Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
Knowledge Puffs Up, Love Builds Up
1 Corinthians 8:1-3
1 Now concerning things sacrificed to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. · WEB
The Corinthians answer a question about idol food by citing what they know; Paul answers by asking what their knowledge is doing to people.
Now concerning things sacrificed to idols: We know that we all have knowledge 1 Corinthians 8:1.
The fifth now concerning, and the question behind it is the most practical in the letter. Meat from temple sacrifices supplied Corinth's markets and its dining rooms, so a guild dinner, a family celebration or a patron's invitation all raised it. We know that we all have knowledge is the Corinthian position quoted back — and their case was theologically correct, as Paul concedes three verses later 1 Corinthians 8:4.
Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.
Then six words that reframe the entire question, and they turn on two metaphors. Puffs up is the letter's word for inflation without substance 1 Corinthians 4:6 1 Corinthians 4:18; builds up is construction, and it belongs to the building the congregation is 1 Corinthians 3:9. So knowledge and love are not opposed as truth against sentiment. They are compared by their effect: one enlarges the person who holds it, the other enlarges the community. A church can be right and still be doing damage, which is the argument of the whole chapter.
And the pairing is deliberate in a letter this concerned with knowing. Ten times Paul asks don't you know 1 Corinthians 6:9 1 Corinthians 6:19, and here he shows that knowledge is not self-justifying — a point pressed again where the most spectacular gifts without love amount to nothing 1 Corinthians 13:2.
But if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he doesn't yet know as he ought to know 1 Corinthians 8:2.
A sentence designed to be uncomfortable. The condition is not ignorance but confidence — thinks that he knows — and the verdict falls on the manner rather than the content: not as he ought to know. There is a way of holding a true thing that is itself a failure of knowledge, and the chapter will identify it as knowing without reference to a brother 1 Corinthians 8:11.
But anyone who loves God is known by him 1 Corinthians 8:3.
The turn is unexpected and it resolves the paragraph. Where a reader expects loves God knows him, Paul writes is known by him — the grammar goes passive, and the knowing that finally matters is God's of us rather than ours of anything Galatians 4:9 John 10:14 Psalms 139:1. A congregation competing over how much it understood is told that its security lies in being known, which is a gift and not an accomplishment. Everything the chapter goes on to ask about the weaker brother follows from that: people who have been known and loved on those terms have no standing to treat each other as obstacles to their own liberty.
settled What this mark means