One mistake some of us make when we encounter unconventional knowledge is to start talking down on others who don’t have it. The scriptures are clear on HOW we should share knowledge that others do not possess.
Whether this knowledge concerns controversial topics like
“once saved, always saved,”
“no heaven, no hell,”
“no rapture,”
“no need to ask for forgiveness,” or beliefs like
“you are God” or
“you are Christ,”
Paul teaches something important about how that knowledge should be handled.
Galatians 5:13 says, “For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love.”
At first glance, it might seem like Paul is saying,
“Don’t start committing sin because of the liberty you have in Christ.”
While that can be implied, it’s not exactly what he’s teaching in that verse.
Paul is teaching that believers who possess knowledge should recognize the weakness of those who do not and help them, rather than wound their faith.
The first statement in verse 13 might suggest something else when read in isolation, but when you read the verses that follow, you realize he’s not talking about sinning only but rather about helping weaker believers in the faith.
And this, he says, can only be done in love.
The second part of verse 13 says,
“Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love.”
This clarifies what he meant by not using your liberty to satisfy your sinful nature.
So, what Paul refers to as “satisfying your sinful nature” is that you are not walking in love with others because you know more than them.
This means that when you talk down on the faith of others, criticize a denomination or belief system, or ridicule it because you have more knowledge, you’re not serving the body in love.
It’s the same instruction he gave in
1 Corinthians 8:9: “But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to them that are weak.”
Before Paul even gets to that warning, he lays down the principle underneath it in
1 Corinthians 8:1: “Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.”
He’s not saying knowledge is bad. He’s saying knowledge, on its own, without love attached to it, tends to inflate the person who has it rather than build up the person who doesn’t. Two people can carry the same correct doctrine. One uses it to puff himself up. The other uses it to edify. The difference is not what they know. The difference is love.
This is serious, because using this same line of reasoning, Paul goes on to contrast the sins of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit.
Before listing the degenerate sins of the flesh, he warns the believers in
Galatians 5:15: “But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.”
The biting and devouring we see in the body of Christ today will lead to degenerate sins like hatred and envy, as listed in verses 19 and 20. When the church reaches a point where we are constantly at each other’s throats, Paul warns that we would have consumed one another. In other words, biting and devouring each other within the body of Christ will lead to the destruction of that part of the body.
This is the same idea he expresses in
1 Corinthians 8:11: “And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?”
How counterproductive it would be to destroy your brother because of your knowledge, rather than building him up!
Paul makes almost the identical argument again in Romans 14, and it’s worth sitting here for a moment, because this chapter is where he gets most practical about what this looks like in real church life.
Romans 14:1 opens with, “Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations.”
Notice the instruction isn’t “correct him immediately” or “argue him out of his position.” It’s “receive him.” Before you fix anyone’s theology, you’re first told to welcome the person. Not welcome them conditionally, pending their agreement with you. Welcome them as they are, mid-journey, still working things out.
Then a few verses later, Paul says something that should stop most of us in our tracks:
“Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way” (Romans 14:13).
He takes the word “judge” and redirects it. Instead of using your discernment to judge your brother’s position, use that same discernment to judge whether your own behavior is setting a trap in front of him.
That’s a complete reversal of how most of us handle disagreement. Our instinct, the moment we spot an error in someone else’s understanding, is to correct the error out loud, publicly, and quickly, sometimes before we’ve even considered what that correction will cost the person hearing it. Paul’s instinct runs the other way. Guard the weak, not just the doctrine.
And Paul isn’t finished. He goes even further in
Romans 15:1: “We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.”
“Bear,” not broadcast. If you have grown to a place of understanding someone else hasn’t reached yet, Scripture doesn’t ask you to announce that gap. It asks you to carry them through it.
So what does all this actually look like in practice, especially with the kind of divisive topics named at the start?
Someone believes “once saved, always saved.” Someone else doesn’t believe in a literal hell. Someone else says there’s no rapture. Someone else has drifted into saying “you are God” or “you are Christ.”
You may have knowledge that directly contradicts what they believe. That’s not the problem. Having knowledge was never the problem. The problem starts the moment that knowledge becomes a weapon instead of a bridge.
Ask yourself before you speak:
Am I trying to win, or am I trying to help this person grow?
Am I saying this because I love them, or because I want to be seen as the one who knows better?
Would I say this the same way if I truly believed I was talking to someone Christ died for, someone whose faith is genuinely fragile in this particular area?
That last question matters most, because 1 Corinthians 8:11 doesn’t say the weak brother might merely be embarrassed by your knowledge. It says he might perish. That’s not a small stake.
Paul isn’t asking you to withhold truth. He’s asking you to deliver truth in a way that doesn’t destroy the very person that truth was meant to help.
This is why “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) isn’t a soft, watered-down compromise between truth and love. It’s the only way truth was ever designed to travel.
Truth without love arrives as an attack.
Love without truth becomes empty sentiment.
But truth carried by love actually reaches its destination and does what it was meant to do, which is build the person up, not just prove you right.
So the next time you come across someone still holding a belief you’ve long since outgrown, remember what you’re actually holding in your hands.
Not a weapon to correct them into silence.
Not a badge to separate yourself from them.
A tool meant to serve them, in love, the same way it once served you when someone else chose patience over pride and helped you grow instead of making you feel small for not knowing yet.
That’s the difference between knowledge that puffs up and knowledge that builds up. And it’s a difference every one of us gets to choose, every single time we open our mouths to correct someone.