The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Determining the will of God should be of great importance in the minds of serious Christians. Even more essential is knowing the will of God in questionable situations. Such was the case in relation to the eating of meat sacrificed to idols in the ancient city of Corinth.

Mark Daniels: Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. The choice between what job to take, for whom we should vote, and where we should live are important considerations. But our Christian witness doesn't generally rest on those kinds of decisions.

There's a whole realm of other choices that bear considerably more weight and consequence. Join Dr. Boice as he takes a deeper look into the biblical principles which should guide us as we're confronted with questionable situations like the eating of meat sacrificed to idols in the ancient world of the Apostle Paul's ministry.

Dr. James Boice: If at some point in my past I had training as a sociologist or even in statistics or accounting, I'm sure that there would have been some point in my past where I would have begun to make a list of the kind of questions I've been asked over the years as I've spoken on a variety of subjects here and in other places. I would have tried to make an analysis of those questions in terms of their frequency to determine what really are the chief problems and the problems behind the problems that concern Christian people.

I have not had any training in statistics. I am not an accountant. I know very little sociology and so I haven't done that. But I have a sense of what kind of things bother people. I think if anybody would ask me what is the number one question in whatever variety of forms it may be asked that you have been asked over the years, I think I'd have to answer it would be a question having to do with the will of God.

People ask it in terms of marriage. How do I know which one I should marry? People ask it in terms of their jobs. They say what job should I take or what field should I enter or what college should I attend in preparation for that? In one form or another, these are the things that are often in our minds.

I think I would say also that in that great category of questions that have to do with knowing the will of God, there is a special and also very prominent category that has to do with knowing the will of God in doubtful situations. I say that's a special category because when you talk about a job, for example, generally speaking, when Christian people face that, that's not a doubtful situation. You might have doubt about what you should do, but in the long run, it doesn't make a whole lot of significance whether you take a job with Company A or Company B. A whole lot is not resting on that in terms of your Christian witness and testimony.

But there are areas which have become significant, perhaps intrinsically and perhaps only culturally, in which we do have those questions. And so we say, "What should I do in those areas? Should I take a stand in this way?" If I do that, it may well be misunderstood and maybe it's not right. Or should I do something else and if I do that, these people won't misunderstand me but another group of people will and perhaps that's not right. And so we say, "What should I do?" We wish, I think, when we begin to think along those lines that the Bible was more clear than it is.

The Bible treats Christian people as adults. And that means it is not a book of rules. That is not to say that there aren't some rules in it. There are. But when we're talking about this matter of doubtful things, the Bible does what the Bible should do and God treated us like the adult human beings he's made us. It doesn't give easy rules so you can get off the hook by simply looking up in an index, but rather it lays down principles by which if we are serious about the Christian life we should live.

This is what Paul gets into at this point of 1st Corinthians. He's dealt, I'm sure in a very logical way, with the kind of things that seem to him to be problems and perhaps the most important problems. Certainly this matter of wisdom and the people at Corinth being so proud of their human knowledge. That was a basic fundamental thing and he had to get that out of the way first and so that's the first thing he plunges into in the letter.

Then there was that matter of immorality. That was a violation of the law of God and the problem there is that it wasn't disciplined in the church. So he tackles that. But then, having done those things, he begins to get into areas that aren't quite so simple. One of them is these problems that grow out of marriage and divorces and mixed marriages and those things.

That's a step closer to the simple principles with which he begins because there are clear principles in the word of God on which we're to operate and generally speaking in those areas, our difficulties are not with the gray areas but with the principles. We don't like the principles. But at the same time there are gray areas and he begins to deal with that.

Then as we get to this eighth chapter, he gets into a matter that really is what we would call a doubtful situation. He discusses it surprisingly, not merely in one chapter, but in one way or another throughout all of chapter eight, a portion of chapter nine, and even into chapter ten. Now the problem the Corinthians face is not the kind of problem we face in doubtful areas. We have such areas, but we don't have this one.

Their problem had to do with whether a Christian could lawfully before God eat meat that had been sacrificed to one of the heathen idols. It's helpful to know something about that. There was a little system by which the temples and the priests and priestesses were supported. Sacrifices were always part of the worship system in the ancient world, as well as in Judaism. When a worshiper would come with one of these sacrifices and offer it, the basic formula is that the sacrifice would be divided into three parts.

One part would go to the priest and one part would be sacrificed and burnt on the altar and the other part would be sold in the marketplace. It was a simple system. The food itself supported the priesthood and the part that was sold also supported them because that began to produce currency and so forth that they could use for other things and so that's the way the religious establishment was supported generally speaking in the ancient world.

What would happen, of course, is that the third of the sacrifices that were sold, that is not burnt on the altar or used by the priest, would be purchased just openly in the marketplace by all kinds of people. And that would mean that in a normal situation, somebody buying food in the marketplace might easily be buying, like we would buy at a supermarket, meat that had been sacrificed, dedicated to these pagan idols.

The question would be, could a Christian buy that kind of meat? Or did a Christian have to be scrupulous at this point? Did a Christian have to say, "No, I am a Christian, I worship the one God, therefore I can't have anything to do with meat that has been offered to idols?" Or could a Christian say, "Well, let's just not ask any questions and buy it and we just will treat it as a matter of indifference?"

It became additionally complicated when that meat was purchased by a pagan family. And then that pagan family invited a Christian family in for dinner. And the Christian family is sitting there at the table and the pagan family said, "We have a wonderful roast and we know it's a good one because it was sacrificed to Zeus." What was the Christian going to do at that point? Choke? Or swallow dutifully and say, "This certainly does taste good"? You see the problem.

Apparently the Christians at Corinth had written to Paul about it. Paul, being faced with the kind of problems he was faced with at Corinth, could, I suppose, have said, "Shame on you for writing to me about something as silly as that when actually you've got immorality in the church that you ought to be worried about. You didn't write to me about the immorality." But Paul doesn't do that. Paul's a good pastor. He operates on the basis of the need, the problems that people face. He deals with the principles first, the most important things. He deals with that forthrightly.

This is nevertheless something that had come up out of the church and so he begins to talk about it and he does it, notice, not in an offhanded way. Paul never did anything offhandedly, though he writes in such a polished style that sometimes it seems that way to us. He did it in a very analytical measure. When we talk, you see, about knowing God's will in doubtful situations, that involves a number of key ideas. It involves the idea of knowledge first of all. What is it really to know? And then it involves the idea of situations. What is the situation?

Then it involves the knowledge of God's will in that situation. And that's precisely the way he handles it. Some people have read this and have said it looks to me like he takes a long time getting into the subject because as he begins the chapter about food sacrificed to idols, he does what seems to most people to be a digression. That's because when he gets to verse four, he seems to pick up with verse one all over again. He says, "Now about food sacrificed to idols," he goes on and says something, gets to verse four he says, "Well and so then about food sacrificed to idols." It sounds like he's digressed.

He's done nothing of the sort. What he talks about in verses one through three is knowledge and he does that in the most profound way. You say, "Well, why does he do it?" Well, if you've been following this book carefully, you know precisely why he does it. It's because they were so proud of their knowledge. Those Corinthians thought they had the keen analytical minds and so Paul begins with knowledge and he says a number of very significant things about it.

The key thing he says here is that knowledge and love go together. Does that seem right to you? It really doesn't because we don't think that way, do we? We say love is one thing and isn't it grand? We say knowledge, well, that's something else. That's what goes on in college. Love also goes on in college today, but we think of them as two separate things. And Paul says that's not right.

If you have the kind of knowledge that is knowledge divorced from love, it's really a brittle, self-righteous, self-elevating knowledge which really is not knowledge in the deepest biblical sense. That's not the way God wants us to know. Because you see, what is it to really know God? To know God is to love God if you really know God. And you can't love God without knowing God. The two go together.

The same thing is true with people. We take a situation like that and it has to do with our brothers or sisters in the Lord and we say, "Well, we know what's right, we want to do what's right." But you don't really know what's right until that is coupled with your love for Christian brethren. That's what he says. And then he says something else that's very profound because you notice that he's talking, although he doesn't say it directly, about two kinds of knowledge and love.

There's knowledge and love of God on the one hand and there's knowledge and love of our fellow Christians on the other. I say he doesn't say that clearly but it's obvious what he has in mind because in verse one, knowledge puffs up but love builds up. He's not talking about love of God there because by our love we don't build up God. He's talking about human beings.

Later he talks about being known by God and loving God so he's got the two. And what he's really saying is that that goes together. He's saying you can't have a vertical relationship without a horizontal relationship. If you think you know God, you don't know God unless you also know men. And if you think you know men, you don't know men unless you also know God.

The same thing is true of love. You don't really love others properly unless you love God first. And you can't really love God unless you love your brothers and sisters in the Lord. That's very profound. That is not the sort of thing the Greeks were teaching in the Agora. This is not the sort of wisdom that was passing around the halls of learning in the city of Rome. But this is Christianity and this is the integration of the person and the integration of knowledge.

It's the basis of what Paul wants to say about this question concerning food sacrificed to idols. So he lays down that groundwork first of all: when you talk about knowing what you should do in that kind of a situation, make sure you understand what kind of knowledge you're talking about. And secondly, he plunges into the question itself and that's why he reintroduces it. Verse four: "So then about eating food sacrificed to idols." And now he begins to lay down some principles.

The first is this: that an idol is nothing. That's what he says. We know that an idol is nothing. It's just a piece of wood or it's something carved out of stone or it's a beautiful piece of marble, but in terms of anything spiritual, in terms of real spiritual entities, it's just nothing at all. This is of course what Paul would have drawn from the Old Testament because he knew it very well. Isaiah's one who says that in virtually those same words.

He's quoting God and God is challenging the idols of the heathen and he says, "Look, here's a man who cuts down a tree and he uses half of it to build a fire and cook his food and the other half he dries out and he carves out an idol and then he falls down and worships it." And God says, "Did you ever hear anything as ridiculous as that in all your life?" That's my translation, but that's what God is saying. That's just absurd, God says. Then he falls down and he worships a stick of wood.

God says it's nothing and I'll prove it's nothing. Challenge it to do something. Let it tell the future. What's going to come? God says, "Tell us what's going to happen five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now." They're nothing. God ridicules them. Paul is saying that's the point at which we begin. Now Paul, I do not think, is saying there is no such thing as demons. Certainly there are.

In other places he says this really is the battle that's going on in the world. It's not a physical battle, it's a spiritual battle between those who are serving the Lord Jesus Christ and those knowingly or unknowingly are serving the demons. We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers in the heavenly places. He acknowledges that.

What's involved here is the idol and sacrificing the food to the idol and he says, "Look, the place to start here is to recognize that that idol is nothing at all." And the reason it's nothing at all is there's only one God and we know who that one God is. So he says let's take that as a first principle.

Secondly he says, and again Paul is not inventing this, Paul I think in this instance is going back to the teaching of Jesus Christ. He says secondly, verse eight: "Food does not bring us near to God. We are not worse if we do not eat and we are no better if we do." I think what he had in mind there was the teaching of Jesus who was asked the same kind of question in his day about certain ritual forms of eating and keeping kosher and all of that.

Jesus said quite openly in his day, "Look, it's not what goes into the mouth of a man that defiles the man, it's what comes out." Because you don't have a corrupt heart because of what you eat, but what you speak. You speak because of your corrupt heart. So Jesus said, "Look, whether you eat or don't eat, whether you keep kosher or don't keep kosher, all that is a matter of utter indifference so far as the spiritual life is concerned." Now you might want to do certain things for cultural reasons but that's quite another thing.

Paul lays down that principle. You see again as a good teacher and as a good scholar. Then we ask if those two things are true, and they obviously are, number one that an idol is nothing and that eating or not eating doesn't have anything to do with your spiritual life, that it's a matter of utter indifference, what follows from that? Well quite obviously eating or not eating meat that has been offered to idols is likewise a matter of utter indifference.

So you see Paul's technical answer to the question that they're answering is it just doesn't matter. It's not important. You can eat? Eat. You don't want to eat? Don't eat. Doesn't matter. I suppose those who were of that party at that point smiled rather smugly and looked down their long Greek noses at those who had been fastidious and said, "You see, Paul says we're right."

As a matter of fact they were right technically but they were wrong in spirit because they hadn't understood what it really is to know in a matter such as this. So Paul says, and this is the third part of his outline, yes, that is true and I have tried to develop the principles here which are right and I want to lay them down because that's the basis. I don't want you to forget that. But Paul says you see, there is still this matter of the situation and what you should do in the situation.

You say, "Well, haven't you described the situation? You've described an idol and an idol is nothing and you've described eating food or not eating food and you say that's a matter of indifference. Isn't that the situation?" Ah you see, when you talk that way, what you're betraying is that you're thinking of knowledge only as intellectual accumulation of data and you've forgotten your brothers and sisters. You're not loving them.

What we do affects others. And so part of the situation involves how your brothers and sisters in the Lord are going to take your activity. Now that does not mean, you see, that therefore nobody can ever eat any meat that has ever been offered to any idol. Paul just said he doesn't mean that. I'm sure he also does not mean that these weaker brethren, who are not always weak but are sometimes just difficult, can use their weakness as a club over those who regard this as a matter of freedom in the Lord.

If that were the case, it would be a backdoor way of bringing in legalism. You'd say, "Well, I'm free. Yes, but here's a brother who thinks I ought not to be free and therefore since he's my brother or since that's my sister in the Lord, I've got to give up my freedom and we have to begin to live under a whole lot of rules that say you mustn't go to R-movies and you mustn't eat food that's sacrificed to idols and you must never drink any alcohol in any form and there are all sorts of other things that you must never, never, ever do."

Paul is not saying that. And he says in verse nine: "Be careful that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak." He is not saying that you can never exercise your freedom. As a matter of fact, if you ask Paul what he would rather happen, that's what Paul would say. "I would like to see everyone free of these things. I'd like you to forget in a certain sense about these matters that are basically matters of indifference and get on to the far more important things of serving the Lord." I'm sure he would say that.

But at the same time you see he's a pastor and he knows people and he knows that there are genuinely weak brothers, people for whom this is a real problem. Maybe someday it won't be a problem for them. Give them another six months or another five years, maybe they'll grow. Maybe they'll find things that are going to create problems for you because you're going to be weak in their area. But at the moment they're weak and this really is a problem.

So Paul says if you really love them and you find yourself in that situation, then you would better act not as an island which says what I do matters to me and matters to nobody else at all, because it isn't true, and begin to conduct yourself in such a way that you have not your freedom at heart but their spiritual well-being. He says two interesting things at that point. When he talks about that, I think what he has in mind is the example of Christ.

Paul could well have written the second chapter of Philippians here, pointing out how the Lord Jesus had all the prerogatives of Godhead, didn't count that something that was his right to be maintained at all costs but he willingly yielded those things, laid them aside in order that he could take on the form of a human being and die on the cross in order to save us. That's our example.

I'm sure Paul would say, "Look, if the Lord Jesus Christ did that for you, it's not really too big a deal, is it, if you have to give up doing something for the sake of your brother or your sister in the Lord?" Not saying you should do that all the time. Hopefully you're in a situation where that's not even necessary. But if it does involve somebody else, it's really not too big a sacrifice, is it? Because if you really know God and know yourself and know them, you love them and that's a far more important thing for you than exercising that liberty.

At the very end, Paul spells it out in a category that I almost wish he hadn't said. Verse 13: he says, "So if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again so that I will not cause him to fall." I wish he had said, "I'll put it on hold for six months," or, "I'll take a vow that will last a year or two." Paul wants you to see how this really works. Paul says you see, if it's necessary, if it's really hurting somebody else, I've got to be willing to give up that thing which I think is my right in this area of indifference because if it really is a matter of indifference, it is a matter of indifference and I must be willing to give that up not just for six months but forever if that's what's necessary that somebody else might grow.

This is the kind of thing I'm sure you recognize that requires balance because in the church, again and again and down through all the history, one thing or another comes along as a test case in the minds of some people by which spirituality is measured. Whenever that becomes dominant, you get a false kind of spirituality and we don't want that. But at the same time, you often have in the church of Jesus Christ the swing to the other pole and that which on one occasion was legalism now becomes license and people say, "Well, we're free in the Lord to do anything at all," and so they do it and they don't care about their brothers or their sisters at all.

A number of chapters later in here when Paul is talking about spiritual gifts, he has a little device he uses where having answered the question he says: "Now I'll show you a better way." He goes on to talk about love. I think he could have done that in this matter of doubtful things and he could have referred to his own writings.

He could have said at this point: we've talked about this, we've discussed what it means to know and we've discussed the situation and how that involves other people and how love has to be wrapped up into it, but look, I'll show you a better way which if you follow I suppose in the final analysis you don't generally have to worry about this kind of thing at all.

Here's the text I have in mind: it's in Philippians, the fourth chapter and it's verse eight. What Paul says there is this: "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. And what you've learned or received or heard from me or seen in me, put into practice and the God of peace will be with you." All he's saying is Christians really should have their minds set on the best things. They should be pursuing the very best things.

If you fill your mind and heart and lives and time with the best things, then these other things fall into the place where they belong. Not perhaps matters of utter indifference because often they do concern other people, but those things that just don't have that much importance to you because you're going on with the Lord in a way that is benefiting his body, the church of Jesus Christ. You say, "Well, that's easy to say, it's hard to do." Yes, that is exactly right. Because it requires maturity. That's what we have to become and that's why the Bible doesn't give us a list of 39 rules.

Let us pray. Our Father, we find ourselves often reacting as children do when their parents want them to make a mature decision. We say, "Oh just tell me, just tell me." And you don't do that. We would pray that you would help us to realize how seriously you take our development and indeed our individuality and so allow that very fact to move us in the direction of what is the very best for the sake of others and ourselves too, and above all, for the sake of Jesus Christ in whose name we pray. Amen.

Mark Daniels: When is it sinful to do something that's not sinful? It's when a Christian acts against his beliefs even where scripture gives him freedom. Consider this conundrum further through our free CD offer entitled Responsible Christianity and discover with Dr. Boice how to exercise Christian liberty with love and concern for others. This free CD message is our way of saying thanks for listening. Give us a call at 1-800-488-1888 and we'll be happy to send you a copy of Responsible Christianity. Again the number: 1-800-488-1888.

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The message you just heard, as well as audio books and more from Dr. Boice and many other reformed teachers, authors and speakers is available at reformedresources.org. That's reformedresources.org. I'm Mark Daniels. As human beings and as Americans, we have certain inalienable rights and at times it's appropriate as citizens to exercise those rights. But as followers of Christ, there are many situations in which we must waive the exercise of those rights for the sake of the gospel. Join Dr. Boice as he takes a deeper look into the Apostle Paul's instructions regarding this sometimes problematic subject. That's next time on the Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.