1 CORINTHIANS CHAPTER 8.
Christian Liberty in the Matter of Eating Meat Offered to Idols. 1 Cor. 8, 1—13.
The weak in faith defile their conscience: V. 7. Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge; for some with conscience of the idol unto this hour eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. V. 8. But meat commendeth us not to God; for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse. All the believers of Corinth agreed with Paul in his great confession concerning the true God; in this respect their knowledge was sound. But not all of them had the knowledge that there was no such thing as a false god, an idol, in existence, and that therefore the meat offered to the idols was like any other meat, uncontaminated by the consecration to a thing which did not really exist except in the imagination of the heathen.
Some of them, by reason of the fact that they were used to the idol, since that was the familiar way of speaking of the idol, as they had always made use of it, could not get rid of the notion that there was something real about the idol. And therefore, as Paul writes, to the present time they ate the meat as an idol sacrifice, and thus their conscience, since it was weak, was polluted, Rom. 14, 23. "The consciousness of sharing in idol-worship is defiling to the spirit of a Christian." The idea that the idol was, after all, a real being gave them a bad conscience, and for that reason their eating, though in itself not wrong, became sinful.
"Their conscience was cleansed through the blood of Christ, Heb. 9, 14, in whom they believed; but it was weak, because the confirming Word of God had not yet worked the knowledge in them by which a Christian knows and is certain in the Lord Jesus that nothing in itself is unclean, Rom. 14, 14" (Besser, Bibelstunden, 8, 410).
For the sake of the weak, therefore, Paul writes: But food will not commend us to God, will not affect our relation toward God; the food that we eat cannot influence our spiritual life. When we are presented to God for judgment on the last day, He will not judge and condemn us on the basis of the food that we subsisted on in this world, just as we do not lose our standing before Him at the present time for that reason.
For neither if we eat are we the better off, nor if we eat not are we the worse off; it makes no difference before the Lord; these external matters do not affect our standing with Him. In either case our observance or non-observance of eating will not promote us in spiritual grace, nor will it detract from the blessings which we may be enjoying. (Compare Apologia Concordia Triglotta, 429; Luther, 3, 536.)