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Liberty not license, parts 3 and 4

Lynne Baab • Thursday July 16 2026

Liberty not license, parts 3 and 4

Overall theme from January through today: God’s law is love

Lesson 13: Liberty not license (1 Corinthians 8; 10:23–11:1)

Key verse: “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up.  1 Corinthians 10:23b

Freedom from sin for the purpose of love

Christian theologians and ethicists talk about freedom from and freedom for. In Christ, we are freed from the power of sin, death, and evil. This freedom is profound and life-changing. Many forms of destructive behavior no longer seem attractive. Many of the fears that plagued us are lifted. We are freed from the drive to earn God’s approval by obedience to rules or by any form of self-directed spirituality. Because of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, we are called “beloved” by God. We are accepted just as we are.

Because we are freed from the anxiety of having to prove ourselves, we can join Christians throughout the ages in worship, enjoying God’s presence, making music to God, singing joyfully. We are free to enjoy the beauty of God’s creation, seeing God’s handiwork in bright flowers, tall trees, majestic mountains, and rushing waves. We are free to bring every concern to God in prayer, and we can pray the words of even the most anguished and confrontational psalms with full assurance of our acceptance before God through Jesus. We are free to speak honestly about our weaknesses, regrets, and failings in Christian community, knowing we do not have to impress others in order to look good to God. This enormous gift of freedom from having to earn God’s approval blesses every moment of our lives.

The gift of freedom from sin, death, and evil through Jesus is accompanied by a further gift, the Holy Spirit poured into our hearts. In John 14:15-30 and 16:4-15, Jesus describes the ways that the Holy Spirit will implant Jesus’s teaching in our heart. The Holy Spirit will, in fact, be Jesus’s presence with us every day of our lives, guiding us and giving us strength to do what is right. Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus is inside us and walks beside us. Therefore, it is inconceivable that we would want to do something that breaks Jesus’s heart, and harming someone made in the image of God would do that.

Paul focuses on a very specific issue related to freedom. Christians throughout the ages have used the situation in Corinth as a case study to explore limits on our freedom for the sake of another’s faith and spiritual well-being. In Christ, we are freed for love — love for God and love for everything God has made, including all fellow humans, our Christian brothers and sisters, and God’s beautiful creation. Therefore, we voluntarily limit our own freedom in situations when exercising our freedom would damage someone or something God created and loves.

When you think of being freed from something and being freed for something, what specific aspects of freedom come to mind? What are your biggest challenges related to freedom?

Stepping into the world

When Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth, he is addressing people who have interpreted freedom in Christ as the permission to do anything they want. For those of us who become Christians out of wild and crazy backgrounds, Paul’s letters to the Corinthians can feel helpful and relevant to the challenges of trying to figure out which limits are appropriate as Christians, and which limits are not necessary.

For those of us who were raised in churchgoing families, who as children experienced a great deal of pressure to conform and be “good,” Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians can feel a bit confusing. We already know how to limit our freedom for the sake of others. Our parents pushed us, year after year, to moderate our behavior so that we would look good to others. Many of us bring into adulthood a pattern of looking around constantly to see what others are thinking about our actions. It feels like the last thing we need to hear from the Bible is more pressure to pay attention to the opinions of others.

Paul, however, is not telling the Christians in Corinth to focus on the opinions of others. He wants Christians to be aware of the spiritual well-being of others. He wants us to ponder whether our exercise of freedom will damage other people by encouraging them to pursue idolatry in any form. He wants us to think about what is beneficial to ourselves and others. His focus is on behavior that builds up. He is not interested in helping Christians learn how to impress others.

In 1 Corinthians 11:1, Paul makes a statement that can sound egotistical: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” Paul is an excellent model for many behaviors relevant to all Christians. He is concerned about the spiritual well-being of others without necessarily trying to look good to them. He ignores the opinions of others when they conflict with his sense of purpose in Christ. Paul limits his own freedoms so that he can continue to preach the gospel effectively. He tries to imitate Jesus. He writes in his second letter to the Corinthians that all of us are being transformed into the image of Jesus “from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Paul participates in that transformation in every way that he can. The challenge for those of us who focus too easily on the opinions of others is to shift our focus toward well-being and wholeness for ourselves and others, modeled after Jesus’s love.

Can you think of an instance where you limited your freedom for the spiritual well-being of another person? What did you learn about love from that action?

Next week: Something new! Illustration by Dave Baab: Preliminary sketch for a commissioned painting for Unicol, one of the colleges at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.

This is the last post in a series that began in January. The most popular posts in this series are:

This lesson appeared in the Fall 2023 edition of The Present Word adult Bible study curriculum published by the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Used with permission.

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