Think of a time you had to give up something you were genuinely free to enjoy because of someone else's situation. What was it, and what made the choice difficult?
Observe
1. Read 1 Corinthians 8:1-13 aloud. What does Paul say the strong believers in Corinth know to be true (verses 1, 4-6)?
2. In verses 7-12, how does Paul describe the believer he calls "weak"? What forms their conscience, what happens when their conscience is triggered?
3. Paul names two things in verse 1: knowledge and love. How do these two relate? What happens if you have one without the other?
Interpret
4. Verse 6 packs a whole lot of doctrine about God into a single sentence. How does this verse describe how Jesus relates to the Father? What does this confession mean for how a Christian thinks about the physical world, including food?
5. The conscience of the weak believer in verse 7 fires against eating the meat. But Paul has just said in verse 4 that an idol is nothing. So the weak believer's conscience is firing against something that is not actually wrong in itself. What does that tell you about how conscience works? Can a conscience be both genuinely binding on the person who carries it and also misinformed? How?
6. In verse 11 Paul says the weak brother can be *destroyed* by the strong's eating, and in verse 12 he calls this a sin against Christ. Why does Paul reach for such severe language here? What does it tell us about how Christ relates to the weakest believer in the room?
Apply
7. Where in your own life are you the strong believer in this chapter? Be specific. What is your "restaurant"?
8. Paul's solution in this chapter is the strong restraining their freedom in love. But the wider New Testament also calls the church to form the weak conscience toward maturity (Colossians 1:28; Romans 15:14). How can that actually happen in the church?
9. Verse 13: Paul lands the chapter on a personal commitment. What freedom might you need to set down because of someone specific in the church?
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