1 Corinthians 10:23, Part Deux

I don't like to comment on the comments because I figure I had my shot in the post. So I usually try to anticipate confusion and objections and head them off at the pass in the body of my two-cent musing. But the direction of the responses to yesterday's meditation on 1 Corinthians 10:23 took me by surprise. Here I was talking "permissible" and "helpful," meaning something very personal and intimate with God, and you were mainly talking about the "liberty-versus-license question." The thread then went off on warning about the dangers of imposing one's standards on others.

I shouldn't have been surprised because that passage from Paul used to automatically trigger the "Christian liberty" debate for me too. I don't know exactly when or how all that changed, but my spiritual focus, or my insight into the verse, is evidently different nowadays.

What I was sharing in the post was that the Holy Spirit is getting me away from my complacent surface-dwelling on rules and regulations and somebody's category of "permissible" things. He is showing me that where it's at is intimacy with him, and obedience to his slightest whispers. I had never before bothered with anything more spiritually taxing than the question of external standards---whether the teetotaler question, or homeschooling, or what kind of music is right in Sunday worship.

The Spirit is taking me deeper into myself (my motives, my responsibility to love others), deeper into His Word, and deeper into my relationship with God (what actions would bring maximum glory to God, which actions would require more faith, which would have more integrity). There is a rich life of the inner man in relation to God that I had never bothered with before. And to commence abiding on that level is to be forced into spiritual warfare and many a mini-death to selfish desire.

One night I attended a house party where a professor from a well-known seminary was presenting her book about God to a group of selected invitees. I happened to love the book, so I went willingly. The presentation was in large part an appeal to the group to brainstorm ways that the author's theological insights could be adapted for use in Christian or secular business enterprises of various kinds. She solicited responses and suggestions from the audience. Another professor who happened to be there raised his hand and said, gently, that he is leery of a tendency in human nature to reduce every fresh Christian insight into a program.

Likewise, I fear that we reduce Paul's meaning with our knee-jerk response to 1 Corinthians 10:23 as the classic "Christian liberty" locus. It then becomes one step removed from personal relationship. We tend to end up discussing God rather than obeying God.

We murder to systematize. I do not see in 1 Corinthians 10:23 primarily a concern with codes of conduct. "Helpful things" isn't a category we may add to or subtract from. It is a deeply personal call to the individual to search his heart and motives, and to search the Word of God, in all he says and thinks and does, and to act in the most expansive faith possible. I think RJRIECK81 said it best in comment No. 6: "Paul summarizes it nicely in the same passage . . . 'So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God' (1 Corinthians 10:31)."

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.