Reflections on 1 Corinthians 10:25–26
“Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.’” (1 Corinthians 10:25–26, NIV)
The church in Corinth had a real dilemma. Much of the meat sold in the city’s markets had first been offered to pagan gods. Was it safe for a Christian to eat? Paul’s answer was simple: buy it, eat it, and don’t worry about it. Everything on this earth was made by God and still belongs to Him.
Dr. Tim Jennings’s paraphrase, The Remedy, puts the reason plainly: physical matter cannot soil the conscience. So don’t waste your emotional energy and time worrying about things that have no ability to affect your heart, mind, or body. The demons cannot affect God’s creation. They are not gods; they cannot create or change created matter. Just like us, they cannot effect a single change to a hair on their own heads.
It Starts in the Mind
The demons must live and move in the laws of reality just as we do. Food offered to an idol is physically just as it was before it was offered. It is the value we place on the act of offering a sacrifice to demons that affects us.
The effect takes place in the mind first, and then how the mind is affected transfers into the body. We can affect our own physical bodies for good or ill by the way we choose to assimilate and process the events of our life. Our past history and the way we were taught to approach an event all play a part in how something will affect us emotionally, and then move into the physical part of our lives.
But we are also free to examine our beliefs, to understand the science, truth, and reality behind an event, and to reapply it to our heart and mind. This changes how things are able to affect us.
Far More Than Food
This applies to far more than food. Think of the death of a beloved pet. A constant companion for a decade or longer cannot vanish from your life without a feeling of loss, an empty space right next to your heart. Yet the reality is you will have the company of your beloved pet again.
The Lord who loves you, and who created that creature to fill your heart and life, will return him to you with all the love he had for you when he fell asleep. So the event, though sad, is not an eternal loss for someone trusting in the Lord. You now have a deposit waiting for you in heaven. Like the loved ones we say goodbye to in this life who fall asleep trusting Jesus, he will at last be reunited with us.
An event in this life only carries the emotions, for good or ill, that we personally give to it.
We Still Choose the Good
That doesn’t mean anything goes. The food we eat and the places we go still need to be healthy for us in reality. Praying over unhealthy food, or before going into a place of entertainment that is not good for the mind or heart, will not change the effect it has on your body. Unhealthy food is still unhealthy, and mind-numbing entertainment will not become enlightening and uplifting.
You have to choose the good for yourself, and know that the devil has no ability to touch the good you choose or how it blesses you. It is your mind and your choice how you take in reality and apply it in your own heart.
We Are Free
We can live knowing the devil has no power to taint the heart and mind that trusts in the Lord, regardless of what another misguided person might do or think. Even Job, who lost nearly everything at the devil’s hand, was not touched where it counted.
We are free to live walking in heaven, surrounded each day by the glories and protection of heaven. We are free to move through this world, never needing to ask questions or be concerned with what the devil or someone else has done before us.
We are free!
