“Wherefore, if meat (food) make my brother to offend, I will eat
no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to
offend.”—1 COR. viii. 13.
Of all the great writers of the world, the apostle Paul perhaps most
needs to be read with the eye of the heart, as well as with the eye of
the understanding. Moral sympathy is an essential condition of the full
understanding of the apostle’s words. Most especially is it needed in
such passages as the present, in which he gives vehement and even
passionate utterance to his vivid sympathies with the weaker brethren
who were still struggling with the difficulties and perplexities from
which his powerful genius had already emancipated him, or who were
tormented by doubts which he had laid happily at rest for ever. There is
no great writer who is less careful to guard himself from even grave
misconstructions, or whose eager, impetuous sentences, when matters
which touch his sympathies and affections are in question, are more
likely, if formulated into maxims and rules of action, to lead weak
minds astray. Indeed, there is a sense in which the Bible is the most
unguarded of all books. Meant more than any other book to be a guide of
action, it is less careful about misunderstandings of its meaning, and
lays itself open to more complete misapprehensions, than any other book
in the world. And this precisely because it will be read with the spirit
as well as with the understanding. It needs no worldly scholarship; but
it will not make its meanings plain to those who do not care to bring to
bear on it, not the attention of their heads only, but that of their
hearts. How many startling sentences are there which, in the first
flash of their meaning, seem to strike at the root of institutions or
principles which we learn from other passages the Bible is most
earnestly solicitous to maintain and secure. Take some utterances of the
mind of the apostle Paul about women for instance, as isolated dicta;
treat them as complete authoritative utterances, giving the law to us;
the result would be the utter confusion of all man’s most sacred
relations, and the overthrow of human society. There are words too,
uttered by yet more sacred lips, which it needs no little spiritual
experience and insight to avoid misunderstanding, and applying to uses
which the whole tenour of the Saviour’s life and teaching would sternly
condemn. Paul, a man vividly sympathetic and tender, easily touched by
suffering, easily drawn by love, intense, passionate, and impetuous,
suffers himself ever and anon to express in one short, startling
sentence some vivid impression which for the moment occupied his whole
soul. But we must pause—as he would have paused, nay, did manifestly
pause—before we treat it as a mould in which we are to cast our rules
of action or habits of life. The sentence expresses the desire and
purpose of the apostle’s heart, that which would animate and give aim to
all its action; but the action itself would be wisely modulated by a
hundred secondary considerations, and by other co-ordinate principles,
so as to secure, as far as might be possible, the end at which he aimed,
without imperilling other and it might be yet higher things. It would be
a grand mistake then to formulate such a sentence as this into a rigid
rule of action. Treated thus, the first thing which would fall under
condemnation would probably be the apostle’s life.
These words are very constantly employed as though they laid down a rule
of action concerning things indifferent which might lead easily to sin,
and set before us a way of helping men against vicious habits at the
cost of some personal self-sacrifice. That may be a very important
subject, and it has plenty of passages bearing on it in the word of
God. But it is not the difficulty here. This passage has quite a
different bearing. It is a case, not of a weak will, but of a weak
judgment, a weak conscience, in which there is danger of false beliefs
or of a lowering of the tone of the conscientious principle of action.
It is this, and not any question of vicious habits, which draws from the
apostle, who had fought his way through the whole jungle of doubts and
difficulties and perplexities in which the weaker brethren were
struggling painfully still, these ardent and decisive words.
I. At the root of this declaration lies the conviction that there is no
consideration which may compete in a man’s motives with the desire to
promote the spiritual welfare and progress of mankind. It is the object
dearest to God. It was the object dearest to the apostle’s heart. It
seemed so great to God, so essentially glorious, that God came forth in
the form of a man to die for it. This is the true form of the
Calvinistic tenet that to God His own glory is His highest end. And Paul
was prepared to die for it too. “_And as we tarried there many days,
there came down from Judæa a certain prophet, named Agabus. And when he
was come unto us, he took Paul’s girdle, and bound his own hands and
feet, and said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So shall the Jews at
Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him
into the hands of the Gentiles. And when we heard these things, both we,
and they of that place, besought him not to go up to Jerusalem. Then
Paul answered, What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am
ready not to be bound, only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name
of the Lord Jesus._” (Acts xxi. 10–13.) When a man has settled that, and
has taken his life in his hand to fulfil a ministry to mankind, he has
but one supreme consideration; his own interests vanish; man’s
interests, the estate of the poorest and most wretched of mankind, fill
the sphere of his aims and hopes. (1 Cor. iv. 9–13.) No wonder that
nothing could move him from this ministry, and that life was valueless
save as it might be a “_finishing his course with joy, and the ministry
which he had received of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the
grace of God_.” Of course, if life was freely laid on that altar, “_as
the life is more than meat, and the body than raiment_,” meats would be
freely offered as a sacrifice too. The man who was ready to die for man
was not likely to suffer a morsel of meat, any worldly possession, any
physical or mental pleasure, to stand for an instant in the way of any
help or guidance which he might offer to the weakest of mankind. “_For
though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all,
that I might gain the more. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I
might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law,
that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without
law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to
Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became
I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men,
that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the gospel’s
sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you._” (1 Cor. ix. 19–23.)
We must take this sentence then, as explaining the full readiness of the
apostle, as far as his own tastes, habits, and appetites were concerned,
to eat no meat to his dying day, if he saw that such a course of action
would remove effectually an offence, a stone of stumbling, from the path
of the weakest of his fellow-men.
But all are not apostles. How far is the conduct of this great Christian
teacher to be regarded as giving the rule to us? This is but another
form of a yet graver question—How far do we feel ourselves bound to be
followers of the Son of man in the regeneration, in the reconstruction
of man’s nature and of human society, in the working out of His benign
plans and purposes for mankind? “_Be ye followers of me_,” said Paul,
“_as I am of Christ_.” The apostle’s life was simply the most Christlike
life, and those who care to follow Christ must drink of the same
springs, and aim at the same ends, while they pursue the various
callings by which society is sustained and developed. To be Christian is
to have in us the same mind which was likewise in Christ Jesus. The
measure of our Christian vitality is the measure in which that mind is
in us, and in which we are able thereby to enter into this language of
the apostle Paul. Those that can enter into it perfectly, and can live
it, following Paul as Paul followed Christ, are the heaven-sent leaders
and ministers of mankind. It is a sacred line which God keeps unbroken
through all the ages, the men of apostolic spirit and self-devotion to
the good of their fellows. But those who follow can only follow through
sympathy. They must be able to believe in this spirit, to make it the
aim of their lives to work it out in their limited spheres, with feebler
it may be, but with honest and manly effort; or Christianity becomes
simply the efflorescence of civilization, and the sad world has to seek
its helper, teacher, and saviour still. Clearly then Paul was ready for
this, and far more than this, if thereby he might effectually help a
weak brother on his way.
II. Actually, as far as we have the means—and we have some means—of
knowing, Paul continued to eat meat to his dying day, while the
difficulty still remained a pressing one, and the stone of stumbling
still continued to block many a weak Christian’s path.
What was the difficulty? How did the offence arise? The meat spoken of
here is meat which had been offered in an idolatrous temple, and which
might be supposed by those who had not the lofty intelligence of the
apostle to have contracted some moral contamination thereby. Under all
systems the meat offered in sacrifice was in some measure the perquisite
of the priest. (Lev. vii. 7–19.) The abuse of the custom is thus
described:—“_Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial; they knew not the
Lord. And the priest’s custom with the people was, that, when any man
offered sacrifice, the priest’s servant came, while the flesh was in
seething, with a flesh-hook of three teeth in his hand; and he struck it
into the pan, or kettle, or caldron, or pot: all that the flesh-hook
brought up, the priest took for himself. So they did in Shiloh unto all
the Israelites that came thither. Also before they burnt the fat, the
priest’s servant came, and said to the man that sacrificed, Give flesh
to roast for the priest; for he will not have sodden flesh of thee, but
raw. And if any man said unto him, Let them not fail to burn the fat
presently, and then take as much as thy soul desireth; then he would
answer him, Nay; but thou shalt give it me now; and if not I will take
it by force. Wherefore the sin of the young men was very great before
the Lord: for men abhorred the offering of the Lord._” (1 Sam. ii.
12–17.) There is a very interesting question behind this, into which I
must not enter here; how far all animal sacrifice is to be regarded as
the consecration of food; the recognition of God as the giver, as the
lord of the animal slain, and of man’s right to slay as a right which
had been delegated by the Lord. That there is some deeper idea in animal
sacrifice no thoughtful reader of the Bible, I imagine, can well
question; but that this is a very important part of the meaning I feel
well assured. It casts a flood of light on the immense slaughter of
victims at the consecration of the temple and other high occasions;
while it is itself illustrated by the customs of orientals with
reference to the slaughter of animals to this day. But the priest’s
portion was a recognised thing. Portions of this, not needed by the
priest’s household, would be sold in the shambles. Portions belonging to
those who offered the sacrifice might be similarly exposed. Sometimes a
feast would be made in the temple, the animal which furnished the flesh
being sacrificed there (ver. 10); sometimes in a private house (x. 27),
where Christians, following the liberal law, the law of liberty laid
down by the apostle (1 Cor. v. 9, 10), would be constantly brought into
contact with it, and through it, it might seem to them, with the idol by
whose name it had been consecrated. A serious difficulty would thus
arise. I beg you to mark carefully where the real heart of the
difficulty lay. It was not at all a question of meat in itself, noxious
in quality or becoming noxious by quantity. If it had been a question of
a man eating unwholesome food, or eating good food to excess, damaging
health of body and mind thereby, I cannot imagine that Paul would have
treated it as a difficult question at all. You have a sinful habit he
would say, you are injuring and destroying your system; you must break
it, absolutely, decisively, or perish: what help I can give you as man
to man, by the influence of my words or works, is at your service; but
it is no question of what I do or do not: it is a simple point, it is
between you and God; fly to Him for grace and strength, and master your
lust.
But here the case is quite different. It is a case not of a vicious
habit, but of a puzzled conscience; a feeble apprehension of truth, a
doubt as to what is right or wrong, in which the conduct of the wise and
enlightened would be a most wholesome and valuable guide. This weak soul
trying to see its way needed guidance. What a glutton or a sot needs is
power. For the one use, example is most precious; the other need can
only be supplied from a yet deeper spring. How far am I in contact with
idolatry in this eating of meat offered to idols? might easily be a very
fair question; and not only with the weakest of the young Gentile
Church. Some would eat it with conscience of the idol. They would be
pained and distressed, and a constant tolerance of such pain and
distress is demoralizing. Doing great acts of life with a half heart,
with a troubled faith, paralyses conscience, and in the end opens the
way to tremendous sins. The constant converse with idolatry which
attending these feasts with a “conscience of the idol” would generate,
might easily end in apostasy, shipwreck of faith and hope for ever.
How beautiful is the mingled wisdom and charity with which the apostle
handles the difficulty! It was absolutely none to him. The idol to him
was not anything at all. It was a vain imagination of man’s vain heart.
There could be no conscience of an idol in his mind in dealing with
anything created by God, however the idol might have been connected with
it by others. Who would recognise an usurper because he occupies the
palace and assumes the signet of the rightful king? “_The earth is the
Lord’s, and the fulness thereof._” The creature is the Lord’s, every
limb, every particle. If I can but use it for the end for which the Lord
created it and put it under my hand, I will rejoice and give thanks that
so far the usurper is despoiled. Thus the instructed Jew would look at
the matter: “_the idol is not anything at all_.” But the Corinthians
were converted Gentiles. The idol was a reality, and a very terrible
reality to them; in memory and association at any rate, if not in
conviction. Relapse into idolatry, which was all round them, many dear
to them being devoted to it, was a very pressing peril; and association
with idolaters, with conscience of the idol in the act of association,
might easily bring the danger near.
There was but one thing which could deliver them; a thoroughly Christian
conviction that the idol is not anything at all: that “_every creature
of God is good and is to be received with thanksgiving, being sanctified
by the word of God and by prayer_.” But these noble and lofty beliefs
are not born in a moment. God had been for ages educating the Jews to
the belief of which the Christian Paul, the Hebrew of the Hebrews, in
this as in other things was reaping the fruit. And education is a slow
and delicate process, and needs to be managed by a nursing hand. While
these Gentile converts are being trained to this loftier view, beware
lest, puffed up by your superior knowledge, your conduct tempts them to
a course which will deaden that fine tact of conscience, by which alone,
when it has fastened on the higher truth, the emancipation can be
gained. Act on your higher knowledge as your rule of living. The fools
and the weaklings are not to be the lords of life and the masters of the
world. But if you see any attempt made to draw you into visible contact
with the idol, that those weaker than you, led by your example, may be
drawn into a contact which to them would be detrimental and degrading,
bend the higher law for the moment, or rather lift it higher still—lose
it in the lovelier law of charity, and practise a forbearance the motive
of which is a brother’s good. “_All things are lawful for me, but all
things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things
edify not. Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth.
Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for
conscience sake; for the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof.
If any of them that believe not bid you to a feast, and ye be disposed
to go; whatsoever is set before you, eat, asking no question for
conscience sake. 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:
conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the other: for why is my
liberty judged of another man’s conscience? For if I by grace be a
partaker, why am I evil spoken of for that for which I give thanks?
Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of
God._” (1 Cor. x. 23–31.)
Free use of all God’s good gifts with bold conscience is to be the law
of Christian living, the daily practice and habit of the life. Voluntary
abstinence, forbearance in the use of the freedom, is demanded of us by
a yet higher law, the law of Christian charity, the charity which has
Christ for its model and inspiration; but only when we find that it will
be helpful to a weak brother in our personal intercourse with and
influence over his soul. That Paul did not adopt this as his rule of
living seems quite indisputable. He could not have omitted to refer to
it and explain it in such a passage as 1 Tim. iv. 1–5, if his own rule
had been abstinence. “_Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the
latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing
spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having
their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and
commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received
with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every
creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received
with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer._”
At the same time we cannot question that he frequently acted on it when
brought into personal contact with brethren of weak faith and tender
conscience, whom he sought, by sympathy with their doubts and
difficulties, to educate to a more vigorous and healthy life. In order
to understand what we have every reason to believe was the habit of the
apostle’s life, the free and temperate use of all the good gifts of God,
we must consider—
III. That the adoption of a rule of abstinence, in permanent deference
to weak consciences, would simply transfer to the weak the regulation of
the order of human life and the progress of the world. The pace of
progress would thus be permanently adjusted to the strength of the
weakest, instead of being so regulated as to stimulate and help the
weaker to press on into the front line. The result would be a grievous
impoverishment of moral and mental power; and Christianity, instead of
being the power of God unto salvation, would be the instrument of
decline and a ministry of death. Surely it is a fundamental principle
that the framework of a man’s life, his daily habits, should be set in
the measure of his own personal stature and power. What suits his
character and life, and ministers to his development, he is to embody in
his habits, as the best service which he can render to God and to his
fellow-men. To be strong, wise, self-controlled, is the best beginning,
the only true beginning of real service to mankind. The best work which
a man can work at, for the service of his fellows, is his life. To
regulate permanent habits on the wants and the weaknesses of others is
to deny this principle, and to exalt the influence of spasmodic effort
above the broad, grand ministry of life. Paul was far from such
illusions. Freedom was with him the fundamental condition of vital
progress; and if his sympathy with the weak and perplexed led him again
and again to veil his freedom for the moment, it was that he might help
the weak to strength, the perplexed to clearness of vision, the bondsmen
to liberty—strength, clearness, and freedom of which he offered
conspicuous examples in his own constant habits of life. “Be ye as I
am,” was his appeal: free and strong; able to see the Lord’s mark on all
things and creatures, and not the idol’s. To live habitually as if he
saw the idol’s mark would have seemed to him a base act of treason, a
shameful forsaking of that liberty which he had in Christ, and which he
was resolved to hold for himself and his brethren even unto death.
To generalize and formalize into laws of action the impulses and
purposes which inspire the spirit in its personal contact with the will,
the consciences, and the affections of its fellows, is in most cases to
rob charity of its life and grace of its power. It is to substitute law
for grace in our personal relations and dealings with mankind. Had Paul
laid down the rule,—There are weak consciences, which cannot get rid of
the savour of the idol; they shall rule our conduct; I will never eat
meat offered to idols, and I ordain the same to the Church,—the
development of mankind by Christianity would have been killed at the
very root. Scruples would have become the consecrated thing instead of
liberty, and Christianity would have made manifest the weakness of man,
instead of the power of God, to the world. No! his supreme concern was
that they might master their weakness, break their bonds, and grow from
babes to men. If this abstaining from flesh while the world stood would
have helped them to that progress, he loved them well enough to do it
without a pang of regret. But he evidently was eager to see them rise
out of the lower region which is haunted and tormented by such scruples.
He ignored them as far as possible, though he dealt with them in tender
charity, when, as in chap. x. 28, they were forced on his sight.
Something very parallel to this difficulty of the meat offered to idols
was the question about the theatre which was a sore perplexity to pious
but intelligent spirits a few years ago. There was something, which had
in it essentially no element of evil. But it was closely connected with
a world and a worldly life which those nurtured in the Church or brought
under its influence were sedulously taught to shun. Many who felt
themselves strong abstained. They saw no harm, and would get no harm,
but rather a positive good. But they denied themselves, that others of
weaker faith might not be in the way of harm, and that no sin or ruin of
a brother might by any chance be laid at their door. Whether the rule of
abstinence was wise I am not called here to consider. It was complicated
by moral considerations—which too were not absent in the case which the
apostle treats of here—which make it less easy to pronounce judgment in
a word. But it must always be remembered that a rule or law of
abstinence in such cases on the part of the strong consecrates the
scruple, associates evil permanently with that which has no essential
evil in it, and multiplies thereby the stumbling-blocks of mankind.
The case of actual vice, like drinking to excess, seems to me to fall
under quite another category; though it is constantly regarded as
settled by the text, as though it had been written, “Wherefore, if drink
make my brother to offend I will drink no wine while the world standeth,
lest I make my brother to offend.” We have no call here to discuss and
pass judgment on a movement by which men of most unquestioned goodness,
and self-devotion to the best interests of others, think that they see a
means of largely helping the morally weak by removing a fatal temptation
from their path. We only say that it is a question well worthy of the
most careful consideration, how far in the long run and on a large scale
a permanent confession of weakness can be helpful to human development;
how far a habit of life confessedly built on the weakness of others can
offer a noble and inspiring example to those who it is hoped would
profit by it; and how far an unnatural condition can have in it the
elements of a true and vital reformation. But these considerations are
really beside the true scope of the text, though they are naturally
suggested by it. And in closing this discussion of a perplexed and
difficult subject I would say in brief:—(1) That isolated acts of
abstinence, which may have their special reason and justification, when
moulded into habits fall in the way of the withering denunciation which
the passage I have quoted from 1 Tim. iv. 1–4 expresses; (2) That the
moulding of our personal habits on the follies, weaknesses, or vices of
others, is a betrayal of trust, for that which we have chiefly in trust
is life—to live a life free, strong, and fearless, shining as a light,
not of rebuke or of caution, but of guidance to mankind; and (3) That
every concession to doubt and weakness to which Divine charity moves us
is futile and vicious, unless in the very act we are putting forth a
hand to lift a weak brother to a standing ground where he will be above
these fogs of fear and infirmity for ever.
Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
_In crown 8vo, 5s., cloth._