Free To Love

Transcript

Well, good morning, Saints. If you have your Bibles, I’d like to invite you to open them to 1 Corinthians chapter 8. And if you don’t have a Bible with you, there should be one under the seat in front of you, and you can go ahead and use that. And if you don’t have a Bible at home, we would love for you to take that as a gift, and read it, and use it, and grow in godliness as a result of the power of the Word. Well, we continue our sermon series through 1 Corinthians, Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church. And we’ve reached chapter 8, and this is a beautiful text. This is a text that speaks broadly about Christian liberty, but so much more, as we’ll see as we begin to unpack it. And this interesting thing happens, and you’d think that after so many sermons,

I would have learned my lesson. Every time I’m assigned a text, or I choose a text to preach, and I look at that text, and I read through it, and I think, well, that’s fairly straightforward. I’ve preached on liberty, I’ve preached on legalism, antinomianism, these things before. No biggie, right? And then it ends up being this really brutal, difficult sermon prep, where nothing seems to click, and everything that I read opens up all these new doors that I’m trying to fit things in, and I’m starting to see really just the magnitude of the Word of God, and these truths that are eternally true, not just true for us. And what ended up happening was what always happens. This week was a really lengthy sermon prep, and then the night before I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I couldn’t sleep, and then I woke up this morning, and I’m not feeling all that well,

so I would ask if you could be in prayer for me. My mind is a bit frazzled, and there’s a lot that I want to say, but I really need the Lord’s help to say it well, and I want to honor Jesus and the way that I communicate his truth. I don’t want to just come at this from my perspectives on Christian freedom, but I want us to hear what God has to say about it. So if you have your Bibles open to 1 Corinthians 8, I’d like to invite you to stand for the reading of the Word of God. 1 Corinthians 8, beginning at verse 1. Now concerning food offered to idols, we know that all of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.

But if anyone loves God, he is known by God. Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence, and that there is no God but one. For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. However, not all possess this knowledge, but some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat and no better off if we do. But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.

For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so, by your knowledge, this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brothers stumble, I will never eat meat again, lest I make my brothers stumble. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please be seated.

Free to Love

The title of this morning’s sermon is Free to Love. Friends, how much freedom do we have to do what we want to do? If Scripture doesn’t explicitly forbid something, does that then mean that thing is fair game? What does it mean to be free in regard to some aspect of cultural practice or cultural norms, or maybe even something that’s popular in the broader culture? These questions, they’re not new. As we see in our text, this is something that Christians have been wrestling with in one way or another for almost 2,000 years. In more ways than one, these questions are still being asked by followers of Jesus to this day, all over the world, even in little old Trinity Church of Portland. Throughout church history, faithful Christians have sought to figure out what it looks like to be different from the world. And by asking what it means to be different from the world,

they ask, well, what then is permissible for the Christian? How then should the Christian live? How then should the Christian look, sound, etc.? In America, when theological liberalism, this is theological liberalism, not cultural or political liberalism, but when theological liberalism made its way over to our shores from Germany and from England in the mid to late 1800s, there came a response from the evangelical church, because with theological liberalism, there came questions about the veracity of Scripture, how much we can trust in the miraculous claims of Scripture, how much we actually need the substitutionary atonement of Jesus, and things like this. And so naturally, there was a response from faithful Bible-believing Christians, and what they did is they took these questions being posed by theological liberalism, and they reaffirmed the fundamental beliefs of the Christian faith. And thus, the fundamentalists were born. Initially, this was a response to the rejection of orthodox biblical Christianity,

but then fundamentalism eventually grew to become a sort of caricature of hyper-religious people who would shun any and everything that even remotely looks like the world. And in its unhealthiest stages, fundamentalists would even call associating with people who do those secondary or tertiary things a sin. They did this by designating degrees of separation, how far you need to be from the person doing the thing that you have determined to be a sin. So, let’s say dancing. If dancing is a sin, and you are friends with somebody who dances, well, guilty by association. You’re sinning. The antinomianist who says that details don’t matter, and that we’re free to do what we want so long as Scripture doesn’t explicitly forbid it, and the legalist who would insist on a life of rules or a life of guidelines and extra-biblical prohibitions in order to be seen as a Christian,

both of these sides of the equation get it wrong. Both the hardcore fundamentalists and the theological liberal who seek to create a religion of their own, in a way, are wrong. So, if both of those extremes are wrong, how then are we to live, beloved? How then are we to function? Well, our good God has left us His Word, and He helps us navigate questions such as these, and that’s what we’ll be doing today. We’re going to look at this question of Christian freedom. In Christian freedom, this isn’t just some kind of secondary thought for the Holy Spirit when He was inspiring the writers of the New Testament, but this is an extremely important theme. This is very central to the New Testament. In John 8, 31 and 32, we read, So Jesus said to the Jews who believed in Him, If you abide in My Word, if you are truly My disciples,

you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3, 17, that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And he also writes in Galatians 5, 1, For freedom Christ has set you free. And the list goes on. Our chapter is actually the beginning of a larger section of Paul’s letter. It starts from 8, 1 and it extends over to 11, 1. And it’s this broader section in which Paul will touch on this question of liberty in a number of different ways. Beginning with this text, where he speaks about eating food that was once offered to idols. And so when we read this, the question that we should be asking ourselves is, What’s the issue then? What’s the problem with eating this food? Is this an issue? How do we navigate this cultural phenomenon? Is this relevant for us today where that’s not an issue in Portland, as far as I know?

Knowledge That Puffs Up

Now, to help the Corinthian Christians, the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul walks through this beauty, the beauty of Christian liberty in three steps. And we’re going to look at our text in three different steps. First is knowledge. Second is freedom. And third, love. And so in verses 1 through 3, we’ll look at knowledge. I’ll reread these verses for us. Now, concerning food offered to idols, we know that all of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God. Now, Paul starts this section by touching on knowledge. He starts by speaking about what the Christian man or woman knows. Or maybe what they think they know. What they ought to know. What’s going on with this food being sacrificed to idols?

What’s the issue here? Well, in Corinth, the people living in that time would regularly worship a number of different gods. Not Christians, I mean. The people in the broader culture would worship a whole panoply of gods. There was a god for this and a god for that. And if you need something handled, you have your specific god that would address that issue for you. So whatever you’re going through, there’s a god that can help. There’s a god that can kind of step in and intercede for you, hopefully. So people would go to these temples and they would offer sacrifices to the god of their choice that they thought would help. And these sacrifices were often animal sacrifices or meat sacrifices. And this pagan priest, what he would do is he would offer the meat sacrifice to the god of the worshiper’s choice. Then he’d take a little bit for himself.

And then he’d give some to the temple. And if anything was left over, it would be eaten at the temple or sold off to people that wanted some meat to take home. So the question then comes to these newly converted Christians. Can we eat that meat? Is that an issue? It’s associated with idols. It’s associated with these pagan worship rituals. Is it okay to do that? Can we even go to these temples? If I’m going to get the meat, is it an issue that I’m going to this temple and I’m interacting with this whole process and this whole ecosystem that participates in pagan worship and all of these things? And the thing is that the temple, the meat was not only sold there, but it was often even served there. So people would kind of gather at the temple and they would hang out. So the community would often gather there and they would eat the meat there.

And it would often be sold there almost like a restaurant. And so these Christians are like, do we avoid going where people from our broader community regularly gather? Do we avoid interacting with this whole weird process of false pagan idolatrous worship and this giving money to these priests who are then going to fund the temple? So these are questions that these Christians were wrestling with. And it was a real issue for them. So the Corinthians faced this dilemma. And what they say is we have knowledge. We know stuff. But we’re not really sure what to do here. We’re a little bit conflicted. And the things that these Christians think they know, what Paul is saying in verses 1 and 2, may not actually be as much knowledge as they think they had. Do you see the phrase, all of us possess knowledge, being in quotes?

Well, virtually every scholar that touches on this text is saying that this is something that the Corinthians said about themselves. This isn’t like Paul complimenting them. This is the Corinthians that are like, hey, we know some stuff. And so they’re writing him this letter. And that starts in verse 7, or chapter 7, I’m sorry, at the beginning where Paul starts by responding to different things that they wrote him. And so he’s saying now concerning food offered to idols, this is something that they’re asking him about. And in the context of asking him about what we should do, they make sure to let him know that they know stuff. And this is because the Corinthians, like we talked about at the beginning of this sermon series, they really, really valued knowledge. It was very important to them to not be ignorant. To not be in the know was unacceptable to them.

It’s really important for these people to be recognized as someone who has a place in society more than just kind of mere existence. You’ve kind of posited yourself as a person who offers something to the broader culture. And this extends into the church. These people, even when they’re not sure about what to do, they’re like, but I’m not dumb. I know stuff. I have knowledge. So they’re like, Paul, we know a lot, but we could use your help. And Paul’s response, this is an issue of love, not an issue of knowledge. You can know the right things and you can completely miss the mark. You can know that an idol is nothing and still be sinning and eating that meat. You can know that an idol is nothing and eat the meat and not be sinning. See, the issue is not so much in what you know or in what you do.

Other than those things that God explicitly forbids or explicitly tells us to do. But the issue is an issue of love. How do we interact with the people that God has placed around us? How do we extend the love that we have received from God to the people in our midst? Paul is saying here that these Corinthians think they know a lot and they have this freedom to do this or to do that. And he’s saying love trumps your freedom. Love trumps your knowledge. Love is a much better indicator of just how mature a Christian is rather than how much he knows. Or how well they can speak about their faith. Or how well they can recite verses. Or how well they can recite the thinkers or the theologians or the writers or the pastors of their day. If you know all of those things and if you know the freedoms that you have,

but how that’s practically practiced is that you don’t care about what your freedom and what your knowledge and what your life does to the people around you, you’re missing the mark. Love and knowledge are never at odds with one another, dear friends. They ought to work hand in hand as they do in the mind of God, but where knowledge is greater than love, that knowledge is really not as great as we might think it is. And we’ll discuss this topic of love a little bit more in the third point, but it’s important to note here that if our knowledge doesn’t lead to love, it’s a useless knowledge. It doesn’t accomplish anything. If what we know about God doesn’t change the way that we interact with the world around us, with the people that God has placed into our lives to serve them and to live in community with them,

do we really then understand what we’re learning and what we think we know? If knowledge, dear friend, has caused you to be puffed up, if you become the kind of person who just always has the answer, you always know the exact right thing to say, you may not necessarily know as much as you think you know. And this was the issue with the Corinthians. They had a lot of answers. They had a lot of things to say. They were never short of words. But they didn’t love. And then Paul says this really interesting thing in verse 3. The one who loves God is known by God. Again, what Paul seems to be saying is that the one who thinks he knows everything is likely in the dark, whereas the one who knows as he ought to know, i.e. true knowledge, that person is known by God.

If my knowledge doesn’t make me love God more and make me love people more, do I actually know anything? Do I actually understand anything? What does all of my theological or biblical knowledge actually produce? What does my spiritual growth have to show for it? The right kind of thinking and the right kind of knowledge will always produce love. This will allow one to judge rightly, to see clearly. This will allow us to navigate these sticky situations in a way that actually benefits the people around us, not just to have the right answer. It’s not enough just to know stuff. We need to see clearly. We need this so badly. You see, the Pharisees looked the Messiah in the face. They saw him perform miracles. They heard his teaching. They witnessed God in the flesh living a perfect life before their eyes. And how did they respond?

Freedom in Christ

They murdered him. They killed him because he didn’t fit their system of what? How one ought to live out the law of God. They didn’t kill him because he was an unbeliever. They didn’t kill him because he was just rejecting things. They killed him because he didn’t fit their understanding of what the law of God lived out looks like. They knew the law, but they didn’t really know, did they? Are we guilty of this? If not, are we in danger of this? Being know-it-alls that miss the mark completely. Going from knowledge that the Corinthians had and what that knowledge should produce, Paul then moves on to the freedom that they have in the matter at hand. And this brings us to our second point. Verses 4-6 and then verse 8. Look at these verses with me once again. Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols,

we know that an idol has no real existence and that there is no God but one. For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet there is one God, the Father, for whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. And then jump over to verse 8. Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat and no better off if we do. The Corinthians, just like Christians in every place at virtually all points of history in the church, wanted to better understand Christian liberty. They wanted to better understand how we live this stuff out. In the context of these new believers coming out of paganism and being in a church

with others that have been walking with the Lord for some time now, there arose this tension in their midst. And so they find themselves asking, is doing what we used to do permissible for the Christian? There are certain things, certain cultural practices, certain norms that we’ve become kind of accustomed to. Are those things still okay for the Christians? Do we have to do with all things from our old lives, even the things that may not be bad, even the things that may not be overtly sinful? And we see this in our lives, don’t we, brothers and sisters? A person comes to saving faith, or perhaps someone who’s been walking with the Lord for some time deepens in their understanding of Scripture, deepens in their understanding of who God is, and so they start going deeper and deeper and deeper into their convictions, into why they do what they do,

and they start asking questions. And some of these questions, either from the new believer or from the believer who’s inquiring about their faith, can I still go to blank? Can I eat blank? Or drink blank? Can I listen to or watch blank? And fill in the blank with your choice and whatever. And so Christians, in trying to understand how we’re supposed to live out this life, they start asking this question. And in response, Paul is really pretty clear. He’s basically saying, in regard to food offered to idols, the thing you’re asking about is a non-issue. Why? There is only one true God, and an idol is not a deity. In fact, it is nothing. But as this is in quotes, this is something that the Corinthians clearly already knew, because they were saying these things to Paul themselves. The food is not unclean. These ceremonies are not actual worship.

What pagan priests are doing amount to nothing. So if your conscience is clean in eating the meat, Paul is saying, you’re not sinning in eating it. You’re okay. As far as Christian freedoms go, the Corinthians were free to eat the meat sold in these temples. In verse 8, Paul really drives this point home by saying, you’re not worse off in God’s eyes if you eat it and you’re no better off, or see, holy, if you don’t. Now, there’s a lot more that goes into using our Christian freedom, or abstaining, or there’s a lot more that goes into it rather than is it a sin or is it not. We understand that. But in essence, what Paul is saying, what Paul says, and what’s consistent with his other letters to other churches, is this notion of we need to steer clear of legalism. We need to steer clear of these man-made rules

that would give us a false sense of security or a false sense of standing before God. It’s pretty straightforward, right? So this is where we look at a text like this, and we look at a lot of these secondary or tertiary issues, and it’s pretty straightforward. Well, not quite. When working on this sermon, I came across two different camps that read this text in different ways and how it needs to be interpreted. One says that Paul leaves it up to the Corinthians whether or not eating the meat offered to idols is okay. He’s basically saying they have the freedom to do so, but they should tread carefully so as not to needlessly wound their brothers. That’s camp one. Camp two says that Paul seems to be saying that the Corinthians should not eat the meat. He seems to be telling them that they should avoid this meat,

with the thought being stretched out to chapter 10 where he basically kind of reiterates that thought, the argument being that it is unwise to do so because of the clear association with idolatry and paganism. Now, I do find it a bit ironic that a text that speaks about matters of the conscience and disagreement between different viewpoints brings about different viewpoints and different scholars and different views of reading the very text that speaks about these different viewpoints. Now, full disclosure, I land in the former camp. I think Paul is telling the Corinthians that they are free to eat the meat if their conscience has allowed them to do so and if doing so does not lead their brothers and sisters into sin. And I’ll expand on that in a little bit when we talk about what stumbling actually is. But I think that what Paul is saying is,

look, you have the freedom, freedom in Christ, you have freedom as far as the Word of God doesn’t forbid you from doing so, and so you have access to this thing. But I have a lot of love for my fellow brothers and sisters who would disagree with me, and I just want to tell you if you do disagree with me, there is room in the kingdom for both of us. Now, one more thing to note from these verses, and this is a really cool point when Paul is speaking about freedom. Verse 6 is a fascinating text which points to the equality of God the Father with God the Son. And this is a text that very explicitly and very clearly shows us the deity of Jesus. And this is an incredibly important Christological text for us to know. This is one of those things that, when we’re reading,

it should kind of jump out at us because Paul is saying these things that are, you know, specifically pertain to the question at hand and then he just gives this, like, boom, this, like, deep theological treatise. Freedom in whom? And freedom through whom? And Paul just fleshes that out in a few words in a way that only this Holy Spirit could have inspired him to do. Freedom in Jesus, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. And he would go on in his letter to the Galatians to say this really beautiful thing that I think just connects so well. Who loved me and gave himself for me. And this brings us to our last point. Our knowledge and our freedom are only ever to be practiced in love. And we see this last point in verses 7 and then 9 through 13. I’ll just reread these verses for us.

Love That Builds Up

However, not all possess this knowledge, but some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. And then jump ahead to verse 9. But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so, by your knowledge, this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience, when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat again, lest I make my brother stumble. Later on in this letter, Paul will write a section that would continue to be recited by Christians for almost 2,000 years.

And that’s chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians. This chapter, this beautiful chapter on love, which he ends by saying, So now, faith, hope, and love abide. These three. But the greatest of these is love. And in verse 2 of that chapter, chapter 13, he says, Love is the guiding light which helps us determine how we practice our freedoms, dear brothers and sisters. What we see in these final verses is love for our brothers and sisters. We see not only that, but we see talk about conscience, and we see talk about being a stumbling block. And I thought it was important to include verse 7 in this section, specifically on love, because if I’m to navigate some of these challenging situations, which would pertain to Christian freedoms, or which would pertain to gray zones, I need to know what’s going on with the person to my left or my right.

If I’m going to navigate my freedom, and I’m just doing that knowing what I know and saying that I love people, well, how can I really navigate those things in a loving way, in a way that blesses the people around them if I don’t know the people around me? If I don’t know what’s going on in the life of the brother to my right or the sister to my left, I don’t really know how to love this person. I don’t know how to practice my freedoms. I don’t know how to live out my life and what’s okay and what’s not okay. I need to know if they have a former association with an idol. I need to know if there are people who are weak in certain regards. I need to know if I need to be cautious around people. Or, let’s get a little more specific.

If I’m going to have a beer at dinner, I need to know if the person I’m having the meal with was saved out of alcoholism. And having alcohol at the table would be a huge stumbling block for this person. And I’m practicing my freedom. I know, like, well, I don’t have an issue with this. I don’t ever have more than one. And so it’s not an issue for me. And, you know, I have the freedom in Christ to do these things. But this brother is sitting over here and he’s sweating bullets. Is that loving? What has my knowledge and my conviction and my freedom amounted to if I am just wounding this person and drilling them into the ground and causing this inner turmoil in them in which they think, man, as soon as Andre’s away from this table, that’s it. I’m getting a drink. And that could be the end for that person who’s been struggling

and who’s been dealing with this thing. Love for my brother will use my knowledge and will use my freedom to make decisions that will better serve a person that God places near me. I may know that an idol is not a real thing. I may know that there is only one true God. But the person next to me might not have that deep conviction yet. Paul says, while they are weak, people are in process. God is working out our salvation in each of us. God is working in each of us to draw us closer to himself, to make us more like Jesus. But some of us have been walking with the Lord for 40 years. Some of us have been walking with the Lord for 40 minutes. And the fact of the matter is, if I think that everyone just needs to be at my mark

and be comfortable with where I’m at, that’s not loving. That’s not gracious. That’s not kind. I may have freedom and a clear conscience about eating the meat from the pagan temple, but the person who just joined our church might be incredibly confused about that. And so what now? How will I care for this person? More specifically, how will I love this person who is precious to Jesus? When Paul speaks about not being a stumbling block in verse 9, he’s not saying this in the way that many of us normally think about. This is one of those things that often is just kind of abused in Christian circles. And anything and everything can be kind of propped up to be a potential stumbling block. And when many people use this phrase, this is used to describe not so much something that causes a person to sin,

but really just describes something I don’t like. So if I don’t like something, then it’s a stumbling block for me. And that’s not what Paul is talking about. That’s not what Scripture tells us. This is often weaponized in the church. And this is not what Scripture is teaching us. Scripture is teaching us that when we think about being a stumbling block, we think about, is this going to cause somebody to sin? Is this going to undo the work that they’ve been doing to grow in godliness and to flee from sin and to flee from idolatry and to flee from the things that have driven them away from God? Is this going to send them right back in there? Because if your definition of stumbling block is you listen to this kind of music and I don’t like that kind of music and so you’re causing me to stumble.

I’m a country guy, you listen to hip-hop, you’re causing me to stumble. That’s not how stumbling blocks work. That’s not what Paul is talking about. When Paul speaks about not being a stumbling block, he’s talking about an offense, truly an offense that would lead someone to sin against their own conscience. The conscience is a gift from the Lord to help us stay away from sin. And so if we encourage others to ignore their consciences or if we encourage others to, or God forbid, push somebody to ignore their consciences, what we’re doing is we’re making that person sin and the sin is not even in the act that’s being done. It’s in the fact that there’s the heart that would cause them to push through what God has put in place to keep that person safe. Maybe uninformed, maybe not mature, maybe still weak, but it’s there because that person is in process.

R.C. Sproul, speaking about the conscience, put it like this, if we act against our conscience, we are also guilty of sin. The sin may not be located in what we do, but rather in the fact that we commit an act we believe to be evil. Here the biblical principle of Romans 14.23 comes into play. Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. For example, if a person is taught and comes to believe that wearing lipstick is a sin and then wears lipstick, that person is sinning. The sin resides not in the lipstick, but the intent to act against what one believes to be the command of God. Paul is certainly not saying that if anything you do offends or upsets someone, you can’t do it. That’s not what he’s talking about because if that were the case, the Amish way of life would probably be

the safest way to navigate the world because you just take away any possible offense, any possible anything that could be pointed to and said, well, that’s not good or that’s wrong or that’s against what God has ordained for us. But that’s not what he’s talking about. He’s saying to know who’s around you and to be sensitive with where they are in their walk. Know the brother or sister in your church. Know where they’re at. And if you don’t know, proceed cautiously. Don’t just flaunt your liberty because you know that you’re okay with that, but love the people around you in such a way that you help them grow. You help them mature. And you help them come out in love of that weakness in which they presently stand. Not prodding them, not telling them that’s a silly thing, that’s a silly belief. Help them. Love them.

Be willing to adjust where necessary. Be willing to put your freedoms on hold where necessary. We need to be careful to not prematurely remove the things binding a person’s conscience before they grow in Christ. And we need to not unnecessarily bind their consciences. Again, Sproul addresses this in a really helpful way later on in that same article. The manipulation of conscience can be a destructive force within the Christian community. Legalists are often masters of guilt manipulation, while antinomians master the art of quiet denial. The conscience is a delicate instrument that must be respected. One who seeks to influence the consciences of others carries a heavy responsibility to maintain the integrity of the other person’s own personality as crafted by God. When we impose false guilt on others, we paralyze our neighbors, binding them in chains where God has left them free. When we urge false innocence,

we contribute to their delinquency, exposing them to the judgment of God. Love will always make another way for us to live in community with others. And then consider verse 11 in which Paul says, by your knowledge, and again, here he’s saying by your maturity, by your right to do something, so on, by your knowledge, the weak person is destroyed. Your knowledge, dear saints, unrestrained and unbound with love can cause destruction. Your freedom, your being advanced in your walk can hurt somebody. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Paul, in writing to the Galatians, says this about freedom. For you were called to freedom, brothers, only. Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another. Is this how we think about what we should or shouldn’t do? If I insist on doing something that could harm someone,

I need to ask myself, am I okay with potentially destroying a brother or sister? You need to ask yourself these questions. You need to do an honest self-assessment of your own heart and your own motives in the way that you navigate Christian community. When we press on with our freedoms, indifferent to how this action might be received and indifferent to what it might do to a brother or sister in Christ, what Paul says we’re doing, what God says we’re doing, is that we’re sinning against Christ, in verse 12. The way in which we approach our liberties should be seen not only in our grabbing hold of all of the things that we’re free to do, but also of our freedom to let go of those things for the sake of the people that we love and for their good.

Paul is intentionally pointing to the Corinthians’ love of brother here. When he’s talking about this freedom or lack of freedom, this thing that they should or shouldn’t be doing, he very intentionally just drives the point home to love of brother. Their identity as Christians is now not only wrapped up in their love of Christ, but in loving their brothers and sisters, the ones for whom Christ died. So what’s the solution to these sticky situations? What does Paul say? Well, in verse 13 he says, if my actions cause a brother to sin, I’ll never do it again. He’ll go on to flesh this out in 9.19, the following chapter, where he says, For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. And then again in chapter 10, verse 24, Let no one seek his own good,

but the good of his neighbor. And then again in chapter 10, verse 31, So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Friends, are you catching on? What we should be asking ourselves is, does my life bring people closer to Jesus or push them further away from Him? And the beautiful thing that Paul says here, and this is where I think a lot of people go wrong with this notion of weaker brother and stumbling block and all of these things. The beautiful thing that he says here, I will never eat meat again. Notice that. It’s very, very important. What doesn’t he say? He doesn’t say, Nobody should ever eat meat again. He doesn’t give us more rules to follow. He doesn’t give us more guidelines and more man-made systems by which we can measure, Am I doing okay?

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Living for Others

Am I not doing okay? He’s saying, Because I love my brother, as a matter of personal conviction, as a matter of relationship with this brother, and as a matter of closeness to him, I’m going to decide to do this. And this is how love is practiced. You can’t force other people to love somebody. You can’t make them function in such a way. That only lasts for so long. You can give people a certain set of rules and they might follow them for a while, but if the heart is not driving the living out that way by love for that person, it’s only going to last for so long. Friends, our lives are not our own. Our example is Jesus, who we see in Philippians 2-7, emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. And in the verses that come just before that, Paul writes this to the Christians in Philippi,

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also the interests of others. Love led Jesus to give himself up for us. And love should lead us to freely give things up that would benefit or be a blessing to the brothers or sisters that he has placed around us. As I’ve navigated this text, I’ve really gone back and forth with what to lean into. I think each of us in one way or another are kind of wired and am I wired more like the legalist or am I wired more like the antinomian? Am I wired to be a little bit more free? Or do I function a little bit better in having a lot of rules or having a lot of guidelines? And so as I’ve been trying to navigate

where the Lord wants me to kind of, what he wants me to lean into here, I’ve really struggled. So do I press against this legalistic notion that we need to tell people what to do? Do I press on the antinomian approach, this errant view of Christianity that says we essentially have license to do whatever we want so long as scripture doesn’t explicitly forbid it? And if someone doesn’t like it, that’s their problem. And as I’ve thought and prayed about this, I just keep coming back to how beautiful the Christian life is God’s way and how the only reason these questions are here and the only reason that we can’t seem settled about how should a person dress and what should a person eat and what should a person be doing is because we keep trying to input our own understanding of the gospel

and Christian life into scripture. And we keep trying to use the Bible as a weapon by which we make our religion more prominent. And this is never God’s way. When it’s these bizarre extremes of religious fervor or a desire to create community my own way, this is completely unlike Jesus. He gave up all of his rights. He gave himself up for his enemies. And we struggle with giving up a certain freedom for a brother. He suffered a horrendous death unjustly so that we could have life. So saints, maybe we shouldn’t be so concerned with what we can or can’t do. What’s going on in the dinner plate or the headphones of the person to my left or right or in the closet of a brother or sister in the church, but rather seeking to grow in love for that person and growing closer to them?

See, rules are easy. It’s really easy to tell someone what to do. But love and investment and relationship and going the long haul with somebody, especially if you don’t agree with them on everything, that’s hard. Now I could tell you don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t dress a certain way, don’t listen to secular music. For some, that might be helpful. For some, maybe you need some guidelines and some guardrails while you’re maturing in the faith and maybe we can have that conversation. But for others, what it’ll do is it’ll develop the heart of a Pharisee. And the thing is, following Jesus requires all of me, not just my diet, and it will require all of you. If we see what we’re doing here is a beautiful thing, and it is, this is a beautiful thing, then we’ll gladly embrace each other, weakness and all, and we will seek to bless one another

and care for each other’s souls, even if that means sacrificing to reach that end. Amen? Amen. Would you pray with me? Lord, we need so badly for you to help us. What we’re talking about this morning is impossible from human standards. Just to give up the things that we want to do and the things that we want to be and the lives that we want to live for the good of others seems incredibly foreign and confusing. But Lord, it’s not confusing to you. In your wisdom and in your infinite love for those whom you came to save, you have called us to be the bride of Jesus who would faithfully live out the lives that were called to in your word. That’s a life of love, a life of sacrifice, and a love of service to others, being servants for their sake. Lord, help us with this.

We can’t do it on our own. We want so badly to live these beautiful Christian lives in which the world can look at us and see Jesus, but we need your spirit to work in our hearts to help us to that end. So I ask, would you do a miraculous work in Trinity Church? Lord, you already have. You’ve been so gracious to us. You’ve been so gracious. You’ve blessed us so many ways. But we ask, would you continue to work in the hearts of your people and make us resemble Jesus more and more, make us love one another more and more, make us live closely in community where we serve and care for each other, where we want the person next to me to look more like Jesus? I want so badly for that to be what defines Trinity, but we need your help, Lord,

and we beg you for it. In Jesus’ name and for his glory, amen.