1Cor 8:4-6 - The Everlasting Arms

4-6 Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that "an idol has no real existence," and that "there is no God but one." 5 For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many "gods" and many "lords" - 6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.


So, first Paul lays out the facts as they are. Idols are nothing in and of themselves. In other places we can learn that the true powers behind the making of idols are actually demons - but the idols themselves are blocks of stone or lumps of wood. An enlightened Christian knows this. To some it might seem patently obvious. Especially to some who have never actually seriously worshiped idols, the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit on the matter will seem as if God is agreeing with them when, in fact, they are agreeing with God.

Idols represented a concept of God to those who took them seriously. They were wrong, and they would have perished despite their sincerity, had they not been delivered from darkness by the power of God, through faith in Jesus Christ. But they were nevertheless sincere and therefore had a deeply rooted experiential history with these things. Having been delivered, they knew that they had been wrong.

But not all were idol worshipers. Some had been, perhaps, cynics or Epicureans or simply humanists or agnostics. Some may have been genuine idol worshipers who were, for some reason known only to God, completely delivered from them, instantly upon conversion, into a liberty that others can only seek to have. God knows and He is in charge of each separate life. And each Christian must work out his own salvation with fear and trembling.

No Christian, whether weak or so-called "strong" would deny the Oneness, the Supremacy, the reality and uniqueness of the True God. "I am God and there is none beside Me!" is what He speaks to our heart, and we know it to be true. But what we know and Who we know in any given circumstance are quite different. We can possess the facts and we can believe the facts after a fashion, but we are still fallen human beings with histories of experience, along with residual tendencies to sin and unbelief.

God has set us all (all believers) free with exactly the same freedom but we have not all grasped that freedom to the same degree. And the coming to it, or moving towards it, are the means of growth unto maturity, and the fostering an intimate dependency upon God. So the "strong" and the "weak" are utterly equal in God’s economy. All that matters is that they are in Christ. And the strong help the weak, even as the weak teach the strong about weakness. For weakness itself is a blessing simply because it keeps us close to God. It can be our own personal version of Paul’s thorn.

Anyone who fails to linger and meditate often on the truths expressed in verse 6, robs himself of understanding. So often we "assume" the word "God" without reflecting upon Who that word represents and what He is like. It is natural to us to think that He is altogether as we are - to take isolated expressions like "made in God’s image" - and to foist off on them some purely human-centred understanding of what they mean. As C. S. Lewis might express it, despite our yearnings and our attempts to be pious, God is still in the dock as far as some of the deep thoughts and reservations of our hearts are concerned. The pride of human nature puts Him on trial instead of agreeing that it actually is the other way round. He is the judge of all the earth, despite our pitiful self-delusion, and our attempts to usurp that fact.

So here, Paul takes a moment to reflect upon reality and to ponder and to acknowledge the fact that "God" means God. There is only one. He is the maker and sustainer of everything, including us, and we exist only for His purposes. We do not exist for our own purposes, or to please ourselves. Yet this is how the natural man lives out his entire life; and it is how we would live out our lives from the very next moment in time unless the grace of God was at work in us for Jesus sake, through our regenerate nature, by the Spirit - keeping us to the end in answer to the prayer of Jesus to the Father in John 17.

And Paul echoes the Apostle John here, affirming the deity of the Son by acknowledging His creative power. The very same Son Who took on human flesh in Jesus Christ, is the One through whom the universe and all that is in it, including us, came to be and continue to be. Mere knowledge - plain facts - just cannot do justice to this truth. We must start with knowledge, and the Christian faith is firmly rooted in historical fact, but the fallen human mind cannot grasp these facts unaided. The word "cannot" is not accidental - it is scriptural. But the inability is moral one, not something purely logical. Men cannot understand because they are corrupt, fallen and dead (to spiritual truth) in trespasses and sins - for which they are responsible because all men willingly embrace their sin.

All this sovereign exclusivity Paul implies in order to agree with the enlightened brethren and to put the true facts into the mix. But he will go on from here to explain that facts alone aren’t the whole story.