8:7-13 Eating one kind of food, and abstaining from another, have nothing in them to recommend a person to God. But the apostle cautions against putting a stumbling-block in the way of the weak; lest they be made bold to eat what was offered to the idol, not as common food, but as a sacrifice, and thereby be guilty of idolatry. He who has the Spirit of Christ in him, will love those whom Christ loved so as to die for them. Injuries done to Christians, are done to Christ; but most of all, the entangling them in guilt: wounding their consciences, is wounding him. We should be very tender of doing any thing that may occasion stumbling to others, though it may be innocent in itself. And if we must not endanger other men's souls, how much should we take care not to destroy our own! Let Christians beware of approaching the brink of evil, or the appearance of it, though many do this in public matters, for which perhaps they plead plausibly. Men cannot thus sin against their brethren, without offending Christ, and endangering their own souls.

7. Howbeit—Though to us who "have knowledge" (1Co 8:1, 4-6) all meats are indifferent, yet "this knowledge is not in all" in the same degree as we have it. Paul had admitted to the Corinthians that "we all have knowledge" (1Co 8:1), that is, so far as Christian theory goes; but practically some have it not in the same degree.

with conscience—an ancient reading; but other very old manuscripts read "association" or "habit." In either reading the meaning is: Some Gentile Christians, whether from old association of ideas or misdirected conscience, when they ate such meats, ate them with some feeling as if the idol were something real (1Co 8:4), and had changed the meats by the fact of the consecration into something either holy or else polluted.

unto this hour—after they have embraced Christianity; an implied censure, that they are not further advanced by this time in Christian "knowledge."

their conscience … is defiled—by their eating it "as a thing offered to idols." If they ate it unconscious at the time that it had been offered to idols, there would be no defilement of conscience. But conscious of what it was, and not having such knowledge as other Corinthians boasted of, namely, that an idol is nothing and can therefore neither pollute nor sanctify meats, they by eating them sin against conscience (compare Ro 14:15-23). It was on the ground of Christian expediency, not to cause a stumbling-block to "weak" brethren, that the Jerusalem decree against partaking of such meats (though indifferent in themselves) was passed (Ac 15:1-29). Hence he here vindicates it against the Corinthian asserters of an inexpedient liberty.