Saint Paul — "Wherefore if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world…"
Wherefore if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Paul is saying he will willingly give up eating meat forever if his food choices would cause another believer to stumble in their faith. Personal freedoms matter less than a fellow Christian's spiritual wellbeing. If something you have every right to do trips someone else up, the loving move is to set it aside. Rights yield to responsibility when another person's conscience is at stake.
Relevance to Saint Paul
Paul wrote this to the Corinthian church, which was fighting over whether eating meat sacrificed to pagan idols was acceptable. As a former Pharisee turned missionary to Gentiles, he constantly navigated clashing customs between Jewish and Greek converts. His ministry hinged on adapting personal practice for the gospel's sake, famously saying he became 'all things to all people' to win them over.
The era
In first-century Corinth, most meat sold in markets had been ritually offered to Greek or Roman gods before butchering. Temple festivals doubled as civic social life, so refusing idol-meat meant social isolation. New Christians from pagan backgrounds still associated such meat with demonic worship, while mature believers saw idols as nothing. This split threatened to fracture the young, mixed-ethnicity churches Paul was planting across the Roman Empire.
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