1 Corinthians 8:7

Corinth was a busy, cosmopolitan port and a Roman provincial capital, full of temples to gods such as Aphrodite, Apollo, Poseidon and Asclepius, along with cults that honoured the emperors as gods. Animal sacrifice ran through its religious, social and civic life. Part of a sacrificed animal was usually eaten by the worshippers, part went to the priests, and the rest was sold in the public meat markets, the macella. So meat from the altars reached the butcher’s stall, the private banquet and the feasts held in temple grounds, and a believer who bought meat or accepted an invitation to dinner faced a real question. For converts from paganism, eating it could stir up everything they had left behind. Others, confident that the idols were nothing, ate it freely.

Paul takes the matter up across 1 Corinthians 8–10. He opens with a warning, “Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth” (1 Corinthians 8:1), and that warning governs everything in these verses. Verses 4–6 set out what believers know about idols and about God, verses 7–8 turn to the believers who still lack that knowledge and to where food stands before God, and 1 Corinthians 8:9–13 asks those who know to use their freedom in love. The whole discussion ends with “whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Paul handles the same kind of question in Romans 14.

The words “as concerning therefore” bring Paul back to the subject he raised in verse 1. The particle oûn, “therefore”, marks the next step in his thought. His subject is the brōsis of things offered to idols, the eating of them. The noun comes from the base of bibrōskō, “to eat”, and is the everyday word for eating, which keeps this great teaching about God tied to an ordinary meal. “Those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols” are one word in Greek, eidōlóthyton, an idol-sacrifice, part of an offering made to a pagan god.

“We know” uses eídō, a verb that properly means to see and is used figuratively for knowing. Paul speaks for every believer who shares this understanding, and he names two things they know.

The first is that “an idol is nothing in the world”. An eídōlon is an image made for worship, and by implication the heathen god it stands for. Paul joins it to oudeís, “nothing”. The image is a made object, and the god it represents is empty of divine being and of spiritual power. Because the idol is “nothing”, believers are free from fear of the gods of the city and of the meat that was offered to them.

The second is that “there is none other God but one”, and this is the ground of the first. The Greek runs oudeís héteros theós ei mḗ heîs, “no other God except one”. Héteros means “other” or “another”, ei mḗ means “if not”, “except” or “save”, and heîs is the numeral one. This is the faith of Israel, which confesses that the LORD is one (Deuteronomy 6:4). It is the faith Isaiah heard from the LORD himself: “I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God” (Isaiah 44:6). In the same chapter Isaiah sets out at length the folly of making and worshipping idols (Isaiah 44:9–20). Against all the gods of Corinth stands this one God, and he alone is worthy of worship and allegiance.

Paul grants what anyone walking through Corinth could see: “there be that are called gods”. The verb is légō, to lay out in words, to say, and here to call or name. These beings are gods by name, named so by the people who worship them, and Paul leaves the title with those who give it. The word for god, theós, is the common noun for a deity. With the article it usually means the one supreme God, and the New Testament also uses it, as here, for the gods of the nations.

“Whether in heaven or in earth” takes in the whole range of them. In the heavens were the Olympian gods such as Zeus, Apollo and Aphrodite, the gods of the stars and the figures of myth, and on earth were local spirits, heroes raised to divine honour, and rulers who claimed divine status. The word for lord, kýrios, means one supreme in authority, a master or controller. It was used of powerful gods, of emperors made divine (Caesar was often worshipped as “Lord”) and of men who held great power and commanded loyalty. The words in brackets, “(as there be gods many, and lords many)”, press home how crowded the pagan world was with names demanding worship, and they prepare for the “one God” and “one Lord” of the next verse. The psalmist had already said, “For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the LORD made the heavens” (Psalm 96:5).

“But to us” sets the confession of believers over against every god and lord that people name. Heîs, the same numeral as in verse 4, stands at the head of both halves of it: “one God, the Father” and “one Lord Jesus Christ”. Here the Shema’s one God is confessed by a church in a city of many gods, and Paul speaks elsewhere of “One God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:6).

The Father is the one “of whom are all things”. The preposition is ek, “from” or “out of”, so all that exists comes from him as its source. “And we in him” is in Greek hēmeis eis auton, “we unto him”, and it speaks of direction. We live toward the Father and for his purpose. He is where all things come from and where our lives are headed.

“One Lord Jesus Christ” gives Jesus the title Kyrios, the word the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, often uses for the LORD. Set beside the “lords many” of verse 5, it gives Jesus the authority and the divine standing that belong to God. “By whom are all things” uses diá, “through”, which here marks the channel or means by which something is done. All things were made through the Son and continue to exist through him. John says the same of the Word (John 1:3), and Paul calls Christ the image of the invisible God, by whom all things were created and in whom all things hold together (Colossians 1:15–17).

“And we by him”, hēmeis di’ autou, carries the same truth into our own lives. Our creation, our redemption and our daily life with God all come to us through Christ. He is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), the mediator of the new testament (Hebrews 9:15), and the one through whom we have access by one Spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:18).

Every lord of Corinth stands below this one Lord. God has given Jesus the name above every name, so that every knee in heaven and on earth should bow to him and every tongue confess that he is Lord (Philippians 2:9–11). He is head over every rule and authority (Colossians 2:10), and after his resurrection he said that “all power” had been given to him “in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18), the same two realms where verse 5 places the gods and lords of the nations.

“Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge” turns from what is true to who has grasped it. Gnōsis, “knowledge”, means knowing, here the understanding that idols are powerless and that food offered to them is undefiled in itself. Paul had it, and so did many in Corinth, but some in the church still lacked it.

These are believers who eat “with conscience of the idol unto this hour”. They were most likely recent converts from paganism, and even now, after coming to faith, the idol is still real to them when the meat is on the table. They eat it “as a thing offered unto an idol” (eidōlóthyton again), feeling that they are taking part in the worship they once gave. The word for conscience, syneídēsis, means co-perception or moral consciousness, the inner sense that discerns right from wrong and holds us to our own convictions. Their conscience is asthenḗs, “weak”, still being formed by the freeing truth of verses 4–6, and when they eat against it, it is “defiled”, molýnō, soiled or stained.

The KJV’s “meat” is brōma, which means food of any kind, especially foods allowed or forbidden by the Jewish law. Here it is the sacrificed meat in question at Corinth. The verb “commendeth” is parístēmi, to stand beside, to present or to recommend, so Paul’s point is that our acceptance with God is untouched by what we eat. He explains it in two balanced clauses. “If we eat, are we the better” uses perisseúō, to abound or excel, and “if we eat not, are we the worse” uses hysteréō, to come behind, to fall short or be lacking. Eating brings us no gain in righteousness or favour, and abstaining brings no loss. Both acts are, in themselves, matters indifferent before God, what has long been called adiaphora.

Jesus taught the same when he said, “not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man” (Matthew 15:11). Paul tells the Romans that “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink” (Romans 14:17), and he warns the Colossians against letting anyone judge them over food or drink (Colossians 2:16–17). Our standing before God is a gift of grace, received by faith in Christ, whose sacrifice made us righteous in God’s sight (2 Corinthians 5:21).

The confession of verses 4–6 is good news for everyone who once lived under many masters. There is one God, from whom we came and to whom we go, and one Lord, through whom we live. Every other power that claims our worship is a god only in the mouths of those who serve it. Our own world has its gods many and lords many in wealth, power, fame, career, self-fulfilment, political causes and even technology, and each promises a security and a life that belong to God alone.

Paul sets this glorious knowledge beside a brother who is still weak. The same Lord through whom all things exist “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:5–8), and he “came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). The strong in Corinth were asked to follow him, bearing the infirmities of the weak and pleasing others before themselves (Romans 15:1), and keeping every stumbling block out of a brother’s way (Romans 14:13). The truth about idols sets us free, and love decides how that freedom is used, as Paul shows at length in 1 Corinthians 13. The one God and the Lord who gave himself are honoured when knowledge serves love in the church.