1 ቆሮንቶስ 8

Food offered to idols

¹Now about food offered to idols. We know, as you say, that “all of us have knowledge.”^a Knowledge puffs a person up, but love builds others up. ²If anyone imagines they have mastered some piece of knowledge, they have not yet come to know in the way one must. ³But if someone loves God, that person is known by him.^b

One God, one Lord

⁴So, to come back to eating food offered to idols: we know that “no idol in the world is anything real,” and that “there is no God except one.”^{c 5}There may indeed be beings called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, and in that sense there are many gods and many lords. ⁶Yet for us there is one God, the Father. Everything has its source in him, and our life is directed to him. And there is one Lord, Jesus Christ. Everything exists through him, and through him we exist.^d

Do not make the weak fall

⁷But not all have this knowledge. Some, from long habit with the idol up to the present, still eat the food as something offered to an idol; and their conscience, which is weak, is soiled.^{e 8}Food will not decide how we stand before God: we gain nothing by eating, and we lose nothing by not eating. ⁹But be careful that this right you have does not trip up those who are weak. ¹⁰For suppose someone who is weak sees you, the one with knowledge, reclining at a meal in an idol’s temple. Will that not “build up” their conscience, so that they go on to eat food offered to idols? ¹¹And so, through your knowledge, the one who is weak is ruined: a brother or sister for whom Christ died.^{f 12}When you sin like this against your brothers and sisters and deal a blow to their weak conscience, you are sinning against Christ. ¹³That is why, if food causes my brother or sister to fall, I will not eat meat as long as I live, so that I will not be what makes my brother or sister fall.