1 Corinthians 10:23-25 -Not all things build up

10:23,24

There is an unfortunate section break here in most Bibles, for this is all part of Paul dealing with the same issue, namely the food and idols one, though he weaves in all sorts of other theological matters along the way. “All things are lawful”. Paul has just been saying that people who worship idols are actually worshipping demons, so idol worship itself is not something that an be simply dismissed as irrelevant. The “I can do anything” merchant may not chip in with some indignation “all things are lawful”. Such a person is missing the point. A key question about anything we do is “does it build up?” Does it build ourselves up? And, most importantly, does it build others up? So the prime motivation in our lives is not how do we benefit, but how do others benefit or suffer as a result of our actions.

10:25

This brings things directly back to the question raised sometime ago about eating food offered to idols. So one can indeed eat any food offered in the market without raising matters of conscience. So the “idols are nothings so it is fine to eat the food” people are indeed right, up to a point, but they are not looking at the whole issue. Before we go on to the wider issues, let’s look a little at this verse. In our desire to please God we can get obsessive in looking each and every thing to see if it is in anyway “demonic” or “unclean”, ie is there any speck of impurity. We should not do this. There is a verse in Ecclesiastes that says “do not try and be over righteous”. You can find something impure about anything, and you can certainly find something impure about our motives in almost anything we do. We should avoid doing this, it will not do us any good, and may lead to some form of legalism. Now where there is a clear command against something we obviously should not do it, and if the Holy Spirit is putting His finger on something in our lives we should respond to it, but we should not become spiritual neurotics.