“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
The Basket Case Chronicles #89
“But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend” (1 Cor. 8:12-13)”
So the issue is relationships within the body, and not the liberty of a man with a robust conscience to eat meat from a pagan temple. In short, a man who knows that there is nothing wrong with the meat, because Christ is Lord of all, and who then exercises that liberty in a way that wounds a brother with a weak conscience, he finds that Christ identifies with the weak brother and not with the strong. Given how Christ died for us while we were still sinners, this should not be surprising. In the dispute between two brothers in the body, Christ sides with the one who is wrong. This is because there is a deeper right than being right.
Paul says that our brother should be more important than our right to eat meat. If that is the choice, as it frequently is, then we should rather become vegetarians than to stumble a brother such that he lapses back into pagan idolatry. This is a very specific caution—Paul is not saying that we must live in such a way as to make absolutely everybody happy. He is saying that we are not to lure someone who is weak into an exercise of liberty that requires strength to handle. Compared to my brother’s personal salvation, my personal convenience is nothing.
At the same time, we have to remember and recognize that Paul rebukes believers for submitting to petty legalisms. “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink . . .” (Col. 2:16). When someone sets himself up as your personal liberty sheriff, and tells you that you must not ever drink alcohol because there are former drunks in the world, your reply must be that this is a dictum that was mysteriously overlooked at Cana.