Text: 1 Corinthians 8:1-13                                                                                   4 Epiphany

When it’s a Sin Not to Sin

            In the name of him who loved us and gave himself for us, dear friends in Christ:  If you pay attention to the Scripture readings we have each week (and I assume that most of you do pay attention to them) then you know there is usually a good deal of correspondence between them.  Very often they are dealing with different aspects of the same issues.  Just for example, today in the Old Testament lesson we’ve got the Lord telling Moses how he will, some time in the future, raise up a mighty prophet among the people who will be a mediator between them and the Lord, and who will speak with the authority of God himself.  We see the fulfillment of that promise in the Gospel reading.  It turns out that Jesus, God’s own Son, is the prophet whose coming was foretold.  It is he who speaks with such power and authority that “even the evil spirits obey him.”  So, it’s fairly easy to see the connection between the first and last readings we heard today.

            Then we’ve got the Epistle lesson, having to do with food that has been sacrificed to idols, and whether it’s okay to eat it or not.  Now, I’m just curious:  is there anyone here who does not see the obvious connection this reading has to the other two?  [Show of hands.]  A few of you are honest about it, I see. … And the rest:  do I need to remind you of where you are sitting?   Because if there’s any connection at all, you need to come up here and explain it to me.  Not only is this reading totally unrelated to the other two passages; I imagine that many of you are wondering what it has to do with anything that might even remotely touch some aspect of your life. “What has food sacrificed to idols got to do with me, now, right here, in twenty-first century America?”  … Well, the answer may surprise you, because it’s probably a lot more than you thought.

            Now, I expect some folks around here might have taken exception when they heard Paul say, “I’ll never eat meat again.”  In this part of the country, where so much of the economy hangs on the livestock business, “thems ken be fightin’ words.” But Paul is not saying that he wants to be a vegetarian, nor is he telling any of us that we should be. He’s saying that he wants us all to practice the Christian law of love; and what that means is that sometimes we who are Christians must set aside our God-given freedoms and not do certain things that are otherwise perfectly okay because of the harm it may do to other Christians.  Or to put it more bluntly, sometimes it’s a sin to do something that is not a sin. “Huh?  Pastor, do you mean to say that not only do I have to worry about sins that are sins, I also have to worry about sins that aren’t sins?  Care to explain that?”

            I’d be delighted to; but first we have to put things in context.  Paul is writing to the Christian Church in the Greek city of Corinth.  And at the time, Corinth was an almost completely pagan city.  The total number of Christians there probably made up only a fraction of one percent of the population.  The majority of the people believed (at least to some degree) in the Greek gods:  Zeus, Apollo, Ares, Aphrodite, Poseidon … all those you read about in Greek mythology. There were temples to these gods and goddesses all over the city.  And the practice of Greek religion was pretty simple.  You worshipped the gods so that you could secure their favor, and then they would smile on you and everything would come up roses in your life.  Or, if things were going badly for you, you had to assume that you had offended one of the gods (though you might not know which one), and then you’d have to do what was necessary to get back in favor again.

            In general, the way to get the gods to smile on you (or at least to get yourself out of disfavor) was to bring offerings to their temples:  usually that meant livestock that would be sacrificed.  So let’s say some Greek guy decides he needs the gods to do him a real big favor.  Everybody knows that Zeus is the head god, and that he’s partial to beef.  So this guy gets his hands on a real fine animal, the best he can buy (and that’s really expensive in this day and age). He brings it to the temple of Zeus.  There the priests sacrifice it and lay its carcass before the idol.  The idea is that Zeus, sitting up there on Mt. Olympus, receives the animal in a spiritual sort of way to be on his dinner table – and hopefully that makes him happy.  He’ll owe the guy one.  Just the same, the priests need to leave the animal in place for a certain amount of time just to be sure Zeus doesn’t want the animal for real. According to pagan beliefs, there’s a chance he’ll take it in more than a spiritual sort of way.  Funny though, that never seemed actually to happen to anyone’s sacrifice.  So, anyway, after waiting the prescribed period for Zeus to take it if he wants it, the Greek guy has done his part and can go home hoping that the gods were well pleased.  Now the priests are ready for the next customer and his sacrifice.  Trouble is there’s this all this beef lying there in the temple that Zeus failed to pick up.  What are they going to do with that?

            They’re going to sell it in the local meat market and use the money for the support of the temple and the priests, that’s what. As a matter of fact, that’s where the vast majority of the funds to support all the pagan temples and priests come from – the sale of meat.  And so, not surprisingly, the vast majority of meat sold in the markets is meat that has come from a temple and that was first offered as a sacrifice to some idol.

Now here’s the question:  let’s say you are a Christian in the market picking up some hamburger or a pot-roast for your supper this evening.  Is it all right for you to buy meat that has been offered to an idol?  Or is the meat defiled somehow?  Has it been made unholy by its use in a pagan ceremony?  Are you participating in the heathen worship by eating it?  Or is it wrong for you to buy since your money will end up going to help support a false religion?  These were the sorts of questions the people to whom Paul was writing had to deal with every day.

And Paul had already taught them about these things.  We Christians, he had told them, recognize and worship the One True God.  There are no other gods.  So when a pagan offers a sacrifice to Zeus, there’s really nothing going on except in the minds of people who are deceived. Their mistaken understanding doesn’t do anything to the meat itself.  It’s still just meat.  And you who know the truth are not defiled by the wrong beliefs of others.  So by all means, buy the meat and enjoy it, giving thanks to the True God who has provided it to you through these means.

            But, says Paul, there is a catch.  You see, most of the members of the Corinthian congregation had been pagans prior to their conversion to the true faith.  They grew up believing in all the Greek gods, and they had sincerely participated in all the pagan rites – including sacrifices. They now realized how foolish, lost, and wrong they had been.  They were ashamed of the things they had done and believed.  And for many of them, now as relative infants in the true faith, they had a hard time separating their former idolatrous practices from the meat that was being sold as a result of those practices.  They had not yet grasped the full extent of their freedom in the Gospel, and they thought of the meat as being defiled.  They felt as if it were something they should avoid.

            And here’s the thing:  if you do something that you think is wrong, even if it is not wrong in an absolute sense, then you are still sinning.  If you believe that you are defying God by your action, even if the Lord is not opposed to it, the attitude of your heart is one of rebellion and sin just the same as if you were doing something God had prohibited. That’s what makes it sin:  the consciousness that you are doing something you ought not be doing.  So, here within the Corinthian congregation, you had some people who had a pretty good handle on things.  They could use meat that had been sacrificed to idols without any problem.  To them it was just meat.  At the same time, there were others who weren’t as yet quite so mature in the faith.  To them the meat was participation in idolatry – and because they thought that, for them it would be wrong to use it.

            It is in this context that Paul addresses himself to those who are a little more mature in the faith to say this:  you must be careful not to lead your fellow Christians into sin.  You can, by your actions and your example in doing something that’s perfectly okay for you, influence someone else for whom it’s not okay to do the same thing. He might see you doing it, and think, “Well, maybe it’s all right … but I’m not real sure … oh, I’ll just go ahead since that person thinks it’s okay.”  And if that happens, you are sinning by leading someone else into sin. Your “non-sin” becomes a serious offense that places the soul of a weaker brother or sister in Christ in jeopardy of being lost.  You’ve sinned by insisting on exercising your rights and freedoms without regard to the damage you may do to someone else.  Christianity is about love not about rights.  It’s about God’s great love for us in Christ Jesus and the love that we share for one another in him.  And it’s not a loving thing to do to hurt people who are spiritually weak. True Christian maturity, then, is not just doing anything that’s okay – but it also includes being conscious of your influence on others and protective of their spiritual wellbeing.

            And this is the application to us.  We don’t have to worry about the meat we buy in the market. To the best of my knowledge, none of it is used to offer sacrifices to idols.  But the overall principle of showing Christian love remains the same: you must be careful that through the exercise of your freedoms you not lead your fellow Christians into sin. And let me give you a few examples. Since we’ve been talking about meat, you probably know that many Christians observe certain ceremonial dietary restrictions.  Converts from Islam or Judaism sometimes find it difficult to get used to the idea of eating pork.  From childhood it was pounded into their heads that it was a sin to eat it. Likewise some Christian denominations teach that pork should not be consumed.  Were you to dine with such a person, or have them over to dinner, it would wrong for you to offer him a tenderloin sandwich or to offend him by eating one in front of him.

            Or again, a recovering alcoholic would very likely associate drinking with all sorts of troubles and sins now past.  Or maybe someone who grew up with an alcoholic parent would feel the same way.  To such a person, the use of alcohol in any form might be thought of as wrong.  Also, some churches teach that it is a sin to use alcohol, and many Christian people believe it.  Your responsibility, as one who doesn’t have a problem with it, is not to put such people in a situation or position where they may be tempted to fall by violating their consciences.

            Or another example:  A pastor friend of mind recently pointed out that this principle of not putting others in a situation in which they might be tempted to fall into sin because of their lack of understanding is a major part of the reason our Church practices close communion.  We have an obligation, borne of Christian love, to keep those who do not recognize the body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament from sinning against the Lord by partaking of him in unbelief.  Though our motives are often misunderstood, we say “no” to protect them.

            Okay then, hopefully by now we’ve made some sense of this spiritual problem:  how it is possible to sin when doing something that is not a sin.  But I need to issue a corrective.  Problems like this are a lot like horses:  you can fall off of either side of the saddle. (Actually, I know from personal experience that you can fall off the front and back of a horse too – but that’s another story.)  Anyway, while we recognize now that we must sometimes forfeit our rights and freedoms for the sake of others with less understanding or spiritual maturity, we must also be careful not to adopt their misunderstanding as the truth.  It’s one thing to protect the weak Christian; it’s another matter entirely to accept or submit to the false teachings of the erring.

            The other day I was listening to a radio preacher going on and on about what he called the sin of drinking alcohol.  He readily admitted that Scripture did not prohibit it or say that it was sin.  But he went on to say that it’s a choice God gives you to see whether or not you will be obedient.  Obedient to what, I don’t know since he had already said it was not prohibited. He said that if you choose not to drink alcohol, God will honor and reward you for your decision, and that when you stand before the Lord in judgment, you can be proud of having made the right choice.  Do you see what he’s done here?  He’s set up a way for you to earn extra points with God for something you have done – a way to be righteous before God beyond what Jesus Christ has done for you by his atoning death on the cross.  To the extent that he has done that, he has denied the saving faith.

            Now, I have to tell you that here we are not dealing with a weak brother or sister who is in danger of temptation and falling into sin. We are dealing with a legalistic and self-righteous heretic who is trying to impose his man-made laws on others. Were I to spend an evening with such a fellow, the loving thing to do would be to show him with my personal example how it is possible that a Christian person can responsibly drink and enjoy alcohol without sin.  I would feel it my Christian duty to have drink (maybe two).  I can hear it now:  “Dear, did you hear what pastor said?  He said it was my duty to have this beer.”

            So, while we must be cautious not to cause the weak in faith to stumble into sin because of their misunderstanding, at the same time, we must be equally careful not reinforce the errors of those who would misapply God’s Word or create laws on their own.  And because we will always have in the Church those who are just learning and those who are deceived, we’ll have to keep adjusting our balance in the saddle to keep from falling off either side of the horse.  The goal, of course, is for all of us to move forward in the faith by growing rich in the truth and the love of Christ Jesus our Lord. We want the immature to grow up, the erring to be corrected, and for all God’s people to become more fully grounded and informed by the authoritative teaching of Jesus.   His alone are the words of grace, forgiveness, and eternal life for all who believe.  So, may he continue to send us his Spirit to lead and guide each of us into his whole truth. In Jesus’ holy name.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!