”’Everything is permissible for me,’ but not everything is beneficial. ‘Everything is permissible for me,’ but I will not be mastered by anything. ‘Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food,’ and God will do away with both of them. However, the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” (vv. 12-13)

Let’s talk a bit about Christian freedom:

Are you, in fact, freed from many of the strictures and presuppositions of legalistic religion? Yes. There are more than a few good biblical boundaries in place—for instance, prohibiting drunkenness—but extrabiblical absolutism is rendered irrelevant under grace.

In other words, Christians are free. We, so long as the Bible doesn’t clearly prohibit a thing, may partake of it under the New Covenant.

But! Always remember that the Corinthian church—a church that fell into every kind of division, immorality, and shame—leaned on those same arguments on the way. They claimed a permissive freedom—and they strayed. They embraced things that became their masters, and they got what you get when you are governed by your wants.

Is that who you want to be? How you want your church to be known?

Everything might be permissible for the believer, but it might not be good. Don’t let the thing you felt free to do into the driver’s seat. If Christ is your Master, then the pursuit of purity will prove more freeing than anything else. And your church’s witness will endure strongly because of it.

— Tyler