The Bondage of Freedom
Tom Shrader works through 1 Corinthians 8, where Paul addresses eating meat sacrificed to idols as a case study in balancing Christian freedom with love for weaker believers. The core tension is that mature believers may have full knowledge that a practice is permissible, yet must weigh whether exercising that freedom causes a brother or sister with a more tender conscience to stumble into sin. Shrader closes by pressing listeners past legalism and license toward a harder question: not 'can I do this?' but 'should I, and what does it cost others?'
“Knowledge may tell us that something is perfectly acceptable, but love will tell us that because it's not acceptable to a fellow believer's conscience, we should not take advantage of our freedom.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Life Management
Recorded: 2001 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 40 min
Themes: freedom, conscience, love, legalism, unity, stumbling block, discernment, gray areas, new believer, struggling with legalism, young adult, navigating conflict, mature believer, parent, questioning church rules, recovering from religious background
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, 1 Corinthians 4:6, 1 Corinthians 4:18, 1 Corinthians 5:2, 1 John 4:19, Ephesians 4, Psalm 115, John 14:6
Theological Themes: christian liberty, weaker brother, sanctification, adiaphora, 1 corinthians 8, moral responsibility, spiritual maturity, license vs legalism
Full Transcript
Introduction: A Lesson Without Easy Answers
Turn with me, if you would, to 1 Corinthians chapter 8. This has turned out to be a really hard lesson, and I am convinced the reason for it is very simple: I cannot give you concrete answers. I am not able tonight to tell you what to do. If we are looking at adultery, do not do it. Fornication, do not do it. Worship, do it. Lying, stealing, cheating, do not do it. But that is not the kind of issue we have before us tonight.
Paul is going to talk about eating meat that has been offered to idols. We look at that and say, why would we even waste time with this? This is not even something we think about. There has not been a person, in ten years, who has come into my office and said, "I am really struggling — there is a temple down the street and we are smoking meat, and I just cannot work through this." That does not come up. But the principle does.
The principle is this. There are people in the church at Corinth who look at meat sacrificed to idols and say, "It is just meat. Eat it." There are others — Paul describes them as weak — whose conscience is violated if they eat that meat. They come out of a pagan background, and for them to eat that meat thrusts them back into all of that. It violates their conscience.
Here is what Paul does as he addresses this. He is going to say the problem is with the weaker brother, but the answer is in the mature brother. And here is how it applies to us. Is it okay for a Christian to go to an R-rated movie? Is it okay for a Christian to have a glass of wine with dinner? Is it okay for a Christian to dance?
In my research for this, I came across a phrase I had never heard before: is it okay for a Christian to use "the devil's grease"? That would be lipstick. I will answer that one — use it. Ladies too, if need be. I am liberated. We laugh at some of these, but we had a man who was raised in an environment that said if you play pinball, you will go to hell. And then we get into more sophisticated and subtle issues. What about trick-or-treating? Is it okay for my kids to go? There are people who will not have a Christmas tree because of its pagan roots. How do we resolve these things?
The Challenge of Principles Over Answers
I am going to tell you plainly — this is the second time I have said it already — I am not going to tell you how to settle this tonight. I am going to give you principles. I will try to be helpful, and on certain of these issues I will tell you how I look at them in my own life, and perhaps that will be useful. But you are going to have to work these things through.
What has become very clear to me over the course of the day — this is the fifth time I have taught this lesson — is that those who are older in the faith especially are asking: how long do I have to wait for the weaker brother? At what point does the weaker brother's lack of knowledge become Pharisaism? Maybe they are simply being legalists. We love answers. I am convinced that one of the things so attractive about the way God uses East Valley Bible Church is that we say, "This is the truth, that is it." We are eager to do that. But I cannot do that for you tonight. What I can do is give you the principles, help you see what the passage says, and let you apply it in your own life. We may even disagree on how you apply it, and that is okay.
The Text: 1 Corinthians 8:1–3
Here we go. 1 Corinthians chapter 8, beginning in verse 1. Paul says this: "Now concerning things sacrificed to idols." That phrase — "things sacrificed to idols" — is actually one word in the Greek, meaning literally "idol sacrifices." Paul continues: "We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies. If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know." If you think you have arrived, then you know you are in trouble. "But if anyone loves God, he is known by God."
Paul opens by saying we have enough knowledge — between God's Word and what we observe around us — to work this out. But he immediately qualifies that knowledge with a warning about arrogance, and redirects us toward love.
Historical Background: Idol Worship in the Greco-Roman World
Let me give you a brief history lesson. In Greek and Roman culture, the people were polytheists. They believed in many gods and worshipped them in a variety of ways. They had gods for every circumstance, every occasion, every need — a god of war, a goddess of love, a goddess of justice, a god of travel, and so on. Worship of these gods typically involved going to a temple and bringing a food sacrifice as an offering.
That sacrifice would have one of three destinies. It would either be burned as part of the sacrifice, given to the priest as part of his compensation, or sacrificed and then taken home and eaten. Part of what worshippers were doing was not only praising the gods but also addressing their fear that demons were constantly trying to invade their bodies through contaminated food. They believed that by sacrificing the food, the demons would be driven out of it, and then they could eat it safely.
For the Christian living in that culture, it was virtually impossible to avoid this issue altogether. This was not a matter of mere personal preference. If they went to a wedding banquet, they would be served food that had been offered to idols.
Knowledge Without Love
If they went to somebody's house, it would not at all be uncommon for them to be offered food that had been sacrificed to idols. This food was all over. The priest had so much food that he couldn't possibly consume it, so what he would do was sell it. What people would typically bring for sacrifice would be the best of foods, so if you wanted the best steak in town, the place to get it was at the meat market right next to the temple.
So that is the issue. Paul says, "We've got this. We understand this." He is going to tell us what this knowledge is. Here is what he is going to say: we know these idols aren't real, we know these are false idols, we know that meat is meat is meat and we can eat it. That is what we know.
That word "know" is a key word. Seven times Paul uses the word "know," "knowledge," or "known." But let me tell you something about knowledge, Paul says: knowledge makes you arrogant if it is not mixed with love. And arrogance was an ongoing problem in this church.
Look back at chapter 4, verse 6. Paul has been talking to them about Apollos and himself. He says, "Now these things, brethren, I have figuratively applied to myself and Apollos for your sake, that in us you might learn not to exceed what is written, in order that no one of you might be arrogant." Chapter 4, verse 18: "Now some of you have become arrogant." Chapter 5, verse 2: "And you have become arrogant." All through this book, we see that one of the problems in Corinth is that they are an arrogant, prideful people.
Paul is not saying in any way, shape, or form that there is something wrong with knowledge. Knowledge is good, but it needs to be seasoned with love. Love is what softens that knowledge.
Known by God, Called to Love
He says in verse 3, if anyone loves God, he is known by Him. That word "known" means more than informational — it means known in a relational way. If we love God, it is because we have a relationship with Him. And we know from 1 John, chapter 4, verse 19, that we love Him because He first loved us.
Paul says, here is the thing: there ought to be in the Christian life this characteristic of not just knowledge, but also love. The love we talk about is the love of God, and from this love of God flows our love for one another.
A Reminder at the Ballgame
Last night Susan and I went to the baseball game. We are going in, seven o'clock on a Saturday night, and there is a guy over here on what seemed like his fiftieth beer. There is all this stuff going on. And I am thinking to myself, what is wrong with these people?
I will tell you what is wrong with them — they are pagan. Why wouldn't they act like that? Some of you have grown to the point where you see non-believers as almost an interference in your life. They are obstacles; they get in the way. You know why? Because they are hard to deal with. They are dirty and sloppy and they do not behave the way you would like them to behave. But how am I going to be salt in life if I am not with them? That is the whole point.
One author writes this about this passage:
> If you love God, you're responding to the love of God for you. That's the appeal of the apostle. Do not try to force yourself into thinking of somebody else. Give yourself to reviewing what God has done for you. Think of the thousands of times a day He's manifested love and concern and faithfulness for you. It will begin to make you feel humbly grateful. When you do this, you will then be able to recognize that other people need to be treated with as much patience as God treats you. You'll begin to be more understanding of their point of view. Therefore, that's the key to carrying out this kind of exhortation. You learn to love God because He first loved you.
I am watching these people and saying this is a pathetic way to behave. It was as though God said, "Hey — that is the way you are."
What Grace Has Done
A long time ago, before I was a Christian, I was at a Suns game and I was riding one of the players so hard that he came into the stands after me. It was a great reminder last night. I thought, that is me. What is the difference between me and that guy on his fiftieth beer? God's grace.
I had somebody in my office this week, and they were asking me a series of questions. One of them, and I am paraphrasing, went something like this: "When I met you in 1986 and first got to know you, you were unapproachable and uncomfortable to talk to, hard to communicate with — but I don't see you that way now. What happened?" It was not meant in a critical way, but it makes me really wonder what in the world I must have been like in 1986. It must have been awful.
I tried to answer, and I said that I think part of what God did in my life was bring me into East Valley Bible Church. Before that, all I did was teach. If all you do is teach, it is really easy — if all you have to do is say, "Here is what it says," that is easy. But when you have to walk alongside somebody and walk with them, it is a lot harder.
That is when I hear guys who are on a search committee for a church looking for a pastor, and they say, "What should we look for?" And I say, "Well, what are you looking for?" They say, "We're looking for a guy that's good up front." Jerry Seinfeld is good up front. I think you want something deeper than that. I think you want somebody who is biblical.
He said, I realize how close we are. And I said, I'm going to push back on that gently. We are not close at all. We use the same words, but if you open the dictionary, we come up with totally different definitions. So I said, we're actually quite far apart. So Paul is saying, listen, if you know this stuff, if you're mature, you understand idols aren't real and there's only one true God, then eating meat sacrificed to an idol is no big deal. You're free. You've got the knowledge. Eat whatever you want.
But not all have this knowledge. For some, who have been accustomed to the idol until now, eat food as if it were sacrificed to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. So he says, here's the problem. Somebody who just walked out of that idol worship, somebody who was just in that pagan temple, now they're a Christian and they see you eating this meat. You may be free, but there's something happening to that person's conscience. He doesn't say they're weaker in faith. He doesn't say they're less intelligent. He's saying they're weaker in their conscience.
The Danger of Knowledge Without Love
Now, here's what he says next, and this is the punch line, this is where we've been going. But food will not commend us to God. We are neither the worse if we do not eat, nor the better if we do eat. He's saying, this is not a salvation issue. You eat this meat, you're not better with God. You don't eat this meat, you're not worse with God. This is not a salvation issue.
But take care lest this liberty of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. He says, here's the problem with your liberty. Your liberty may trip up somebody else. And he says, for if someone sees you, who have knowledge, dining in an idol's temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be strengthened to eat things sacrificed to idols? And through your knowledge, he who is weak is ruined, the brother for whose sake Christ died. He's saying, do you understand what you're doing? You're using your freedom as an occasion to trip up a brother for whom Christ died.
And that is the issue Paul has been driving at this whole time. Knowledge puffs up, love builds up. The question is not what do I have the freedom to do. The question is what does love require me to do. And that's the bondage of freedom. Your freedom is now in bondage to love, and that's exactly where it should be.
Freedom Bound by Love
See, we live in a culture that says freedom means I can do whatever I want. And in one sense that's true of the believer. You are free. But the mature believer understands that freedom is not the end of the story. Love is the end of the story. And if my freedom causes my brother to stumble, then I've missed the whole point.
I'll give you an illustration of this. I had a guy in a church I used to pastor and he was a recovering alcoholic. And there were people in that church who loved to have wine at their dinner parties. And they were not wrong to do that. There's nothing in scripture that forbids drinking wine. Jesus made wine. Paul told Timothy to use a little wine for his stomach. These people were not in sin. But when they invited this guy to their dinner parties and put wine on the table, do you know what happened to him? He struggled. And I had to have a hard conversation with those folks. I said, you are free. I'm not saying you're not free. But I'm asking you, is your freedom worth more to you than this brother?
And that's exactly what Paul is asking the Corinthians. Is your freedom worth more to you than this brother for whom Christ died? That's the question. And the mature answer, the love answer, is no. No, my freedom is not worth more than my brother. And so I will voluntarily lay down my freedom for the sake of love.
The Conscience of the Weak Brother
Now let's be careful here, because Paul is making a specific point about conscience. He's not saying that the weak brother is right in his thinking. The weak brother is wrong. The idol is nothing. The meat is fine. The weak brother has an incorrect understanding. But his conscience is real, and his conscience is defiled when he violates it, even if he's violating it over something that is objectively permissible.
This is a very important distinction. Paul is not saying we must cater to every wrong idea somebody has in the church forever. He's not saying the mature believer must permanently live at the level of the least mature believer in the room. What he's saying is that love is patient. Love walks alongside. Love does not use its freedom as a weapon or as a badge. Love considers the other person.
And here's the thing about conscience that we need to understand. You cannot violate your conscience without damaging yourself spiritually, even if your conscience is wrong about the particular issue. So when you, with your correct knowledge, pressure or influence a weaker brother to do something his conscience is telling him not to do, you are not helping him grow. You are harming him. You are defiling his conscience. And Paul says that brother is ruined through your knowledge.
Sinning Against Christ
And then Paul says something absolutely stunning. And sinning against the brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. You sin against Christ. Not just against your brother. When you use your freedom carelessly and wound a weak brother, you have sinned against the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for that brother.
That should stop us cold. I mean, that should just stop us right in our tracks. Every time I am tempted to say, well, that's their problem, they need to grow up, I've got my freedom, Paul says, wait a minute. Do you understand that brother, that sister, that person you are so casually dismissing with your freedom? Christ died for them. And when you wound them, you wound Him.
That is the weight of what Paul is saying here. And this is why knowledge without love is so dangerous. It is not neutral. It is not just unhelpful. It is destructive. It wounds people. And when it wounds people for whom Christ died, it wounds Christ.
Laying Down Liberty
So Paul ends this section with a personal statement. He says, therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, that I might not cause my brother to stumble. Now, Paul is not making a universal law here. He's not saying no Christian can ever eat meat. He's making a point about his own posture. He is saying, I would rather give up a legitimate freedom permanently than cause a brother to stumble.
That is radical. That is countercultural. That was countercultural in the first century and it is absolutely countercultural in the twenty-first century. We do not think like this. We think, here are my rights, here is my freedom, and you need to accommodate yourself to me. Paul flips it entirely. He says, I accommodate myself to you, for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of love, for the sake of Christ.
And that is the bondage of freedom. You are free in Christ. Genuinely, truly free. No one can take that from you. But love takes that freedom and voluntarily binds it to the good of others. And that is not a diminishment of your freedom. That is the fullest expression of it. That is what it looks like to be a mature believer who has moved from knowledge to love.
The Reality of Idols
Paul's point is that there is one God — not these false idols. Psalm 115 says it plainly: idols are silver and gold, the work of man's hands. They have mouths, but they cannot speak. They have eyes, but they cannot see. Ears, but they cannot hear. Noses, but they cannot smell. They have hands, but they cannot feel. They have feet, but they cannot walk. They cannot make a sound with their throat. These gods that people worship — small g — are not real. They don't exist. They have no power. Don't be distracted by them.
The Weaker Brother
Paul then gets into the heart of the matter. Verse 7 says, "However, not all men have this knowledge." He is not talking about all men in the universe — he is talking about believers. Not all believers see this as clearly. Some, being accustomed to the idol until now, eat food as if it were sacrificed to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. That word *defiled* means a conscience that has been ignored or violated.
Here is what was happening. These believers looked at meat sacrificed to idols and could not see it as just meat. For them, it was something bigger than that. It pulled them back into the whole world of pagan worship. They were weak. It became a matter of conscience for them — indeed, even a matter of sin.
John MacArthur writes: "Paul's primary point in this passage is that anyone who causes such a weaker brother to defile his conscience and his faith helps lead that brother into sin. Knowledge may tell us that something is perfectly acceptable, but love will tell us that because it's not acceptable to a fellow believer's conscience, we should not take advantage of our freedom."
Food Does Not Commend Us to God
Paul is not struggling to figure this out. Look at verse 8: "But food will not commend us to God." That word *commend* means to place near, to bring beside, to present us to. This food is not going to make us acceptable to God — whether we eat it or whether we don't. It simply does not matter. That is not the issue.
Paul's position is clear. He understands that these are idols, that these are false gods, that they have no power. The whole thing is irrelevant. Food is food is food. It doesn't condemn you if you don't eat it. It doesn't sanctify you if you do. It's just food.
Liberty as a Stumbling Block
However, verse 9 says: "But take care lest this liberty of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak brother." Be careful what you do with this freedom, because there may be brothers who cannot handle it. "If someone sees you, you who have knowledge, dining in the idol's temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be strengthened to eat things sacrificed to idols?"
The New Living Translation puts it this way: "You must be careful with this freedom of yours. Do not cause a brother or sister with a weak conscience to stumble. You see, this is what can happen. Weak Christians who think it's wrong to eat this food will see you eating in the temple of an idol. You know there's nothing wrong with it, but they will then be encouraged to violate their conscience by eating food that's been dedicated to this idol."
This conscience — this instrument of the Holy Spirit — is not tuned the same in every believer. Those with knowledge understand it is just food. The weaker brother is still entrapped in the old associations, and that weakness has to factor into how the stronger believer behaves. Paul says he should not let his liberty become a stumbling block to others.
"For through your knowledge he who is weak is being ruined." He sees you do it, assumes it must be acceptable, and goes ahead and eats — all while his conscience is telling him he cannot do this, that it is thrusting him back into everything he left behind. Paul concludes: "Thus, by sinning against the brethren and wounding their weak conscience, you sin against the Lord." You are leading that person into sin.
The Principle and Its Application Today
So here is the principle — another of Paul's conclusions: "Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, that I might not cause my brother to stumble."
For us today, none of us are wrestling with whether to eat meat sacrificed to idols. But there are issues we face in our lives that can be stumbling blocks for others, even when we have full knowledge. Take drinking as an example. Scripture is very clear: do not get drunk with wine. No one comes asking whether it is acceptable to get drunk on a Friday night — that one is easy. The real question is this: is it all right to have a glass of wine at dinner? Scripture says don't get drunk with wine, but Paul's instruction goes further. Don't let your liberty become a stumbling block. Paul himself understood that he had the freedom to eat that meat, but if it was a stumbling block to his brother, he would not eat it.
A Complicated Issue
Here is what Paul does not do, and it is worth noting carefully. Paul does not turn to the weaker brother and say, "Get it figured out." That raises its own difficult question: at what point does the weaker brother's behavior become legalism? These are the sub-issues that make this passage genuinely difficult. This is not a clean-cut, black-and-white situation. It is a complicated issue.
The Freedom to Abstain
I don't drink. I'll give you three reasons. Number one, I always ended up in jail. As a non-believer, I would get in trouble all the time. There was the time at the game where I was all over this guy, on him so hard. I'm in about the fifth row and he's four rows up, and all of a sudden it occurs to me that this guy could kill me. They finally get him away, and I was liquored up and always in trouble. That was as a pagan.
Now I'm a Christian, and I have two reasons I don't drink. Number one, I have two daughters. I know the day is going to come when they say to me, "Is it all right for me to have a drink?" If I'm going to have a drink myself, I'm going to have to sit down with them and say, "Well, yeah, but let me tell you something — you cannot have a drink." And they're going to say, "Dad, you have one." Then I say, "You don't understand, you're not old enough," to which they're going to say, "I'm old enough to die in Vietnam, but I'm not old enough to have a beer." That is a loser conversation. You are taking an idiot position.
Do I have the freedom to drink? Yeah, no problem. But there is one more reason, and it is a bigger reason.
The Weight of Another Person's Struggle
For some of you, alcohol would be a struggle. If you saw me having a drink, you might be tempted to drink again, or your faith might be shaken. Thursday is a great example for me. I'm done with my last class at one o'clock, and imagine you come into Mikayo's around 1:30 on a Thursday afternoon and there I am having a chicken quesadilla and a margarita.
I know exactly what's going to happen. You can't wait to get to your cell phone. You'd say something like, "It was 1:30 in the afternoon, and he was there, and I'm not sure — I don't know if it was his first margarita or not." That's why I don't even get into the virgin piña colada situation, because if you come in and you don't know what's in the glass, you're not going to say, "Let me taste that." You're going to make a judgment from across the room, and you're going to judge me in the harshest possible way. That's your dark side. That's the way it is, and that's the truth.
My girls are 19 and 21, and I'm pretty confident they have never had a drink or even tasted the stuff. Maybe I'm wrong — maybe they have. But I don't know if someday one of them is having a bad day, and all of a sudden she has a beer, and then another one, and then another. I don't know where they're going to go with that. So how do I avoid that down cycle? I don't drink it.
Am I telling you that you shouldn't drink? No, I'm not telling you anything. I'm not even aware that we have a staff policy here at church on that matter.
Principles for Evaluating Gray Areas
What's the principle? We see it play out in so many different ways. I had a friend who was struggling with whether he and his wife should go see a certain movie. He said, "We shouldn't be seeing this movie. We have no business seeing this movie." His conscience was telling him to get out of there. Just then the movie let out, and out came his pastor. His wife said, "Listen, if he can see it, we can see it." And so into the movie they went.
He's sitting in there saying, "I shouldn't be in this movie." I'm not making a judgment about whether he should or shouldn't have been there. But I know this — it's a pretty good parallel to what we're looking at. His conscience said don't go, but he saw someone he admired who seemed to say it was okay, and now he's inside with his conscience violated. This is really hard stuff.
So let me give you three simple principles for how you start to evaluate these things on your own.
Three Principles
Number one: what is permissible for one person may not be for another. That is not a double standard. What it means is that for some people a particular thing is going to be a struggle, and for others it isn't. I need to understand that my freedom may present a problem for somebody else.
Number two: when you are trying to formulate a view on these things, you need to use both knowledge and love. Knowledge tends to make you arrogant. You will look down on others and feel superior to them. Love brings a sense of compassion, and it will soften and probably modify your behavior. What love does is pull you out of what is right or best for you and cause you to ask what is okay for somebody else, and how will I actually be viewed by them?
Number three: I have no right to exercise my freedom at the expense of another person.
The Danger of Extremes
Here is the tension when we look at something like this. We like extremes. We are going to go one of two ways — we are going to go to legalism, or we are going to go to license. John MacArthur talks about legalism, and here is what he writes: legalism lives by the rules rather than by the spirit. Legalists classify everything as either good or bad, black or white, whether the Bible mentions it or not. They develop exhaustive lists of dos and don'ts.
The Trap of Extremes
Lists of dos and don'ts — doing the things on the good list and avoiding the things on the bad list — that is their idea of spirituality, no matter what the inner person is like. Their lives are controlled by the law, not by the Spirit. Refraining from doing things is not spiritual. Walking in the Spirit is spiritual. Legalism stifles liberty, stifles conscience, stifles the Word, stifles the Holy Spirit.
That is what legalism does, and the troubling thing is that we like it. That is why so many people are frustrated today. They want to be told, "Do this, don't do that." They want that certainty.
So there is one extreme — legalism. The other is license. License says, "Hey, I'm forgiven. If I do this, will God forgive me? Yes? Then I'm off." And most of us are drawn to the extremes.
I have never been big on moderation. The only thing I have ever done in moderation in my life is work. Everything else I have done to excess — that is the way I have lived. In the old days, the guys at the office would say, "Schrade, you want to stop and have a beer?" I would say, "Here is what I will do: I will stop and get hammered, or I will go home. I have no interest in having a beer — which one do you want?" The only time I am ever in balance in my life is when I am swinging from one extreme to the other, and there is that one moment when I catch balance on the way across. That is the only balance I know.
Living in the Tension
We like the extremes because balance hangs in the tension, and we do not want tension — we want answers. But the truth is, I do not have a singular answer for all of this. Is it okay to have a cigar? I don't know — what is the response going to be to the people around you?
Here is something we are hearing a lot about lately: yoga. Is it all right to participate in yoga? We are getting many questions about this because of the Eastern mysticism associated with it. To me, you are just over in the corner grunting and stretching, but if somehow that leads to burning candles and Eastern meditation, then you had better think carefully. And as we laugh at that, you need to know that somebody sitting next to you may be genuinely struggling with it. Just this morning, someone came up and asked, "My doctor has recommended acupuncture — what about that?" The list goes on and on.
What you need to use is biblical principles and common sense. The problem is that common sense is not so common anymore, and people do not like to live in that tension and struggle through it. One of the mothers leaving today asked her teenager what the lesson was about, and the teenager said, "The lesson was don't drink." That is not the lesson. The lesson is that you have to figure this thing out.
Principles Over Consistency
You have to wrestle with these questions. How about certain movies? How about Easter eggs and Christmas trees? Ray Stedman talks about people who, because of pagans in northern Germany who decorated trees during the winter solstice, refuse to have Christmas trees. He points out that if they are going to be consistent, they ought not use the days of the week either, because those are named for pagan gods — Sunday, Moon Day, Thor's Day. In fact, he goes on to note that the names of the months are pagan names as well. January is named for the Roman god Janus, the two-faced god who looked backward over the old year and forward to the new. You have to use your head on this. You have to figure these things out.
What you need to remember, over and over again, is that there are guiding principles. Those of you who understand this freedom are to exercise it very cautiously, and the driving force in your conclusion ought to be: what about the other person?
For some people, these are real issues. And I will acknowledge something I mentioned at the beginning — at what point does the weaker brother need to come to this conclusion on his own? I honestly do not know; the text does not say. What Paul does say is this: "If food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again." We are going to have to draw some conclusions, and what will drive you to frustration is that being perfectly consistent will take you to absurdity. You have to figure that out on your own.
The Right Question
You need to take the Word of God and ask the Spirit of God to apply it to your heart. You have to ask the tough questions. The question for me is not, "Can you have a drink?" That is not the question. It is not, "Can you see that movie?" The question is, "Should you?" Not, can you — should you?
A great deal of our time is consumed figuring out what our rights are, when the real question is what we ought to do. What is the point of having that drink, and what is it costing you? What does it cost you to go to that movie? You have to figure those things out. Some of it is frivolous, and what is frivolous to you may be significant to someone else — and that is exactly why this is so hard. That is why this has been a difficult series of lessons.
Freedom Used Wisely
God has given us great freedom. But from the Apostle Paul we gain this insight: we use our freedom very sparingly, and never at the expense of another. We avoid legalism — that list of dos and don'ts.
Did you understand that for the person Paul was describing, this was not a legalistic battle? They were struggling in their heart over what was right.
Walking in Wisdom Together
They weren't trying to please God through some list of do's and don'ts — they were struggling, and their knowledge wasn't full. So we educate, we love, and we put those things together.
Father, we confess to You, these are hard issues for us. We can't land on one position and stand there and say, "This is it for everybody." So God, we ask You for wisdom, and understanding, and knowledge. We know that two of us can look at this and arrive at different conclusions.
But it's not important tonight to figure out what the position is for everybody else. The question now is: God, what would You have me do? God, how would You have me live?
God, put in our hearts a spirit and a willingness and a desire to yield our lives — even though we're free — to yield them to You. To be willing to not do everything we can, but to ask the question: should we do it?
God, we bring that to You. We ask Your Spirit to open our eyes to see it. We pray that in Jesus' name. Amen.