1 Corinthians 8

Knowledge Puffs Up, but Love Builds Up

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Food Offered to Idols

8:1Now concerning food offered to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

8:2If anyone thinks he has known something, he has not yet known as he ought to know.

8:3But if anyone loves God, that person has been known by Him.

8:4Therefore, concerning the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world and that there is no God except one.

8:5For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many gods and many lords—

8:6yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we for Him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through Him.

The Weak Conscience

8:7But not everyone has this knowledge. Some, through their accustomed involvement with the idol until now, eat the food as offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.

8:8But food will not present us favorably before God. For neither are we better off if we eat, nor worse off if we do not eat.

8:9But watch lest this authority of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.

8:10For if someone sees you who have knowledge reclining at a meal in an idol’s temple, will not his conscience, weak as he is, be built up to eat food offered to idols?

8:11For through your knowledge the weak person is being destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died.

8:12When you sin against the brothers in this way and strike their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.

8:13Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause my brother to stumble.

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Saints Translation · Liturgical reading edition · V1 · working draft awaiting specialist review.