1 Corinthians 8:1 Commentary and Bible Study

These first three verses are about the believer’s battle with pride. There is not a believer who does not have a battle with pride in some shape or form. Now the Corinthians, or many of them, had grasped and realised, at conversion, that idols are nothing. They had before been idolaters filled with superstitions and beliefs in the gods behind their idols, but they had mostly come to realise that they were nothing; there were non-existent, a fiction; they were imagination. Therefore if they were required on account of their work, their trade guilds, to engage in some ceremony which involve idol worship, they thought nothing of it. ‘The idol is nothing’, they said. ‘We can go; we can participate. Of course, we smile at it all. It is nothing.’ And in a sense they were right – not to go to the ceremony, but to think that way. But there was something left out. There were those among them who were deeply concerned about this. They felt this association with idols was deeply significant, that these things were demonic if nothing else, and it should not be participated in at all. The apostle Paul is very concerned about what he calls the weaker conscience, people who are not yet fully informed, but they are true Christians and they are very concerned about what is going on. The people who felt liberated and said: ‘Idols are nothing; we can openly accept and eat meat which has been offered to idols’; they were not acting in due consideration for those among them who were very anxious about this. They may have been technically right, but they lacked compassion and consideration and carefulness. And so the apostle Paul is going to talk to them about pride, because knowledge can lead to pride. In fact, it does lead to pride unless certain steps are taken. Knowledge joins hands with our mental equipment, and becomes something dangerous: pride. In worldly society knowledge always produces proud effects. Very quickly people having knowledge promote theories into facts. They make the assumption that because they have got knowledge, they must also be wise. But there is a great chasm between knowledge and wisdom: the capability to apply knowledge. Knowledge is intoxicating; you run away with the impression you are also wise, and it doesn't follow. Knowledge also gives people a kind of assurance that you can figure out anything. You see it in humanism and naturalistic science. Because we conquer some fields and can understand great things, immediately the assumption is made that rational explanation can account for everything. And then if people have knowledge they very often think, that gives them an entitlement to exercise authority. It does not, of course: the two things are quite different. In the world the acquisition of knowledge leads you to despise revelation and reject it. I therefore despise the idea that there is given truth, given by God. These things all observable in society at large, and it affects Christians in a similar way. Knowledge can make a humble Christian feel superior. I have knowledge in some field or other which other people don't have. So Satan whispers in my ear, ‘You are better than they; you are superior’, and we are immediately inflated. What a wonderful word the apostle uses here, ‘Knowledge puffeth up.’ In five other places in this epistle, and strangely nowhere else, the apostle uses this term. You get so the idea of a person who is as though he has been blown up with air. Such a person is very unwieldy, and finds movement very awkward and is very clumsy, and apt to fall over. What a perfect description for the effects of pride. Knowledge puffeth up, even good knowledge. Knowledge of doctrine, if precautions are not taken, puffs up. Knowledge of the ways of God puffs up. Pride is blown into us.