Verse 2
Paul warned that if anyone thinks he or she has fully mastered any subject he or she can count on the fact that he or she has not. The reason for this is that there is always more to any subject than any one person ever appreciates. There is always another facet to it, another point of view that one has not considered when examining it, or more information about it.
This person’s knowledge is deficient in another sense. His attitude toward his knowledge is wrong. He arrogantly and unrealistically claims to have exhausted his subject rather than humbly realizing that he has not done so. To think one has fully mastered any subject is the height of arrogance. Paul said what he did here to humble some of his readers. Some claimed that since there are no such things as idols it was perfectly obvious what the Christian’s relation to eating meat in an idol’s temple should be.
"True gnosis ["knowledge"] consists not in the accumulation of so much data, nor even in the correctness of one’s theology, but in the fact that one has learned to live in love toward all." [Note: Fee, The First . . ., p. 368.]
"The distinction which it seems that these rather cumbersome clauses seek to express is between, on the one hand, the collection of pieces of information (gnosis) about God, and, on the other, the state of being personally, and rightly, related to him." [Note: Barrett, p. 190.]
"A famous preacher used to say, ’Some Christians grow; others just swell.’" [Note: Wiersbe, 1:595.]
Be the first to react on this!
