1 Corinthians 8

1 Corinthians 8:1-10

Subdivision 3. (1 Corinthians 8:1-13; 1 Corinthians 9:1-27; 1 Corinthians 10:1-33.)Encompassed by the prevalent idolatry, the manifestation of the enemy’s work. We have seen that in all this part of the epistle, it is the Church as in the world that is looked at, encompassed by influences which are adverse. The whole trinity of evil is against the Church. There are enemies without. There is, alas, an enemy within also, and this is that which needs specially to be guarded against. External enemies can never prevail against the Christian who is true to himself. The first failure, as we see in the church or Ephesus in the apocalyptic epistles, was in the maintenance of first love to Christ.

That of necessity allows all other evils to come in. Christ, if He be known and walked with, is absolute sufficiency, as the apostle has shown us here, for everything that can arise. There must be, first of all, that which comes in between the soul and Him, in order to expose it to the power of evil. We have seen the wisdom of the world as that which was in the case of the Corinthians the first element of seduction. This encouraged, as it always does, the flesh, which was manifesting itself amongst them in the grossest way. The apostle now comes to that which was encompassing them on every side, the prevalent idolatry which was the fullest manifestation of the enemy’s work, of the hold that he had got upon man. The very knowledge that Christians had with regard to it had itself its dangers, through the assumption so often accompanying knowledge, and needed to be corrected. In consequence of their apprehension of the nothingness of an idol, they might walk as little realizing the power which was actually working through it, and which had molded the whole form of things around them. In connection with this, therefore, the apostle looks at the spirit in which one must walk in order to be free from the enemy’s power; and appeals to the testimony of history as to the dangers of a path which lay through such a world as this.

1. He begins, therefore, at once with that which had no doubt been made a question with him, things sacrificed to idols. They were everywhere. That which was sold in the shambles was very often what had been thus offered. What were they to do about it? Was there defilement in it? He begins by asserting, first of all, the absolute nothingness of idols according to the knowledge given to the Christian. The Hebrews had a word which expressed this.

The idols were “elilim “, -“nothings”; but then, knowledge itself was not a sufficient guide in relation to these things. Knowledge (that is, the idea of knowing, not the things known, but the idea of knowing) puffed a man up. How readily this takes place, we ought surely to realize. How easy it is to value one’s self upon every bit of truth attained, so as to set one’s self on an elevation above others, instead of seeking to serve with that knowledge! They needed love, therefore, as the apostle says. Love is that which edifieth. It does not think of its own things, but of the things of others; and it is this only which is sale for the Christian himself. If a man rested upon his knowledge as if he knew something, he knew nothing yet aright.

How small, (although there are things surely known,) but how small, after all, is all the knowledge of time compared with that which a moment’s entrance into eternity, as one may say, will effect for us! The man who values himself upon his knowledge is but, as it were, a child, priding itself upon that which others recognize to be merely childish. He does not make light of it, of course, as that which has to do with God. The knowledge of God aright gives God His place in the soul and delivers from self, if it be really knowledge. Pride cannot live in such an atmosphere; and if one loves God, the blessed thing is that he is known of God. He walks in the light of that which God knows, as one who is manifested to Him.

With regard, therefore to the eating of things sacrificed to idols, the first principle necessarily is that the idol is nothing in the world, for there is only one God. There are plenty that are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, heavenly objects of worship or earthly ones, “gods many and lords many,” according, alas, to the multiplicity of the evil principles which stir men’s hearts; but to us there is but one God, the Father.

This is how God is characterized for us now, the way in which Christ has revealed Him. It is not a question here of the Trinity, or the distinction of persons, but of how God has been revealed to us in relationship, first of all to Christ, and thus to all who are His. God is no more what the mere monotheist aught account Him. He is not One far off, but One come nigh. He is not One from whom, through the very dread natural to man. one might seek rather to escape, but One who is for us; One of whom it is a delight to know that all things belong, and that we also belong, to Him. How different a thing this from the mere question of one god or many. And so there is for us one Lord, he says, Jesus Christ. God hath made that same Jesus, whom men crucified, both Lord and Christ.

He is, moreover, the One by whom are all things, the One who has acted for God the Father, both in creation and in the redemption of those ruined by the fall. We too are by Him. We are the fruits of His love, the work of His power. This, then, is the primary thought, and it is above all necessary that the soul should be free, not under superstitious dread of other objects, real even or unreal. There is nothing but what is under the control of Him who has loved us, who has given His Son for us, and of that Son Himself who is at the right hand of God upon the Father’s throne, and living for us there. 2. But then, even among Christians this knowledge was not just as it should be in all. Some with conscience of the idol ate things sacrificed to idols. They were not free in spirit, and thus, although the idol itself was nothing, yet their conscience was defiled. It is a question which has already, in fact, come before us in Romans, but it is a question which pressed everywhere, in the condition of the world around Christians in those days. What was to be done? Should a man press his knowledge upon one who, after all, had not attained so much? It was rather a case for yielding in love to the weakness of another.

The meat itself was nothing. It was no advantage eating it or abstaining from it, but the important thing, that which was needed, was that the Christian’s right should not become a stumbling-block to the weak in faith. Suppose one who had not this knowledge were to see one who had it sitting at table in an idol house, might he not be emboldened to eat things sacrificed to an idol while, after all, his conscience was not good about it? He was merely imitating the faith of another; and the imitation of faith is not faith. He might thus be put into a condition in which he would be really drifting away from a right conscience toward God, and exposed, naturally, even to perish through another’s knowledge. This may seem unnecessarily strong language.

We might ask how is it possible that one of Christ’s should perish? He is not really insisting upon any possibility of this sort, but he is insisting upon our responsibility, however this may be.

If we were to put poison upon a man’s plate, whether he died or not, we should be responsible for his death; and if God will not suffer His own to find all the consequences of their sin and failure, if He will necessarily, as true to His own love, come in to deliver them, this is not knowledge such as we are to act upon. It does not affect our own responsibility, who may so easily, by our own acts, really lead astray the sheep of Christ and do them spiritual damage. It is important also to realize that in ourselves there is no help or hope, if once we are adrift from our anchorage, if we have got away front Christ. And how easily is it possible to get thus away! In this case it would be simply, as we might say, the aim to be as another Christian more advanced than myself. If the conscience be taken away from the simple, individual subjection to God, the result is the same, no matter in what way readied.

We have to be exercised, each one for himself, and as a matter of responsibility to God alone, as to each step in the way. We are not to follow one another, except as we are convinced, as the apostle puts it, that that other follows Christ; but then again, if that which I do is something which may make my brother stumble, whatever may be his own responsibility in the matter, mine is clear.

Says the apostle, “I will eat no flesh any more if it is to make my brother to stumble.” This and this alone is the right use of knowledge. 3. But at this point we have once more what seems an entire digression from the apostle’s subject, yet it is not really so. He is about to set before us this spirit which he has already exemplified, and as that which is necessary to be our spirit in order to be able to go through a world like this, under the power of Satan, and where there are in every direction baits and lures, to lure the one who is capable of another object than Christ Himself. This was the apostle’s object; and he shows us now how everything, -whatever it might be, (the undoubted privileges which were his as an apostle or a minister of Christ,) -was nevertheless to be used in the interests of Christ Himself. If it were claimed apart from this, it would be, for the man himself who did this, an evil and not a good. (1) He first gives us, therefore, the claim which was rightly his as an apostle. Was he not that? Had he not seen Jesus the Lord? It was from Him, as we know, that he had got this apostleship; but were they not the seals of it also? Had not his work approved itself and been owned of God? They certainly were not the people to question this.

If he were not an apostle to any others, yet surely he was to them, for they themselves were the seals of his apostleship. If, therefore, people were questioning, with regard to him, whether he had really this apostolic right, he answered at once by fully claiming it. No doubt they might take advantage of what we have read with regard to his life at Corinth, his working with his own hands there, a distinct testimony in the midst of people such as were the Corinthians, of the love which sought not theirs, but them. Was it a question, then, of right on his part? Had he not the same right as other apostles, and the brethren of the Lord and Cephas, to lead about with him a sister as a wife? Or had he alone and Barnabas not the right to abstain from working?

What did common reason say? Who carried on a warfare at his own charges? Who planted a vineyard without expecting to eat of the fruit of it? Who that tended a flock did not eat of the milk of the flock. The claim then was evident, and nature itself affirmed it. (2) But not only nature, Scripture affirmed it also. This was not what he said himself simply. Did not the law, which was practically the Scripture that was in their hands (there was little as yet of the Christian Scriptures as we know) -but did not the law say these things too? He interprets it according to its typical character as at other times. In the law of Moses it was written: “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.” Was it really, after all, for the oxen that God cared so much? He does not, of course, mean to deny that God has care for oxen, but was that the great thing? Was there no higher purpose of such a principle as that? Does he not, in fact, say it altogether; as the apostle puts it, on account of others, -the ministers of His grace?

Yes, he says, for our sake it is written; that he that ploweth might plow in hope, and he that treadeth out corn in hope of partaking. Was it not right? If he had sown unto them spiritual things, did they think it a great matter that he should reap their carnal things? They acknowledged this right in others; could they fail to acknowledge it with regard to himself? And yet he had not used this right. That was the secret of his conduct at Corinth.

He bore all things that no hindrance might be given to the gospel of Christ. Here was his motive. Here was the characteristic and principle of his life. It was Christ who governed one who was perfectly free in serving Him. But further, as to the law and in that which touched the present question more nearly, had not those who wrought about sacred things a right to eat of the things of the temple? Did not those who waited upon the altar partake with the altar of the gifts given?

There is a perfect analogy in God’s dealings at all times; and in this case the Lord has ordained, says the apostle, that they who preach the gospel should live of the gospel. (3) But we now come to see how this privilege is transformed in his hands into another kind of privilege altogether; that is, the privilege of sacrificing himself for Christ and in His service. “I have used,” he says, “none of these things”; an argument no doubt which they were pleading against him, and he was not going now to insist upon this claim. He did not want them to do anything with regard to this. There was a glorying which he had, and which he would rather die than have made void. It was not indeed as to preaching the gospel that he was speaking. It was not his having anything to glory in there. With regard to this, necessity was laid upon him, be could do nothing else; yea, woe would it be to him if he did not preach the gospel.

Quite true that if he did it freely, of his own will, he would have a reward, but if not, still he was entrusted with a stewardship; but now then, what was the reward of which he speaks? It was this, that in preaching the gospel he could make the gospel without charge, so as not to use his own right in the gospel; and that, in order to make the gospel itself more effective.

Free from all, even love made him a bond-servant to all, that he might gain the more. Thus, if he were addressing himself to Jews, he became a Jew to gain them. We have seen this principle already in the circumcision of Timothy in the Acts. To those under the law he became as if under the law, though he was not, as he carefully tells us, himself in reality under it; but he was privileged to give up his liberty, and he gave it up freely, to gain those that were under the law. He could be with theta without insisting upon his own Christian freedom; just as, on the other hand, he could be with the Gentile as without law, not as being lawless with regard to God; on the contrary, just as in lawful subjection to Christ; for it was in His interests that he was acting and seeking to win souls. Thus he wrought that he might gain those without law.

If men were weak, he took the same ground; he would become weak, too, that he might gain these. As to any privilege of his own, he could give it up.

He could not, of course, give up that in which he was hound in duty to God. That was another thing. He had no liberty in that which belonged to another, but with regard to anything which was simply his own right, he could give that up and did give it up, that by all means he might save men. 4. We have seen the transformation of privilege in the hands of one for whom Christ was the object of life. Privilege it remained, but how changed in its character! That which was but a matter of self-interest before, becomes now an opportunity for self-sacrifice on behalf of Christ and His gospel. This was a privilege indeed, and this is the spirit which alone can carry a man safely through Satan’s world undeceived and unallured (we may add, undismayed) by all that Satan may employ against him. In this there seems to be the reference to the main subject of this part, in which it is plainly the power of the enemy which is before us.

He is himself one who by seeking his own, lost all that he had, and this is still the nature of his allurement. He cannot, therefore, touch the one who seeks not his own, but the things of Christ. We go on now to see how the principle tests us, the testing being necessarily involved through the fact of going through a world like this, which is Satan’s world. (1) There is a prize before the apostle, but it is beyond and therefore outside of present things. He was seeking to partake with the gospel, which he personifies here -that gospel with which he was identified in its triumphs and gains. In this he was using the energy which was requisite to press through the difficulties of the way. Life was for him a race, calling on the one hand for energy, and on the other for conformity to the conditions of a race. As the apostle says, not all the runners in a race receive the prize. There must be a running after such a manner as to obtain.

Every one that contendeth for a prize is temperate in all things; and this is only to receive a corruptible crown, but the Christian’s crown is incorruptible. The apostle, therefore, was so running, not in any uncertainty about the end, but as taking the due means to reach the end.

He was fighting, not as one beating the air. It was no needless conflict. There was his own body to be buffeted and led captive, as he expresses it; and here after all is always the great hindrance. We have seen already how the Spirit of God is in the body in order to deliver us from the power of it, and to make the very place of the conflict that in which God manifests Himself. He does this, as he says, lest having preached to others, he himself should be rejected. The word is “disapproved,” but it is the ordinary word which the apostle uses again in the last chapter of the second epistle, where it is translated “reprobates.” He there plainly uses it for final, absolute rejection, and here it can be really no different from that.

People have sought to guard what needs no guarding, the precious doctrine of God’s perfect grace, and of the believer’s safety in committing himself to that grace; but there are, nevertheless, conditions of the way; and this Scripture always recognizes. There is a way the end of which is eternal life.

The way of evil and unholiness does not lead to life, but the reverse; and God’s grace never alters this. It would not be that which breaks the power of sin, if it were mere laxity in this respect. The apostle expresses no fear for himself, but applies the principle to himself. He could not except himself from the application. If he did so, he would be permitting any other professing Christian to follow his example in it. It is simply the professor who is contemplated in all these conditional statements, but when we say the professor; we do not mean the mere professor; for few such would own the application, and if the Christian does not own it he is a loser by that. fact.

The Lord means that we should solemnly realize the connection of holiness and salvation, and we must not in any wise separate the two. On the other hand, nothing but grace can work for holiness.

Nothing but grace can give us the only proper motive for a holy life, which is Christ’s glory and not our personal gain; although we do gain personally by it. So with the apostle here, therefore. He speaks of himself simply as a preacher to others, and he puts himself upon the same ground as any other preacher. One may preach to others and be one’s self rejected. That is, alas, clear, and that is all he says. He was entering intelligently into the conditions of the race and running it, but he had no thought that God would not preserve him to the end and enable him to persevere through all hindrances, whatever they might be. (2) He then adduces the witness of history in which the things that happened to Israel were, as he says, things that happened to them for types. Full of admonition in themselves, full of significance for that generation in which they really happened, they nevertheless develop for us a higher meaning which God would have us read in them, the history of which is so written that it might develop for us. How important it is to realize this principle all through those histories of the Old Testament, and even of the New, in which there is much more than is upon the surface, and in which God shows us His control upon everything in connection with men, making the wrath of man to praise Him, restraining the remainder of it, and giving a meaning to things which those of whom it is the history were perfectly ignorant. Thus he tells us that all our fathers, Israel’s fathers, were under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and were all baptized to Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They were set apart to Moses as his disciples; which is what baptism represents for us with regard to Christ. They were set apart in the most solemn way by the cloud which covered them and protected them from their enemies, by the sea which divided to let them pass and overthrew their pursuers.

In that cloud and sea they were delivered from all the condition in which they had been as slaves to the Egyptians, and were set truly free, -free to serve God their Saviour. How powerful should have been the impress of such events upon them, God Himself having become in this way their Saviour-God!

We can find in all this history a deeper meaning, but there was a deep meaning in what they themselves experienced. Then in the wilderness the same love followed them. They ate of the spiritual food; they drank, he says, of spiritual drink, (“spiritual.” one may say, perhaps, in its origin, and in the meaning which was more than merely to furnish sustenance for them, -that might have been done easily in another way,) but to keep them also in dependence upon God and make them realize the ministering hand of God and the tenderness of His care for them, -thus that their hearts might be brought fully to Him and made absolutely to confide in Him. This spiritual rock, as the apostle says, followed them; not, of course, that there was any literal following of a rock, as some have wildly imagined, or of even the streams from the first rock smitten. There was another rock smitten, as we know, afterwards, and the streams which first flowed from the rock were, therefore, not those that actually followed them all through the wilderness; but the same love followed them with a similar supply, so that it was one and the same thing all the way through; and the rock had a deeper meaning than any they could have realized in it. The rock for us is Christ.

It is from this Rock, the riven Rock, that the streams of the Spirit flow to us; a Rock which requires no more to be smitten (Moses in that way spoiled the type, as we know) but only to be spoken to. Thus has God provided for us.

The types of baptism and the Lord’s supper, which some would find here, are part of that ritualistic perversion of things which lowers everything it touches. There are no types of baptism at all. The passage in the first of Peter which may seem to come nearest to this is in fact very different. There the water of the deluge and the water of baptism are spoken of in fact as alike figures. They are both figures of spiritual things, and they are like figures; but the one figure is not a figure of the other figure. So with baptism and the Lord’s supper now. They are both figures, and they are in their highest, deepest, fullest reality figures for us. The very adoption by the Lord of such simple things as water, as bread and wine, admonishes us to keep to the same simplicity.

Water can do only what water can do; and bread and wine can minister to the body, but not as such to the soul. The spiritual significance in them is everything for us, and the memorial character of the Lord’s supper; in which we have the remembrance of a dead Christ, is an absolute protest against the thought of there being ministered to us in it a Christ who does not as such exist. It is not a dead Christ now with whom we have to do, but a living Christ; but it is not a living Christ we have to do with in the ordinance of the supper, but a dead Christ. There can be no confusion of these two things without a confusion resulting in every way; and, as has been said before, there is nothing more degrading, there is nothing that has wrought worse confusion for the Church of Christ, than forgetfulness of simple principles such as these. Here we have “the Rock was Christ.” Does anybody imagine that the rock was literally Christ? Of course not; but when the Lord says: “This is My body,” He uses similar language exactly. The rock was Christ in its spiritual significance, nothing else, and the supper is Christ in sweet and holy memory; and that is much more than anything that ritualism could give us. These things, then, were types in Israelitish history; yet after all, spite of all God’s dealings with them, spite of all the love which had delivered and which was continually blessing them, with most of them God was not well pleased, and they were overthrown in the wilderness, -solemn word of admonition then for us in these things which happened, as he says, as types of us, warnings of the greatest significance. As we think of how, indeed, there were but two of that whole generation brought out of Egypt, as grown men at least, who survived to enter Canaan, it is a serious admonition as to what might come of the testing of Christian profession after this manner. Warning it is for us all. We have no right to say, Well, but we are true Christians, and therefore we need not trouble about these things. These are things which as principles are of the greatest importance for us to realize. There are evil things for which we may lust as they lusted.

If God prevents the extreme result for us, that is His mercy, but the effect of our disregarding the warnings may be that our lives may be, alas, bow greatly spoiled and disfigured and made quite other than He would have them, by our laxity! The people turned even from God Himself and became idolaters.

As it is written: “The people sat down to eat and to drink and rose up to play.” They turned from the very One who had manifestly led them out of Egypt and who went before them in a pillar of cloud and fire by night and by day. They turned from the One who had drawn them to Himself and made them His own peculiar people after this manner; and in the very presence of the fiery mount they said: “As for this Moses, we know not what has become of him. Up, make us gods that may go before us.” They might dignify their idols with Jehovah’s name. God would have none of it. He had already forbidden it and stamped it as following a false god, and so in fact it was. The god they celebrated with their heathen games and sports was not Jehovah.

How important for us to realize that we also may have in measure another god than the true God, while the name remains for us the same, and another Christ, perhaps, than the true Christ, although we speak reverently of Him all the while! The lusts of the flesh broke out in what followed in Israel’s case.

If one departs from God, the necessary result will be that from the evil in us we shall not be able to depart. It will have full control, as with Israel. In one day there fell three and twenty thousand of them. The passage in Numbers says four and twenty thousand, and it does not seem a question of any difference of reading here; but it does not say that the four and twenty thousand fell in one day. The apostle may give the immediate result here, and the history go further. There was another form of evil. They tempted the Lord in the wilderness. They tried His patience. How great that patience had been with them, to its full limit! They refused His gracious provision and scoffed against His care, and perished by serpents. This shows us distinctly to what the apostle refers. For us, the admonition is that we tempt not Christ. It does not seem exactly to follow that he means that they tempted Christ in the wilderness.

Another reading, very well supported also, is here “the Lord,” instead of “Christ,” but there is no need to adopt it. Christ is for us the Lord, the one Lord, than whom there is no other, and Israel’s sin can be committed, as is plain, by us in this very way. We can refuse the light food of which Israel had said: “What is it?” but which contained so much for them; food of the mighty, and which would have made them, had they truly understood it, the men of might they should have been. How great for us, alas, is the danger of turning, too, from that which alone can nourish our souls and seeking in some form or other the things upon which men feed around us! The Lord allowed the power of the enemy to manifest itself in the serpents by which they perished, and the same power of the enemy will still manifest itself upon us in turning to the world away from Christ. It is there that his power is found.

He is the prince of this world. The world has been formed in its moral character by that fall to which he seduced men, and thus, if we will venture upon this ground, we shall find that he has not yet given up those as to whom he believes he has gained the perfect right of a master.

They murmured in other ways. They murmured when the hand of God came upon them in judgment, in the destruction of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. They murmured against Moses, when it was really by the judgment of God that these had fallen, so that again the hand of the destroyer was upon them and the former judgment was solemnly confirmed in the repetition of it. How easily, too, we may murmur against that which has been simply the necessary judgment of God because of the sins of His professing people, instead of humbling ourselves before Him on account of them! “All these things,” then, the apostle reminds us here, “happened to them as types.” They are not merely things which may be applied in that way now, but that is the very meaning of the history for us as we read it. They are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages are come. It is not the ends of the “world,” but the ends of the dispensations past, -those dispensations of trial which for us are closed by the death of Christ, in which the utter condemnation of man is reached, but in which, also, divine grace has reached us. We can look back now over those ages and find them all ministering to us their special lessons. How wonderful a place to be set in, to have instruction of this kind from every past generation! How important that we should heed the admonition of it, and how guilty shall we be in disregarding it! “Wherefore,” says the apostle, “let hint that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” That, surely, is a great part of the admonition.

Those dispensations were the trial of man as man. There can be no trial when there is no self-confidence on man’s part, -when we have reached where the apostle was, and can say we have no confidence in the flesh. All self-confidence is confidence in the flesh. All true confidence is confidence in God alone. It is thus that we find ability to stand. We stand indeed, but we stand as He holds us up.

If we think that we stand after any independent manner, we are on the very brink of a fall. Dependence is that which is proper to a creature; and we are not merely in a dangerous place, but we have, as one may say, already fallen, when we have lost our hold of the Hand that supports us. How blessed to realize again that in the midst of a world full of testing, such as this is, in which the history of the Church has repeated for us in so solemn a way the history of Israel, in which man has been tested under grace (although that was not the object of grace) as he has been so thoroughly, still with the same result! When we look at ourselves, and think of how little we are able to stand against all the trials of the way, how blessed to realize the limits which the apostle sets to the trial! There is no temptation but such as belongs to man; and then, God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able. He is speaking, of course, of a soul in the true condition of conscious helplessness before Him. If we are self-confident, we shall find that the least temptation is something above what we are able; but if we are in a right condition, (which should be the normal one of the Christian,) God will not suffer temptation to he too strong for us, but will with the temptation make the outcome of it also a deliverance in due time, that we may be able to bear it. He adds, significantly, as one great lesson of it all: “Wherefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.” Idolatry was but one feature of that history of Israel, although a notorious one; but for us, is it not, in fact, in a heart that wanders from God which makes in this way, however little conscious it may be, a false god of its own, -is it not in this that all departure from Him, we may say, is found?

Here is the root, the basis of it. If God Himself, the God that we know, the God that has been revealed to us, is the God of our hearts, the God whom we serve and follow, how safe and how blessed will be our condition! Christ is the manifestation of God for this, and thus we are indeed far better provided than was Israel in the knowledge of this God who claims our obedience and our affections. What is it for us to depart from One who has revealed Himself to us after this manner? 5. We return now fully to that question which has been in the apostle’s mind all the way through, the results for us of this power of Satan manifest in the world, of which he is prince, and where he has so molded things according to his mind. In fact, in those days, as we know, idolatry was everywhere. The Emperor was worshiped as divine, so that not to worship him was disobedience to the law. What was a Christian to do in the midst of so great defilement? They, on their part, were identified with God, and with Him whom God has appointed to be the Lord of all, who claimed such obedience as none other ever even thought of claiming. The apostle, therefore, looks, at this question of association with God and the responsibility resulting from it. (1) In the first place, he puts before us our identification with the Lord as in the manifest tokens of it in the cup and the loaf, which stood for a pledged communion with Himself. He bids them enter intelligently into this question. What was the cup of blessing which they blessed? Was it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread they broke, was it not the communion of the body of Christ? Were they not all by it one loaf, the manifested body, one body, as all partaking of that one loaf? It is plain that what men call the sacrament stands for something in this connection. There is an outward pledge in it.

There is something which, if not real, is the fullest hypocrisy. Here is before us in this table; in all the responsibility of it, communion with the body and blood of Christ, -Christ in all that He has done for us, all that He has endeared Himself to us by. What are we going to do with it? Thus identified, must not this follow us into our common, ordinary life, into every detail of our conduct here? He puts before them Israel after the flesh. Were not those who ate the sacrifices in communion with the altar? Were they not identified, if what they did meant anything, if it were anything more than the grossest formalism, with all that that Jewish altar stood for? It was not, therefore, a question as to whether there was any reality in the idol or not.

He has already decided that there was not, but the idol stood for something in men’s thoughts; and not merely that, but in this idolatry the power of Satan wrought so that the things the Gentiles sacrificed they did not sacrifice, in fact, to nothing, but to demons, and not to God. Thus there was the most serious question possible. People could not escape by saying that an idol was nothing in the world, and that there was no other God but One. They could not drink the cup of the Lord, which said this, and the cup of the idol, which said another thing. They could not partake of the Lord’s table aright and of the table of demons. Was it not provoking the Lord to jealousy? Were they going to be stronger than He? (2) Once more be takes up that which might be urged, that all these things were lawful things. A man might sit in an idol’s temple and get no harm. He might eat of the idol’s offerings and get no harm. With his higher knowledge, these things meant nothing for him; but that was not the whole question. On one side they might mean nothing; on another side they might mean very much. In the one view, all things indeed were lawful, but here are other things to be affected by them. Could they say that all things were expedient too? If one had nobody to please but himself, then he might, of course, please himself; but all things, as he says, that are lawful do not edify, do not help another; and that is what we are bound to do, not to seek our own, but the good of others.

As to the things sold in the shambles, which were in fact often things sacrificed to idols, they could eat of them if that were all, and make no inquiry for conscience’ sake. They would neither be defiled spiritually nor injured in any way. The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof. They could eat it in that sense, and so far have no conscience about it; and, supposing one of those that believed not invited them to a feast, and they were disposed to go, they could eat of that which was set before them, making no question of anything, as far as they were concerned. But suppose some one said, This is sacrificed to an idol. Now says the apostle, that shows that here is a man to whom an idol is something, not nothing, as it is to you; and now your conscience ought. to be affected by that which affects his conscience.

You are one as Christians, and you are bound to help one another as one The conscience that I am regarding, you may say, is the conscience of another, and not my own; yes, but why do I turn my liberty into something which another man’s conscience judges as evil? Why do I injure him with that which I may, so far as I am concerned,, do sinlessly before God?

If I partake of this meat with thanksgiving, why should I do it so as to allow myself to be evil spoken of for the very thing I am giving thanks for? Is it a right use? Whether we eat or drink, or Whatever we do, we are to do all to the glory of God. We are to give no occasion of stumbling, whether to Jews or Greeks or the assembly of God. With eyes watching all around, how careful should the conduct of a Christian be, and how very far from deciding a thing is the mere question of right and wrong in itself; of right and wrong, that is, in the thing of which I am thinking, leaving out altogether the judgment of others or the snares that may be for others in it! Let it he even here not simply the question of Christians, but, as he says, Jews or Greeks, who may be drawn to Christ or repelled from Him by what they see in.

Christians. How common a case is this!

How commonly is the conduct of Christians pleaded against the Christianity they profess! For himself it, was, as we know, the apostle’s constant aim to please all men in all things, but in this spirit, which involves a necessary limitation, that he was seeking, not his own profit, but that of the many, and their truest profit, also, that they might be saved.