I Corinthians 8:1-3

Knowledge by itself is neutral. It does not automatically make a person conceited or arrogant, as it were. It depends on what one does with it. If love is associated with knowledge, it will build up and unify. You see, love takes a person one step beyond knowledge.

What we have to be careful about is whether our knowledge, our understanding, was garnered in this world or whether it has been garnered since God called us. Whether it is being used in the right way. Chapter 8 begins a very long explanation that does not end until the end of chapter 13, and basically what he is showing here is the priority of love over our liberty to do something we feel we have the right to do out of obedience to God.

Now he is not saying that knowledge automatically puffs one up. He is saying though that there are those who are subject to conceit because they feel that they have a superior position due to their intellectual insight. But Paul is saying that there is a limitation. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," he says.

What is it that Paul is getting at here? What does sin and leaven have to do with being puffed up? Well, its product is pride. Sin's product is pride or we might say pride's product might be sin. It can be turned in either direction. But what pride does, is that it makes one feel and act independent of God.

You see, it puffs him up and puts him on the same level, he thinks, as God, and free to choose to set his own rules, his own standards of what is right and good. This is what Adam and Eve did. We find an example of that here in I Corinthians 8—13; that their pride made them feel that they had the right to impose their idea, their belief, their right on other brothers who did not know or who were ignorant of it, and in the process they offended their brother. But sin, leaven, puffs up.

I Corinthians 8:1-3

Let us go back to the New Testament again, this time in I Corinthians as we continue to advance through the fruits that come from pride. In I Corinthians 8 we have instructions to a church that was proud to say the least. They were proud of their gifts. The fruit of it was that the congregation was dividing up, this group against that group. Apparently it had divided up - I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas, I am of Christ - at least four or five different ways, maybe more. Those are the only ones that he mentions. But pride was having its evil work in the congregation.

Pride makes those who have it bold and rash. It makes them, or renders them, careless of the feelings of others. It leads them to openly ridicule and condemn others, others who do not believe exactly as they do. Again you are seeing that it is an aggressive self-confidence. There is an old saying: "When people learn a little, they imagine a lot." It is the tag end of this saying that we remember most frequently. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

Now I will read them together. "When people learn a little, they imagine a lot. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." That is the whole quote. Thus proud people are often hair-splitting, hypercritical, setting people one against the other, dividing congregations and families. Paul is asking, "Is this love?" No, it is not. And so what Paul is doing here is warning against dependence on simply knowing something since a person never knows all that he ought to know about a given subject. Such an attitude then exhibits a complete dependence on one's own self-sufficient knowledge. The person is puffed up.

I Corinthians 8:1-13

Now clearly in Corinth and more specifically in the church there, there were people that were both strong in the faith and weak in the faith. For some, eating meat, whether it was offered to an idol or not, was really no big deal. That filet mignon was still a filet mignon regardless of what ceremony it went through or who prayed over it, because at the end of the day, it was just meat. To others who took a stance that they did not want to have anything to do with idols, even though idols, as Paul explains here, are nothing in the world, they believe that partaking of that filet was sin. Paul, because of his love for his brethren said, if eating meat offends or causes someone to stumble, I will not do it. Paul shows that he did not want to offend any one of his brethren.

I Corinthians 8:1-3

Perhaps these seemingly innocuous words are really the central issue in this whole book (or even books), because this was the sin that led Satan into his separation from God's government. He got puffed up about himself. These people were puffed up about how much they knew.

I Corinthians 8:1-3

That is far more important! So what is God saying here? God says that knowledge by itself will not cut it. Knowledge must be joined with love! Love is an action. It is outgoing concern—toward God, and also toward our fellow man.