At first glance this past Sunday’s Scriptures look to not apply to our lives today. We do not have temples to idols after all. It was a real problem in Corinth. Often times, temple festivals were holidays and the feast was thrown for the city. People would come to these festivals and for some it was the only time they ate meat because of its expense.
In addition to this, temples were the civic organizations of the day. You might go down to the temple of Hera to network with other business leaders. There were some Corinthians who thought (wrongly) that there was nothing wrong with eating meat sacrificed to other gods since they knew there was one God.
Saint Paul points out that their “knowledge” has hardened their hearts to their brothers (1 Cor. 8:11). Some new Christians who were raised pagan could not divorce the idea of idolatry from eating meat. Saint Paul makes the point that a Christian must not just care about the reality of eating meat sacrificed to idols (on which their thinking is in error by the way) but also a Christian must think about how his actions affect his brothers and sisters. While 1 Cor. 8:13 makes is clear that we cannot cause someone else to lose salvation, we never want to push someone down the path to apostasy out of hardness of heart.
To listen to the sermon from Sunday please visit here…
https://soundcloud.com/lakewood-anglican/9-9-18-series-on-first-corinthians-sermon-8-the-greater-good