All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. “Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power.”

Wonderfully free from the Law, but not mastered by sin—that is the profound and often misunderstood truth of the Christian life. On the one hand, we are no longer judged by the Law. There is no sin that a Christian can commit that would bring him under God’s condemnation, for Christ died for sin once for all (Heb. 10:10, 12, 14, Rom. 8:1). This holds not just for past sins but for all future sins as well, for indeed all of our sins were future to the time Christ was crucified.

What then is our motivation to flee sin? If we are no longer condemned, why not go out and enjoy all that the world, the flesh, and the devil have to offer? To that, Paul answers: why in the world would a Christian want to? Sure, sin is alluring, as the Corinthians found out. It seeks to master us and drive us to unprofitable, unfruitful living. But our sinful desires are all self-centered, self-pleasure-oriented. Indulging them serves no one well, except for one’s own self—and that only momentarily, for self-centered living has its problems! Sin doesn’t give the believer freedom. As believers we are free from its pull.

Paul’s poignant example of this is one’s eating. We give into an unhealthy eating pattern under the guise that the next bite is necessary for life. God gave us our appetite for His purposes, not so that we would be enslaved by our appetites or temptations. Our eating should not be motivated by the tyranny of appetite, but by the desire to take care of the body God has given us to serve Him. God is concerned about our bodies, as the promise of resurrection attests. So why as Christians would we enslave ourselves to food or any other temptations? For that is not profitable for glorifying God.

What, then, do we make of the Christian who gives himself over to sin as the Corinthians did? The answer is simply this: he is not living a profitable life for God or for the body of Christ. Paul shamed them by his comparison to those unbelievers who are condemned for such behaviors. Why then, as Christians would the Corinthians want to live like the unsaved? Why not live with the promise that one day we will be raised up bodily through the power of the resurrected Christ? That is a greater motivation than the fear of condemnation, and it is a higher calling than to just be free to do anything one wants.

Lord, I want to live not for myself but to come in line with Your purposes.