Jehovah's Witnesses Straight Talk - Forum/Blog

The book of 1 Corinthians

Chapter 8

1Cor.8:1 Now concerning things sacrificed to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 8:2 But if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he doesn't yet know as he ought to know.
8:3 But if anyone loves God, the same is known by him.

Do we as Christian's know anything about God if don't love God? As strange as that question is in relationship to idols it makes perfect sense that a person loving God could never love a lesser created thing more than God, one of which is knowledge placed above God it becomes an idol. God is love, and without love, a person is not known by God, nor does the person have knowledge of God. Many Christian's in today's world intellectualize love as truth, an unemotional legal definitions that has some moral substance, but no person loving God having His Spirit could make such a perfunctory judgment about their Heavenly Father, and His love. The seat of motivation is our hearts, which expresses emotions when God speaks too us, in our hearts, we have the law of love written into our hearts by our Father. We as human are created first to feel emotions by the million of sensor outside our bodies, which emotions are translating into thought.

Ephesians 4:16 from whom all the body, being fitted and knit together through that which every joint supplies, according to the working in measure of each individual part, makes the body increase to the building up of itself in love.

To prove this point, science has used visual images of people being hurt, the person watching the person being hurts feels their pain, than they translated those feelings of pain into compassion and empathy, When a child of God hears the words Abba Father meaning pop pa it is an emotional attachment to our heavenly Father. Love of God is a feeling of safety and security with the Most High, what it is not is a legal doctrine of words printed in our bibles, or association with a certain religious group, nor a science of facts, intellectualize by empirical study. The Holy Spirit is spoken of in feminine gender, a comforter, consoling us by our Father's love.

Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the assembly, and gave himself up for it;

Ephesians 5:28 Even so husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself.

John 15:25 But this happened so that the word may be fulfilled which was written in their law, 'They hated me without a cause.'{Psalms 35:19; 69:4} 15:26 "When the Counselor{Greek Parakletos: Counselor, Helper, Advocate, Intercessor, and Comfortor.} has come, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will testify about me. 15:27 You will also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.

No idol is anything when compared to our most precious relationship with our Father, if one thinks they know something intellectually about God's written word they know nothing that they ought to know about God. You see, let us not forget anything less than love for God, is an idol! Thus, any knowledge, gift, or prophecy that we may speak of as truth if we do not have love of God it is nothing. Love is not a word intellectualize as it is for those under the fleshly mind where they make mankind into a god through various studies of human wisdom, no! Love is God, and without love we judge, and teach, God's personality as human wisdom making our worship and knowledge of him into an idol.

1 John 4:16 We know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and he who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.

Worship of idol is nothing, having no power over a son of God, who is born again by God's Holy Spirit; loved and comforted by the body of Christ Jesus. Nothing in heaven or upon earth can separated us from such a powerful force as God's love. Because the world does not know Him, this love, hence, without God's love they know nothing of God. This statement does not diminishes the truth of God's love for Christian's. Where ones mocks, calling love weak in fear of using it because false religion has so badly abused human love in the name of God. It is, nevertheless, the identifying mark of true worship, without God's love as a perfect gift from above given us by His Holy Spirit we are idol worshipers found in false religion.

John 13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just like I have loved you; that you also love one another.

1Cor.13:1 If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but don't have love, I have become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. 13:2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but don't have love, I am nothing. 13:3 If I dole out all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but don't have love, it profits me nothing.

1Cor.8:4 Therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world, and that there is no other God but one. 8:5 For though there are things that are called "gods," whether in the heavens or on earth; as there are many "gods" and many "lords;" 8:6 yet to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we live through him.
8:7 However, that knowledge isn't in all men. But some, with consciousness of the idol until now, eat as of a thing sacrificed to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. 8:8 But food will not commend us to God. For neither, if we don't eat, are we the worse; nor, if we eat, are we the better.

Here is the problem for those Christian's living by works of law, in other words, they practice a commandment from the bible or their religious group thinking it makes the righteous before God. But such is the way of the fleshly mind, now they stumble upon verses in their bible like these Paul wrote, and they must legally lock them down into a doctrine justifying how a person can eat something known as unclean from an idol, as a Christian's, when indeed it breaks another work of law makes them unclean person associated with demons. Do you see the connection?

Romans 14:20 Don't overthrow God's work for food's sake. All things indeed are clean, however it is evil for that man who creates a stumbling block by eating.

Works of law, a Christian's can become unclean by so many works of law it becomes impossible for them not to think unclean first and than impute evil for the slightest infraction of others. Subsequently, this is what apostle Paul was dealing with in the Corinthian's congregation, just such fleshly minded thinking. Food, commandments, and/or works of law cannot make a member of the body of Christ unclean, do you know why? Because they were never made clean by these things, they are made clean by Christ Jesus blood, imputed too them when they ask God for a clean conscience based upon the merit of Christ Jesus life, and not their own. It much like looking at a pig rolling in the mire, thinking that it will become clean if the pig obeys commandments of God, or in not eating certain foods found in the mire!

Romans 14:14 I know, and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean of itself; except that to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.

God does not come down and clean the mire from the pig, he simply does not look at the mire, He looks at the Christ righteousness, that is, Christ earned merit given too us. In this state we are now clean from the mire, not that we clean ourselves up, but God does not see the mire, he instead see the clean and righteous garments of Christ Jesus. Now once we have this understanding Paul's words will make perfect sense, but should we refuse this understand returning to rolling in the mire by self-good works of eating or not eating, doing works of laws that judge us as rolling in the mire, sinners, they will make no good sense at all!

Acts 11:8 But I said, 'Not so, Lord, for nothing unholy or unclean has ever entered into my mouth.'

Acts 11:9 But a voice answered me the second time out of heaven, 'What God has cleansed, don't you call unclean.'

Because we have a clean conscience before God does not make our flesh clean, or our fleshly mind thinking clean, what it does is allows us to be humble knowing the truth of our own sinful condition, we do not point out from laws that judge cleanness and uncleanness to try and prove ourselves righteous, which laws obviously prove we are all sinners/unclean. That truth God Himself established through the Old Law; Christ Jesus completed for us. So we have an option living in the past, which is death, or dead works in works of law, or living in Christ Jesus who is life our future.

1 Peter 3:21 This is a symbol of baptism, which now saves you--not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.

Rom.8:9 But be careful that by no means does this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to the weak.
8:10 For if a man sees you who have knowledge sitting in an idol's temple, won't his conscience, if he is weak, be emboldened to eat things sacrificed to idols? 8:11 And through your knowledge, he who is weak perishes, the brother for whose sake Christ died. 8:12 Thus, sinning against the brothers, and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. 8:13 Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will eat no meat forevermore, that I don't cause my brother to stumble.

Why did the apostle Paul state the above, was it from law or love? Sadly, many stumbling blocks have been set up by legalize Christian's demanding their rights not to be offend by laws to eat, or not to eat certain foods!. But this was not Paul's meaning at all. Love works no harm towards neighbor what loving person would stumble some one that did not fully understand how a clean Christian's could eat something unclean sacrificed too idol? Would a loving person disregard hurting a brothers/sisters feelings, how does that work when we walk in love?

James 2:7 Don't they blaspheme the honorable name by which you are called? 2:8 However, if you fulfill the royal law, according to the Scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself,"{Leviticus 19:18} you do well. 2:9 But if you show partiality, you commit sin, being convicted by the law as transgressors. 2:10 For whoever keeps the whole law, and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. 2:11 For he who said, "Do not commit adultery,"{Exodus 20:14; Deuteronomy 5:18} also said, "Do not commit murder."{Exodus 10:13; Deuteronomy 5:17} Now if you do not commit adultery, but murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. 2:12 So speak, and so do, as men who are to be judged by a law of freedom.

There is no real mystery here, just kindness, but it has becomes one more confused doctrine of faith when it is made into a commandment, law, or a rule of by false religion. Paul was not here making a new rule, he was simply dealing with an issue of fleshly thinking stopping it from being introduced into the law of love within the body of Christ. We must never be fooled, we are not made righteous by our food, drink, thinking, or in attending a religious meeting, we are however, made righteous by Christ Jesus blood. Moreover, our being made righteous by Christ bloods means we are sinless, not evil people, but sinless without the laws of our flesh condemning us.

Rom. 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who don't walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.{NU omits "who don't walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit"}
8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.

This is why it makes not difference if a person eats food to an idol, or meat, or does not eating meat at all, Christ makes us clean by his righteousness, not by rules, obligations, or doctrines of do's and don'ts. The flesh and what its eats or does not eat is not clean in God's eyes, it is rather dead in Christ where none of us can put away the filth of our flesh. We can by faith ask God for a clean conscious because of the filth of are flesh in the blood of Christ Jesus.

Romans 8:5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.

Romans 8:6 For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace;

Romans 14:17 for the Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

In other words, we are not walking by flesh and its desires, so what desire of our flesh could be more important than love for our brother in Christ? On the other hand, who's conscience should be so weak that they find evil in their brothers/sisters for eating or drinking judging them as evil under laws we are set free from in Christ? Let us none of us become egoistical in our thinking the Kingdom of God lay in eating and drinking, doing so some how make us better, more righteous, closer to God, because of what we approve of, or disapprove of, by are conscience.

Colossians 2:16 Let no man therefore judge you in eating, or in drinking, or with respect to a feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath day.

12:3 For I say, through the grace that was given me, to every man who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think reasonably, as God has apportioned to each person a measure of faith.