There are things that some feel are sin and others don’t. This daily devotional looks at how we interact with these conflicting interpretations.
Nuggets
- God tells us what He does and doesn’t want us to do, but in many other things, He is silent.
- When God is indifferent on whether something is a sin, we should take cues from other disciples during a specific gathering.
Devotions in the Never Alone: The Holy Spirit in Our Lives series
God has given us a list of laws and commandments to follow. But there are times when God doesn’t address things.
We try to make them into sins and force others to follow our interpretation.
Paul kind of flipped that around in First Corinthians. His main point is we have to watch how we try to enforce our beliefs on others.
Let’s take a look.
Let's Put It into Context
Here is a running list of nuggets for the series.
Okay but not Okay
“‘Everything is permissible,’ but not everything is beneficial. ‘Everything is permissible,’ but not everything builds up. No one is to seek his own good, but the good of the other person” (I Cor. 10: 23-24 CSB)
God tells us what He does and doesn’t want us to do, but in many other things, He is silent.
We’ve talked before how He is indifferent in some things.
- If God hasn’t expressly forbidden something, we should just keep our beliefs to ourselves on the indifferent items.
- Things that were not forbidden but have no moral value are sometimes known only to those who are more knowledgeable in the faith.
- They ceased to be indifferent when they became stumbling blocks and started violating the law of love. They now became the exact opposite of what God wants.
To read a related devotion, click the appropriate button below.
The way I see it, disciples need to walk a fine line. We don’t want to tolerate sin and make it appear that it is acceptable.
That is especially true when we are thinking of ourselves. We don’t want to engage in antinomianism. Antinomianism is the fancy name for thinking that grace allows us to no longer follow the moral laws because we have salvation.
We definitely give a wrong impression of discipleship when we think salvation gives us license to sin.
But neither do we want to play Pharisee and enforce man-made laws and commandments on others. We don’t want to put stumbling blocks up that do not lead to God in the first place.
Persons of Interest
How many times do we rationalize fudging on God’s laws and commandments with the justification that these practices are a way of doing business in a worldview society? We fear we would have to close our businesses if we remain true to God.
That rationalization is unacceptable. We must follow God’s laws and commandments without compromising.
We must find balance. If we are as strict as the Pharisees, we lose the joy of our salvation. If we are as tolerant as the worldview people, did we really have salvation in the first place?
The deciding factor as to how we are going to act on indifferent things should be the effect that decision has on our witness. Are we building others up in the faith, or our we turning them away from their Lord and Savior?
Verse 24 is what it is all about. It is what our walk after salvation is to be about: witnessing to others so they come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior.
Pratt had an interesting sermon. Let me process what I think he is trying to say.
There are some people that reject the gospel because they don’t understand it. To them, the mysteries it contains is so far out of reach.
What they do understand goes so much against their physical nature. That makes it hard to understand what they read and harder yet to implement what they read.
Paul said we aren’t “… to seek [our] own good, but the good of the other person” (I Cor. 10: 24 CSB). We have to clean out our selfish, narrow intentions.
Instead, we have to open our hearts to others.
When we open our hearts, we look for the good of others. Good, in the biblical sense, is the workings of God within His people through His holy, pure, and righteous behavior.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
Glossary
The way we should look at it is that, if we dedicate all of our hopes, dreams, and possessions to God, we recognize all is from God. He has blessed us.
We have to have a servant’s heart. Pratt said that we must “… seek that only as is most pleasing to His Lord and most beneficial to the advantage of the whole.”
Resource
One thing the pandemic taught us was that humans are social animals. People struggled against the enforced isolation even if they agreed with it.
That can be coupled with the idea that we want to lead a purposeful life. That life must include others.
We are to seek that others have a strong spiritual condition — that their faith is strong.
Taking Cues from Others
“Eat everything that is sold in the meat market, without raising questions for the sake of conscience, since the earth is the Lord’s, and all that is in it. If any of the unbelievers invites you over and you want to go, eat everything that is set before you, without raising questions for the sake of conscience. But if someone says to you, ‘This is food from a sacrifice,’ do not eat it, out of consideration for the one who told you, and for the sake of conscience. I do not mean your own conscience, but the other person’s. For why is my freedom judged by another person’s conscience? If I partake with thanksgiving, why am I criticized because of something for which I give thanks?” (I Cor. 10: 25-30 CSB)
When God is indifferent on whether something is a sin, we should take cues from other disciples during a specific gathering.
Sometimes, we get invitations to maybe a coworker’s house for a party. Should we go?
Paul says, sure. Go ahead and go if we want to go.
No, Paul wasn’t encouraging us to go somewhere where people were blatantly sinning. He wasn’t giving us permission to sin.
Paul knew there was no way a command like that would be practical. Scott told us why. He wrote that it “would involve a command with which it would be impossible to comply, and which would be inconsistent with the position of the Christian as a citizen of this world.”
Resource
Why is Paul saying go? Disciples can’t cut themselves off from unbelievers. How would they witness to them if we did?
Besides, how would we be able to live if we couldn’t interact with unbelievers? Some may even be our family members.
Scott also reminded us that we gain piety and righteousness through loving others. Isn’t that what Jesus teaches?
- Piety is defined as the persistent application of moral virtues to our lives because of our supreme love for God.
- Righteousness is the indwelling goodness that is the result of a solid relationship with God built by a sincere life of conscientious obedience to God’s laws and commandments and from which all virtues flow.
In verse 29, Paul talked about the conscience. Our conscience is the part of our nature that impacts our moral decisions as it points us to what is right and gives us pain or pleasure depending on the choice.
How often does it cross our minds that we can damage someone else’s conscience? Oh, we probably know we have influence on their making their decisions.
But this is talking about influence over right and wrong. We can point them to Satan in minute ways if we aren’t careful. Plus, we may not want to give up the ways we have it wrong.
Making the Connections
This last part reminded me of Peter and the sheet of unclean animals. He was jumping up and down, saying there was no way he was going to be eating even one bite of anything.
God kept telling him, “It’s okay. I say they aren’t unclean.”
We would probably say the food sacrificed to idols were right up there with being unclean. Paul said no. We would be a Pharisee if we tried to enforce not eating it.
How Do We Apply This?
- Abstain from doing lawful things that will be detrimental to another person’s faith.
- Live a life exhibiting the spiritual graces.
- Make disciples of others.
Resource
Father God. We want to follow Your laws and commandments. We don’t want to add to them or take away from them. Help us to follow You. Amen.
What do you think?
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