'All things are lawful for me, but all things are not
expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things
edify not. 24. Let no man seek his own, but every man
another's wealth. 25. Whatsoever is sold in the shambles,
that eat, asking no question for conscience sake.
26. For the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.
27. If any of them that believe not bid you to a feast,
and ye be disposed togo, whatsoever is set before you
eat, asking no question for conscience sake. 28. But
if any man say unto you, This is offered in sacrifice
unto idols, eat not for his sake that shewed it, and
for conscience sake: for the earth is the Lord's and
the fulness thereof: 29. Conscience, I say, not thine
own, but of the other: for why is my liberty judged
of another man's conscience? 30. For if I by grace be
a partaker, why am I evil spoken of for that for which
I give thanks? 31. Whether therefore ye eat, or drink,
or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.
32. Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the
Gentiles, nor to the church of God: 33. Even as I
please all men in all things, not seeking mine own
profit, but the profit of many, that they may be
saved.'--1 COR. x. 23-33.
This passage strikingly illustrates Paul's constant habit of solving
questions as to conduct by the largest principles. He did not keep
his 'theology' and his ethics in separate water-tight compartments,
having no communication with each other. The greatest truths were
used to regulate the smallest duties. Like the star that guided the
Magi, they burned high in the heavens, but yet directed to the house
in Bethlehem.
The question here in hand was one that pressed on the Corinthian
Christians, and is very far away from our experience. Idolatry had so
inextricably intertwined itself with daily life that it was hard to
keep up any intercourse with non-Christians without falling into
constructive idolatry; and one very constantly obtruding difficulty
was that much of the animal food served on private tables had been
slaughtered as sacrifices or with certain sacrificial rites. What was
a Christian to do in such a case? To eat or not to eat? Both views
had their vehement supporters in the Corinthian church, and the
importance of the question is manifest from the large space devoted
to it in this letter.
In chapter viii. we have a weighty paragraph, in which one phase of
the difficulty is dealt with--the question whether a Christian ought
to attend a feast in an idol temple, where, of course, the viands had
been offered as sacrifices. But in chapter x. Paul deals with the
case in which the meat had been bought in the flesh-market, and so
was not necessarily sacrificial. Paul's manner of handling the point
is very instructive. He envelops, as it were, the practical solution
in a wrapping of large principles; verses 23, 24 precede the specific
answer, and are general principles; verses 25-30 contain the
practical answer; verses 31-33 and verse 1 of the next chapter are
again general principles, wide and imperative enough to mould all
conduct, as well as to settle the matter immediately in hand, which,
important as it was at Corinth, has become entirely uninteresting to
us.
We need not spend time in elucidating the specific directions given
as to the particular question in hand further than to note the
immense gift of saving common-sense which Paul had, and how sanely
and moderately he dealt with his problem. His advice was--'Don't ask
where the joint set before you came from. If you do not know that it
was offered, your eating of it does not commit you to idol worship.'
No doubt there were Corinthian Christians with inflamed consciences
who did ask such questions, and rather prided themselves on their
strictness and rigidity; but Paul would have them let sleeping dogs
lie. If, however, the meat is known to have been offered to an idol,
then Paul is as rigid and strict as they are. That combination of
willingness to go as far as possible, and inflexible determination
not to go one step farther, of yieldingness wherever principle does
not come in, and of iron fixedness wherever it does, is rare indeed,
but should be aimed at by all Christians. The morality of the Gospel
would make more way in the world if its advocates always copied the
'sweet reasonableness' of Paul, which, as he tells us in this
passage, he learned from Jesus.
As to the wrapping of general principles, they may all be reduced to
one--the duty of limiting Christian liberty by consideration for
others. In the two verses preceding the practical precepts, that duty
is stated with reference entirely to the obligations flowing from our
relationship to others. We are all bound together by a mystical chain
of solidarity. Since every man is my neighbour, I am bound to think
of him and not only of myself in deciding what I may do or refrain
from doing. I must abstain from lawful things if, by doing them, I
should be likely to harm my neighbour's building up of a strong
character. I can, or I believe that I can, pursue some course of
conduct, engage in some enterprise, follow some line of life, without
damage to myself, either in regard to worldly position, or in regard
to my religious life. Be it so, but I have to take some one else into
account. Will my example call out imitation in others, to whom it may
be harmful or fatal to do as I can do with real or supposed impunity?
If so, I am guilty of something very like murder if I do not abstain.
'What harm is there in betting a shilling? I can well afford to lose
it, and I can keep myself from the feverish wish to risk more.' Yes,
and you are thereby helping to hold up that gambling habit which is
ruining thousands.
'I can take alcohol in moderation, and it does me no harm, and I can
go to a prayer-meeting after my dinner and temperate glass, and I am
within my Christian liberty in doing so.' Yes, and you take part
thereby in the greatest curse that besets our country, and are, by
countenancing the drink habit, guilty of the blood of souls. How any
Christian man can read these two verses and not abstain from all
intoxicants is a mystery. They cut clean through all the pleas for
moderate drinking, and bring into play another set of principles
which limit liberty by regard to others' good. Surely, if there was
ever a subject to which these words apply, it is the use of alcohol,
the proved cause of almost all the crime and poverty on both sides of
the Atlantic. To the Christians who plead their 'liberty' we can only
say, 'Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he
alloweth.'
The same general considerations reappear in the verses following the
specific precept, but with a difference. The neighbour's profit is
still put forth as the limiting consideration, but it is elevated to
a higher sacredness of obligation by being set in connection with the
'glory of God' and the example of Christ. 'Do all to the glory of
God.' To put the thought here into modern English--Could you ask a
blessing over a glass of spirits when you think that, though it
should do you no harm, your taking it may, as it were, tip some weak
brother over the precipice? Can you drink to God's glory when you
know that drink is slaying thousands body and soul, and that hopeless
drunkards are made by wholesale out of moderate drinkers? 'Give no
occasion of stumbling'; do not by your example tempt others into
risky courses. And remember that 'neighbour' (verse 24) resolves
itself into 'Jews' and 'Greeks' and the 'Church of God'--that is,
substantially to your own race and other races--to men with whom you
have affinities, and to men with whom you have none.
A Christian man is bound to shape his life so that no man shall be
able to say of him that he was the occasion of that one's fall. He is
so bound because every man is his neighbour. He is so bound because
he is bound to live to the glory of God, which can never be advanced
by laying stumbling-blocks in the way for feeble feet. He is so bound
because, unless Christ had limited Himself within the bound of
manhood, and had sought not His own profit or pleasure, we should
have had neither life nor hope. For all these reasons, the duty of
thinking of others, and of abstaining, for their sakes, from what one
might do, is laid on all Christians. How do they discharge that duty
who will not forswear alcohol for their neighbour's sake?
'IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME'
'This do in remembrance of Me.'--1 COR. xi. 24.
The account of the institution of the Lord's Supper, contained in
this context, is very much the oldest extant narrative of that event.
It dates long before any of the Gospels, and goes up, probably, to
somewhere about five and twenty years after the Crucifixion. It
presupposes a previous narrative which had been orally delivered to
the Corinthians, and, as the Apostle alleges, was derived by him from
Christ Himself. It is intended to correct corruptions in the
administration of the rite which must have taken some time to develop
themselves. And so we are carried back to a period very close indeed
to the first institution of the rite, by the words before us.
No reasonable doubt can exist, then, that within a very few years of
our Lord's death, the whole body of Christian people believed that
Jesus Christ Himself appointed the Lord's Supper. I do not stay to
dwell upon the value of a rite contemporaneous with the fact which it
commemorates, and continuously lasting throughout the ages, as a
witness of the historical veracity of the alleged fact; but I want to
fix upon this thought, that Jesus Christ, who cared very little for
rites, who came to establish a religion singularly independent of any
outward form, did establish two rites, one of them to be done once in
a Christian lifetime, one of them to be repeated with indefinite
frequency, and, as it appears, at first repeated daily by the early
believers. The reason why these two, and only these two, external
ordinances were appointed by Jesus Christ was, that, taken together,
they cover the whole ground of revealed fact, and they also cover the
whole ground of Christian experience. There is no room for any other
rites, because these two, the rite of initiation, which is baptism,
and the rite of commemoration, which is the Lord's Supper, say
everything about Christianity as a revelation, and about Christianity
as a living experience.
Not only so, but in the simple primitive form of the Lord's Supper
there is contained a reference to the past, the present and the
future. It covers all time as well as all revelation and all
Christian experience. For the past, as the text shows us, it is a
memorial of one Person, and one fact in that Person's life. For the
present, it is the symbol of the Christian life, as that great sixth
chapter in John's gospel sets forth; and for the future, it is a
prophecy, as our Lord Himself said on that night in the upper
chamber, 'Till I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom,' and
as the Apostle in this context says, 'Till He come.' It is to these
three aspects of this ordinance, as the embodiment of all essential
Christian truth, and as the embodiment of all deep Christian
experience, covering the past, the present, and the future, that I
wish to turn now. I do not deal so much with the mere words of my
text as with this threefold significance of the rite which it
appoints.