January, 21st, 2024
1 Corinthians 8 Notes
The Problem: Knowledge puffs up.
- The strong were speaking facts but missing the bigger picture.
- In using knowledge without love, they were not utilizing true knowledge at all.
- With their actions, they were sinning.
The Solution: Love builds up.
- Love always has in mind the interest of others.
- It takes knowledge to properly love.
- Love will lead us to want more knowledge, so that we may better love!
Personal Application:
- The strong should bear with the weak.
- The weak should continue working out their faith.
- The church must lead in love and wisdom.
Gospel Application: Look to the one who knows everything. He knows every true fact down to every minute detail. He knows every intricate thing about us, and he is perfect. Yet this God-man didn’t take what He knows and decide to fact check us or beat us over the head with it. He chose to lay down His knowledge, power, and his very life to demonstrate the greatest act of love the world has ever seen.
Memory Verse: “But knowledge puffs up while love builds up.”
– 1 Corinthians 8:1b
Quotes of Interest
Regarding Knowledge:
There is always a certain danger in knowledge. It tends to make a man arrogant and feel superior and look down unsympathetically on the man who is not as far advanced as himself. (William Barclay, Letters to the Corinthians Revised Edition)
“In our salutary emphasis on truth and knowledge, we must never succumb to an intellectual arrogance that assigns small importance to self-denying love for those who do not know as much.” (D.A. Carson)
…all knowledge is derivative and comes from God through Christ. All the treasures of God’s Wisdom and knowledge are stored in Christ. True knowledge therefore has a spiritual dimension that relates to God, who bases knowledge on love. Knowledge by itself is not wrong; indeed it is essential to life. But when a person fails to link knowledge to divine love, he deceives himself and fails utterly. (New Testament Commentary, 1 Corinthians, Simon J Kistemaker)
Nothing ought to be judged solely from the point of view of knowledge; everything ought to be judged from the point of view of love. (William Barclay, Letters to the Corinthians Revised Edition)
Why do you learn? Do you learn because you love? Because you love so much and you think I want to help somehow? Do you think, “I love these people and want to help them somehow, and the only way is if I can understand this stuff”? (Francis Chan)
Regarding Conscience:
A “weak” conscience regards as wrong an act that is not wrong, or is still unclear about whether it is wrong or not. The possibility exists for new converts to fall back into old obsessions by seeing other believers exercise their freedom. Old patterns may link the activity (such as playing cards) with an old obsession (such as gambling). (Life Application Bible Commentary, 1 & 2 Corinthians)
A person’s conscience must be well informed to function properly. If this is not the case, he or she needlessly stumbles at various places on life’s pathway. (Simon J Kistemaker New Testament Commentary, 1 Corinthians, p271)
…The full responsibility of the spiritual health of the (weaker) brother rests on the shoulders of the person who has knowledge. (Simon J Kistemaker, New Testament Commentary, 1 Corinthians, p274)
Undoubtedly these weak ones did not see themselves as weaker… Legalism has a way of making us think that we are strong and those who don’t keep the rules the way we do are weak, (David Gutzik on Rom.14, Enduring Word)
