Ground Rules for Christian Freedom — Part One

First Corinthians chapter 10, and we read from verse 23:

“‘Everything is permissible’—but not everything is beneficial. ‘Everything is permissible’—but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.

“Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for, ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.’

“If some unbeliever invites you to a meal and you want to go, eat whatever is put before you without raising questions of conscience. But if anyone says to you, ‘This has been offered in sacrifice,’ then do not eat it, both for the sake of the man who told you and for conscience’ sake—the other man’s conscience, I mean, not yours. For why should my freedom be judged by another’s conscience? If I take part in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of something I thank God for?

“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God—even as I try to please everybody in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved. Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.”

And may God add his blessing to the reading of his Word and grant us understanding of it as we study it together.

Before Paul addresses those very practical issues of Christian behavior within the context of the worshipping community, he determines that he will conclude with probably the finest summary statement on the nature of Christian freedom that is provided for us in the whole of the New Testament.

We’ve noticed that there were some within the church of Corinth who were pushing the limits. We might refer to them as the “I can do anything I want” party. There was another group that were seeking to restrict the freedom of others, and we might refer to them as “You can’t do anything at all” party. The question was, as remains in many contexts today, a great debate, a great chasm, between license on the one hand and legalism on the other.

Paul has been pointing out that there are immediate dangers to thinking in a faulty fashion about this issue: there is the danger of presumptuousness, there is the danger of compromise, and there is the danger of legalism. And it is in these concluding verses of chapter 10 that he pays most attention to this whole question of legalism.

There was a slogan going around the Corinthian church; Paul may even have been the originator of it. It is the phrase which begins verse 23: “Everything is permissible.” Or, if you’re using a different version of the New Testament, it may read in your translation, “All things are lawful.”[1] And the people were going around essentially singing, “You can do anything you want at the apostle’s restaurant.” And they were happy to do this, and consequently, there was a great spirit of freedom abounding.

And what the apostle does is provide clarity for this phrase. He explains what it means and its significance. “Everything,” he says, “is permissible.” And then he launches into what we’re referring to here as ground rules for Christian freedom.

Now, keep in mind this morning that this is not a matter of marginal importance. This is not some little discussion that we can have over in a corner that bears little relevance to the ebb and flow of our lives as a church or our lives as individuals. History proves what the Bible suggests will happen—namely, that whenever a local church gets matters wrong on these kind of issues, it leads to dreadful experiences.

For example, when a church errs on the side of legalism, then it becomes a legalistic community; it becomes cold; it becomes brittle, hard, refrigerated, enslaved, and produces clones, produces individuals who haven’t really thought for very long. They don’t want to think; they simply want a list of rules that they can obey. They want to know that they’re the right ones, that someone has made them the right ones, and that they will be happy to accept them and to live their life that way.

It’s the kind of church that has an answer for every question but expects no questions. Things seldom change in these churches, because they’re all locked up. Their motto is “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.” And it’s not referring to Christian doctrine; it is referring to rules and regulations. You travel anywhere in the world, and you will find church fellowships just like that. They’re not all bad, they’re not full of bad people, but that’s what characterizes them.

The degree to which we fall into either the legalist camp or the license camp is the degree to which we severely inhibit our walk with Christ and our usefulness in the kingdom.

Now, when a church falls off the other side of the cliff, as it were, and falls down into the realm of license, then it usually goes laughing and joking into spiritual and moral carelessness. In this kind of congregation, you find that people do all manner of things anytime they want with anyone they want, and they usually wake up only when it’s too late—only when they’ve discovered the fact that they are irrelevant, that they’re lost, that they are at best in By-Path Meadow and at worst that they’re nowhere near the track leading towards the heavenly city at all. And all across the world, there are congregations like that. The way they arrive at it is to come down on one side of this equation; to champion what the Bible, they believe, champions; to negate what it negates; and thereby to embrace this great experience of freedom. They’re not bad people—many good people, many messed-up people. And there are Christians just like this.

I can look back on my times studying theology with fellows who went through the course as legalists and others who went through as the champions of license and freedom. The legalists, many of them, are in little churches somewhere, tied up in knots, along with the small group of people that they’ve decided to tie themselves up in knots with. And the fellows who went into license, few of them are involved in any church at all. They became irrelevant very quickly. They said they could do anything. They would do anything they wanted. There was no real reason to obey the Scripture. After all, the law was for the Old Testament period. You could do anything anytime. And eventually, they decided that since they could do anything, they just wouldn’t get up on a Sunday morning and go to church. And then they liked that feeling, and then they decided that they would get up, and then they’d just go out for breakfast. And then, after they went out for breakfast, they would read the newspaper, because after all, “all things are permissible,” and having read the newspaper, they would play golf. And so now, all these years later, maybe a few of them are professionals in a golf club, but they’re certainly not pastoring churches. They fell off one side or the other.

Now, as we’ve said all the way from chapter 6, the issue of the New Testament is that there is a narrow Striding Edge in between these two corries on either side of the mountain. And the narrow Striding Edge to which James refers as “the perfect law of liberty”[2] is the track along which we must walk. And in walking that track, it is precarious, in the sense that we have this incipient tendency, most of us, to fall down into one of the two gullies. Some of us, by virtue of our background, are far more prone to fall into the legalist camp, and others of us are far more prone to fall into the license camp. The degree to which we fall into either camp is the degree to which we severely inhibit our walk with Christ and our usefulness in the kingdom.

Now, let me then launch into these ground rules, which are here in the text. I think I can justify each of these statements. They’re largely just a restatement of the verses themselves.

Is This Beneficial?

What should we do, then, in approaching this question of “What am I free to do, and what am I not free to do?”

Well, first of all, we should not ask, “Am I allowed to do this?” but we should ask, “Does this edify?” Now, this comes from verse 23. Paul says, “Everything is permissible.” Let’s leave that as it stands. However, he says, “everything is [not] beneficial.” Or in your version, it may read “expedient,”[3] which is not a good translation, because the word “expedient” has all kinds of connotations that aren’t wrapped up in the word “beneficial.” He says, “Yeah, you’re free to do whatever you want, but not everything that you want to do is beneficial, either to you, to your brothers and sisters in Christ, or to the watching world.”

Second, he says, “‘Everything is permissible’—but not everything is constructive.” And the word there is oikodomia, which is the word which means “to build up.” “Not everything,” he says, “edifies.” So the ultimate question is not “Am I allowed to do this?” but “Since I am allowed to do this, will my doing of this be constructive? Will it edify?” Here is ground rule number one for Christian living.

What Paul is saying is essentially this: the slogan is right: “All things are permissible.” But if you look carefully at the bottom of your ticket or at the bottom of your pass—you know, I’ve been looking at tickets and passes carefully this past seven days—if you look carefully at the bottom of your pass, you will notice the phrase “Some restrictions apply.” That’s exactly what he’s saying: “Some restrictions apply.” “All things are permissible,” look down the bottom: “Some restrictions apply.”

Now, first of all, let’s be clear what we’ve said many times. On the basis of our previous studies, particularly in chapter 6, we notice that when Paul refers to “all things,”[4] he is referring to all things not specifically identified in the Bible as sinful. He can’t on the one hand give a long list of things that are sinful and then on the other hand say all things are permissible. So when he says all things are permissible, he means all things that are not covered as the things that aren’t permissible. You got that? “You’re not allowed to do these things. So,” says Paul, “when I say all things are permissible, I’m not referring to these things. What I’m referring to,” he says, “are the things about which the Bible says nothing”—where there is no rule written down, where there’s no statement concerning a specific attitude or action of Christian behavior. For example, should a Christian go and watch the Cleveland Browns? It is permissible, but is it sensible? Is it beneficial? Is it constructive? Now, that may seem frivolous, but I’m going to come back to that. It just came upon me in my study about a week and a half ago, and I left it there. I will return to it.

The question we should ask, then, is not just “Am I allowed?” but “Will this behavior be useful and profitable?” It’s not only necessary to ask what one may do but also to consider the effect of such an action upon somebody else.

You may remember, I’ve told you before the story of an old man in Ireland who was very well known as an evangelist and as a Bible teacher in an earlier generation, and he used to do question-and-answer sessions. And in one of the question-and-answer sessions, a man stood up and said, “Mr. Nicholson, can a Christian smoke?” And Nicholson replied, “Yes, you can, you dirty pig.” So, it answers the question “Permissible?” It still leaves begging the question “Beneficial or constructive?”

Now, here is the issue. The word that is used—“Not everything,” he says, “is constructive”—the question I need to ask and you need to ask… And you’re a teenager, ask it about your music. You’re a businessman, ask it about your ethical practices. You’re a mother, ask it about the way you spend your time. You’re a single person, ask it about the literature you use. Ask it about your attendance upon the means of grace. Ask it about everything that you’re free to do: “Will what I am doing or I am about to do cause Mr. X or Miss Y to advance spiritually? Will my activity cause spiritual advance?” That’s the question. The question is not “Am I allowed?” The question is “Since I am allowed, will it cause advance? Will it cause spiritual growth? Will what I am now free to do—since the Bible does not deny it to me—will it allow me to grow up to be a stronger Christian? Will it encourage my children to grow up in the means of grace? Will it mean that those who are my friends and my neighbors will go on with Christ and that the watching world would be drawn to him?” That’s the question.

He says, “Don’t sit around asking the question whether it fits within the list of rules that your church just dreamt up.” That’s easy. That’s why churches do it, largely. ’Cause we can all just write the list down, and we hold everyone else to the list; then, if you violate the list, [imitates explosion]. But when you work on the basis of principle, it’s different.

In 1 Corinthians 14, if you just let your eyes scan on a page or two, you’ll see that Paul reminds us that this quest for benefiting and helping should be a general principle in our lives. First Corinthians 14:26: “What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All … these must be done for the strengthening”—same word, for the building up—“of the church.”

Now, that’s a principle that we’ll come to some Sunday nights away from now, but it’s the same issue. Someone says, “Well, I want to sing such and such,” or “I’ve got an ecstatic utterance.” Paul says, “Okay, let’s talk about that in relationship to the general principle, which is ‘All these things are to be done for the building up of the church.’ Will this, then, build it up?” The question is not “Am I allowed?” The question is “Is it beneficial? Is it constructive?”

Turn back a book to Romans chapter 14. You can do your homework in Romans chapter 14, because you get very helpful cross-reference material here. Romans 14:19: “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.” Same word: to the building up of one another. Chapter 15 and verse 2: “Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.” Now, we don’t need to beat it into the ground. It’s straightforward now, right? We understand.

So then, when we’re faced with a decision about some activity or some practice, here’s what you do. I’ve got a decision to make about x or y. I open my Bible and I say, “Does the Scripture approve it or forbid it?” If it is expressly approved—namely, “Do good to one another”[5]—then we don’t have to call a committee meeting about the issue. Just get on and do good. If it is expressly forbidden—“Thou shalt not commit adultery”[6]—then we don’t need to go and seek biblical counseling on the issue; we just don’t do it. But if the issue is unaddressed, as many practical issues of Christian living have been and are, then we need to take this principle seriously.

If it is not forbidden, then we’re free to do it. If we’re free to do it, we then have to ask question two: “Since I’m free to do it, is it profitable and constructive for myself and for others?” If the answer is clearly yes, then go ahead and do it. “Do it all [to] the glory of God.”

Now, I want to come back to the Browns. Is it lawful to go and watch the Cleveland Browns? Well, we could discuss the nature of the Ten Commandments, as we will, in relationship to the Lord’s Day. But setting that aside for a moment—that’s not what is in my mind—let us say that it is not expressly forbidden that we can go and watch the Cleveland Browns. “So we’re okay, right? We’re going to see the Browns. After all, it’s a neutral thing. There’s no thing in the Bible. I have read the Bible cover to cover a number of times,” you say, “the Cleveland Browns are not in there.”

Well, they are. They’re in the Book of Lamentations. But they are. Okay, they’re not in there. That’s fine. They’re not there.

“Okay, so we can go, right?”

Well, maybe.

“Well, what do you mean, ‘maybe’? ‘All things are permissible.’ It’s not professed as being some kind of error. Therefore, we can go.”

Well, no, not necessarily.

“Why not?”

Well, who are you going with?

“I’m going with Joe.”

Oh, Joe?

“Yeah.”

You mean Joe, the guy with the season tickets?

“Yeah.”

You mean Joe, the guy that wears the stuff all the time?

“That Joe. Yeah. I mean, after all, I mean, Joe would go anyway.”

Well, no, that’s not what I heard. ’Cause Joe called me this week.

“He did?”

Yeah. Isn’t this Joe the same Joe that became a Christian at one of our baptism services three months ago in the evening?

“Yeah, that’s him. Yeah, he became a Christian! Great. We had a great discipleship time. Cleveland Browns, Joe, me, discipleship, ‘All things are permissible.’ Let’s go!”

Not so fast! Hang on a minute. He called me to ask me a question.

“Well, what was that, Pastor?”

Well, he called me to ask about Hebrews 10:25.

“What’s Hebrews 10:25?”

You better look it up. Go ahead, look it up, unless you know it. Keep your head up if you know it. Lot of heads going down. Hebrews 10:25: “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” Aha!

“Well, what’s that got to do with anything, Pastor?”

Well, just this: Joe said to me, “It’s a four o’clock game.” He says, “You know how much I love the Browns. I’ve had season tickets to the Browns since my father got them with his company years ago. I do not miss the Browns. I’ve never missed them. But Pastor, something’s happened to me. I can’t fully explain what happened to me, but in my heart there is an insatiable longing for the things of Jesus Christ, for the worship of God’s people, for prayer, and for the instruction of Scripture. And if I go to the four o’clock game here, that means I miss the prayer meeting, and that means I can’t hear what you’re about to say about 1 Corinthians 11 and whether women should wear hats in church. And I really want to know about what the Bible has to say about that! So I don’t know whether I should go or not.”

Now, you see, our brother here, Mr. All-Things-Permissible, he’s got a different kind of discussion on his hands now. Do you understand it? I don’t want to beat it to death. He’s got to determine whether the permissibility of his activity at four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon will drive him or whether his concern for the spiritual well-being of young Joe, most recently professing faith in Jesus Christ, will be the issue that constrains his activity. Not a law, a principle. What’s he going to do?

Now, I can tell you that if you find yourself leaning this morning down into the corrie marked “license,” you hate this illustration. If you find yourself leaning down into legalism, you’re going, “Oh, I love this! Wonderful, see? See how he did that thing about the rules for the evening service?” No, no, you got it all wrong.

Take the legalism check. The legalism check goes like this. You get a book: “Rule 43B, concerning sporting events between three and seven on the Lord’s Day afternoon, early evening: thou shall go nowhere except wherever the approved aforementioned, duly elected, thrice-baptized group have determined.” “Fine. We can’t go, Joe. It’s in the book, man. We’re done. I mean, they’ve got this big book. It’s three times the size of the Bible. We’re out of it. We can’t go.” Okay? That’s the legalism check.

License check? “Ladies and gentlemen, the evening service will be held in section 132B at the Cleveland stadium.” “Hey, Joe, it’s cool, man. They moved the whole evening service over there. It’s great. You’ve got to get there just a little bit early. You sing a hymn, and then it just breaks loose from there.”

Or the liberty check, okay? Does my personal freedom to enjoy leisure-time activity take precedence over my spiritual profit and the spiritual advancement of my brother in Christ? Don’t just ask, “Is it allowed?” That’s easy. Ask, “Is it beneficial?” Ask, “Is it constructive?” “Oh, but,” you say, “we may end up at the same place as Mr. Legalist.” Possibly. But the route that is taken is so radically different as to render the location a whole different location when you get there.

And those of us who have lived by legalism and the tyranny and the fear that is attached to that will understand very clearly the distinction. Because legalism does not produce a holy life. Legalism only produces bondage to rules, and usually to men and women’s rules. It is only the love of Jesus Christ to fill a heart and to constrain a mind that produces the perfect kind of freedom that isn’t asking, “Am I allowed to listen to this kind of music? Am I allowed to attend this kind of activity?” but has such a grasp of the Scriptures as to say, “Since this fits the category of ‘All things are permissible,’ let me apply these two important principles: beneficial, constructive.”

What Is Best for Others?

Now, let’s just do one more, shall we, in the time that we have? Let’s go on to the second ground rule, which is to put the concerns of others first. That doesn’t really advance us very far; it’s simply an extension of the same demand, expressed as a general principle.

This addresses the propensity within us to say, “My business is my business,” or to say, “What I do on my own time is my concern and doesn’t involve anybody else.” Now, Mr. Michael Jordan may say that and believe it. He’s wrong. And if you’re a Christian, you can’t say it and believe it. What you do on your own time is not just your business. As I’ve said to you many times, what I do when I’m not in front of you—when I drive in my car, when I travel, when I’m on my own, when I read books, when I listen to music, when I wander streets on my own—what I do on my own time is not my own business. It’s your business, it’s my wife’s business, it’s my children’s business, my sisters’ business. Because I don’t live to myself, and I don’t die to myself. Therefore, if all that I do is seek to go through my life saying “Am I allowed?” and tick it off and live with the illusion that whatever I do on my own time is just my own time and I can do what I choose, then I’ll never live in the joy of Christian freedom. I’ll never know the reality and wonder of it all. So here’s the question. “Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.” So turn it around the other way, and we end up with “Put the concerns of others first.” Whoever God puts at our sides is to be our concern.

It is only the love of Jesus Christ to fill a heart and to constrain a mind that produces the perfect kind of freedom.

Let me cross-reference this in just one place. Philippians chapter 2—some verses in Philippians 2 that I’ve always had a hard time explaining until I’d started to look at 1 Corinthians chapter 10, and I think I understand the application of them now. Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. Philippians 2:3–4. You’ll remember these when you see them: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider [each other as] better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

Now, what does 1 Corinthians 10:24 mean? “Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.” I think it means Philippians 2:3–4. That’s how it’s worked out. Perhaps this evening, in our question-and-answer time, one or two will be able to give examples of what they have given up for the sake of a brother or a sister in Christ. There may be some within our congregation who are able to give us personal testimony of the fact that in the realm of “All things are permissible,” there are certain spheres of activity in which they no longer engage, or there are certain things in which they now engage which they would never have done before, until they understood this ground rule of Christian freedom—that I shouldn’t ask “Am I allowed?” but “Will it benefit?” and that I shouldn’t think about myself, but I should think of others. John Calvin put it this way: “This injunction is very necessary, for our own nature is so corrupt that each of us looks to his own interests to the neglect of those of his brothers.”[7]

Now, back in 1 Corinthians 10:24. Notice carefully: Paul is not saying that we shouldn’t think about our own interests at all but that we should not get so bound up in our own interests that we’re unprepared to give up the least part of them where the well-being of our brothers and sisters demands it.

Avoid Unnecessary Complication

And then, in verse 25, he goes on to take the principle and apply it in very practical terms. And that bring us to the third ground rule, which is “Don’t tie yourself up in unnecessary knots.” And if we just anticipate where we’ll begin next time: you imagine Mrs. Brown, who goes to the market, and when she goes to the market, the man is there selling the produce, and she says to him, “Excuse me, sir, how much is that?” and he gives her the price, and then she says, “By the way, did it come from the temple before it arrived here?” And he says, “Uh, yeah, probably.” And she says, “Ah, do you know if it was involved in the sacrificial systems before it came down here?” And he said, “Look, I don’t know that. Do you want the meat or do you not want the meat?” And she goes over in a corner, and she has this big discussion with herself: “Well, I wonder if it went in the temple. If it went in the temple, does that mean it’s messed up? And if it’s messed up, then what’ll happen if I take it home, and then I put it on my husband’s plate, and then he’ll start the same thing all over again, and then we’ll have this big debate about whether we can eat it, and the meat will be freezing cold, and everyone will starve to death…”

Paul says, “Don’t get into that rubbish. Don’t be sitting in a corner asking fussy questions of overscrupulousness. Don’t become a Pharisee, for goodness’ sake,” he says. “I was once a Pharisee. I don’t want to go back to being a Pharisee again.” Do you ever spend time with those people? You can’t hardly do a thing when they’re around. You can’t even laugh without permission. Whistling is taboo. Everything is a threat to spirituality, because they are so constrained by rules. And some of us have lived such a long part of our lives there that to even think along these lines is one of the most unsettling things we could ever do.

Read ahead, consider the notes in the bulletin, do your own study, and we’ll return to this important topic on our next occasion around the Scriptures together.

Let us bow in prayer.

As we bow in a moment of silent prayer, let’s ask God to bring home to our hearts today just what he wants to impress upon us. Let’s remember that God will hold us accountable for not simply being hearers of the Word but being doers of the Word.[8] Let’s take the test. The legalist test: Do we find ourselves constantly condemning others because of our own external list that we’ve created and they’re violating, even though we can’t find it in the Bible? The license test: Do we find ourselves allowing, under the disguise of freedom, entry into our lives of that which the Bible has clearly closed to us? And the liberty test: Am I prepared to forego things that are clearly allowed because I’m concerned about the benefit and the building up of my brother and sister in Christ? In short, am I prepared to stop doing things or to start doing things not because it’s a rule but because I just have to if I am to apply this principle?

Lord, teach us what this means as we study these concluding verses of chapter 10. We really need to find out as a church. We need to know your mind in these things, lest we fall into one of these traps—or, if we’re in it, lest we stay in it. And as individuals, as families, as students going about our days, as men in the marketplace of life, as mothers at home, as singles, may “the word of Christ dwell in [us] richly.”[9]

And now may grace and mercy and peace from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit rest upon and remain with each one of us, today and forevermore. Amen.

[1] 1 Corinthians 10:23 (KJV).

[2] James 1:25 (KJV).

[3] 1 Corinthians 10:23 (KJV).

[4] 1 Corinthians 6:12 (paraphrased).

[5] Hebrews 13:16 (paraphrased).

[6] Exodus 20:14 (KJV). See also Deuteronomy 5:18.

[7] John Calvin, The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, trans. John W. Fraser, ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 221.

[8] See James 1:22.

[9] Colossians 3:16 (NIV 1984).