January 31, 2021
Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
Deuteronomy 18:15–20, Psalm 111, 1 Corinthians 8:1–13, Mark 1:21–28
This passage in 1 Corinthians is one of my favorite passages in Scripture because it lays out a way of thinking about new problems in the world. For Paul’s audience the question has to do with eating meat sacrificed to idols. This isn’t a question about Christians going to temples and participating in the process of sacrificing to idols, that is absolutely against God. The situation is that in the meat markets, some of the meat had been sacrificed for idols and so Gentile Christians were unsure if they needed to specifically avoid these meats.
Interestingly, Paul does not deny the existence of other spiritual forces, but says that for us there is one God and one Lord, and so this is nothing to the one who is in Christ. So there is a genuine freedom in Christ to engage in activities that may seem to be “out of bounds.”
The key thing though, is that if taking your freedom goes against the conscience of another believer, if eating meat like this may cause someone to relapse or return to their past sin, it is sin against that believer to eat the meat.
Freedom in Christ is only to be understood within the responsibility of genuine love for one another.
So how can we apply this kind of thinking into our world?
The most direct parallel I can think of would be something like yoga in modern day America. There is certainly room for debate in this one because in my understanding the positions in yoga corresponded to worship of so-called gods. However, I believe that for many if not most people who practice yoga, it is simply a form of exercise that doesn’t relate in the slightest to yoga’s roots. And so if there has never been this connection for you, and if the connection isn’t made explicit in your practice of yoga, I see no problem—with the exception that if it is a cause for someone to stumble or relapse into sin, you ought to stop out of love for that person.
We have freedom in Christ, but that freedom is secondary to the love we are called to.
