I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

9Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Corinthians 9-11.

    What Paul writes in chapter nine can be a bit confusing. I believe that he is responding to people in Corinth who accused him of trying to take financial advantage of the Corinthian believers. His answer to that is twofold. First, he emphasizes that, as one who had preached the Gospel to them, he had the right to their financial support. The other part of his rebuttal of that accusation was to point out that he had never exercised that right. The case Paul makes here leads me to an important conclusion, also two part. Those who minister to their fellow believers and provide leadership for the Church are entitled to be paid. We should be prepared to provide for the financial needs of our pastors. However, some people are called by God to refuse that financial support. This latter can only be something that someone comes to on their own by the leading of the Holy Spirit.

    In chapter ten Paul goes into more in Depth on the issue of eating meat offered to idols. However, actively taking part in worship rituals to idols is idolatry. if for no other reason than it will cause some to believe that we worship those idols. Actively taking part in the worship rituals of pagans will encourage them in their false beliefs. It will bind them more deeply into their servitude to demons. Going on from there Paul lays out the guidelines we should follow, guidelines which can be easily applied in other areas. The most important point Paul makes is that since idols are of no real significance there is no harm if we eat meat that we were unaware had been offered to an idol. Therefore, we should make no effort to find out if the meat we are purchasing in the market had been offered to idols. This “willful ignorance” extends to the food served to us by a pagan who has invited us to dinner. Don’t ask, just eat what is offered. However, if someone makes the effort to inform us, either our host, another pagan, or a fellow believer, that the food put before us was offered to an idol, we should decline to eat it. This is not because our knowing it was offered to idols would change our relationship to the meat, the idol, or even to God. Rather, it is because, if we eat the food after being informed, we will encourage whoever informed us in worshiping idols.