1 Corinthians 8:1-13 Living for your brothers”

1 Corinthians 8:1-13 Living for your brothers”

The people in Corinth must have asked Paul about eating meat that had been offered to idol’s. Paul’s answer to their question has much to say to our world today.

Over the last 50 or 60 years we have pushed out the boundaries of individual rights. We have been so focused on what we have a right to do, that we fail to ask what we should do. Just because something is legal to do does not make it right to do. When individual rights are pushed to the extreme the natural result is conflict. Paul’s answer to the Corinthian church shows us a different way to live.

1.       Eating food offered to idols

a.       The meat market and food stands

b.       You did not offer it to idols but you buy it from those who did.

c.       People who cannot break the idol connection

d.       They end up back in idol worship

2.       Individual rights

a.       Speech, beach, drinking and cars

b.       People struggling with addictions

c.       New age religion

3.       Living to help others

a.       What will we give up to help a brother or sister

b.       Drinking, gambling, ostentatious living

c.       Are we even aware that our actions may affect others?

d.       Do we consider or actions effect on others?

God calls us to live as an encouragement to other Christ Followers around us.

 1 thes 5: 11  ¹¹Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.

1 Thess 5:14 Be at peace among yourselves.   ¹⁴And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.

Heb 10:24   ²⁴And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,   ²⁵not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Mark 9:42 “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. 

God calls us to live as an encouragement to other Christ Followers around us. What we do, what we say, how we live may affect the people living around us.