1 Corinthians 8:10-12
For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.
The danger of our freedom is that it may cause others to be tempted because of their past lives. There are many issues we face in this life that are neither good or bad. Some choices are obviously better than others but are not necessarily sin as revealed in the Bible. The strong person is one who knows that a certain action is not a sin and, therefore, can be done by a Christian. In Corinth, this focused on eating meat sacrificed to idols. Idols are only man-made objects of stone or wood. They have no power in and of themselves. So eating meat offered to them has no moral or spiritual impact upon a person who knows the reality of these idols.
There are others who do not have knowledge that frees their consciences from the particular activity. They see someone else do an activity and they are tempted to fall back into their old lifestyles. For example, drinking wine is not prohibited in the Bible, though one should not get drunk with it. An ex-alcoholic could see someone drinking wine and be tempted to drink some, falling back into the trap of alcohol. There are many other issues that are similar to this.
The problem is that the person who has knowledge opens up the door to temptation to the one without knowledge, leading that person to sin. Paul says that this is actually sin against Christ. Why would we do something that would harm another person spiritually? This is a violation of the greatest command of loving our neighbors.
Love is more important than freedom. Our lives would be much different if we lived by this key principle. We may find ourselves avoiding a lot of activities, which are not explicitly spokane about in the Bible, because they violate the law of love.
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