I Corinthians 10:31 Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.
How do you know what is right and what is wrong? What are the parameters in which to make those decisions? What about movies at the cinema? What about drinking a Coca-Cola in the local bar? What about eating supper in a bar? What about the many things that people might call debatable?
In I Corinthians 8-10 Paul talks about knowledge and charity, context and conscience. So, with anything I am doing, the question needs to be, “Am I building up myself because I know how smart I am and what rights I have, or am I being loving to other people?” But just as important, and something we often miss, is the importance of context and conscience.
The question in Paul’s day was about meat offered to idols. Was it right or wrong for a believer to eat such meat? Paul says, “I know that God made meat. It is made to be enjoyed. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with meat, and God is the One Who made the creatures from which the meat is taken.” Paul then gives three contexts in which to consider whether meat offered to idols could be eaten. What you find here is not about meat so much as it is about the place in which and the way in which such meat would be eaten. The question here was not so much, “Is what I am doing intrinsically right or wrong?” Sometimes what I am doing may not be intrinsically right or wrong, but the way I am doing that thing or where I am doing that thing, the context, makes it right or wrong.
The first context for a believer eating meat offered to idols was in the pagan temple. I Corinthians 8:10 says, “For if a man see thee which hath knowledge sit at meat in the idol’s temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which were offered to idols…?” He is talking about eating meat in the temple and he says, “You know that there is nothing wrong with that meat, but for love of another, be aware of their conscience if they see you eating in the temple.”
Conscience means “with science or “with knowledge.” Our conscience needs to be informed. You can’t fellowship with God and fellowship with the devil at the same time. What he is saying is that it is not that meat offered to idols is wrong, but that eating the meat in the temple is wrong because it is showing fellowship with the devil who is truly behind the idols. It is a context. Eating meat in the temple hurts a weaker brother’s conscience because where the meat is being eaten is wrong.
The second context is when a believer would eat meat that was sold in the marketplace. Oftentimes the meat would be offered to idols and then sold in the marketplace. At the marketplace, believers did not need to worry about whether the meat had been offered to idols or not. If a Christian was eating this meat at home, he did not know whether or not it had been previously offered to idols. There was no fellowship with an idol. So, they were not to ask any questions, they were just to eat the meat with gratitude to God.
The third context in which a believer might eat meat offered to idols was when invited to a dinner. If someone said, “This meat has been offered to idols,” then it became a matter of deferring to the conscience of the person who mentioned it. It would not be a matter of avoiding fellowship with idolatry but a matter of doing no harm to a brother.
In short, there are four elements that one needs to consider. They are knowledge and charity, context and conscience. In other words, are you acting with knowledge? Are you thinking about what surrounds what you are doing? Let’s look at a modern example. Could I drink a Coca-Cola in a bar? Now there is nothing intrinsically right or wrong about a Coca-Cola, but the purpose of a bar is not Coca-Cola. So, to drink that Coke in a bar is wrong, not because of the thing itself but because of the context. The bottom line is “whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” Let the glory of God be your guide.