Four Sayings in Their Settings

Four more verses are often quoted in a row, like a closing argument. “Paul said, ‘Eat anything that is sold in the meat market without asking questions.’ He said, ‘Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food.’ He said, ‘To the pure, all things are pure.’ And Yeshua Himself told His disciples, ‘Eat what is set before you.’ If that is not permission to eat anything, what would be?”

It is a fair question, and each of these sentences is in Scripture, word for word. We will do with them what we did with Romans 14: put each one back where it was written, and let the verses around it tell us what it means.

The Meat Market in Corinth

1 Corinthians 8 opens with its subject: “Now concerning things sacrificed to idols.” Paul stays on that subject for three chapters. In chapter 10 he warns, “flee from idolatry” (10:14), and he says that the things the nations sacrifice, “they sacrifice to demon(individual evil spirits to be expelled)s and not to God” (10:20). We will come back to that table in Chapter 34. Then he gives the Corinthians a practical rule for the market.

1 Corinthians 10:25-29 Eat anything that is sold in the meat market without asking questions for syneidesis συνείδησις soon-i'-day-sis(conscience)' sake, for the earth is the Lord's, and all it contains. If one of the unbelievers invites you and you want to go, eat anything that is set before you without asking questions for conscience' sake. But if anyone says to you, "This is meat sacrificed to idols," do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you and for conscience' sake; for the earth is the Lord's, and all it contains — conscience, I say, not your own but the other man's; for why is my freedom krino κρίνω kree'-no(judged) by another's conscience?

The market is the makellon μάκελλον mak'-el-lon, the meat market of Corinth. A believer standing at the counter could not see whether a cut had come from a pagan altar, and Paul’s instruction is simple: do not interrogate the butcher, for “the earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains.” That line is not Paul’s own invention. It is Psalm 24:1, a psalm of David: “To the LORD belong the earth and its fullness.”

The exception in verse 28 settles the matter: “But if anyone says to you, ‘This is meat sacrificed to idols,’ do not eat it.” The Greek word there is eidolothyton, the same word as in 8:1, so the subject has not changed in three chapters. Verse 27 applies the same rule to a dinner in an unbeliever’s home, “eat anything that is set before you without asking questions,” and verse 28 gives the same exception. At the market or at a neighbor’s table, Paul is answering a single question: must I ask whether this was offered to an idol?

That exception decides the meaning of the rule. If “eat anything that is sold in the meat market” meant that nothing a believer eats matters anymore, the next sentence would be impossible, for Paul would be saying “eat anything” and “do not eat it” about the same piece of meat. He is not contradicting himself. “Eat anything” means that you need not go searching for an idol behind every cut. “Do not eat it” means that once you know the meat came from an idol’s altar, you leave it. The question in the Corinthian market was the source of the meat, not the species. Nobody in these three chapters is asking whether a believer may eat a pig.

A Slogan Quoted and Corrected

The second verse comes from earlier in the same letter.

1 Corinthians 6:12-13 All things are lawful for me, but not all things are beneficial; all things are lawful for me, but I will not be exousiazo ἐξουσιάζω ex-oo-see-ad'-zo(mastered, controlled) by anything. Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food, but God will do away with both of them; yet the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body.

Read it slowly and you will hear two voices. “Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food” is a saying of the Corinthians. “Yet the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord” is Paul’s reply.

Paul is answering a letter, as he says in the next chapter: “Now concerning the things you wrote” (7:1). Anyone who answers a letter will often quote the other person’s words back and then reply to them: “You wrote that you were too busy to call, yet you found time to visit your cousin.” Nobody reading such a reply takes the first half for the writer’s own opinion.

The word for food there is bromata βρώματα bro'-mah, the same word we have met in Mark 7 and Romans 14. Paul quotes the Corinthians’ slogan in order to correct it: food may be for the stomach, but the body is not for sexual immorality. The next verses name what he is warning against: joining the body to a prostitute (6:15-16). The body is “for the Lord,” and a few verses later he calls it “a naos ναός nah-os'(temple, inner-sanctuary) of the hagio(holy) pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit)” (6:19). 1 Corinthians 6:13 is not a permission to eat anything. It is about the body belonging to the Lord.

“To the Pure, All Things Are Pure”

The third verse is in Paul’s letter to Titus, on the island of Crete.

Titus 1:14-15 not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the aletheia ἀλήθεια al-ay'-thi-a(truth). To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their nous νοῦς nooce(intellect, spiritual domain) and their conscience are defiled.

Before the famous sentence, Paul names the people he is answering. A few verses earlier he called them “empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision” (Titus 1:10), and here he names what they taught: “Jewish myths and commandments of men.”

“Commandments of men” is the same charge Yeshua made in Mark 7, when He spoke of “teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.” These teachers were not passing on the Torah; they were teaching commandments of men.

Against them Paul says, “To the pure, all things are pure.” The word is katharos καθαρός kath-ar-os' again, clean. And where does he locate the defilement? “Both their nous(intellect, spiritual domain) and their conscience are defiled.” It is in their minds, not on their plates. The next verse finishes the thought: “They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient” (1:16). Paul is rebuking teachers of commandments of men who were “disobedient.” He is not erasing Leviticus 11, which no one in this passage mentions.

“Eat What Is Set Before You”

The last verse comes from Yeshua, and its setting is given in the first verse of the chapter.

Luke 10:1 Now after these things the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them two by two ahead of Him into every city and place where He Himself was about to come.

Yeshua was traveling through the land of Israel, and He sent the seventy ahead of Him into its towns and villages. Then He told them how to behave as guests.

Luke 10:7-8 Remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the worker deserves his wages; do not move from house to house. Whatever city you enter and they receive you, eat what is set before you,

The homes that would receive them were Jewish homes, and the food set before them would be what Jewish families ate, food as Scripture defines it.

The point of the saying lies in the line just before it: “Remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide … do not move from house to house.” A messenger of the kingdom was not to go door to door looking for a richer host and a better table. If a poor family offered lentils, he was to eat the lentils, be grateful, and get on with healing the sick and announcing the kingdom (10:9). This is a lesson about contentment, not about the menu.

Four Settings

These four verses come from four settings, and they give the same result we found in Romans 14. Each sentence is true where it stands, and none of them tells a believer to eat what God said is not food.

One passage remains, and its words are broad: “everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude.” That sentence, too, has to be read to its end.