A new question from Corinth, and a genuinely difficult one. Most meat sold in a Greek city had passed through a temple: the animal was sacrificed, a portion burned, and the rest went to the priests and to the market. So a Christian at a dinner party, or at a butcher's stall, faced a practical problem — and the sophisticated members of the church had solved it.
What happens
"Knowledge inflates with pride, but love builds up. If anyone supposes he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if one lovesTheos, one is known by him. So about the eating of meat sacrificed to idols: we know that there is no idol in the world, and that there is no Theos but one… yet for us there is one Theos, the Father, from whom all things are and for whom we exist, and one master, Jesus Messiah, through whom all things are and through whom we exist. But not all have this knowledge… Thus, through your knowledge, the weak person is brought to destruction, the brother for whom Messiah died… Therefore, if food causes my brother to sin, I will never eat meat again."
What to notice
Hē gnōsis physioi, hē de agapē oikodomei. The two verbs are chosen for their physics. Physioō is to inflate — the root is physaō, to blow, the word for what a bellows does. Oikodomeō is to build a house, stone on stone. One expands the volume without adding anything; the other adds material. Then 1 Corinthians 8:3, which reverses a sentence everyone expects: the construction runs if anyone loves Theos — and the reader waits for he knows him. Paul writes houtos egnōstai hyp' autou, "this one has been known by him." The whole epistemology goes into the passive. And hidden inside an argument about butchery is one of the boldest sentences in the New Testament: the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4) reads in Greek kyrios ho theos hēmōn kyrios heis estin, and Paul splits it — heis theos ho patēr… kai heis kyrios Iēsous Christos. The two halves of Israel's daily prayer are distributed across two figures, in a throwaway clause, in a discussion about dinner.
The great psalm of being known: twenty-four verses on the impossibility of getting out of range, moving from surveillance through gestation to a request. It contains the one passage in the Psalter about being formed in the womb, and it ends by asking for the very examination it began by describing.
The selected verses
Psalm 139:1–3."Yahweh, you have probed me and you know me; you know when I sit and when I stand; you understand my thoughts from afar. My journeys and my rest you scrutinize; with all my ways you are familiar." Psalm 139:13–14ab."Truly you have formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb. I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made." Psalm 139:23–24."Probe me, Theos, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts. See if my way is crooked, and lead me in the way of old."
What to notice
The psalm's first verb and its last verb are the same: haqartani in Psalm 139:1, "you have searched me," and haqreni in Psalm 139:23, "search me." Haqar is a mining word — to dig into, to explore a vein. The psalm opens by observing that the search has already happened and closes by asking for it, which is not redundant: being searched is one thing, consenting to it is another, and the twenty-two verses in between are what it takes to get from the first to the second. The pairing with the first reading is exact. Paul: "if one loves Theos, one is known by him." The psalm is what that sentence sounds like from the inside — not a claim to have grasped anything, but the discovery of having been read.
Straight on from yesterday's blessings and woes, still on the level place. Luke has no equivalent of Matthew's long sermon; this compressed passage carries most of what Matthew spreads over three chapters.
What happens
"To you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well… Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you." Then the arithmetic: "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them… Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." And the conclusion: "Stop judging and you will not be judged… Give, and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you."
What to notice
The question in Luke 6:32 is poia hymin charis estin — literally "what grace is that to you?" Not "what reward," which is Matthew's word (misthos). Luke asks what charis there is in reciprocated love, and the answer is none: it is a perfectly correct transaction with nothing left over. Sinners can run it; it balances. Then the line separating Luke from Matthew at the summit of the sermon. Matthew 5:48 has "be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" — teleioi, complete. Luke has be merciful, as your Father is merciful — oiktirmōn, from oiktos, a wail of pity, the Greek that renders Hebrew rahum, from rehem, the womb. And the closing image is a grain merchant's: a measure filled, then pepiesmenon — pressed down; sesaleumenon — shaken so the contents settle; hyperekchynnomenon — heaped until it spills. Poured eis ton kolpon, into the fold of the garment above the belt, which is how a man carried loose grain home. The reward is not a number. It is what a generous dealer does with a scoop.
Loving those who love you is sound arithmetic and earns no charis at all
Both readings are about the insufficiency of accuracy, and neither suggests accuracy does not matter. Paul concedes the Corinthian argument entirely. We know that there is no idol in the world. The meat is meat; the god it was dedicated to does not exist; there is no contamination to fear. He does not qualify this or walk it back. And then he says the person holding this correct view is destroying someone with it — the brother for whom Messiah died, a phrase placed exactly where it will do maximum damage to the winner of the argument.
Luke makes the same move with ethics rather than doctrine. If you love those who love you, what grace is that? Reciprocal love is not condemned; it is audited, and found to balance. The books close. What Luke calls charis is whatever is left over when the accounts have been settled — which by definition can only appear in transactions that do not balance: loving an enemy, lending with no expectation, giving to someone who will not return it.
Psalm 139 is the hinge, and it is placed with real skill. Paul's "if one loves Theos, one is known by him" is a strange, almost evasive sentence until you hear the psalm underneath it. The alternative to inflated knowledge is not humbler knowledge; it is a change of voice, from active to passive. The psalmist does not claim to have found Theos out. He reports having been searched — sitting, standing, travelling, resting, knit together before he could object — and then asks for it: probe me, and know my heart. That request is the opposite of the Corinthian posture, and it costs more than any argument about meat. And Luke's final image supplies what the measure looks like coming back: pressed, shaken, spilling over the edge of the scoop. Not a wage — a way of handling grain, determined entirely by which scoop you used on somebody else.
A Question to Sit With
Paul agrees with the man he is correcting. The idols are nothing, the meat is fine, the argument is won — and someone is being destroyed by the winning. I know that position from the inside, and the pleasure of it is precisely that I have checked and I am right. What Luke adds is the audit: even a perfectly balanced account leaves no grace in it. Where am I currently correct, and what is my correctness costing the person on the other side of it?