New Thoughts: (11/10/15-11/11/15)
The primary challenge faced in these two verses, so far as coming to a right understanding of them is concerned, lies in discerning where Paul is expressing viewpoints common to the Corinthians and where he is expressing God’s viewpoints. The NASB is particularly unhelpful here, in that it gives no reason to suppose there is any such exchange going on. In fairness, the original text does not contain quotation marks to give such indication. Yet, many of the more recent translations inject them to help us understand.
Though the style of presentation is different, the flow of Paul’s thoughts is not so far removed from the Sermon on the Mount. There, Jesus goes through a series of lessons that begin along the lines of, “You have heard it said that,” followed by the corrective, “But I tell you.” Paul is doing the same, but with matters more current. For Jesus, it was the traditions of long years of Pharisaic teaching that needed to be cut away. For Paul, it’s perhaps those of one young lifetime, maybe less.
What do I mean by that? The viewpoint that he is countering here does not appear to stem from some long-rooted system of pagan beliefs. It doesn’t sound like a reflection of the tenets of Aphrodite or any of the other Greek gods. It sounds more like an overreaction to news of grace. It smacks of the once saved, always saved perversion of gospel salvation, what we often hear referred to as cheap grace. This is nothing new. It’s effectively as old as the Gospel. If grace is free, and my salvation is assured, then I may as well just get back to what I was doing. It won’t matter in the end. Paul had to correct that with the Romans. He has to correct it here. It is a matter the Church must ever be vigilant to put forward with utmost care. Grace is free, but you are not free to sin. Your sins are forgiven, but they mustn’t master you any longer. Your freedom from that slavery was bought at too great a price to grant them power again.
What is interesting, both here, and in the Sermon on the Mount, is that the lesson does not refute what had been said. It amplifies it. For Jesus, there were things like the commandment against murder. That commandment had been so vitiated in common thought that men felt as if so long as they had not physically brought about the death of another, they were clean on this one. Jesus did not alter the commandment in His teaching. He did not reject the idea that physical murder was most assuredly against God’s Law. He amplified the message by bringing it back to its original intent: Anything that could be construed as a precursor to that act, right down to the angry cut-down of your brother, counts. The Law spoke of the worst-case situation, but the case law made it abundantly clear that it encompassed everything of that nature. We but sought to make the Law manageable, and thereby became the more subjected to our sins.
Paul’s message here is much the same, particularly in verse 12. In fact, we shall see him return to this adage further on in the letter. So, we may hear the implied, “You say” introducing these thoughts. We may or may not also hear Paul nodding in agreement before he produces the all-important, ‘but’. Consider this verse. “You say ‘all things are lawful for me.’” Some of our translations, proceeding from this point, go so far as to add a, “that’s true, but.” I’m not so sure we should go so far as that. Are all things lawful for the Christian? Clearly not! If all things are lawful, then the Ten Commandments are done and gone. What Jesus enjoined in the Sermon on the Mount is no longer binding. We can call our brothers and sisters fools with wild abandon. We can go chasing after every sexual pleasure without concern. That’s exactly where this thinking had taken the Corinthians, and if their adage held any truth whatsoever, Paul would have no business correcting them.
Let us instead leave out any sort of agreement here. “You say, ‘all things are lawful for me’, but it is patently obvious that not all things are profitable for you.” That which masters you cannot possibly be lawful! These sorts of things obviate the statement you are making. It can’t possibly be right! Frankly, you know it. You have merely slipped into making your own Codex of the Achievable, just like the Pharisees did. They started on the right foot, seeking to maintain holiness before a holy God. But, when they found that impossible, rather than humbling themselves before Him, they lowered their standards until their standards became achievable.
It is easy, after all, to refrain from murder. Merest lack of steely resolve will see to that. Fear of failing, and finding oneself instead the victim of murder might well prevent us from making the attempt. Refraining from angry thoughts towards our fellow man, on the other hand, is as near to impossible as admits no distinction. We may manage to reserve it primarily for those we don’t know personally. I find it relatively easy, for example, to be angered by the unseen IT folks at the various companies at which I work. Why do they make it so hard, so annoying, to obtain the tools I need to do my job? Why are these barriers put in my way? Why didn’t they do things the way I would have done them. Fools! All of them.
But, you see? That’s exactly what Jesus was getting at. That whole way of thinking? Precluded for the believer. All things are not legal. That propensity of thought is not legal. Corinthians, there’s nothing in that adage that I can agree with, because it’s fundamentally wrong at root, and can only lead you into error. You’re setting the wrong standard, using the wrong ruler for measurement. The question is not, “what can I get away with as being legal?” The question, as Paul makes explicit, is, “What is profitable?” I wanted to add a ‘for me’ to that, but even that, I think, would get us off course. Who cares if it’s profitable for me? Is it profitable for the kingdom of God? If I am His servant, His steward, then whose profit should I have in mind?
The right question is not, “is this legal for me to do?” The right question is, “why am I asking? Does this already have such mastery over me?” We need to get out of this mode of looking for loopholes and escape clauses, and start seeking to live like God his holy. We need to stop trying to skate by on doing the minimum and ask instead how much more we could be doing in God’s strength and power.
Now, I think in verse 12 the location of the quoted material is clear. In verse 13, there’s actually some question. Which part is the “You say”? Is it, “Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food”? Or, is it a longer quote? “Food is for the stomach, and the stomach for food; but God will do away with both of them”? Most of our translations take the shorter form, if they mark the ‘you say’ at all. This, I suspect, comes about because of that ‘but’. That ‘but’, after all, is how Paul marked his response in the previous verse. However, the NET, and perhaps a few others find cause to consider the longer section as being quoted, and I find myself agreeing with that assessment.
Consider that we are still dealing more largely with matters of sexual sin. The next few verses will make that clear. These two verses do not present some unconnected aside. Paul doesn’t work that way. In fact, by the end of verse 13, it is clear that he’s still focused on the matter at hand. “The body is not for immorality but for the Lord; and the Lord is for the body.” What does that correct? Does it correct some matter of overindulgence or gluttony? No. What Paul corrects there is the second part: “God will do away with both.”
That thinking reflects something nearer to Manicheism, although I’m not certain that particular heretic was on the scene as yet. He was just one in a line, really. There was this idea that the physical world was less perfect, less permanent. It didn’t really matter. It’s the spirit that matters. We still carry that sort of thinking with us, and if we are not careful, we’ll find ourselves reading it into any number of Scriptural teachings. This has led to various heretical teachings across the centuries, and continues to do so in our own day and age. It’s the fundamental basis for every conception of the so-called carnal Christian. It lies at the base of the once saved, always saved lie. You find the seeds of it already being rooted out in passages like Romans 6. No! This grace into which you’ve been brought does not give you license to sin with abandon, so long as it’s only physical. No! You can’t find some grounds for maintaining a mistress on the basis that your interest in her is solely physical, but your heart remains true to your wife. You cannot justify viewing pornography on the basis that it’s only dealing with physical needs, and doesn’t touch the heart. You’re wrong in the first place, and even were you right, you’d still be wrong. The body is not for immorality, it’s for the Lord!
See, the mindset that says God’s going to destroy my stomach and my flesh anyway, so what I do with it now doesn’t matter is the mindset that is looking for loopholes. Paul utterly removes them. Your body is for the Lord. It is His. He made it. He reclaimed it. He sanctified it. Remember that word? You were sanctified – set apart for His exclusive use. How, then, can you suppose it acceptable to put that body which is His exclusively to uses He does neither command nor condone? Your understanding, being poor and beset by every sin, has led you far off the course of righteousness, all the while boasting of your great advancement in this business of Christianity!
Paul has not only failed to let go of the matter of sexual sin; he’s still hammering away at the same root issue of spiritual pride that has been there from the opening of the letter, and will remain in view right through to the end. Such is the nature of sin in us, so all-pervasive that we will discount in ourselves the very sins we so readily decry in others. Indeed, it is our own sins that most offend us in a brother, and why is that? It is because we cannot recognize our brother’s sin without being forced to recognize our own. We may deny it vehemently, and only more vehemently to ourselves. But, we know. Conscience knows. The Spirit knows, and He will not suffer us to persist in our self-delusions.
There are those sins we know are enticing to us, and against these we are hopefully on guard. We are generally pretty clear on the necessity of rejecting physical participation in sexual sins. We understand that even granting the eyes and the imagination opportunity to participate is too much. “I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?” (Job 31:1). That is the way of a righteous man. Of course, our eyes are as fallen as the rest of us, and refuse to be bound by covenant, but we should be constantly reminding ourselves: This is who I am, not that.
What happens, though, when we step into the basic activities of daily life? What happens when we commute, when we go about the efforts required to maintain property, when we enter the workplace? Does God get so much as a thought as we ponder how to fulfill our various duties? What does it even mean to do laundry in a godly fashion, or to design electronics in light of Christ? It means much! It means we are not to be doing these things from the place of grumbling and complaining about what must be done or how it must be achieved. “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken. You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Ge 3:19). The nature of our labors is wholly just, even if it can seem unbearably toilsome. That is not, however, to say our labors are wholly cursed. No! Your daily grind, in whatever it may consist, is the first round of good works you have been given to achieve. God has provided these things, as much as you may dislike them, for your good and your profit.
Now, obviously, when I say that whatever you do it is a good work, there are necessary bounds on ‘whatever’. You cannot go about pursuing what is clearly sinful in nature and suppose it a good work. To take the most painfully obvious, real-life example, you cannot open a brothel somewhere, and suppose yourself to be pursuing the call of God on your life. Nor can you be employed there, nor be its customer. The nature of that business is roundly denounced as sinful, and as I have noted many times, so sinful as to head most every list of sins that Scripture propounds. We’ll explore that point more fully in the next section, so I shan’t dwell on it here.
My point is this: Let it be assumed that our employments and occupations are not such as are by nature contrary to God’s rule: That they do no violence to the love of God, nor to the love of our fellow man. This being the case, they are indeed assignments given by God for our benefit. If they are assignments given by God, and we are His sworn servants, how ought we to go about pursuing our assignments? Ought we not to be asking what it is He wishes to see done in these tasks? Yes, it is well to accept such assignments our bosses may hand us, and to do them as well as we are able. Yes, it is well to offer our best counsel to our employers, that we turn in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s wage. We should be model employees as we are intended to be model citizens. It’s the same duty, really, just at a different level. But, in all things, surely we should remain mindful that our earthly employers are not the ones to whom we primarily answer. We do answer to them, as they are placed in authority by the One who has authority over us. He has granted them this authority, and has called us to obedience. If it is time to move along, He will make it known to us, and if He does not make it known to us, we frankly have no business moving along.
Now, let’s go one step farther, for our days are not entirely composed of necessity. True, the labors of employment, of keeping house, of raising family, of membership in the church, and such other duties may well fill the vast majority of our time. But, no man is so busy as to find no place for down time. We may tend to overbook, but that’s another issue. We have those moments when we are granted to stop for a space. What do we do with them? What do we do them at all? Is it done with any concern for whether it is right to stop, or whether we are in fact doing so as shirking our proper duties?
Of the three points that Paul makes in these two verses, the one that hits me most squarely is the first: Is it profitable? Now, it should be clear to all that Paul is not discussing matters of commerce. He’s not asking if everything we do is something we can charge for, or something that otherwise increases our material worth. The focus is not on the material but on the spiritual. The focus is on bringing the material part of us into proper service to the spiritual. The question, then, is not whether our choices and actions are such as will help us earn a living and keep food on the table. The question is whether our choices and actions are helping or hindering our spiritual growth.
And make no mistake: They do one or the other. There is no neutral ground in this battle of life. We are inclined to map out vast swaths of neutral ground. We decide that all manner of things don’t really matter. If I stop what I’m doing to go play a game for a few moments (or a few hours), what of it? What did it hurt? Am I not permitted my down time? Is it not good for a man that he should recharge from time to time? Well, of course it is. The questions are when, how, and for how long? It is easy to slip from the place of recharging into a place of sloth. It is easy to become so occupied with diversions that we come to the end of the day feeling more behind than we were at the beginning. Indeed, we likely are more behind than we were at the beginning. Why? Because we have left God completely out of our considerations. We have not been asking what He would have us do with the time He has given us.
What would change in you, I wonder, if you could but keep that simple thing in mind: The time you have is a gift from God. It is given to you for purpose, not for frittering away. It is one of those talents entrusted to you by which to do what is profitable to Him. And therein lies the greater truth of Paul’s point. It’s not even so much a question of whether our choices serve to improve our spiritual growth. It’s far more a question of whether our choices serve the Kingdom. How much service to Christ is too much? How much, should He ask it of you, constitutes an unfair burden set upon you by the One who saved your soul? I dare say there can be no such load as we could pronounce unfair, no call placed upon us that exceeds the terms of our service. There is not even a load so great as should cause us to sorrow, grumble, or despair.
Think about it. The great prophet Moses was brought down not by the enormity of the task that was assigned to him. You think you’ve got it tough? Here he was opposing the mightiest of nations effectively single-handed. Here he was leading how many hundreds of thousands of grumbling, uncooperative, whiny people through arid lands. Here he was, appointed as chief justice over every least little disagreement as might come up, tasked with establishing proper order of worship, tasked with every minutia of governance. And you’re going to complain about how hard your life is? What brought Moses down was not the task given him, but his grumbling frustration, his impatience, and his angry outburst. It was taking matters into his own hands rather than seeking out how God wanted things done. Poor Moses. It was asking a lot of him to put so much upon his shoulders. But, the truth is it was never put on his shoulders. God carried the burden. Moses just served as conductor, if you will. What was on Moses’ shoulders was there by his own decision.
So it is with us. We feel the weight of things not because God has set us under great burdens, but because we have insisted on picking up what was never ours to carry. How have we done so? We have done so by neglecting to query our Lord as to how we are to carry out the tasks He assigns. We have done so by insisting on our self-sufficiency, even as we proclaim the truth that apart from Him we can do nothing. We say it. We know it. And yet, we keep trying to deny it in practice.
Father, I pray You would help me to be more mindful of this. I have watched the wife You gave me practice this very presence of mind and found it more frustrating than pleasing. Forgive me. What am I thinking? She is modeling exactly the mindset You call us all to have. May I learn rather than belittle. May I come to that same place of seeking You out in all things, rather than assuming I’ve got it without You. I’ve got nothing but frustration without You. How can it be that I convince myself this is preferable to the joy of walking humbly together with You? How can I so swiftly go from walking conscious of Your eyes ever upon me, to acting as if You weren’t there? Help me, Holy Lord. Remind me, Holy Spirit. Keep me mindful of what it is You would have done with the moments of my day. So much is the process of habit, and even now, I feel habit calling. But, You have not called us to habit, but to obedience. How, then, shall I live this day with You? May it be an improvement over the last as You work within and upon Me for Your good pleasure.
