Love Versus Knowledge

1 Cor. 8:1-6

Paul is talking about food sacrificed to idols. Nothing we have to worry about right? But hold on a sec. In the Liberal media someone has published an interesting little article: “51 Things Evangelicals Have To Give Up To Be Compliant Biblically,” by Deborah on June 5, 2013. It’s poking fun at Christians for trying to live according to the Bible.1

It begins this way. “If you’re a follower of former evangelical pastor and conservative activist David Barton, you can kiss any fun in your life good-bye. Heck, you can kiss most things that support your lifestyle good-bye. On May 19th, Barton gave a sermon at Whitesburg Baptist Church in Huntsville, Alabama in which he fingered Starbucks as a corporation that supports marriage equality. He said:

“Starbucks is pouring all this money into destroying traditional marriage. The question is, can a Christian give money to a group he knows will use it to attack what God supports. If you know that, when you buy a cup of Starbucks, 5, 10, 15 cents is going to be used to defeat marriage, can you do that? The answer is no. Biblically, there’s no way a Christian can help support what is attacking God. I’m sorry, you’ve got to find some other coffee to drink. You can’t drink Starbucks and be Biblically correct on this thing. It’s just a real simple principle.”

End of quote. Now this is me. I don’t know who Dave Barton is, but his real simple principle may be based on this passage in 1 Cor. 8. His argument might be summarized as, “What you know ought to have a direct impact on how you behave.” The author of the liberal media article did a little research in to what other companies are supporting unbiblical ethics and came up with the following:

“So Starbucks is off the list, evangelicals. But following Barton’s reasoning, what other things are you going to have to give up? There’s been a lot of publicity given to companies that support marriage equality and [oppose traditional biblical marriage], so let’s take a look at what you can no longer have as part of your life and still be right with God. These corporations, also, support equality.”

She delivered the list with some tongue in cheek commentary, but I am going to shorten the article by giving just the list of companies in our world today that apparently Pastor Dave Barton needs to know about.  Obviously, Starbucks. Then there’s Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Absolut Vodka,  Apple, the computer company that makes iPad and iPhone, etc., Google, Microsoft, Facebook, T-Mobile, Verizon, American Apparel, Nordstrom’s, Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, Sears, Target, J.C. Penney’s, American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Marriott Hotels, Kraft Foods, Oreo, Ben and Jerry’s, McDonald’s, Applebees, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, General Mills, Proctor & Gamble, Disney, Lucas Films, Marvel, The Muppets, Pixar, ESPN, Cablevision, ABC, YouTube, Amazon, eBay, Costco, Home Depot, Barnes And Noble, Nike, Walgreens.

Can you see that today we live in a world very much like that of the Corinthians? In Corinth, most of the meat available had been sacrificed to idols. They were worried about supporting those pagan temples. In America, most of the products we consume are tainted by support of unbiblical ethics. If you really try to boycott all of those companies for their involvement with the morally controversial what are you left with? It is possible. The Amish seem to do ok.

It seems we actually have a very similar quandary to the one that faced the Corinthians. So we should be very interested in how Paul the Apostle deals with this problem. Paul starts addressing this important matter by stating the spiritual principle. As we have seen several times already in this series, Paul goes right to the spiritual heart of the matter. We know that “We all possess knowledge.” But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God is known by God.”

What is that all about? “We all possess knowledge” is put in quotes in our Bibles to show that it was something the Corinthians were proud of. They loved the new insights about life that were coming to them through their faith in the gospel. That’s fine, but then Paul issues a caution, “Knowledge puffs up.”  This must be where we get the idea of swelled heads for people who think too much of themselves. The more knowledge, the more pride. But love builds up. What is the difference between puffing up and building up?  For puffs, think soap bubbles, flimsy, momentary, useless. For builds up, think brick and mortar, buildings, sturdy, substantial, useful. Think living stones.

Knowledge is not totally useless, but compared to love, knowledge is almost useless. In fact later on in 1 Cor, 13:2 Paul says, “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge…but do not have love, I am nothing.”  No matter how much knowledge I may have, if I do not have love, I am a puffed up, useless bubble head. Also in 1 Cor. 13:8 Paul says ordinary knowledge will pass away. In verse 12 he claims we can only know in part anyway. We should try to be as knowledgeable as possible, but love is far superior to knowledge and here is why. We can’t know everything like God does. But we can love everyone like God does.

Paul says, “Those who think they know something do not know as they ought to know.” That may sound a bit paradoxical. And yet, it is not really so hard to understand. We have a term for someone who exhibits this unfortunate characteristic. We call him a “know-it-all”. What is the crucial thing that a know-it-all usually does not know? Who gets a called a know-it-all? Arrogant people who have to always be right. Nosy people who always talk confidently about what others ought to do with their lives. It seems that what the know-it-all really doesn’t know is how to love people.

In my study of the history of this congregation I have learned that there have been several instances of conflict over the years, and some during my short tenure, in which the solution to the problem was people leaving each other, rather than loving each other. Please recall that at the beginning of this letter we call 1 Corinthians Paul was dealing with factions and divisions in the church. It now seems clear from reading the latest section that the divisions often had to do with bodies of knowledge, or who knows best. People saying things like, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Cephas” must have come about because of what the Corinthians thought each one was saying about how to live. Certainly the letter Paul wrote was motivated by many of the Corinthians wanting to know the right answers to questions they had.  They wanted to know what they ought to know.

But please notice Paul’s very careful use of language. He didn’t say, “Those who think they know something do not know what they ought to know.” He said, “Those who think they know something do not know as they ought to know.” In other words, there must be a way of knowing that the Corinthians were missing. But Paul doesn’t leave us in the dark about that. He immediately speaks of love. Love builds up. Love is the right way to know things, and to know people. Again, we can’t know everything like God. But we can love like God. When a church breaks up or loses members, it is not for lack of knowledge. It is for lack of love.

And yet love and knowledge are very intimately tied together in the Bible and in Hebrew thinking. Perhaps you recall the King James way of saying, “Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived and bare him a son.” That’s not just a clever euphemism developed by the 17th century translators of the Bible. The Hebrew word for knowing is about dedicating ourselves to a person so we can engage them with our love and affection. The same exact word used for Adam knew Eve is used to say that the righteous know wisdom. You could equally translate that this way, “The righteous love wisdom.”

Knowledge is an object, something to be possessed and acted on. But love is the attitude we take towards knowledge and toward people. In Paul’s day people were worried about knowing where the meat came from. In our day it is similar. What happens if we know what the business is doing with our money? 

Paul says, “So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.” For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth…yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.”

Paul’s teaching boils down to, “Don’t worry about that. What really counts is how are you treating the people around you? Are you making people feel bad about how they spend their money or how they live their lives? Or are you being considerate and loving toward one another, careful to maintain good relationships as you work together to figure out how God really wants us to live?” There is a pretty popular slogan going around today that rings true and is a neat summary to this message. “People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

In fact the core of the message of the gospel is to discover that God who knows us very well, into the very depths of our hearts, and sees very clearly all our sins, flaws and weaknesses is the same God who loves us very much anyway, enough to take care of every detail of our need and offer his own son Jesus, who died on the cross to show us all that He loves us all very, very much.  That’s the most important thing God wants us to know about him.

Yes, sin must be dealt with. Lives that come into fellowship with God must change, will change as God does His work in our lives. But our message to the world is not to tell them how to change and then welcome them if they change. Not at all. We are called to love people as God loves people. We want to get to know them and accept them as they are, for none of us is without sin. Truly salvation is not about what you know, but about who you know. If you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, you are saved! Then in that relationship, loving God because he loves us first, we grow in grace and knowledge and learn how to love others as Christ loves us.

So once again, the most important thing is not what you know, but who you know. And that doesn’t just mean do you know and love God. It also means do you know and love your neighbor. It could just as well be said, “It’s not what you know, but how you know” You might know about God. That’s one way to know Him. But the way he wants us to know Him is in loving Him with all our hearts. Similarly again, you may think you know things about your neighbors that cause you to like them or not. But what God wants from us is to know and love our neighbors with the same grace, mercy and love with which God love us.

Then discipleship, the process of growing in grace can be described this way. “It’s not about what you know. It’s about how you share what you know.” Do you beat people over the head with your Bible knowledge? Probably not. In our day we have become too timid to do that. So we are more likely to be afraid to say anything about God because we are afraid they will think we are beating them over the head with our Bible knowledge. The cure for that is love, and how you love.

And this is how God loves us. “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” The one and only son of God is Jesus Christ, who though he is God, loved us humans enough to put in flesh and live and breathe in the flesh to reveal the love and character of God to all the world. He also was rejected in his day, and crucified, put to death on a Roman cross, and yet that was all part of God’s plan. Jesus took the punishment for all our sins and offered forgiveness to all who would put their faith in Him that what he has done on the cross was really done for us, so that we might live a new and eternal life in Him. In that faith we are filled with a new and living hope and we receive the Holy Spirit, who is God come to live inside of our bodies to keep us close to Him and help us love others as he loves, knowing people theway we need to know people.

Let us pray.

1 http://www.liberalamerica.org/2013/06/05/51-things-evangelicals-have-to-give-up-because-of-marriage-equality/