1 Corinthians 8:10 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Corinthians 8:10

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Paul now takes it further and it actually gets even worse, because this is how far short the knowledge of the strong fell short. Now the situation was that they not only bought meat in the market, but they have actually sat down, which means reclined, for a leisurely meal in the idol temples. ‘Shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols?’ The weaker brother is walking down the street in Corinth and he sees you and others with you – the stronger brother – sitting there in the open part of the temple, reclined at meat, eating in the temple. This was where many people used to eat as somewhere equivalent to a restaurant. What does he think to himself? He thinks, ‘Well, that is my brother. That is the person through whom I came to the Lord. I respect him. He is a much more advanced Christian than I am; and he is eating in the temple. Well, then I don’t have to worry about this either. It is wrong, but we are allowed to do things that are wrong. We may do things that are wrong.’ You encourage him to violate his conscience. So serious is the overriding and fracturing of conscience, that Paul describes the strong as being careless even about the salvation of the weak. There is a tendency for those who ignore conscience to turn away from the faith entirely. Paul does not believe that any who are truly converted can lose their salvation, but he knows that the abandonment of conscience can lead to the shipwreck of their faith (1 Timothy 1:19). That may mean the a period of serious backsliding, or loss of instrumentality, and certainly loss of joy. Yes, some also may find that they never came to Christ in the first place and were not of him, but the strong cannot afford to be careless about their example.

Application

I remember talking to a Christian who had gone after wealth and substance, and he ruined his Christian life. He had become extremely wealthy, and completely backslidden; that was the whole main strain of his life. He said that it all started in his early Christian life when he was saved, and he saw the fine cars, top of the range cars, owned by the elders or the deacons, the church officers in the church where he was saved. Up to that moment he had felt that a Christian had to be under the will of God and live very carefully and reasonably, and not just buy whatever he wanted and what made him look good; he thought until then that be reasonable in his requirements. But when he saw the people he deeply respected riding around in these top range cars, it fractured his conscience. He attributed his slide into materialism right from the early stage of Christian life based on that bad example. There are many other ways in which this can happen, and a conscience can be fractured.

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1 Corinthians 8:10 Commentary and Bible Study