1 Corinthians 8:1-13 Now as touching things offered to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but charity edifies. A great controversy is going on in the matter of education. One partly extols the value of instruction, the other insists that secular education without religion is worse than useless: Paul spoke of both as secular and worthless without love. That knowledge which he treated so slightingly was — I. KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT HUMILITY. It is not so much what is known as the spirit in which it is acquired which makes the difference between secular and Christian knowledge (ver. 2). The greatest of modern philosophers and historians, Humboldt and Niebuhr, were both eminently humble men. So, too, you will find that real talent among mechanics is generally united to great humility. Whereas those puffed up by knowledge are those who have a few religious maxims and shallow doctrines. There are two ways therefore of knowing. One is that of the man who loves to calculate how far he is advanced beyond others; the other, that of the man who feels how infinite knowledge is, and how little he knows. II. LIBERTY WITHOUT REVERENCE. The men whom the apostle rebukes were free from many superstitions. An idol, they said, was nothing in the world. But it is not merely freedom from superstition which is worship of God, but loving dependence on Him; the surrender of self. "If any man love God, the same is known of Him," i.e., God acknowledges the likeness of spirit. There is much of the spirit of these Corinthians now. Men throw off what they call the trammels of superstitions, and then call themselves free: they think it grand thing to reverence nothing. This is not high knowledge. It is a great thing to be free from mental slavery, but suppose you are still a slave to your passions? From bonds of the spirit Christianity has freed us, but it has bound us to God (vers. 5, 6). The true freedom from superstition is free service to religion: the real emancipation from false gods is reverence for the true God. And not merely is this the only real knowledge, but no other knowledge "buildeth up" the soul. "He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." Separate from love, the more we know, the profounder the mystery of life, and the more dreary existence becomes. I can conceive no dying hour more awful than that of one who has aspired to know instead of to love, and finds himself at last amidst a world of barren facts and lifeless theories. III. COMPREHENSION WITHOUT LOVE TO MAN. These Corinthians had got a most clear conception of what Christianity was (vers. 4-6). "Well," said the apostle, "and what signifies your profession of that, if you look down with supreme contempt on your ignorant brothers, who cannot reach to these sublime contemplations?" Knowledge such as this is not advance, but retrogression. How immeasurably superior in the sight of God is some benighted Romanist who has gone about doing good, or some ignorant, narrow religionist who has sacrificed time and property to Christ, to the most correct theologian in whose heart there is no love for his fellow-men. Breadth of view is not breadth of heart; the substance of Christianity is love to God and man. Hence it is a precious fact that St. Paul, the apostle of liberty, whose burning intellect expounded the whole philosophy of Christianity, should have been the one to say that knowledge is nothing compared to charity, nay, worse than nothing without it: should have been the one to declare that "knowledge shall vanish away, but love never faileth." (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. |
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