<p>8:9 <i>But take heed, lest by any means this freedom of yours becomes a stumblingblock to the weak</i>- It wasn't a question of who was technically right or wrong on the issue of idol food. It was a question of having the love which builds up others, by not being a stumbling block to them; rather than who had the technical knowledge. This is one of several passages which warn us not to make the weak to stumble. But none of those passages actually says that we can know <i>who </i>is weak. What they are saying is that in God's eyes, there are weak members amongst every group of believers, and therefore we should watch our behaviour, because it will have an effect upon whoever is weak. But this doesn't mean that <i>we</i> actually know who&nbsp; the weak ones are. Because we don't know who is especially weak we must always be careful in our behaviour, <i>whoever</i> we are with. Indeed we have to adopt the perspective that in a sense we are <i>all</i> weak.&nbsp;To understand 1 Cor. 8:9, we must understand what it means to be weak. The Greek word translated &quot;weak&quot; here usually means one of two things: physical illness, or spiritual weakness. Sometimes these two senses are combined (e.g. when James speaks of praying for the &quot;sick&quot; brother, or when Jesus talks of how pleased he was that brethren had visited the &quot;sick&quot; brother in Mt. 25:36). Paul&nbsp; often uses the word in his letters to Corinth. He says that we are <i>all</i> weak because of our natures (1 Cor. 15:43), and that Christ died on account of the fact that we are weak (2 Cor. 13:4 Gk.). Because of this, Paul reasons, we're all weak, because Christ died for every one of us. He therefore says that to sin against a weak brother is to sin against Christ; because Christ has associated himself with our spiritual weakness, in order to save us from it (1 Cor. 8:12). Thus he says that when we visit a weak brother (spiritually? it's the same word), we visit <i>Him</i>. He so closely associates himself with the weak brother. Christ on the cross carried the sins of &quot;the weak&quot; (i.e. all of us), and thereby left us an example of how we should behave towards the &quot;weak&quot;. In this context, Paul says that we should likewise love our neighbour (in the ecclesia; Rom. 15:1-4). What he seems to be saying is that we should understand that we are <i>all</i> weak, and therefore try to help each other, in the same spirit as Christ died for the weakness of each of us. If we recognize that we are <i>all</i> weak, we'll avoid two common mistakes: 1) Thinking that some brethren aren't weak and should therefore be followed blindly; and 2) Thinking that some believers are &quot;weak&quot; whilst the rest of us are &quot;strong&quot;.&nbsp;Paul didn't want the Corinth ecclesia to think he was wagging the finger at them and implying: 'You lot are so weak, but I'm strong'. Several times he speaks of his own weakness, and he glories in the fact that although he is so (spiritually) weak, God works through him so mightily; indeed, he comes to the conclusion that God's strength is perfectly expressed through his spiritual weaknesses (2 Cor. 11:30; 12:5,9,10). He says that he preached to Corinth in the first place in (spiritual) &quot;weakness&quot; (1 Cor. 2:3)-&nbsp; because it seems that when he first got to Corinth, he wasn't spiritually strong enough to grasp the nettle of witnessing to the city as he should have done (Acts 18:9,10). Having admitted to Corinth that he himself was weak, he can say that whenever one of them is weak, he feels weak too; in other words he's saying that he can totally empathize (not just sympathize) with a weak brother's feelings (2 Cor. 11:29).&nbsp;</p>