“Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.” (1 Corinthians 8:12-13)
Paul focused on an issue that perhaps we think has no relevance to us in our modern world: meat sacrificed to idols. Apparently it was a very big issue in the 1st century church at Corinth, though it seems to have concerned the selfish unconcern of some toward their weaker brethren. Some of the believers there boasted in their individual freedom as the highest form of godliness. Yet they were selfish because they did what pleased then without giving thought to how what they did affected anyone else. They ate meat sacrificed to idols at fellowship meals in pagan temples. They figured they could eat such meat because idols had no real existence. Though Paul agreed that idols were not real, these supposedly stronger Christians misled the weaker ones. They gave them the idea that this behavior showed that they were truly “in the spirit”. It may have been that these weaker brethren misunderstood, and assumed that fellowship with false gods was part of the Christian experience. The Corinthians sinned by not edifying these weaker ones.
Paul’s argument is that Christian behavior is not merely a matter of exercising personal freedom but of love for one another. Everything we do, no matter how innocuous or neutral, must take into account the affect it may have on our brethren in Christ as well as what it shows about Christ to the rest of the world. What we do should be influenced by the possible effects it may have them. While we should never compromise the truth or fail to speak it because it may offend someone, we should never do anything that may be or appear to be sinful. Similarly we should not set a bad example for others to copy. Therefore, we should never glorify any person, thing, or idol which these days can be a celebrity, politician and political ideology, philosophy, way or life, worldview, or even the self. All we do must glorify God.