Homilies on First Corinthians

“And thus sinning against the brethren, and wounding their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.”

Do you observe how quietly and gradually he has brought their offense up to the very summit of iniquity? And again, he makes mention of the infirmity of the other sort: and so, the very thing which these considered to make for them, that he every where turns round upon their own head. And he said not, “Putting stumbling-blocks in their way,” but, “wounding;” so as by the force of his expression to indicate their cruelty. For what can be more savage than a man who wounds the sick? And yet no wound is so grievous as making a man to stumble. Often, in fact, is this also the cause of death.

But how do they “sin against Christ?” In one way, because He considers the concerns of His servants as His own; in another, because those who are wounded go to make up His Body and that which is part of Him: in a third way, because that work of His which He built up by His own blood, these are destroying for their ambition's sake.