The Glory of God: When Everything is About One Thing
Anything we we value
Anything we delight in
Anything we think about
Anything we long for more than God is an idol.
It is easy not to notice our own idols.
Common things often express our connection to the divine.
The same principle held true in Jewish worship: “Consider the people of Israel: do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar?” (v 18). To eat sacrificial food in a context of worship was to participate in the sacrifice—the act of worship—itself. If that is true in Christian worship (at the Lord’s table), and if it was true in Jewish worship (at the temple altar), then it is true in pagan worship as well. The participants might think they’re just having a meal, but they’re actually worshipping an idol.
This takes us on to Paul’s second response, which relates to the true character of idols. At a purely factual level, idols do not exist. Paul has already conceded this point (8:4) and does so again here: “Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? No” (10:19–20). But demons exist. Principalities and powers exist. And when idols are worshipped by people who believe they are real and who serve them, demons exercise power over the worshipper. (We could say similar things about the belief in poltergeists or the ghosts of dead people today: they are not real, but they can exercise demonic power over people who believe they are.) So in one sense pagan sacrifices are offered to nobody at all, but in another sense they are offered to the darkest and most dangerous beings of all (v 20). Paul wants the Corinthians to have nothing to do with them.
Mixing worship is exceedingly dangerous.
In Paul’s world, as in ours, there were all sorts of people banning all sorts of foods for all sorts of reasons. Paul will have none of it, and regularly takes the opportunity to give asceticism a punch on the nose
