1 Corinthians 8:12,13

“But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. 13. Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.”

Every violence done to a brother's conscience, even though he should not thereby be drawn into a deed of unfaithfulness, is a sin committed against Christ, whose work so painfully accomplished we compromise. Here again there is a marked force in every term: τύπτειν, strictly speaking, to strike; συνείδησις, conscience, the most sacred of things; ἀσθενοῦσα, weak, tottering with weakness, and consequently claiming the greatest regard; εἰς Χριστόν, against Christ, the highest of crimes.

Vv. 13. This thought of 1 Corinthians 8:12 tells so vividly on the apostle's heart, that it inspires him with a sort of vow whereby he is ready to devote his whole life. The διόπερ, wherefore, sums up all the grounds previously indicated, in particular that of 1 Corinthians 8:12: against Christ.

Instead of, a [kind of] meat, we ought logically to read, this [kind of] meat, or a [kind of] flesh. But the apostle generalizes the idea; though in the second part of the verse, by the use of the expression: flesh, he returns to the particular case. He employs the first person, because the sacrifice in question is one which a man may impose on himself, but which he has no right to impose on others. He would rather abstain from flesh all his life than by using it cause one of his brethren to fall even once.

Holsten well sums up the idea of the chapter thus: The strong sought the solution of the question from the standpoint of knowledge and its rights; the apostle finds it from the standpoint of love and its obligations.

The last words of this chapter evidently form the transition to the following passage, in which Paul continues to present to the Corinthians his own example, by reminding them of the great and constant voluntary sacrifice with which he accompanies the exercise of his apostleship. As Calvin observes to perfection (and such is the real transition from chap. 8 to chap. 9): “ Quia in futurum pollicendo non omnibus fecisset fidem, quid jam fecerit, allegat. ” To the contingent sacrifice of 1 Corinthians 8:13 he adds, as a still more convincing example, the sacrifice which he has already made, and which he renews daily, his renunciation of all recompense from the Churches founded by him.