All things are lawful for me, but all things
are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under
the power of any. – 1 Corinthians 6.12
Liberty in Christ is a wonderful thing. There are some folks
who like to teach that holy living is all about does and don'ts and cans and
can'ts. 'Good Christians don’t go to those kinds of places. Good Christians do
certain things. Good Christians would never do certain things.
On the other hand the Bible says here that we have liberty
in Christ – all things are lawful for me. We know that now that we have been
brought to Christ by the law it no longer has any power over us. It was our
schoolmaster, but now we are out from under its authority.
Since the power of the Law is broken all things are indeed
lawful.
So does that we mean we do anything we want? Since
everything is lawful does that mean we a free to do anything at all?
Well, that’s what it says here – but that is not where it
stops. All things may be lawful, but not all things are helpful or expedient. We don’t do whatever we want just because we
can. We are told in another place not to
use our liberty in Christ to serve our own flesh, but that we should use our
liberty as a chance to love each other.
Paul ends this verse with a key to how to handle this
wonderful liberty – ‘all things are lawful for me, but I will not be under the
power of any.’
Now that is a challenge. We are indeed free, but we need to
be careful that nothing that we are free to do controls us. It is easy, incredibly
easy, to get obsessed or controlled by the things we are free to do. There are
a lot of good, harmless, and enjoyable things we are free today. But when those
things run our lives we have taken our liberty too far.
I like to watch sports, there is nothing wrong with that. I
like certain television programmes, nothing wrong with that. I like Facebook
and Twitter, nothing wrong with that.
But if any of those things have power over me, then there is
a problem.
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