Freedom with Limits

The portion of Scripture that we’re studying begins at 1 Corinthians 6:12. For those of you who are regular with us, you will know that we have been more than a little preoccupied with chapters 5 and 6 of 1 Corinthians for some weeks now. These have not been easy weeks, neither in the proclaiming of the Word, nor in the receiving of the Word, nor in the implications which still as yet are evolving from our discovery of the Word. We sensed that that would be true in beginning it, and I have been looking forward to getting out of chapter 6—and, I think, for all the right reasons, I hope. And so tonight, we will conclude chapter 6, and we’ll go directly to chapter 7 next Lord’s Day morning, when we get into some interesting material concerning the nature of marriage and what it means to be single. And there is much that you may be praying about concerning that.

Now, if you were present this morning, you will also know that we began by looking at the end of these verses, setting the fundamental premise in place, ending with the great crowning statement, the imperative, “Therefore honor God with your body,” he says, because “your body is [the] temple of the Holy Spirit,” because “you are not your own,” because “you were bought [with] a price. Therefore,” you must “honor God with your body.”[1] And if we find ourselves asking what exactly will be the practical implications of that, then we can track back up the page, as it were, and, beginning at verse 12, deal with these verses concerning very pressing and relevant areas of life in terms of Christian living.

I alluded to the fact this morning that the Corinthians had fallen into the trap of believing that Christian freedom, Christian liberty, could be used somehow as a cloak for concealing all kinds of wrongdoing. And whenever they were challenged, they retorted by using a catchphrase, which may actually have emerged initially from the lips of the apostle Paul himself, and the catchphrase, you will find it in verse 12 twice: “Everything is permissible for me.” “Everything is permissible for me.” So when challenged or when tested in relationship to their lifestyle, they would just slip into the automatic mode of defending their activities, no matter how questionable they may be, by pointing to this matter of Christian freedom.

Now, of course, as we said this morning, there was no greater exponent of Christian freedom than the apostle Paul himself. He had been brought up in all the rigmarole of Judaism, he had lived with rules and regulations all of his life, and it was an amazing day for him when he encountered the Lord Jesus on the Damascus Road and discovered that it was not by means of external codes and regulations that he would find peace with God but on account of a sacrifice made by this Lord Jesus. His life was revolutionized from that point. His message was changed, and he was the great exponent of Christian freedom. Therefore, there was no one better to address the matter with these characters who had begun to use it as a means of rationalizing their behavior.

Paul, having heard of their error, which had emerged first in the way they thought and then, of course, inevitably in the things that they did, shows that the statement “Everything is permissible for me” does not need to be nullified but needs to be qualified. And here in this verse, he immediately provides two qualifications to the phrase. He provides a third one, which I’ll just introduce you to; we’ll come to it in 10:23. He introduces these qualifications in order to counteract the rationalizing taking place in the Corinthians’ lives. They were becoming very, very clever at coming up with apparently good reasons for doing wrong things. They had good reasons to explain their wrong behavior.

Misunderstanding Christian Freedom

Now, first of all, it ought to be obvious to us—but let’s state it just in case it isn’t—that the notion of “everything” can’t mean everything. If your phrase is “All things are permissible to me,” or in your version it reads “All things are lawful to me,” clearly, it doesn’t mean all things. That’s why it’s so important that we understand the Bible in relationship to the rest of the Bible. Clearly, it does not mean that we are free to murder, or to commit idolatry, or to steal, or to break any of the Commandments which God has given. If the Christian is set free to do all things, he is not, or she is not, by the same token set free to sin. So, there is no principle which sets us free to a lifestyle which includes within it sin.

And what Paul is addressing here is the fact that the great emphasis of Christian living is not that it makes a man free to sin but that it makes a man free not to sin. That is Christian freedom: that we are now set in a position of liberty whereby we are free not to sin, not that we are enabled to be able to sin as well. Therefore, it is important for us to recognize that when Christian liberty is elevated to the status of a governing principle—if Christian freedom becomes our complete credo for Christian living, if it becomes the filter through which we view everything, the angle of the prism by which we determine all of our activities—then the danger is that things which are forbidden under all circumstances will be thought to be permissible. You understand? If you take the phrase “Everything is permissible to me” and you use that as a blanket explanation of everything, then we will be able to justify sin itself.

And that is exactly what the Corinthians were doing. Their immediate problem was a problem with immorality, and they sought to justify their immoral behavior by using the catchphrase “Everything is permissible to me.” They had a total misunderstanding of the nature of Christian freedom—the kind of misunderstanding which pervades large parts of the church in the Western world tonight, which is why the statistics on premarital sex, why the statistics in family disintegration, divorce, and marital breakdown is sadly not very different from the watching world. It is not the sole reason, but it is a large contributing factor, I believe. It emerges from a misunderstanding on the part of the people of God as to the nature of Christian freedom. And they have somehow got themselves in a terrible mess while using catchphrases just like these.

The great emphasis of Christian living is not that it makes a man free to sin but that it makes a man free not to sin.

Three Qualifications

Well then, let us notice the qualifications which he provides. “Everything is permissible for me,” he says. That’s the statement, and if he had been able to elaborate on it and perhaps did in personal conversation, and he might have said, “And yes, that’s my statement. I said it, and I believe it. But I don’t believe it without qualification. And here’s my first qualification: everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial,” or “not everything is helpful,” or “not everything is advisable.” Leon Morris, the great New Testament commentator, says of this, there are “some things” which “are not expressly forbidden” but whose “results are such as to rule them out for the [Christian]”[2]—some things not expressly forbidden, but the results are such as to just rule them out for the Christian. And they’re ruled out on the basis of benefit, advisability, and help.

Paul wants to make sure that what he’s doing is not just allowed. When you’re a teenager, perhaps as a Christian, you always want to know, “Am I allowed to do this as a Christian?” You go to teenage retreats, and they always have these question-and-answer times, and there are always at least half a dozen questions that begin “Can I be a Christian and…” And without exception, it is an endeavor on the part of the youngster to try and find a loophole to be able to engage in a certain kind of behavior while holding on to their Christian profession. And the answer “Can I be a Christian and,” for example, “smoke?”—the answer to that is “Yes, you can, you filthy thing.” All right? I mean, if you want to destroy your lungs and blow stuff all over the place, yes, you can. Should you, though, since your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? Should you, though, in relationship to the lifestyle that you’re establishing for those who watch you? Should you, though, find yourself trapped in potentially habitual behavior? Everything is permissible, but not all things are advisable and helpful.

Paul is concerned that he doesn’t do things that are simply allowed, that he can squeak in, but that his life and his ministry would be genuinely helpful, number one, in witnessing to unbelievers, number two, in working with his brothers and sisters inside the church, and number three, in his personal walk with Christ. Everything that you and I do must be filtered by those questions: “How helpful will this activity be in my endeavor to reach the lost for Christ? How helpful will this be in my endeavor to build up the body of Christ? And how helpful will this be in my personal walk with Christ?” And if, before we spend our money or make our plans or fill our lives or our bodies or our minds with certain things, we ask those questions, then we will be on track with Paul’s qualification here.

You see, the apostle’s desire is that everything that we do should have a positive result not only in our own lives but in the lives of those that we touch day by day. And so it’s very, very important to realize that the question of Christian freedom, and specifically when or whether to enjoy it, depends not on the freedom itself but upon the circumstances surrounding the potential for freedom.

When the church has not understood this, it has opted for one of two extremes: dreadful legalism whereby it has a huge list of things in the back of its church constitution, or total antinomianism, where the church is completely nuts and no one is in control of themselves or anybody else. The reason has been that they’ve never understood Christian freedom: that the freedom in itself is not the issue; it is the circumstances which surround it.

Let me illustrate it from later on, in 1 Corinthians chapter 8, where he comes to this whole issue of food offered to idols. Paul had no problem with food offered to idols. He said, “The idols don’t exist. Who cares? It’s not a problem. There’s nothing wrong with this food.”[3] Verse 9: “Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak.” So, in relation to food offered to idols, as we will see, Paul says, “Hey, it’s not a problem. There is no direct statement in the Scripture that said I can’t eat this food. However, if my exercise of freedom would be somehow to deprive my brother or my sister in their walk with Christ, then that constraining external circumstance so impacts the principle that I will be governed by it.”

That’s qualification number one.

Qualification number two is still in the same verse: “‘Everything is permissible for me’—but I will not be mastered by anything.”

Turn just quickly to a correlative passage in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. First Thessalonians 4: “It is God’s will that you should be [holy].”[4] People always want to know what God’s will is. “What’s God’s will for my life?” Well, God’s will for your life is that you should be holy. “Anything else?” Yes: “that you should avoid sexual immorality.” “Anything else?” Yes: “that each of you should learn to control his [or her] own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter,” now notice this, “no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him.”[5] And the prevailing emphasis is the same: that in my own personal life, I refuse to be brought under the control of anything else, because not only will it have an impact on me, but it will have an impact on those who are around me.

Willie Barclay tries to capture the play on the freedom factor here by translating the phrase in verse 12, “All things are allowed to me, but I will not allow any thing to get control of me.”[6] All right? “All things are allowed to me, but I will not allow anything to get control of me.” If there is anything which you or I, tonight, find that we cannot give up, then it has become an infringement on our freedom in Christ.

And I want you to notice something, loved ones: there is no nonsense here by Paul about dependency and co-dependency, and your grandmother and your grandfather, and the fact that you are limping through your life on the basis of some genetic hierarchy. He simply says, “Everything is permissible to me, but I will not, by choice, by the enabling of the Holy Spirit, I will not be mastered by it!” How can he say that with such confidence? Because there weren’t the problems in the first century that there are today? Because people did not live with the implications of sin? Do you think that these individuals didn’t come out of dysfunctional families? Do you not think that these folks fought a battle with a heritage which was downright abhorrent? But he says, “Listen, loved ones, we just won’t be mastered by it.” Why? “Because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.[7] The Holy Spirit has come to live in your life. The power of the resurrected Christ now controls you,” he says. “So cut out that nonsense about limping through the rest of your days in some pseudo-psychological, theological hogwash. I will not be mastered by it!” Choice! Choice!

Every sin is an inside job. Every sin! Every time I sin, I sin—no matter who my dad was, my grandpa, my great uncle. And until we come to that point, we will never, ever deal with any kind of habitual behavior in our lives. It is one of the greatest lies of the late twentieth century, which men and women love because it alleviates us from responsibility and leaves us with no guilt. The Bible takes a very different course. “I will not,” he says, “be mastered by anything.”

When the Spirit of God indwells a life, he makes possible what was previously impossible.

Now, we may immediately think of dreadful things. But we needn’t necessarily think of things that have moral overtones. There are plenty things in our lives which have no moral factor at all which may become masterful in our lives. Our occupation, for example, may take total control over us; it shouldn’t. Our leisure-time pursuits, our interest in sports, our hobbies, even our families, as strange as it may seem in a time where we are preoccupied with family values. Paul says, “I will allow nothing—although everything is permissible—I will allow nothing to take me under its control.” He is adamant that he won’t surrender the control of his life to anyone or to anything but the Lord Jesus.

Do you believe that’s possible tonight? If you do, understand that you’re going against the prevailing drift. You will be like a voice shouting out in Hurricane Andrew, out over the Atlantic Coast, “Hello!” and your voice will immediately be lost in the huge tidal wave which comes back to engulf you. The very fact that he puts it in this way is indication to us that when the Spirit of God indwells a life, he makes possible what was previously impossible. Otherwise, where in the world is the change? What’s the change? We just changed our style, or changed our code of ethics, or changed our routine? That’s not good enough! No, no. We were once dead. We were once enslaved. But while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.[8] He liberated us. He raised us to the heavenly places. He seated us with Christ Jesus in the heavenly places.[9] He doesn’t expect us to sit up there surrounded by all that garbage. We’re the bondslaves of Jesus Christ; therefore, there can be no other controlling force.

The third qualification I’ll just mention so you know it is in 10:23, where he uses the exact same catchphrase: “‘Everything is permissible’—but not everything is beneficial.” Then he says it again: “‘Everything is permissible’—but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.” So the question in the exercise of our Christian freedom has to be “Will the exercise of my Christian freedom in this context prove constructive and upbuilding to those who are my brothers and sisters in Christ?”

Now, what does that mean in practical terms? Well, we would need to do a side study in Romans chapter 14, which we won’t do. But when you get to Romans chapter 14, he teaches there on the nature of the weaker brother and how somebody who is strong enough to handle something, out of a sense of deference to a weaker brother, will restrict their freedom so as not to allow them to stumble.[10] To prevent myself from a tangential run, I’m not going to try and apply it. My mind is full of application, but I’m going to let it go. Let us continue with the exposition.

Five Truths about the Body

Verse 13. Actually, what follows are five truths about the body. We’ve done two of them, and we’ll just hit the other three. Five truths about the body.

First of all, in verse 13, the purpose of our bodies is “for the Lord.” Now, it would appear from the quotes that the NIV gives it that in verse 13 we have another proverbial statement that they were commonly saying to one another, and that was “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food.” Eating is a natural function, and they were probably doing what people love to do today—namely, to imply that one bodily function is just the same as another. Don’t you run up against this all the time? You talk to your friends about morality, and they say, “Look, God made us with appetites. It’s not wrong to have appetites. He made them. Therefore, I have the appetite for food; I have the appetite for something else. He made it, it’s not my problem, so I just indulge it.”

Now, what’s our answer to that to be? The answer is very clear: “No, you’ve got it absolutely wrong.” In relation to food for the stomach, that is perfectly clear. But here’s the facts: God will destroy both the food and the stomach. Well, that might sound kind of disgusting, but it’s actually true. In other words, the biological function in relationship to the whole digestive process is temporal. There is some question as to the resurrected body of Jesus Christ, as to exactly the nature of what his biological function was. We certainly don’t know in totality. But God says that that whole process of “Food for the body and the body for food” has a temporal dimension to it.

And one bodily function is not just like another bodily function. What these people were doing was saying, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food; the body for sex and sex for the body.” Paul says, “No. ‘Food for the stomach and the stomach for food’—they will be destroyed. But you’ve got the equation wrong: the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but the body for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” So he has to reprogram them. They’re going around, and they’ve got it all wrong: “Food for the body and the body for food. Body for sex and sex for the body.” He said, “No, no, no. We’re going to have to stop that now. It’s the body for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” The relationship between the body and the food is temporal and will pass away. The relationship between the Lord and your body is eternal and will last forever. The relationship into which we have been brought with Jesus Christ is an indissoluble union that will last for all of eternity. We have been immediately and amazingly joined to Jesus Christ. Therefore, what we do with our bodies is directly related to fact one: the purpose of the body is the Lord.

The relationship between the Lord and your body is eternal and will last forever.

Secondly, we notice not only the proper purpose of the body, but we notice the resurrection of the body by the Lord. Verse 14: “By his power God raised the Lord”—that is, Jesus—“from the dead, and he will raise us also.” In other words, we do not believe—and I’ve said this a million times (that’s an exaggeration; I’ve said this a lot)—we do not believe simply in the immortality of the soul, but we believe in the resurrection of the body. I am not looking forward to becoming some kind of intergalactic floating soul in eternity. I am looking forward to having a resurrected body. I plan to be able to greet people and touch people and shake their hands and be welcomed by them and so on, because God has determined that as he raised Jesus from the dead, so he will raise our bodies from the dead.

What is the implication of that? Well, one is simply this: that our bodies are not dispensable in the ultimate sense. They are the raw materials of a more glorious creation. Our bodies, our actual physical bodies, are the raw materials from which God is going to make a more glorious creation. Incidentally and in passing, this has sparked my thinking a tremendous amount about the perennial question regarding burial and cremation. But we will leave that for another discussion. Our physical bodies are the raw material for what God is planning to do with us in eternity. Therefore, he says, we cannot trivialize them, we cannot denigrate them, we should not beat them up, we should look after them, and we certainly should not act as if what we do with our bodies is irrelevant.

So, fact number one about the body is that it is for the Lord. Fact number two is that it is going to be resurrected. And fact number three is the truth of the interaction of our bodies with the Lord. This is verse 15: “Do you not know”—and here is his fourth time of using this question—“Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?”

What he is saying here is when you came to faith in Jesus Christ, a number of things happened in terms of your relationship to God and your relationship to others, but there is no more fundamental truth nor no more difficult concept to fully understand than that when we came to place our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, as many as received him, received him. The idea of internalizing Christ: “As many as received him, who believed in his name, to them he gave power to become the children of God.”[11] We were integrated into his family. So Christ is in us, but we are also in Christ. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new [creation].”[12] When God looks upon us, he does not see us in isolation, but he sees us in Christ. And that’s how he can stand to look upon us. We cannot say, “Well, I’m just doing this over here, and I left Jesus behind in the sanctuary,” or “That was Sunday, and this is Tuesday,” or “That’s something to do with church, and this has to do with business.” No, everywhere we go, Christ goes. Every place you’ve ever been, every journey you’ve ever taken in your Christian life, every movie you and I have ever seen, every book we’ve ever read, every relationship we’ve ever experienced, Christ was and is right there.

And this is axiomatic, you see, to the principle he’s now about to drive home. He says, “You cannot think of yourselves except as totally interwoven with Christ. You are him, insofar as you now have become an extension of the nature of his body. Therefore,” he says, “for the Christian to be involved in sexual immorality is to use part of Christ’s own body!” When you or I engage in immorality, we engage Christ in it, for we cannot now be separated from him. “Once in [Christ], in him forever.”[13] We didn’t just make a decision. We didn’t just walk an aisle. We didn’t just become religious. We didn’t just determine to have purpose. We didn’t just make a new start. We were absolutely, radically changed for all of eternity. “Therefore,” he says, “do you think that we are going to take the members of Christ”—namely, our bodies—“and unite them in this way?” No! “If you do this,” he says, “there is a one-flesh dimension to it. But,” verse 17, “he who unites himself with the Lord is in a one-spirit dimension.”[14]

And this, incidentally, loved ones, is the great reason as to why a Christian shouldn’t marry a non-Christian. We don’t have time to go down this street either, but you can read it in 2 Corinthians 6. The reason that a Christian should not marry a non-Christian is because a Christian who marries a non-Christian engages with them in a one-flesh dimension but is engaged with God in a one-spirit dimension. And they cannot engage with an unbeliever in both the one-flesh and one-spirit dimension. You cannot join heaven and hell. You cannot join light and darkness. “So,” says Paul, “don’t do it.” That’s why, though. Whenever a Christian endeavors to do that, they live a disintegrated life.

Now, it is clear that Paul is addressing a specific issue in the church. He talks here about the dreadful situation regarding prostitution. But I want you to know something, loved ones: that he says this because he must say this, because this was a peculiar problem in Corinth. It is a peculiar problem in Cleveland. It is a peculiar problem in the whole world. But let not anyone sit in church here and say to themselves, “Boy, I’m glad I missed that one.” He might just as well have said, “Do you not know that he who unites himself with the good-looking lady down the street…,” or “Do you not know that she who unites herself with the good-looking athletic coach from the club…” He is addressing the issue of immorality through a specific dimension as it relates to the proclivities of Corinth.

Now, what was taking place? What takes place every time that sex takes place out of marriage? I’ll tell you what it is. There was intimacy without any intention. There was communion without any commitment. And when you disengage that which God has intended for the framework of marriage from the framework in which God intended it, we will always be in deep trouble—always in deep trouble.

Roger McGough, one of the Liverpool poets in the 1960s, wrote the cynical poem:

The Act of Love lies somewhere
between the belly and the mind
I lost the love sometime ago
Now I’ve only the act to grind.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

High [in] bedroom darkness
we endure the pantomime
ships that go bang in the night
run aground on the sands of time.

[And in the morning]
its cornflakes and … goodbye
another notch on the headboard
another day wondering why.

[Yes,] the Act of Love lies somewhere
between the belly and the mind
[and] I lost the love sometime ago
Now I’ve only the act to grind.[15]

And if somebody doesn’t start to say this in our Christian churches, for crying out loud, who will? Amongst our young people, amongst our kids in our homes, we’re trying to close the door after the horse bolted. We’re out here giving it loudly for the abortion issue. Talk to the kids about the place of sex in their own lives, for crying out loud! We’re not doing it! We just are not doing it! And every sorry sight and every tear-stained fellow and girl’s face that I encountered over the last seventeen years in pastoral ministry can be traced to the disengaging of that which God made in all of its beauty from the framework he intended to the mess of man’s contriving.

What are we supposed to do? Well, it’s really very straightforward. It’s in verse 18. What do you do in relationship to this stuff? Have a prayer meeting? No! Run! With a capital R. In fact with five capital Rs: RRRRRun! That’s it. That’s the word here. Flee! “Flee,” he says, verse 18: “Flee from sexual immorality.” Phillips: “Avoid sexual looseness like the plague!” It’s in the present imperative. This is how it should read: “Make it your habit to run.” That’s it! “Make it your habit to run.” And if you make it your habit to run, then you’ll be better able to run the next time.

One of our elders told me a few months ago, he said, “Every time that I travel on business now and I go into the hotel, when I pick my key up from the front desk, before I even go to my room, I say, ‘Would you please disengage the TV from my room? Just disengage it right now.’” Why? Because he wants to ensure that he flees immorality. What’s wrong with the guy? Isn’t he spiritual? Yeah, he’s spiritual, but he’s also sensible. “Flee immorality.”

Genesis 39. Joseph and Potiphar’s wife is probably as good an illustration of it as is in the whole of the Bible. You remember the situation there? Potiphar leaves everything in Joseph’s care—everything he had! He didn’t concern himself with anything, ’cause Joseph was such a good fellow. He didn’t concern himself with anything except the food that he ate.

Now Joseph was well-built and [he was] handsome, and after a while his master’s wife took notice of Joseph and said, “Come to bed with me!”

But he refused, “With me in charge,” he told her, “my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or [get this] even [to] be with her.[16]

He wasn’t going to play the smart Charlie game of sitting around in the cozy afternoons just having a little coffee, just a little music, just a little easing of our time. No, Joseph said, “I won’t do that, and get this: because of the nature of all that’s involved, I’m not even going to spend time with you.” I want to say to you, gentlemen, you better think these things out in the way you plan your business lunches, in the people with whom you drive in your car, in the kind of perfume that you get up your nostrils, in the way that you embrace people. You and I, we’d better think it out, and we’d better understand the immense practicality of the Bible. Run away! Run away!

The devil knows that sexual sin will destroy a life in a way that other sins will not.

Now, let me draw this to a close. Why is this so important? “Because,” Paul says, “this sin is unique. It strikes at the very roots of a man’s being. Other sins against the body,” he says, “there are, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.” We don’t have time to work all of this out. Let me say what I think he means.

Other sins against the body are from the outside, and they are sinful in their excess. Okay? For example, booze and gluttony: it comes from outside, and it is a sin in excess. The immorality to which he refers here comes from inside and is a sin in itself. It doesn’t have to be done in excess to be sinful; it just has to be done at all, and it is sinful. It drives like no other impulse, and when fulfilled, it affects the human psyche like no other sin. Sexual immorality is dressed up and is paraded before us every day we live our lives as the panacea for many ills, as the answer to emptiness, as the nirvana of our existence. The devil knows it. The devil knows that this kind of sin will destroy a life in a way that other sins will not. He knows it.

Last week, in the evening, I think on Monday night, Sue and I went to get coffee and walk around the mall. It was a cheap date: seventy-five cents for the coffees at the special coffee place, rather than just McDonald’s, which would have made it a little cheaper. And we just were walking around, and I went in the record store, decided I would look at the heavy metal lyrics. I want to see what’s there. And you know, here’s this great schizophrenia again. You’re treated to one of the most disgusting-looking pieces of artwork on the front, the titles for the songs themselves are anti-Christ and filthy, but the same albums have a little sticker on the bottom which says, “Just say no to drugs.” And by this same strange schizophrenia, these people, who deeply need Christ, believe that somehow they can mitigate the influence that they have in one direction by adding this little coda in another.

As bizarre as it might seem, the destruction of Western culture is not coming about as a result of drugs. It is not coming about as a result of booze. We are addressing the wrong issue. It is coming about as a result of the prevailing commitment to a sex-crazed culture, and the Evil One knows that this kind of sin destroys the human psyche and maims the human heart and impacts family life. Can Christ redeem from this? Can he restore? Can he remake? Yes, of course, he certainly can, and many of us are glorious examples of it. But loved ones, many of us still live with the pain of having got the equation wrong when we might have got it right.

The habitation of the body by the Lord is verse 19. The redemption of the body by the Lord is verses 19 and 20.

I’m done. I got a little charged up here; I’m sorry about that. Ran over a little.

Let me conclude with Psalm 139:13. Do you think God’s interested in your body? Listen to this. Psalm 139:13:

For you created my inmost being;
 you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
 your works are wonderful,
 I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
 when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
 were written in your book
 before one of them came to be.

As I finished my notes in my own study, my mind flashed again to my most favorite scene in Chariots of Fire, which you’ll perhaps indulge me by allowing me to quote it just once again. You remember how Eric Liddell is chastised by his sister Jenny because he’s so interested in playing rugby for the university and for Scotland and he’s so interested in athletics that she feels that he’s not being a good enough Christian in relation to his religious commitments, especially at the Bible class. And so, as a classic little kind of legalist lady, she chastises him. And she basically says to him, “Eric, you can’t do all that stuff. It’s not allowed. If you were a real Christian, you wouldn’t be doing that. You’d only be doing this.” And he begins to remonstrate with her, and she says to him, as only a big sister would, “Eric, the Lord made you for himself.” And do you remember his reply? “Aye Jenny, he made me for himself, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.”[17] That is Christian freedom—not life in some little microcosmic legalistic box, not life cast to the four winds in indolent, antinomian, spurious living, but the perfect law of liberty.

“‘Everything’s permissible.’ Yeah, but not everything’s advisable. ‘Everything’s permissible.’ Yeah, but I won’t let anything master me. ‘Everything’s permissible.’ Yeah, but I’ve got a responsibility to my brothers and my sisters.”

Loved ones, think these things out, won’t you?

Let’s pray together.

As we sit at the end of this day, doubtless there are some of us who take this heavily to our hearts, because it raises old sores and old wounds. I recognize the risk in that. I know that. I know that. And I just have to tell you that I just had to run that risk in order to say what needs to be said. But I don’t want you, loved one, to go rummaging in the garbage cans of sins that have been forgiven. I don’t want you to go back and root around in old stuff. Where you’ve brought it to the Lord, it’s confessed, and you’ve gone on from there, leave it there, and don’t allow the Evil One to come and throw it up in your face.

But for others of us tonight who are living with the crazy notion that we can do what we like because we’ve been set free in Jesus, I don’t want you to miss this message. And my prayer is that the Spirit of God may arrest you, arrest me and change me, change us, and that the people around us will know the difference as we understand the nature of Christian freedom; that as a church, we would not be trapped in rules and regulations, nor that we would fall into some rampant antinomianism, but that we might walk the path, that narrow Striding Edge, which is the perfect law of liberty.

Lord Jesus, hear our prayers, the cries of our heart tonight, that we might be the kind of people that you intend for us to be, living in the midst of a crooked and perverse and needy society.[18] For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

[1] 1 Corinthians 6:19–20 (NIV 1984).

[2] Leon Morris, The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 95–96.

[3] 1 Corinthians 8:4, 8 (paraphrased).

[4] 1 Thessalonians 4:3 (NIV 1984).

[5] 1 Thessalonians 4:3–6 (NIV 1984).

[6] William Barclay, The Letters to the Corinthians, rev. ed., The Daily Study Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), 55.

[7] See 1 John 4:4.

[8] See Romans 5:8.

[9] See Ephesians 2:6.

[10] See Romans 14:15, 21.

[11] John 1:12 (paraphrased).

[12] 2 Corinthians 5:17 (KJV).

[13] John Kent, “Sov’reign Grace o’er Sin Abounding.”

[14] 1 Corinthians 6:17 (paraphrased).

[15] Roger McGough, “The Act of Love,” in Watchwords (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969), 51.

[16] Genesis 39:6–10 (NIV 1984).

[17] Chariots of Fire, directed by Hugh Hudson, written by Colin Welland (Warner Bros., 1981). Paraphrased.

[18] See Philippians 2:15.