1 Corinthians 8:1-13 Now as touching things offered to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but charity edifies.… These beautiful words are introduced into a discussion which has long ceased to have any practical interest. In pagan Corinth the banquet and the sacrifice were part of the same proceeding. The animal was slain and offered to the gods. Then the priest claimed his part, and the rest was taken home and used in providing a feast. To these feasts the pagans invited their friends, and some of these friends might be Christians. The question was, Could they conscientiously go? Some, the most simple, honest, earnest souls, said, No. It was recognising idolatry, it was disloyalty to Christ; or, to say the best of it that could be said, it was going into evil associations and temptation. Others who prided themselves on their superior knowledge laughed at these scruples. We know, they said, that there are no gods except One. The offering of the sacrifice to them is an empty farce. The meat has not been polluted at all. We have discernment enough to share in the feast without recognising the occasion of it. We can rejoice with these pagans, and at the same time smile at their superstitions. It is only weak, ignorant natures that will hold aloof from these harmless enjoyments through the fear of being drawn into sin. The pride of knowledge and its accompanying disdain and want of consideration towards their less-instructed brethren were their distinguishing features. Knowledge puffeth up, charity edifieth. Knowledge passeth away, charity abides for ever. Knowledge sees through coloured glass darkly, love sees face to face. Knowledge may be greatest in devils, love makes angels and saints. Knowledge is temporal and earthly, ever changing with the fashions of earth; love is God-like, heavenly, immortal, enduring like the mercy of the Lord for ever. Now, if any other of the apostles had written in this way about knowledge, men would have been found ready to quote against him the old fable of AEsop about the grapes. Untutored peasants and fishermen lifting up their voices in disparagement of knowledge would have furnished the intellectual scorner with a convenient sarcasm. Ah, yes, these men were ignorant! Knowledge was beyond their reach, and therefore they depreciated it. Singularly enough, however, it is St. Paul, the one learned man in the apostolic band, who talks in this way. Never once did those unlearned fishermen, Peter, James, and John, write slightingly of knowledge. That was left to Paul, the scholarly man. Had not his own learning made him a hard, haughty, cruel Pharisee, shutting out the vision of God, hiding from him the beauty of Jesus Christ, filling him with violent prejudice and hatred against all men save those of his own class? With all his knowledge, he had been blind to whatsoever things were lovely, and just, and reverent, and Divine. He had reason, indeed, to write, Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. Knowledge puffeth up. Yes, from the raw schoolgirl to the man of greatest literary attainments, this is the effect of knowledge when it is found without the warm and generous and tender emotions of the heart. There is the young man with his smattering of literary attainments, with little more than an outward daub of culture. He has little reason to be proud; not a bit of that knowledge of which he makes his boast has been his own discovering. It has been drilled into him by patient, painstaking teachers. There is no more reason to be proud of knowledge received from another person than there is for a beggar to be proud of receiving alms. How wise he thinks himself in dealing with religious things, in measuring the preacher, in criticising the Bible, in disposing of questions of faith, in setting down the old-fashioned people who in their simple ignorance have been content to believe all that has been taught them! You see it in literary circles, and in the utterances of the scientist. How conspicuous by its absence is the grace of humility! Because they know something more about letters, and words, and cells, and germs, and rocks, and chemical elements than other people, they write and talk as if their judgments on all subjects were to be received ex cathedra as authoritative and unquestionable. Their word on all the great subjects of morality, faith, inspiration, the Bible, God, is to be deemed final and conclusive. They write as if all men were fools who dare to dispute their conclusions. Yet there is more genius, insight, and real vision in one of David's psalms than there is in all the books they have written. An artist or a poet who has none of their knowledge will see more of beauty and glory and reality in a moment than they would see in a thousand years. We are always boasting that knowledge is power, that knowledge has enriched the world, that knowledge has done wonderful things for humanity. It is the idlest of delusions. Knowledge by itself has done very little. Even the greatest material inventions have come through men who had rather the swift insight of genius than the lore of the schools. They were not knowing men who gave us the railway, the steam-engine, the telegraph. Still less were they knowing men who enriched the world with the sweetest poems, with the noblest pictures, with the most charming stories. Titian, and Raphael, and Shakespeare, and Bunyan, and Burns, and Thomas a Kempis, not to speak of Homer, and David, and Isaiah, and the evangelists, and the fishermen, Peter and John — from these men, who had less knowledge on most things than any undergraduate of the present day, we have inherited the wisdom and the immortal thoughts and words which are beyond all wealth. They were men with great hearts, seeing things with the keen, clear eyes of love, rather than men whose heads had gathered a large stock of culture. Heart rather than head has given to humanity its noble inheritance; love rather than knowledge. Think of the martyrs, the reformers, the defenders of liberty, the philanthropists, the missionaries. And who are doing the best work in the world now? — its purifying, saving, uplifting work? Not the men who call themselves the cultured class. No; knowledge for the most part sits in judgment on the work of others, criticises, and sneers; while love goes on its way, its loins girded for service with quenchless faith in God, and hope which nothing can discourage. It is love, not knowledge, that carries light and sweetness and health into the dark, foul places of city life; it is love, not knowledge, that generates all the power of sweet activities. In the highest kind of knowledge what the world calls knowledge breaks down utterly. What can mere intellect know about God ? His greatness infinitely transcends the grasp of the most cultured mind. Before His wisdom the profoundest reaches of the human intellect are folly. Yes, it is to the pure, gentle, tender heart that God tells His secrets. You can hardly prove the simple fact of God's existence, still less the supremely good, loving, and tender character of God, except to those whose hearts by their very likeness to Him beget their own witness of Him. His own love helps him to grasp the love Divine. So with immortality. All the knowledge of Butler and Plato could not prove it. Men who are only wise in the things of nature never find it there. But when the heart of man has found by experience the measureless power of its own love, found out what a human soul is capable of in long-suffering, patience, self-forgetfulness — how great, how even infinite the soul is in the power of loving — then the proof comes. God could not have made the soul thus and not made it immortal. And the loving heart, too, understands the mystery of sorrow and pain as the head does not and never can. The heart which loves God, and feels His love, knows that beyond all the sorrows and the darkness there is brightness and joy. So give me love and not know. ledge, for knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. (J. G. Greenhough, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. |
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