Bt – Using Freedom for God’s Glory 10:23 to 11:1

Using Freedom for God’s Glory
10:23 to 11:1

Using freedom for God’s glory DIG: What were some of the limits Paul said needed to be placed on the freedom of believers? What is the difference between tolerating differences and condoning wrong behavior? Why is it crucial for believers to love and accept one another? In light of this passage, what does it mean to “do it all so as to bring glory to God?” How did Jesus model the approach He expects us to follow?

REFLECT: Think for a few moments about what freedom in Messiah means to you. What new freedoms have you enjoyed since you became a believer? In what ways do you think your freedom in Messiah is different from any other freedom you have experienced? Based on Paul’s teaching, what should always be your primary concern in making lifestyle choices? Think of one person this week to whom you can show greater sensitivity and love.

Whatever we do, do it all so as to bring glory to the Lord.

Our freedom is always defined by Messiah. Since He gave it to us as a gift, He’s the best person to tell us how to use it. He may ask us to use it in ways that surprise us. Those actions may not seem like freedom when they involve saying no to our desires and saying yes to Messiah’s will for our lives. Some of our greatest moments of freedom come when we choose not to exercise our freedom in order to help someone else.²⁷⁶

Paul is now ready to conclude this matter of eating food that was sacrificed to idols. In this section, he deals with the secondary issue of whether the prohibition against participating in banquets in pagan temples also applies to “leftover” meat that was sold in the city meat market. Not that virtually all the ancient meat sold for human consumption in the Greco-Roman world came from pagan sacrifices; there were no general slaughterhouses or packing plants for cattle, sheep, or pigs.²⁷⁷

A. The principles for using our freedom in Messiah: In verses 23-30, Paul gives us four basic principles to guide us in using our freedom in Messiah for God’s glory.

1. Edification over gratification (10:23): Our freedom in Messiah is important, but there are some things that are not wise. Paul repeats the slogan that was apparently commonly spoken among the Corinthian believers: “Everything is permitted,” you say? Maybe, but not everything is helpful. He counters this with the same argument he made earlier in 6:12b. “Everything is permitted?” Maybe, but not everything is edifying to other believers (10:23). Desiring the spiritual benefit and edification of ourselves and others is a hallmark of maturity in a believer. Paul’s supreme purpose in ministering to believers was to promote their edification (Second Corinthians 12:19). His advice to all believers is that everything we say be for edification according to the need of the moment, that it may give grace to those who hear (Ephesians 4:29; First Thessalonians 5:11 NASB). When we are faced with a decision about a practice we should first ask if we have a right to do it. If it is not forbidden in Scripture the answer is yes. But our next question should be, is it profitable, edifying, and upbuilding for ourselves and for others? If the answer to both questions is yes, then we can do it to God’s glory. If the answer to either question is no, we should refrain from doing it because it will not bring glory to Him.²⁷⁸

Dear Wise Heavenly Father, Sometimes it is hard to know how to handle a sinful situation, but I praise You that I can follow the principles of how You discipline. You are the perfect balance of love and anger at wrong. You are neither a sugar daddy who gives in to whatever your child wants, nor are you a mean and angry father. You are patient, urging sinners to come to you and gently rebuking your erring child. Yet you are wise and discerning when you correct. You wisely base the severity of Your discipline on the severity of the sin. When the situation calls for it, you discipline with great strength and power as when You sent the Northern Kingdom of Isra’el into Assyria captivity and then later the Southern Kingdom of Judah you sent into 70 years of Babylonian captivity.

Your goal in discipline is never to hurt, but to produce the fruit of righteousness.  Now all discipline seems painful at the moment – not joyful. But later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it (Hebrews 12:11). Thank You for being such a wonderful example of patience and yet also you have a holy hatred of wrong. Please help us to remember when we see a wrong situation, that what is important is not our putting them down, but our correcting the issue in a way that will bless and honor You. Honor to You is always the important issue. Please guide as we see wrong to help us know how we can guide the person to move in the right way rather than to just get mad at them and punish them. May we remember what You have said. Never take your own revenge, loved ones, but give room for God’s wrath – for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay,” says ADONAI (Romans 12:19) and For we know the One who said, “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay,” and again, “ADONAI will judge His people” (Hebrews 10:30).

Please help us in all we do to do it to Your honor. When we correct, may we be patient like You and correct lovingly, not in mean anger. Thank You for Your perfect example of loving and purposeful correction to produce the fruit of righteousness. I want to follow Your ways in all I do, including lovingly correcting others. Love You always! In Your holy Son’s name and power of His resurrection. Amen

2. Others over self (10:24): This repeats this same principle in different words, putting it in the form of a third person imperative: No one should seek their own good, but the good of others (10:24). In two later instances (Romans 15:1-3 and Philippians 2:4-5), Paul bases such a stance on the example of Messiah, which is precisely how he concludes this present argument below (see The pattern of our freedom in Messiah below). Later in the letter he will use the same formula as part of his description of love (13:5). For Paul, the death of Messiah, in which He gave Himself “for us,” is not only God’s offer of pardon for sinners, but also the only proper model of discipleship. Hence “freedom” does not mean “to seek what pleases me,” not even “my own good;” rather, it means to be free in Messiah in such a way that we can truly seek to build up and edify others.²⁷⁹

3. Freedom over legalism (10:25-27): Having set out the basic principles, Paul is now ready to apply them to the issue of purchasing or eating meat sold in the market. Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience. It would be difficult, if not impossible to know for certain whether a particular piece of meat had, or had not, been offered to an idol. Paul sees no point in raising the issue. Paul’s attitude was revolutionary. He took seriously the truth that an idol is nothing. This refusal to ask questions shows it did not matter to him whether a piece of meat had been offered to an idol or not.²⁸⁰ After all, market food comes from plants and animals that have been created by God and belong to Him. Paul supports this by quoting Psalm 24:1, “For the earth and everything in it belong to the LORD” (10:25-26). This passage is used by the rabbis to support the contention that a blessing must be said over every meal. Since the earth and everything in it belong to the LORD, one must bless God for one’s food; otherwise, it is as though one were defrauding the Almighty. By this citation, therefore, Paul is almost certainly reflecting the Jewish use of this text for the blessings over meals, especially since he refers again to blessing God in the final rhetorical question in verse 30 below.

But what Paul does here is full of irony toward his Jewish heritage, whether intended or not. The rabbis saw the text as the reason for thanking God for their food. But Paul now uses the text to justify eating anything they wanted, even food forbidden by his own Jewish heritage of only eating kosher, since God is the ultimate source of all food – even food sold in the market. For that reason, it can be eaten with thanksgiving. The clear implication is that nothing “contaminates” food as such along the way. Apart from Paul’s radical statements on circumcision (Romans 2:25-3:1; Galatians 5:6 and 11, 6:11-15; First Corinthians 7:19) it is hard to imagine anything more un-Jewish in the apostle than this.²⁸¹

Paul goes even further. Not only can believers purchase any food for sale in the market; it is within the realm of freedom in Messiah to associate with unbelievers and have dinner with them in any other place besides the temple of an idol.²⁸² If some unbeliever invites you to a meal, and you want to go, eat whatever is put in front of you without raising questions of conscience (10:27). Paul did not expect his readers to cut themselves off completely from the fabric of all social relationships because they were absolutely necessary to survive in the ancient world. In his day, people could not merely go off on their own and expect to survive. Patronage bound freed slaves to former masters, plebs to patriarchs, tenants to landowners; and their relationships established the means of the exchange of honor and personal obligation. Therefore, Paul allowed believers to circulate in pagan society. But there were limitations.²⁸³

4. Consideration over condemnation (10:28-30): But the situation changed if another invited guest, a weaker brother or sister (ie. “someone”), says to you, “This meat was offered as a sacrifice.” The entire argument up to this point has been concerned with the exercise of our freedom in Messiah with reference to offending the weaker brother or sister. In addition, in Chapters 8-10, Paul says nothing whatsoever about the exercise of our freedom in Messiah with respect to pagans. Therefore, context dictates that this “someone” is a weaker brother or sister.²⁸⁴

Here, mature believers must use their freedom in Messiah in a truly loving way: Then don’t eat it, out of consideration for the person who pointed it out and also for conscience’s sake (10:28). Their freedom lies in the ability to choose between eating and not eating as long as they are guided by mature knowledge and true love. However, I don’t mean your conscience but that of the other person. The food’s history matters only when it matters to someone else. The mature believer knows that idols do not exist, that there is no God but One, and that all food ultimately belongs to Him. In this sticky situation, however, it is not what the mature believer knows that counts, but the weaker brother or sister believes.²⁸⁵

You say, “Why should my freedom be determined by someone else’s conscience? If I participate by God’s grace (Greek: charity, which may be understood as by grace, because it is what the grace of God means that the mature believer can give thanks for such meat and eat it), why am I criticized over something for which I myself bless God” (10:29-30)? What the mature believer eats does not matter; however, that he avoids giving offense does! But, when all is said and done, a believer is free to eat at a private home without being judged.

B. The purpose of our freedom in Messiah (10:31-32): Paul was now ready to summarize this entire three-chapter unit (Chapters 8 to Chapter 10), and draw his discussion on the meat sacrificed to idols issue to a close. Well, whatever you do, whether it’s eating or drinking or anything else, do it all so as to bring glory to God (10:31). To do something for the glory of God means to reflect God’s glory in the way we live our lives. When others look at us and how we live, they should be able to see that the standards we live by are different from those in the pagan world around us. They should be able to see Yeshua living in us. Paul deals with this concept in more detail later in Second Corinthians 3:18 to 4:6 and 15-18.²⁸⁶ However, it is obvious that some of the believers in Corinth were taking their freedom in Messiah to extremes. They were in danger of using grace as an excuse to sin. Paul needed to show them that if the exercise of spiritual freedom led to others being misled or harmed, they needed to change their ways.²⁸⁷

There is much confusion today when it comes to ignoring the simple truth that the LORD is far more interested in building your character than He is anything else. We worry when ADONAI seems to be silent on specific issues such as, “What career should I choose?” The truth is, there are many different careers that could be in God’s will for your life. What YHVH cares about most is whatever you do, you do it to His glory. He is far more interested in what you are than what you do; He is much more concerned about your character than your career, because you will take your character into eternity, but not your career.²⁸⁸

Another way of saying this same principle is that we should appear blameless (Greek: oroskopos) – before Jews, to Gentiles, and to God’s Messianic Community (10:32). Here, we see God’s threefold division of humanity. Non-Messianic Jews are mentioned, pagan Gentiles (literally “Greeks”), and God’s Messianic Community, consisting of Messianic Jews and Messianic Gentiles. Some draw an inference from this verse that a Jew who gets saved is no longer a Jew. The reasoning is that just as when a Gentile come to faith in Messiah he leaves his paganism behind, so then, when a Jew comes to faith in Messiah he leaves his “legalistic Judaism” behind; that in the Church both lose their former identity – there is neither Jew nor Gentile (Galatians 3:28), Messiah has made us both one and has broken down the middle wall of separation which divided us, created from the two groups one new person (Ephesians 2:14-15) for whom neither being circumcised nor being uncircumcised matters – what matters is being a new creation (Galatians 6:15).

Though it is true that Jews and Gentiles are equally in need of salvation, and in this regard there is no difference between them, nevertheless salvation does not wipe out their identity as Jews and Gentiles. Paul referred to saved Gentiles as “Gentiles” (Romans 11:13 and Ephesians 2:11), and to saved Jews as “Jews” (Galatians 2:13-15). Paul also spoke of himself as a Pharisee (Acts 23:6), which implies, of course, that as a believer he still considered himself to be Jewish. God’s Messianic Community, His Church, consists of saved Jews who remain Jews and saved Gentiles who remain Gentiles.²⁸⁹

Were Paul’s arguments in these chapters effective enough in persuading the Corinthians to abandon their participation in idolatrous associations? The painful visit (see the commentary on Second Corinthians Am – Paul’s Painful Visit) and continued encouragement (see the commentary on Second Corinthians Bh – Do Not be Unequally Yoked with Unbelievers) suggest not. Such complex issues that require such enormous self-sacrifice are not solved overnight.²⁹⁰

C. The pattern of our freedom in Messiah (10:33-11:1): The final element of Paul’s conclusion makes a reference to his own personal life. In 8:3, he stated that he would not eat meat if by doing so he would cause a fellow believer to sin. In 9:19-23 he demonstrated how he became all things to all people so that by any means he might save some. Now he recites another version of the same principle: Just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not looking out for my own interests but for those of the many, so that they may be saved (10:33). Paul always lived with an eye on what others around him (especially new believers) might be thinking. Love for others must always temper our freedom in Messiah.²⁹¹

Then the apostle goes even further with his example. He is not content simply to live his life as an example for the Corinthians to emulate; he actually instructs them to literally become imitators of him. Try to imitate me, even as I myself try to imitate the Messiah (11:1). Lest we think that Paul thinks too highly of himself, he actually stresses that he himself is an imitator of Messiah and His lifestyle. That must always be the overriding goal in our lives – not to use some other human being as our model but to use the perfect, sinless Messiah. It is not too much to say that Paul is here instructing the Corinthians to imitate him only to the degree that he imitates Messiah.²⁹²

With the conclusion of Chapter 10, Paul puts a period to the discussion of meat sacrificed to idols and moves on to a variety of questions relating to how men and women should conduct themselves in the church’s worship services.