Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that “we all
have knowledge.” Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone thinks he
knows anything, he does not yet know it as he ought to know it. But if anyone
loves God, he is known by him.
This passage presents a subtle rebuke to those involved in a
controversy in the Corinthian church. The issue was meat that had been
sacrificed to idols and whether it was permissible or not to eat this meat. This was a major
issue for the church that Paul spends the next several chapters working through. Paul advocates for the building up of others as the solution to the controversy.
At the beginning of this section Paul contrasts love and prideful knowledge. In this he is saying you can have what you pridefully know guide you or you can
have what you lovingly know guide you. The issue for the church was a heart issue not a knowledge
issue according to Paul.
When someone knows something it can lead to pride and
arrogance. Often when the focus is what a person knows it is with incomplete
knowledge that is mistaken for complete knowledge. The reality is that none of
us can claim to know everything. Even when we narrow the scope to a particular
area the experience of wise learners is that we have more to learn that we do
not yet know. Wisdom approaches knowledge with great humility. In contrast the
people bringing the complaint believed they had full knowledge and yet did not
know it as they ought to have known it.
They had knowledge that had puffed them up. This kind of
knowledge is self seeking, prideful, boastful, arrogant, divisive, and vanity.
So often controversy in the Church is debated in the realm of this type of
knowledge. Angry and divisive knowledge that is building up the speaker while
tearing down the opposition is no virtue.
Paul contrasts knowledge with love. Prideful handling of knowledge has a tendency
to build up the speaker; Love on the other hand builds up the listener. So then
love ought to be the higher virtue.
What is even more interesting is what love does with
knowledge. So prideful knowledge leads to thinking you know something that you don’t yet
fully know. Love leads you to be known by God. Do you see that? Christian faith
is a relationship with the Creator of the universe. It is love and being known
by God that is the primary aim. When we seek knowledge it is in the context of
Loving God and Loving others. Outside of this context seeking knowledge becomes
an exercise of puffing one’s self up.
So then let us embrace God’s offer to be known by Him, love
well, and humbly seek the truth.
God Bless You
~BJ Olson
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