Freedom: The Right To Do What We Ought To Do

1 Corinthians 8-10

Recently our congregation went through the books of 1 & 2 Corinthians to learn some general truths about “Living Joyfully in Biblical Community”. 1 Corinthians chapters 8-10 were the passages of discussion on June 11^th. I have included a part of that lesson here for discussion because I believe our understanding of “freedom” is very important to understanding how to live for Jesus in these times.

The problem which Paul is going to address in chapters 8-10 is not really food sacrificed to idols, although that seems to be the topic at hand. The theological issue of food sacrificed to idols is limited to two verses in 1 Corinthians 8 which makes me think that the actual issue is not the real issue. In 1 Corinthians 8: 4-6 Paul basically says

Idols are nothing.
They aren’t real.
There is no God but one God.
Jesus is the only Lord.

Then in verses 7-13 the real issue arises: Listen to Paul’s words;

"But not everyone possesses this knowledge. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. ⁸ But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do. Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak...”

Did you catch that last verse? It seems that what Paul is really concerned with is how one person’s freedom in Christ, the freedom to eat meat or not eat meat, might hinder another person’s walk with Christ. Many times joylessness in the church has less to do with the issues that arise and a lot to do with the manner in which those issues are handled between people at different places in their walk with Christ. Listen as he continues;

1 Corinthians 8:9-13:

"Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? ¹¹ So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. ¹² When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. ¹³ Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.”

Notice what our Lord is concerned with regarding food sacrificed to idols; it’s not the food sacrificed to idols. It’s the faith of other brothers and sisters in Christ.

I would venture to say that 90% of people who leave churches today to go to other churches leave not because they disagree with other members on issues of faith, but because they have been hurt by the manner in which those issues of faith were handled.

In Christ we have been given the freedom to do many things, but those freedoms must never weaken the faith of others in the church. True freedom in Christ is not the freedom to do whatever I want to do; it’s the freedom to do what I ought to do for the faith of others.

True Freedom

In approximately 2 weeks, if the Lord answers our prayers as we have been requesting, our brother Ken will be released from jail to finish out a final 90 days in a rehabilitation clinic. When Ken’s final day in jail is up he will stand on the exterior wall of the jail and the guards will say to him, “Ok Ken, you are free”.

And at that point every former prisoner must ask himself or herself one question: “Free to do what?”

To those who have not learned their lesson they will say, “Yippee!! I am free to do whatever I want to do!”

Those who say this forget that the reason they were in jail in the first place was because they took the liberty to do just whatever they wanted to do. The freedom to do whatever we want to do will never, never, never, hardly ever, no never bring us freedom.

When Ken is released from jail I believe he will leave knowing that he is free to do not whatever he wants to do…but free to do exactly what he ought to do. That is the essence of freedom, true freedom. And if the church is going to be a joyful beacon of light to our communities we must preach and exemplify true freedom among us and not some false definition of it.

Contemporary Application:

This is important today because in our society the words freedom and liberty are passed around with different meanings. Many people today believe freedom gives me the right to do just whatever I want to do.

A man and a woman have premarital sex together. Not wanting to have a baby they decide to have an abortion. They believe they are free to do so because the laws of our land give them the freedom to do so. What they do not realize, however, is that if they choose to define freedom in this situation as their right to do whatever they want to do (the type of freedom which got them in their predicament in the first place) they will free neither themselves nor their child. The freedom to do whatever they want to do will result in the death of an innocent child and the further enslavement of the mother and father in sin. That's not freedom, folks; that's death. And we can't give it a softer name.

The Devil has convinced us through the media that in order to be free we must have the right to do just whatever we want to do. The truth is, however, that if I take the freedom to do just whatever I want to do in my life, I will quickly find myself a slave. If a country takes the freedom to do just whatever they want to do they will quickly find themselves in shackles as well.

We can give sin a softer name if we like; but the fact is sin by any other name, be it “freedom”, “tolerance”, “human rights” or “alternative lifestyle” is still sin and will always lead to death, not freedom.

True freedom, according to the Bible, is not the right to do what we want to do…it’s the right to do exactly what we ought to do for the benefit of others.

The question for us as believers is: "Who has the right to tell us what we ought to do? The government or God?" (see Acts 4:19-20).

No Spiritual Navy Seals In This Church

A few weeks ago our congregation talked about how the church of Jesus resembles in many ways that of a military team. In fact Paul the Apostle used military terminology when speaking to Timothy: “Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer” (2 Tim.2:3-4).

 In this lesson we talked about how that if you are a Christian then you are a soldier of Jesus Christ. You experience a daily “training in righteousness” (2 Tim.3:16). You experience a very real war everyday all day. As a member of Christ’s church you are part of a soul saving mission to rescue prisoners of war from their captivity to the Evil one by the power of Christ’s Spirit within you.

We also said that different than the Navy Seals who killed Osama Bin Laden on May 1st, in the church there are no heroes besides Jesus.

It does not matter who we are.

It does not matter what we accomplish

It does not matter what awards we receive or how many people we rescue and lead to Christ; in the church of Jesus there is only one hero in the camp and that hero is Jesus.

We concluded by recognizing that as the church seeks to build herself around and on top of Jesus- her foundation (1 Cor.3:11), the life of the church will be a joyless drag in conjunction with how many people there are vying to be the hero. The quarrels in the Corinthian church in particular were largely because some were following Paul, some were following Apollos and some were following Cephas instead of Jesus alone (see 1 Corinthians chapters 1-3).

We would be kidding ourselves if we did not confess the evil desire within us, especially us men, that wants to be the church’s Navy Seal. We want to be the commando. We want to be the Green Bureau. We want to be the knight in shining armor rushing in to make history and receive the recognition.

But the reality of the church is quite different. The reality is that in the church of Jesus, the church Jesus built, there are no spiritual Navy Seals. Instead, we find a whole assembly of former Prisoners of War. Former POW’s. Today we are either former POW’s or we are POW’s. And when God through Jesus makes us former POW’s, we come hard to the fact that we did not have anything to do with Jesus’ rescue mission.

We didn’t plan for it.

We didn’t train for it.

We didn’t even know it was coming.

So what does that have to do with building life around Jesus?  Well as long as we live by the illusion that the church should be filled with spiritual Navy Seals, we will never be able to love one another for the bruised, scarred and beaten POW’s we really are. This seems to be some of what Paul gets at in this passage:

”Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth" [i.e. there were no spiritual Navy Seals among you]. "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. ²⁸ God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, ²⁹ so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31, parenthesis mine).

What were these Corinthian Christians before they were Christians? They were spiritual POW’s. They were not wise. They were not influential. They were not of noble birth. They were not the ones chosen to rush in and make the kill. They were prisoners in need of rescuing, and so were we.

How many times have you started a new job thinking it was a perfect match only to discover 2 years down the road that it is not at all what you thought it would be?

How many times have you gone to see a movie that you were told would be spectacular only to leave feeling disappointed?

How many times have you dated someone that you thought was Mr. Right only to realize a year later that he is pretty messed up in the head?

How many times have you bought a new flavor of coffee creamer at the store, maybe a flavor of creamer others raved about, only to get home, try it in your coffee and regurgitate it in your cup because you couldn’t stand it?

How many times have you involved yourself in a congregation that for the first 8 months you truly loved, only to discover that joyous Joyce is not always joyous? In fact she even gets angry.

In each of these situations what do we do? We jump ship! We find a new job. We find a new movie. We find a new date. We find a new coffee creamer. And it’s perfectly fine to do that with some things.

What really blows it for us in all of these situations is not the bad movie: it’s the expectations we attached to the movie. You see if we had gone to the movie thinking, ‘this movie is probably not going to be as great as everyone says it is’, we might have walked out thinking, ‘hey that was a pretty good movie’. The astronomical expectations killed it for us.

In the same way our perfection expectations of the church can sometimes kill the church for us. Forgetting that there is only one spiritual Navy Seal in the camp- Jesus- we often put the church down for resembling former POW’s. Many say, “I don’t go to church because they are a bunch of hypocrites”. My reply is, “Well at least they go to church, which is more than you can say”.

The fact that the church is not perfect by no means frees us from the fight to become perfect by the power of the Spirit; but it should at least grant us the humility to show compassion and patience with other believers who are just as bruised and scarred as we are. Remember...there is only one spiritual Navy Seal in this church- Jesus.