom. He is “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24), and Peter said to him, “Lord, thou knowest all things” (John 21:17). He carried that knowledge with complete humility. He “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant”, and he humbled himself to the point of death on a cross (Philippians 2:7–8). He used what he knew to save, heal and restore, and he reached out to the weak and the outcast. The cross is the supreme act of love that builds up, for Christ “hath loved us, and hath given himself for us” (Ephesians 5:2), and by it he builds his church and reconciles us to God.

He also loved the Father perfectly. His whole life was obedience and devotion, ending in his sacrificial death, as he said: “But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do” (John 14:31). And it is in Christ that believers are known of God. “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). In him we are adopted into God’s family, and Jesus prays that the world may know that the Father “hast loved them, as thou hast loved me” (John 17:23). Even our love for God is his gift, because “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” (Romans 5:5).

We live with more information and stronger opinions than any generation before us, and it is easy to take a store of facts or sound doctrine for wisdom. Paul asks what our knowledge does. When we are right about something, we can use it to win arguments and dismiss those who see less clearly, or we can use it to serve them. His test is whether it builds up the people around us, especially those more vulnerable or less informed than we are, and that may mean putting their good ahead of our own preferences and rights.

The deepest truth here concerns God’s knowledge more than ours. If you love God, he knows you as his own. Your security rests on that far more than on how much you understand, and it holds firm whatever you fear about yourself.