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Take Care with Your Liberty

¹ Now about ^(C1)food sacrificed to idols, we know that we all have ^(C2)knowledge concerning this. Knowledge alone ^(C3)makes people self-righteously arrogant, but love that unselfishly seeks the best for others ^(C4)builds up and encourages others to grow in wisdom.^2 (C1)If anyone imagines that he knows and understands anything of divine matters, without love, he has not yet ^(C2)known as he ought to know.³ But if anyone loves God with awe-filled reverence, obedience and gratitude, he ^(C1)is known by Him as His very own and is greatly loved.

⁴ In this matter, then, of eating ^(C1)food offered to idols, we know that ^(C2)an idol is nothing in the world it has no real existence, and that ^(C3)there is no God but one. ^(VR1)5 For even if ^(C1)there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords,⁶ yet for us ^(C1)there is but one God, ^(C2)the Father, ^(F1)(C3)who is the source of all things, and we exist for Him; and ^(C4)one Lord, Jesus Christ, ^(C5)by whom are all things that have been created, and we believers exist and have life and have been redeemed through Him. ^(VR1)

⁷ However, not all believers ^(C1)have this knowledge. But ^(C2)some, being accustomed throughout their lives to thinking of the idol until now as real and living, still eat food ^(F1)as if it were sacrificed to an idol; and because their conscience is weak, it is defiled (guilty, ashamed).⁸ Now ^(C1)food will not commend us to God nor bring us close to Him; we are no worse off if we do not eat, nor are we better if we do eat.⁹ Only ^(C1)be careful that this liberty of yours this power to choose does not somehow become a stumbling block that is, a temptation to sin to the ^(C2)weak in conscience.¹⁰ For if someone sees you, a person having ^(F1)(C1)knowledge, ^(F2)eating in an idol's temple, then if he is weak, will he not be encouraged to eat ^(C2)things sacrificed to idols and violate his own convictions?¹¹ For through ^(C1)your knowledge (spiritual maturity) this weak man ^(C2)is ruined that is, he suffers in his spiritual life, the brother for whom Christ died.^12 (C1)And when you sin against the brothers and sisters in this way and wound their weak conscience by confusing them, you sin ^(C2)against Christ.¹³ Therefore, ^(C1)if my eating a certain food causes my brother to stumble (sin), I will not eat such meat ever again, so that I will not cause my brother to stumble.