To Know as We Ought to Know – 1 Corinthians 8:2-3

It is indeed a great privilege to know that we not only speak words of continuity in terms of the faith once for all delivered to the saints, we not only speak words of continuity with the apostles teaching, but we get to sing them. One of the greatest doctrinal traditions of the church is in the great hymns of the church. Where those hymns are sung, theology, doctrine, gospel, and Bible are declared. A dear friend of mine, as 15-year-old boy, was taken by his parents to a very liberal, mainline Protestant church in which the gospel was not declared, an orthodox theology was not declared from the pulpit.

He found authentic Christianity in the recitation of the creed and in the singing of the great hymns. Where the pulpit did not define and declare the gospel, the hymns did. And where the pulpit did not, to its utter failure and shame, define true Christian doctrine, the creeds did. In that sense, both are meant to be teachers, both are meant to be witnesses. And thus, what a joy it is that we got to sing on Christ the solid rock I stand. It’s a great place for us to begin a semester “on Christ, the solid rock we stand.”

I want to direct our attention this morning to two verses in First Corinthians. Chapter eight in particular, and verses two and three. Paul writes, “If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.”

Okay, every once in a while a passage of Scripture that we have read many times and with which we at least we feel familiar, it reaches out to us and grabs us by the throat. What appeared to be so calm on the page becomes a bit riotous on the page. What we passed over rather quickly demands we slow down and stop. I wanted to take these two verses in isolation for just a moment in order just to hear them exactly as they come to us: “If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.”

Alright, so just taking those two verses without concern for context for a moment, we get really confused about our mission at Boyce College and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary because this entire institution is basically established so that we would all know certain things that we would know, certain things that we believe must be known. It exists that we would be taught and that we would learn and there would be knowledge that would be expanded and enriched and deepened. So if the purpose of this institution is not that we know something, honestly I don’t know what we’re doing here.

But the Apostle Paul says here it is not just enough that we know something, we have to know something as we ought to know it. Now that’s an entirely different level of responsibility and one, I don’t think the average academic institution even thinks about… The difference between just knowing something and knowing something as we ought to know it. Okay? So let’s just understand that if it’s possible, and indeed the commandment here is that we are to know things and not just know them but we’re to know them as we ought to know them. That raises the specter of the fact that the danger is we will know them as we ought not to know them.

Alright. At the beginning of an academic term, this seems pretty dangerous. I mean, what if these professors are teaching things but not as they ought to teach them? And what if that isn’t even about content but it’s about attitude and what about knowing things as learners? What if we learn things but we don’t learn them as we ought to learn them? Well, alright, I’m just going to tell you I don’t trust my imagination to figure out what’s going on here. I think we need to look at the totality of the text.

Let’s look at Romans chapter eight. Excuse me, that would be profitable too, but in this morning, First Corinthians chapter eight:

“Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that all of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.

Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence, and that there is no God but one. For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. 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. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.”

I’m just going to offer as a suggestion that this context is quite alien to us. But it would’ve been quite common in the first century Church. In particular, it is an issue in Corinth and given the nature of Corinth and the idolatrous temples there in Corinth, it would seem to be a very pressing pastoral issue. I want to say that I think that context is not easily transferable to any context of my experience. I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve been offered food, offered idols, knowingly. Never had the experience. I’ve never had the slightest twinge of conscience with a steak having been offered to idols. There are plenty of idolaters in this city, but they’re not sacrificing animals so far as I know and they’re not selling meat and we don’t go to them to get meat on the cheap.

I’ve got another problem and that’s rooted back to my experience as a teenager when I didn’t know much, that’s an understatement, about hermeneutics. But I had a sense enough of the plain meaning of the text that I didn’t think the people who were using this text were using it rightly. So I smelled a rat. It seemed a convenient text. This text became an issue of controversy in my home church when I was a teenager. It wasn’t over meat sacrificed to idols. It was over a pool table in the youth room. You wonder how that leap some of the older among you are looking at me and nodding. You’ve been there in that debate. Our church, First Baptist Church put a billiards table in the youth room, guys loved it. It was fun, so, some of the older folks in the church were grievously offended.

They asked one of the stupidest questions I’ve ever been asked. They asked, “Do you not know what this means?” Evidently I have no idea what it means. I see it as a game with hard balls in which you’re trying to get balls in pockets. What am I missing? What I was missing was that the pool table is a symbol of a pool hall and in the pool hall there’s drinking and gambling and all kinds of vice. Do you not know that some are going to stumble because of the billiard table? They threw First Corinthians chapter eight at us… And, by the way, the billiard table stayed, but the first concern I ever heard about concern for a weaker brother had to do with someone stumbling over a billiard table. And I don’t know exactly what happened, but I don’t know of anyone who saw the billiard table and fell immediately back into sin and was never seen again. I don’t think that happened, but nonetheless, I had a hermeneutical problem. I didn’t think that could be really what this text is about. It’s about something with greater weight and gravitas than that.

Now, concerning food offered to idols, we know that Paul’s writing into a pastoral situation there in Corinth and he’s writing with urgency. He’s heard as he tells us in chapter one from Chloe’s people that there are divisions in the church and these divisions are threatening the life of the congregation, even the witness in the worship of the congregation. And he writes into these controversies and of course this will reach a climax in terms of the great chapter on love in First Corinthians chapter 13, but we have anticipations of it here. “Concerning the food offered to idols: we know that all of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

Well, if we didn’t have anything but the first verse, First Corinthians chapter eight, I think in this opening convocation, we’d want to look each other in the eye and say, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ is instructed by even this first verse of First Corinthians chapter eight. What we want to make certain is that our learning does not puff us up.

We don’t want teachers who are puffed up. It’s very easy to get puffed up. We don’t want students who are puffed up. We don’t want students divided between the puffed up and the not yet puffed up. We don’t want to puff each other up with our greater claims to knowledge. This is so easy in an academic setting. It really is. It’s so easy and it’s because knowing is such a privilege, but knowing becomes such a pleasure and knowing seems to become a possession. I know. Do you know? Even if you know you don’t know as I know.

The Apostle Paul shifts immediately to saying that knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. But now we have to be careful here because the Apostle Paul warns against believing you know something in such a way that it is injurious to the church. But this is the same Apostle Paul who leans so heavily in virtually all of his letters into Christianity being defined as what we know.

First and foremost, what we know: we know that on the cross, Christ died for our sins. On the third day, God raised him from the dead. We know these things. We know that Christ died for our sins. We know that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. There are things that we know. We know the truths of the crucifixion, we know the truths of the resurrection, we know the truths of the gospel and the Apostle Paul, even in this text, when you see kind of a creedal statement in verse six, there are things we know that we have to know, but the knowledge of the gospel for the believer is not to puff us up but to ground us in Christ and to ground us in love.

So apparently as you look at this, it becomes apparent that what we know, if we are Christians and we know things in a Christian way, it will lead us into greater Christian devotion and it will lead us into greater love for one another as Christians rather than the opposite and evidently the opposites of danger. Let’s skip over verses two and three for a moment and let’s go to the problem in verse four. “Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know so we’re going to know again here, we know that an idol has no real existence, and that there is no God but one.”

Alright, so we know that an idol is a no thing, an idol is nothing. We’re \ not threatened by them, we’re offended by them, but we’re not threatened by them. We’re not worried about them.

Some of you have probably heard me say before that we are kind of the Smithsonian Institution of the Southern Baptist Convention here and so we have collections of things that have been given to us and especially in the 19th century we were given many things by Southern Baptist missionaries on the foreign mission field and some of these things are idolatrous things collected by missionaries as evidence of the idolatrous practices of the place where they ministered. When Lottie Moon, the famous missionary, when her things came to Southern Seminary including her desk, you can see on the second floor of the library in one of the chambers of the desk there was a Buddha, an idol.

At one point it was on a display case with the idol on it and as the president of the institution, this created a problem for me. I walked down the hallway of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and there’s a desk with a Buddha on it. It was behind glass, I couldn’t just grab the Buddha and run, so I asked the stewards of this display to please remove the Buddha. It wasn’t that it was a thing, but just the presence of it raised more questions than it should have and implied something that an observer who did not know that this was a missionary display and did not know the Lottie Moon had been a missionary in China, they might be very confused about this. And so the Buddha was gone until I came back from a trip, walked down the hall. Buddha’s back. And so I inquired as to why Buddha was back and I was told that one of the housekeeping staff had been told to keep the display exactly as she found it when she dusted or whatever she was to put things exactly back.

And I said, well, that’s exactly right, except for the Buddha. Eventually we had to take the Buddha away and the Buddha is now hidden in an archive, a nothing now in a nowhere where no one can see the Buddha. It is kind of a symbol though of how problematic even just a representation could be. We do know that an idol is a no thing, it is a nothing. We do know that the idolaters are worshiping a nothing. Just think of Isaiah chapter 44 and the foolishness presented there of the idolater. He uses a tree, he cuts it down, half of it, he makes a fire, half of it, he cooks meat and says this is food, it is good with the other half of it, he carves an idol and falls down to it and says, this is my god. He feeds on ashes, says Isaiah. And you see it is not only a nothing, it’s a nothing which symbolizes the insanity of human beings seeking a god other than the one true and living God.

But now you have the Apostle Paul here in Corinth, or writing to the Christians that is in Corinth, nd he says, “We know that an idol has no real existence and we know there’s no God bur one,” but then he goes on and says in verse seven, “However not all possess this knowledge,” and then specifically here’s the pastoral issue, “But some through former association with idols eat food as really offered to an idol and their conscience being weak is defiled.” Okay, so there are those who came into the church who heard the gospel and believed and were saved, they were converted to Christianity, they came into the church, into the body of believers, they’re in Corinth and when they saw the idolatrous practices and when they knew what went on in the temples, it was so close to them, it had been so much a recent part of their experience and it was something that they now wish to put behind them in such a way that they repudiated such things utterly.

The problem was some of the people in the same church didn’t seem to have the same approach and seemed to be at least flirting with and perhaps becoming polluted by the food offered to the idol. Food will not commend us to God. “We are no worse off if we do not eat and no better off if we do,” speaking of this food sacrificed to idols, meat sacrificed to idols. “But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.” You’re claiming a right because you know the idols are nothing. Therefore, the meat has been sacrificed to a nothing and so it hasn’t changed. Its chemical composition hasn’t changed, its physical properties. It’s the same meat before it was sacrificed and so there is nothing wrong with eating it once you know that the idols are nothing, but there are those who have come out of idolatry who know, and perhaps we could put it this way, that even though the idols are nothing, idolatry is not a nothing. Idolatry is a something.

It is something they know they have to leave behind and then becomes a stumbling block and then they’re described as the weak. This is what’s interesting, and I’ve always found this somewhat of a perplexity. Those who are described as having the knowledge that the idol is a nothing, they’re described as strong. By implication, those who do not have this knowledge or do not yet have this knowledge are described as the weak and the strong are encouraged not to cause the weak to stumble.

At least some of this weakness is something that could be overcome over time. I mean this gets back again to the early church and the fact that an awful lot of doctrinal correction had to take place, an awful lot of doctrinal instruction had to take place. I’m so encouraged by, for instance, what we find in the book of Acts in chapters 18 and 19 where we are introduced to Apollo, who is mighty in the Scriptures but clearly inadequately taught, only knows the baptism of John. And where Apollos has been preaching in chapter 19, it’s very apparent they don’t understand the Holy Spirit either. So neither baptism nor the understanding of the Holy Spirit is complete, but you’ll recall that even though Apollo is thus in pretty deep spiritual error, he isn’t condemned by the church, but rather Priscilla and Aquila take him away. They took him to their own home privately to instruct him more accurately according to the Scriptures. That’s a beautiful picture. That’s what we hope for. That’s what we need. We need, we need to be taken and have the gospel explained to us more adequately. We need to be corrected continually and we need to correct one another continually in this spirit and thus the weak can be built up into strength.

But at any given time, and especially in this particular context in Corinth, this is a very real danger. Not only are there divisions in the church, which Paul mentions in First Corinthians chapter one, but there is also this deep, deep problem of weak brothers and sisters being tormented by this, being troubled by this and in some cases according to the text, even going back into some idolatrous practice. Tthe danger is clear in verse 11, “And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed the brother for whom Christ died.” Wow, that strong language, this weak person is destroyed and how has this weak person described the brother for whom Christ died: “Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.”

Well, I just want us to think about these two verses, knowing now the background. “If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.”

So, what’s our hope? Our hope is that we know as we ought to know. My hope is that we begin this term and frankly commit our lives together, not just to knowing, but to knowing as we ought to know. Just some thoughts about what this might mean, maybe some principles we could think about in terms of knowing as we ought to know.

First, all knowledge is made possible because we are image-bearers of God and we’re created hungry and thirsty for knowledge.

We only can know anything. In fact, we know we can only know anything because a holy and perfect Creator made us for his glory in his image and gave us the capacity to know.This is why even the charter of the species were set apart, homosapien. The thinking, knowing creature. And to be human is to know in such a way that we can’t not know. We can’t not know certain things. Paul makes that point In Romans chapter one. We need to recognize that all knowledge is made possible only because God makes it possible, because he created us in his image and not only that, he created us hungry and thirsty for knowledge. A baby is born with a yearning to know that inquisitive toddler is driven by an insatiable appetite to know, to see an object, to touch an object, to feel an object, to understand to some degree that object.

Secondly, I would argue all knowledge is made possible by divine revelation, both special and general.

So all knowledge, all knowledge, not just knowledge of things gospel, not just knowledge of things theological, but all knowledge is made possible only because of divine revelation. Because divine revelation is not only in the doctrines revealed and taught, but in the things that are seen so that there is none who has an excuse. Nature cries out a knowledge that two plus two equals four. You know that, I trust you know that, you need to know that there are people who would say that’s a secular equation. Well, it’s available equally to the redeemed and to the secular. But it’s only true because God has created a universe in which two plus two, first of all, is intelligible and then secondly, is true.

There are secularly available facts, but there are no secular facts and this is the truth in this statement. All truth is God’s truth. That doesn’t mean all truth claims are true. It means however that if anything is true, it’s true only because God has established it to be true and he’s revealed it to be true and allowed us to know and to believe that it is true.

Third, all knowledge must be tested by holy Scripture as the epistemological criteria and authority, the source of all knowledge and the test of all truth claims.

Now of course I’m expanding out from the immediate context of First Corinthians chapter eight, but I’m trying to think about what it would mean to know as we ought to know. I think Scripture lays down principles of knowing as we ought to know, and this sets us in contrast and contradistinction to those who would claim to know in some other way. We just even in the early thoughts about thinking rightly and knowing rightly as we ought to know, we have to understand even the foundation. Third, all knowledge that is tested by holy Scripture, as I say, is the epistemological criteria and authority.

And then fourth, ultimately, we know what is most important to know.

That is God’s love for us in Christ Jesus, only because we are known by him before we knew him. We love him because he first loved us. We know him because he first knew us. That’s right here in the text. Look at this, look at verse three, “But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.” We’re not known by God when we love him. We love him because he knows us and he loves us. So a Christian understanding of knowing as we ought to know, reminds us that we are knowers who are known.

We are never alone. We’re not learning as autonomous entities in a lost universe, an accidental cosmos. We are knowers who are known and specifically here in Christ, we as Christians are knowers who are known by God. That sets us apart. That certainly would indicate at least part of what it means to know as we ought to know.

Fifth, I would argue all knowledge is partial and imperfect even as it’s real in this age.

In this age we know in part, and we see in part. It’s not that we don’t know the truth. We certainly do know the truth, but we will know more. The imperfect will give way to the perfect. The partial will give way to the whole in the glory of the age to come. We will know as we ought to know on completely different terms than we know as we ought to know now. But planted in us now is a yearning for the knowledge that we will one day have. Even as when we look at a text like First Corinthians chapter eight, we have to think, we have to think together. We have to think carefully. We have to think hermeneutically, we have to think theologically. We have to think pastorally. Our thinking can be fractured, our thinking can be wrong. We yearn for that perfect. That is to come. In the meantime, we test all things by Scripture, affirm real knowledge as real, but know that it is impartial in this age.

Sixth, Paul makes this very clear, all knowledge is based in love. It’s based in love. Now we can even speak in a secular sense. We can hear people speak of a love of learning, but this is more than a love of learning. This is a love of God that is translated into a love of learning and that’s different. That’s not only knowing, that’s knowing as we ought to know, it’s not only loving but is loving as we ought to love. It’s very easy to love learning in and of itself. Let’s admit that it’s very easy to love learning. It is exhilarating, it is satisfied.

It is very easy to love learning for its own sake, but that is not the Christian’s calling. We are to love learning because we love God. We want to know more in order to love God more faithfully, and if we love God more faithfully because we know we will also love our brothers and sisters in a completely different way. First of all, we will see them in a transformed vision. They’re no longer just men and women, boys and girls who are just with us in a room. We are common followers, disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. New creatures in Christ, commonly united to Christ. And that to offend them, is to offend Christ.

I am so drawn to Augustine’s description of love. I can think first of all, of an understanding of ordered love oddly in public controversy in recent days, but I’m thinking of his writings on Christian teaching where he says, all learning, all knowledge in a Christian understanding is based in love. Speaking of the teacher, he says, the teacher is driven, first of all, by love of God. It’s important, primary foundational, and then by love of students. If the teacher does not love the students and the students, if they do not love the teacher, then no real learning’s going to take place. It’s a certain form of love and then the teacher is really only effective if the teacher loves the subject taught.

I guarantee you these teachers love the subjects taught, but more importantly, they love God and they love students.

Alight, eighth, Christians are to love each other in the bonds of Christ, and we are then to know all things in proper proportion, with priority to love.

I’ve got to admit to you, I find this problematic. I know it’s true. I needed to say it, I needed to say it to myself, but we need to be clear. Paul is not telling us that doctrine is a matter indifferent. He’s not telling us that we are to love error. He’s very clear about that we are not to love error, and the Apostle Paul would confront those in error, but his love was to build up the saints. His mission was to build up the saints in love and in this letter to the church at Corinth, we know in First Corinthians, it’s so clear that he’s concerned about a lack of love within the congregation that leads to learning, which produces knowledge, not as we ought to know.

The Apostle Paul will make very clear that if you do not believe, and in this very letter he makes very clear, if you do not believe in the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, you are not a believer, you do not know Christ. But the priority has to be love and thus this means on some things, and this is where the meat sacrificed to idols comes in. And this is what’s difficult for me because I can’t think of a direct analogy here, but maybe that’s the point I need to think about more.

The point is that there are things that we know that, asserted wrongly, will harm a brother or a sister, and we need to assert them rightly. We need not to be puffed up proud of our knowledge, but rather to know such things within the bounds of the love of Christ and the bounds of the love of fellow believers. This doesn’t mean we don’t confront error, it can’t mean that, and the Apostle Paul makes very clear that it doesn’t mean that. But it does mean we don’t do so puffed up but rather out of godly concern for one another.

So ninth, that does mean that we have to be constantly on guard of the knowledge that puffs up.

And I have to say this is always close at hand and I think we all know the temptation: once we know something, to immediately want to tell something someone what we know. We want to share what we know with someone in order to make very clear, we now know this thing and then you have one upmanship. “Well, if you know that I know this. Well, if you’ve taken that course, I’ve taken this one. Oh, you’ve read that book? Well, I’ve read another one’s more important. That’s better. You really don’t even understand the one you just read and think you understand until you read that one, then you might go backwards and understand the previous one, but by then I will be on a second or third book still ahead of you. Yeah. How many articles have you published? Yeah. Okay. Right.”

No, I mean this is really easy. Very, very easy. We must watch that we are not puffed up at least a part of what we have to do as colleagues is to encourage one another, not to be puffed up and it’s exhibited gloriously in this faculty. I see no fractiousness or puff-uppery in this faculty and for that I’m very, very thankful and I think we have to put it down everywhere, beginning in our own hearts because it’s not ever absent as a temptation.

Tenth, and I end on a negative, on purpose. We can do harm with our knowledge.

Verse 11, just look at it again: “And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died.” There are applications of what we know. There are assertions of what we know. There are things we can claim in knowledge and for ourselves that can do harm. Now, all my life I’ve stood for making very clear what is right and true what is necessary and revealed what is confessional and mandatory. I don’t think the Apostle Paul would have us back off of that for a moment. I’m absolutely certain of that, but he does give us the apostolic exhortation that while we must know these things and we must teach these things. We must know them within the larger context of the love of God for us in Christ and the love we have for the brothers. And this means that we teach. We contend for the faith. We defend the faith. We build up believers in the true knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. We assert the gospel, declare the gospel, preach the gospel, and defend the gospel. We define the gospel in biblical terms. We are not hesitant to declare any truth revealed in God’s worth nor to understand that we do not have any option but to defend, to declare and to believe every truth revealed in God’s word, but we do so in order, first to seek, to bring along, to grow together with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

That’s why this institution exists. It is to transfer not only knowledge, but the right knowledge. We pray in the right way because we need to know as we ought to know. I want to concede with you that this is a bigger task than any one of us or all of us together. It’s impossible that we can be individually faithful in knowing as we ought to know, that’s why we need one another. That’s why we need each other in this room and the larger gathering of those who are a part of this institution. It means we need the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. It means we need the fellowship of the saints. It means we’ve got a lot to do.

To know, as we ought to know, to teach us as ought to teach, to learn as we ought to learn: it’s a pretty big goal. It’s a pretty big agenda, and I will just offer that it ought to be enough to keep us busy for the rest of this term and then for the rest of our lives. Will you pray with me?

Father, we thank you for this text which exhorts us to know as we ought to know and reminds us that we know only because we are known by you. Father, we pray for your wisdom, your guidance, your protection, your admonition. We pray to see your glory in this semester. Father, we will declare the gospel. We will teach the truth. We will open your word and we will learn from it and we will teach it. We will seek to understand all things as they ought to be understood. We want to know things as they should be known. Father, this will be only by your grace, and it will be to your glory, and it is in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ we do pray. Amen.