Not Under the Power of Any (part 1)

INTRODUCTION:

He had just gotten saved a couple years ago, and he was really thankful, because he was out from the bondage of sin he had lived in. The town where he lived was pretty rough, prostitution and drunkenness were accepted and prevalent vices. Now he was going to church and growing in spiritual maturity. The church was growing too, and new people were coming all the time. There was a woman who started teaching in the church; he liked her teaching style so he soon began to stick with her class being amazed by some of the things she said. Some of her teaching confused him, but what she said appealed to him and soon it started making sense. She talked a lot about Christian liberty and always had a verse or two to back up what she said. Like many others in that church he soon began to practice what she was teaching, and soon after that he found himself back in bondage…back to the temple prostitutes and idolatry. Except now his soul was troubled more than ever. He was part of the church at Thyatira (read Revelation 2:18-29).

This Jezebel was a false prophet who like her father the devil twisted and changed the Word of God, maybe even our text for today, 1 Corinthians 6:12. By doing so, she “seduced Christ’s servants” (Rev 2:20) and many young men were led astray, back into sin, all in the name of “Christian liberty.”

In our study of Church 101 we started with Christ’s assessment of the 7 churches in Rev 2-3. Most of them Jesus found lacking. Not because they weren’t busy, but because their love for Him had faltered, and then their obedience. Remember, Jesus tells His disciples, “If you love Me, then obey My commands” (John 14:21; 15:10). Some churches had compromised the truth, some (like Thyatira) corrupted it, and other churches were dead. We went from Rev 2-3 to 1 Corinthians. In the church at Corinth we see the recipe for the compromise, corruption and death of a church. They were clearly to the point of carnal living (1 Corithians 3:1), having their sin while “playing church.” It led to deep rooted division, pride, and open sin. Sounds just like the bar down the street, not what a church is supposed to be!

Our title this morning is “Not Under the Power of Any.” There are a couple things I say often, when it comes to Bible study it is “context, context, context.” One of the easiest ways to twist and change God’s Word is to take verses and statements out of context! Satan does it all the time; he even tried it on Jesus! That soon leads the church down the path of compromise, corruption, death. Today’s passage is one of the most abused and misused passages of the Bible in my opinion. First Corinthians 6:12 says twice, “All things are lawful for me…” Take that phrase by itself and you have got yourself ripe for heresy. Today we’ll see what the Spirit meant when Paul used that phrase. Guess what will help us and keep us from heresy…context, context, context!

(NOTE: This message was meant to cover 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, but we didn’t make it out of verse 12, so the rest will come after Father’s Day.)

NOT UNDER THE POWER OF ANY:
The Standard (Read 6:12-13)
“All things are lawful for me…” Question: are we even talking about Christian liberty here? Is Paul saying that as a believer I can do anything I want, even though some things are not helpful and as long as I don’t let them have power over me? No. Think about it, every person who gets into an addiction goes in thinking they are in total control, that it does not have power over them. Whether it’s drugs, alcohol, lust, anger, gossip, co-dependency, unforgiveness, etc, eventually we realize that those things to have power over us.

Again, are we talking about Christian liberty in this passage? Drop down to 1 Corinthians 6:15, 18, and back to 6:9-10. The context immediately before and after the phrase “All things are lawful for me” is all about what not to do. “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not receive the kingdom of God (followed by a list of things that God says are unrighteous); forbidding making our bodies “members of a prostitute,” and telling us to “flee sexual immorality” does NOT sound like it goes well with “All things are lawful for me” does it? If all things are lawful, there should be no restrictions.

Nothing in 1 Corinthians 1-6 is about Christian liberty, instead the Holy Spirit is rebuking the church at Corinth for living like the world as shown most clearly by their fighting and willingness to accept open sin (sin that even the unsaved in Corinth would not do – 1 Cor 5:1). Their philosophy of all things being covered by Christian liberty is what led them to earning this rebuke from the Holy Spirit!

In 1 Corinthians 6:12, Paul is not establishing a principle to live by. He is not arguing that “all things ARE lawful to me” It is actually rhetoric…probably a common saying among the people in that church. They were using that idea as an excuse to sin and return to the old desires they had before they were “washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:11). Just check these other verses the Spirit used Paul to write… Romans 6:15-23; 7:21-24; 8:1-8; and then Hebrews 10:26-29 also. “All things are lawful for me” is not a theological principle telling us it’s okay to do anything we want to do becuase that would be in sharp contrast to everything else here and in the NT. This understanding is bolstered by the fact that it is repeated and refuted twice…“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.” It is Paul using their own phrase or ideology on them, and immediately refuting it.

The topic of Christian liberty does come up later in this letter, AFTER the obvious change of topics in 1 Corinthians 7:1. The interesting thing is, what does it say when Christian liberty is brought up? That I have the liberty to do anything I want? NO! Quite the contrary. Look at 1 Corinthians 8:4-6. It is talking about eating food offered to idols and that they knew the idol was “nothing;” it was just a chunk of wood or stone and had no power to do anything. So big deal, right? Well, keep reading, because in 1 Corinthians 8:9-13 it says that if our Christian liberty causes a weak brother to stumble then we have sinned against our brother, and against Christ! THUS, forget the liberty…give it up (whatever “it” is)!!!

That just sounds too hard, too demanding, I want to do what I want; I want my Christian liberty! That is certainly the battle cry of many Christians these days. It’s all about me, and that sounds kind of selfish doesn’t it? That kind of thinking is so totally backwards from what Christianity is all about; we aren’t supposed to demand our way and our rights, we are supposed to look out for the best of others. Isn’t that exactly what was said in 1 Corinthians 6:7 were the solution to all the in-fighting was this: “Why do you not rather accept wrong? Why do you not rather let yourselves be cheated.”

But let’s see keep making sure we’re not getting off track. Let’s go to 1 Corinthians 10 because these exact words of 6:12 are used again in 10:23, “all things are lawful for me.” The topic here is again food offered to idols and fleeing idolatry. Here the people in the church at Corinth are clearly told not to eat food offered to idols. Wait a second…didn’t it just say that idols were nothing, so it was okay (8:4-6)? Go back to 1 Corinthians 8 and read the context in 8:1-4. Notice all the times the word know/knowledge is used? Underline them. Now follow what is being said, “We know we have all knowledge.” And the next line is, “Knowledge puffs up” that is, makes you prideful. Then it says, if you think you know it all, you know nothing that you ought to know. THEN it says right after that, “we know that an idol is nothing…” Do you think that there is a little bit of rhetoric going on here too? To paraphrase, “So, you know that an idol is nothing, well knowledge makes you prideful and if you think you know anything, you know nothing.” Now jump back to the context of 1 Corinthians 10:23 and notice 10:19-20 which says, “What am I saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? RATHER, that the things which the gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do NOT want you to have fellowship with demons.”  The idol may be wood or stone, but behind it is a demon; have nothing to do with it!

So in this part of 1 Corinthians (1 Cor 7-14) where it often talks about Christian liberty, what we see is that the Spirit through Paul tells the church at Corinth to have nothing to do with idolatry, so that you are not a stumbling block to your brother (1 Cor 8) and so you don’t have fellowship with demons (1 Cor 10). Don’t do what would later happen in Thyatira; don’t go back to your old sins! There are no contradictions here; you’ve just gotta take in the context!

Now, back to our “all things are lawful for me” comment in 10:23. This is almost exactly the same verse as 6:12 right? We are talking about Christian liberty in 1 Cor 10 (and the limiting of it). Same is true in 1 Corinthians 8 and limiting yourself so as not to cause a brother to stumble, and in 1 Cor 9 which is all about self-denial and serving others, and in 1 Cor 10:1-13 about God’s judgment upon Israel as an example for to us to obey Him, and in 1 Cor 11 about head coverings and not disgracing Communion. All of these are about limiting ourselves, obeying God and not causing others to faulter. First Cor 1-11 is NOT about enjoying Christian liberty – but restricting it!  Thus, even in this section about Christian liberty, the phrase "all things are lawful to me" is used as a contrast to Biblical truth: that there is a standard of holiness put in place by God that all believers are to follow.  I cannot go out and do anything I want and I certainly cannot go back to my old sins.

Very clearly the context of 1 Corinthians 6:12 (and 10:23) shows us that the phrase “all things are lawful to me” is not permission for us to go live for ourselves and do anything we want to do. Rather, it is clearly given as a dangerous philosophy of life that we should avoid because many things are not helpful, and can have power over us like they did before.

CONCLUSION:
Today’s passage, 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 all goes together. We only got into the first section. After Father’s Day, well finish this section with a review of point one, and then points 2-3…
I. The Standard (6:12-13)
II. The Body (6:14-17)
III. The Temple (6:18-20)

The modern battle cry for Christian Liberty in today’s churches just screams of Revelation 2-3 and the loveless (selfish), compromising, corrupt, and dead churches. We need to stop trying to find excuses and verses to allow us to pursue our desires…and rather, start doing what the Bible says: love God and show it by obeying Him and fleeing from sin.

Don’t see how close we can get to sin, run from it.