First Corinthians 6:12-14 Christian liberty issues
1 Corinthians 6:12-14 · Mike Doyle · Nov 1, 2020
Letters to the Corinthians, No. 31
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261920512777

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Two weeks ago, I started out talking about 1 Corinthians 6, verse 12, and we'll do 12, 13, 14 today. And I wanted to go over this a little more because I think I want to make a couple of points clearer, hopefully, than they were then. So verse 12 is, 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." And then verse 13 is, 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.

It's an interesting statement. And the reason you see this first screen was similar to the screen that we had a couple of weeks ago. I think it's important for us to understand what the whole doctrine of the two men, because a lot of times pronouncements are made or in scripture, especially in Paul's epistles, that if you don't have this understanding about the first man, the second man, the first man, Adam, the last Adam, who's the Lord Jesus Christ, sometimes you get confused as to who's he talking about? So that's why I'm putting this up here. We gave a definition last time, which probably was a little wordy, but he said that a man is a substantive entity.

He's a person, he's a life, belonging to the substance of a thing. This word substantive entity means it's a belonging to the substance of a thing. It's essential. A man is a totally independent entity. And that's what that word means. And so each one of us are substantive entities.

But within that framework, we have certain traits and we have certain characteristics. that are not substantive and they compromise the nature that we have. And so to define a nature, a nature is a composition of attributes and it's not to be considered the entity itself, okay? So that being said, the first man, Adam sinned. And when he sinned, what happened?

He died. positionally, and we could spend a few minutes on position and condition, but most everybody in the audience knows what positionally means is, he became totally dead to God, spirit, soul, and body. And God warned him about that. The day that you sin, you will surely die. And so therefore what happened, his position as dead to God in soul, spirit, and body began to manifest itself in his condition. He began to die experientially. Now, it was 900 years before he actually assumed the position of death, but he died spiritually and he died soullessly. And 900 years later, he died physically, his body died.

So now, the second thing about these two men is the first man, Adam, is the head of the human race. And when, as the head of the human race, when he acts, all of the race acts in him. And so he took all of humanity into the position of death with him. 1 Corinthians 15, 22, really sort of one of those verses that just sort of smacks you in the face when you first see it. In Adam, all die.

All in Adam have his life and therefore they by nature are the children of wrath, Ephesians 2.3. The Adamic life is the source of sin in every one of us, whether we're saved or unsaved. Wherefore, as by one man sin entered the world, and death by sin, so death passed upon all men. Why? Because we all sinned. When Adam sinned, we sinned.

The old man, given this verse 12, would not look at all things from a benefit to others or a mastery to himself. If you look at that verse, it says, all things are lawful for me. Well, the old Adamic man would say, okay, that means I can do anything, but he would never consider whether they were profitable or not to other people. He would say, yeah, all things are lawful for me, but I won't be mastered by any, not realizing that he's mastered by sin at this point. Now, so when Adam sins, what happens? He became this thing called mortal flesh.

And that led to a change in God's, well, really it wasn't a change because God doesn't change his plans, but he had to be replaced by the last man, by the last Adam, which we know is the new man who is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Now this new man, the second man, is the Lord Jesus Christ from heaven.

Now, does he have two natures? Sure he does. He has two lives, yes he does. He has the nature of the son of God and the nature of the son of man. He's 100% God, he's 100% man, and he's in union with all of those elements are united into one person, the Lord Jesus Christ himself. So when you start looking at Christ's attributes, you can't just say he's love, joy, peace, patience. You have to say it a little bit more definitive than that, I think. This divine human life that he has, love is his nature. It's unique to him. Peace is his nature, it's unique to him. Just as long suffering and gentleness and goodness and faithfulness and self-control, they are all unique to this man.

And they are defined by the fact that they are his attributes. Interesting, they're all positive. There's nothing negative about the Lord Jesus Christ, where there's plenty negative about Adam the first. He was and is and ever shall be impeccable, flawless, perfect, exemplary, ideal. I can't come up with enough words to define how wonderful he is.

So the question came up two weeks ago. The question was pretty simple. You didn't tie these two men, to verse 12, and the tie is kind of like this. All things are lawful for me, the new man, but not all things are profitable, the new man. All things are lawful for me, the new man, but I won't be mastered by anything, as Christ wouldn't be mastered by anything. Well, the new man in Christ has freedom and liberty beyond initial understanding of the believer, But we have to get to the idea that, look, we're now in living union with the risen, ascended Lord Jesus Christ. We have his human divine life, and that has become our life.

1 Peter and 2 Peter 1.4 tells us exactly that.

I'm now one spirit with him, 1 Corinthians 6.17. He is my head, and I'm a member of his body. incredible statements about who we are. When we do understand that we have been separated from the old man and united to the new man, we are able to say concerning any action of the old nature, now listen to this, now then it's no more I, the new man in Christ, that do it, but the sin nature that dwells in me.

Now, that doesn't mean I get off of the hook and I'm not responsible. Because what's interesting is I am, as a new creation of Christ, I am no longer responsible for the presence of indwelling sin. I want you to think about that. I'm not responsible for the presence of indwelling sin. However, I'm very much responsible to reject and not to yield to the demands of the sinful indwelling Adam life. The fact that I have a sin nature isn't my responsibility.

The Lord left it there, but I am responsible not to yield to it, not to yield it to his demands. And those demands, if we yield to them, will put me in servitude to the old man. I'll be back in slavery again. I have a second responsibility, and the second responsibility is to abide in the Lord Jesus Christ in order that I may, what?

Grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, 2 Peter 3.18.

In doing my research for this, I ran into, in the 1967 Schofield notes, and he talks a little bit about grace there, And he says, grace being progressively conformed to the image of Christ. That's a process that's going on. And here's what he says about grace.

Grace is also the method of God in the believer's life and service. Everything that we are and do is done by grace. God operates with us only in grace. Because we're saved, we are not under any kind of law We're not under any kind of system other than grace. We live under grace. Having by grace brought the believer into the highest conceivable position. Ephesians 1, 6, blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus in the heavenlies. God ceaselessly works through grace to impart to and perfect in him corresponding graces. Grace therefore stands connected with service, with Christian growth, and with giving.

Those are from Schofield. I thought that was really kind of cool. So we've got to get off this idea that there's improvement for the condemned old man. No, it's just growth. We're to grow in Christ. We're to grow in the acceptance the accepted new man in which I'm already from a positional standpoint complete.

Now I'm responsible for my decisions to do what is profitable and I'm responsible to not to be controlled except by the spirit of Christ. So this faith responsibility is based upon my walking in and depending upon the Holy Spirit to minister and develop that life in my spirit. So that was kind of where I wanted to go to get us up to speed and to show us with these verses coming up how it works.

So where am I now? I'm in the Lord Jesus where he is. And he is in my spirit by the indwelling Holy Spirit. I know that I'm united to him in newness of life. I know that as such, I'm positionally separated from the sinful Adamic life. Look at this chart. I have been taken out of Adam and recreated in Christ Jesus. Every single one of us, that is absolutely an undeniable, cannot ever be changed truth about every single believer that we have been separated from Adam and united to Christ. So our identity for all eternity will be the Lord Jesus Christ. And how does this work? How does it work for me and you? What do I do once I kind of know this? If I know that I'm positionally as such separated from the Adamic life.

I've always loved the Romans 6.11 And sometimes when you first run into it, you can kind of make a law out of it.

It says, even so, consider yourselves dead to sin, the entire sinful nature, the entire man, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus. That's how you deal with the attempt of the old man to try to control you anymore. Wait a minute, I'm absolutely dead to him. And I can consider myself or I can reckon myself totally separated from you. So when anything is left to our judgment, there's a risk.

Now, last week we said that a believer does what, how do I put this? We have three issues here, and I got this from Chester McAuley, and I thought it was really good. Every one of us is obligated to do the commands of the word of God. If God says do them, we're to do them. The other part of that equation is we are absolutely never to do what is prohibited by the word of God.

But those two things don't actually cover a whole lot of how my Christian life operates. There's an awful lot left for what I would call mature judgment. And so when we are in that position as believers, there's a risk. We have an awful lot that we make spiritual judgments about that we can't find specific understanding in the Bible about it. So we have to make our own decisions. Now, what's interesting about that is it means that my judgment When I have the freedom in Christ to make a decision or make a judgment about some specific thing, it always gets compared with legalism.

And the example that came to mind this week was should I wear a mask or shouldn't I wear a mask, right? If I'm a believer walking in the Lord Jesus and I'm confronted with Should I wear a mask? Should I not wear a mask? I have the liberty to make that decision. But the decision is going to be in the realm of, is it going to edify? Is wearing a mask or not wearing a mask going to control me? Is it going to be for the benefit of others? In other words, just because I can do it doesn't give me necessarily license to do it.

Here's what the world does instead of that. What the world does is legalism will substitute rules for judgment. So the world wants to take away our freedom as believers, and so what do they do? They give us rules to obey, and so there goes the judgment. You can't make a decision, we'll make it for you. Legalism will substitute peer pressure for individual decisions. Here's the great thing about this.

If I'm walking in the spirit and I'm a believer, I am not going to make a decision that's going to be harmful to my brother, that's going to control me in any sense of the word, that I find myself in a position where I've really upset people. I don't want to do that because their well-being is more important to me than my own. Once you have rules, though, in an environment, especially a spiritual environment, guess what happens? The standard for spirituality becomes the rules and not grace, and we live under grace.

There's tremendous responsibility living under grace, but we need to stay there because we can trust the grace of God to bring us to the point in whatever decision we have to make that it'll be the right one, and it'll be the loving one, and it will be the one that fits perfectly with the resurrected life of Christ. Give you another example.

I grew up in Catholicism, as most of you know, and I found these notes about, you know, the Catholics are the ones that put the label on the, what we know as Protestants, and they were protestors, that fits. But the Protestant Reformers fell under the same criticism by their Roman Catholic opponents. Now watch how subtle this is. The Catholics said about the Reformers that they were teaching, that the Reformers were teaching that since Christians are saved by grace, they could live sinful lives.

That was what they said about them. Unfortunately, John Calvin's successor in Geneva, Theodore Beza, overreacted and argued, and here's what he said, that a true Christian cannot commit gross sin. Oh, really? The assertion led to the conclusion that the basis of assurance of salvation is the presence of fruit in the life rather than the promise of God. You see how subtle that is? So you incorporate rules in, the problem is you get tied to the rules rather than the person of God. This view that a true Christian would not commit gross sin has become popular in reformed theology today, but it goes further than scripture does. That's the problem. Scripture never makes this claim, but constantly is warning us as believers against abusing our liberty in Christ and turning it into a license to sin.

And that's the issue that Paul is faced here. So when confronted with a decision regarding whether a legitimate thing is feasible, I've got to consider the profitability to all, and I've got to be convinced that doing so will not control me. And only the new man in Christ can make this determination regarding his actions. The old man is already in bondage and doesn't have the freedom to do this. So maybe some of the hallmarks would be this. Freedom is not the final question. What are the consequences in my final decision? And am I mastered by the freedom?

The believer should always be able to submit to the Lord's control. We should give the Lord not anyone or anything else control of our bodies. And as we go through the rest of these verses this week and next week, you'll see how important that is. But you know what? If I allow myself to be controlled, God is so gracious to us.

And I find myself back under the reign of the old Adamic man. And therefore I sin by doing so. And the consequence resulting sins, God has provided a gracious, offer to me and to you to restore fellowship with my Father and with the Lord Jesus, and that is confession. So now, let's go back and talk a little bit about the twisted logic that these Corinthians were going through.

In verse 13, he says, food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both. Yet the body is not for immorality or fornication, but for the Lord and the Lord is for the body. Now this first analogy is true. The stomach is for food and food is for the stomach. The body can't be sustained without food. But the second analogy is false. The body is for fornication or immorality. It's a false analogy. because it doesn't explain the purpose of the body.

Not only is food made for the stomach, but the stomach, which is essential to physical existence, is made for food and can't exist without them. With the words, the body is for the Lord, Paul corrects their thinking. Correct thinking would say this. The stomach is for food. Food is for the stomach. The body for the Lord. and the Lord for the body. That would have been a true analogy.

But in Corinth, I think there were some men within their Christian community who were going to prostitutes. And not only that, they were arguing that they had a right to do so. One argument would be, well, being spiritual people, they would imply, has moved them to a higher plane, the realm of the spirit. where they are unaffected by behavior that has merely to do with the body. And where do they get that? They get it from the Greek culture. Another may argue this.

If I may satisfy one bodily appetite as I wish, why may I not satisfy another bodily appetite as I wish? The stomach is temporal. God says right here, God will do away with both. The stomach is temporal, but God will do away with it. The body is eternal.

Oh, we'll see that in verse 14. The body is part of what the Lord saved and sanctified. Therefore it is for him. And we should use it for his glory and not for immorality. Furthermore, The Lord's got a purpose and a destiny for our bodies. And for them, he is for them in that sense.

What body is he talking about? Resurrected body, talking about the new body. Chester McCauley put it this way. He said, the resurrection body is part of, but different from the natural body. And hopefully we can make that clear as we go along. I looked at 1 Corinthians 15, 42, and this is probably one of the most important passages in the New Testament regarding the human body. Now watch how this goes.

The human body is sown, I'm sorry, so also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body. It is raised an imperishable body. It's sown in dishonor. It's raised in glory. It's sown in weakness. It's raised in power. It's sown a natural body. It's raised a spiritual body. And if there is a natural body, there's also a spiritual body.

What's wonderful about these verses is it just lays out what God has done to our physical body and what he intends to do with it for his purposes, which are really cool stuff. Maybe the proposition, if you looked at Paul's argument, it would look like this. Food is for the stomach, stomach is for the food. A is for B, B is for A. Part two, God will destroy the stomach and the food, B and A. Proposition number two, the body is for the Lord, not for sexual immorality. And the Lord is for the body, A for B and B for A. God has raised the Lord and he will raise us by his own power.

It's just amazing that we are gonna have a body that fits the future of our whole entire existence. Now, let's talk about the future of our bodies. Verse 14 says, now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through his power. stuck in there the Greek word for race, and there's a difference. Notice the first one's A-G-E-R-I-O, and the second one is E-G-E-R-O.

The difference is that we as men entered the grave differently than Christ did. The Lord We die as a consequence of our own personal sin. And therefore we legitimately, we belong in the realm of death. Christ did not die as a result of his own personal sin. So therefore he doesn't deserve death. Christ passed through the realm of death and was raised out of it. We were deeply embedded in death and we will be raised out of it out of or removal from its entire realm.

It's wonderful to know that God has intended that the Lord will resurrect the bodies of almost all Christians. The reason I say that is that some will get caught away in the rapture and they won't have to be resurrected. The resurrection of our bodies shows that God has plans for them. Some in Corinth didn't believe in the resurrection, but Paul dealt with it later, as we'll see in chapter 15.

Here he simply states the facts without defending them. Now God has raised up, God has not only raised up the Lord, but also will raise us up in his power. The body of the believer is for the Lord, because through Christ's resurrection, God has set in motion the reality of our own resurrection. This means that the believer's physical body is to be understood as joined to Christ's own body that was raised from the dead.

Paul learned something about this great truth on the road to Damascus and his conviction, guess what did the Lord say to him? Why are you persecuting me? There was a direct link between the Lord Jesus Christ and the physical believers who he was persecuting. They were united to him and it was more than just a spiritual union.

To touch the bodies of saints was to touch Christ. It's really what it comes down to. How solemn is all sin, how specially solemn is sin against the body, which is indwelt by the Holy Spirit and belongs to God. It's our privilege and our responsibility to allow our bodies to be used for the glory of God.

In 2 Corinthians 4.14, Knowing this, that he who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise with Jesus, will also raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you. Look at the honor the body has. It's set in the true light when Christ came to the earth and proved it, not only in his own person as a man, but in ours as redeemed by the blood and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Philippians 321 tells us, he who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of his glory by the exertion of the power that has even to subject all things to himself. So our bodies are uniquely special in this plan of God in terms of how he's going to do things. In this body, you and I are gonna have part of the Lord Jesus. God has both raised the Lord and will raise us up in his power.

1 Corinthians 15, 20 says, but now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. As in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. To finish up now, God has not only raised the Lord, but also raised us up together.

If you look at Romans 8, 11, it says really cool, it says, but since the spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised up Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. And that's now, we don't have to wait. That's now. It's not merely that our spirits go to be with the Lord in heaven. Our bodies shall be raised like his at his coming.

For if death shows man's weakness, resurrection displays God's power. The actual spiritual effect of this is immense. Resurrection is all about the body. And so when Paul is dealing with the Corinthians, their immorality, he begins, rather than tell them just to stop it, he starts to lay out the value that God has placed on a human body.

And so, next week, we're going to take a good hard look at not only our souls, but our bodies are declared to be members of Christ. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Verse 15. So if you're just a person who wants to discuss the soul or the spirit because you think that's the advanced spiritual position you should take, I think that when you study the body and what God has intended for it, you can't leave that out.

It's a unique part of it. So to close now, on the contrary of the immorality of the soul, is easily perverted to man's pride, not so the resurrection, which not only exalts God, but it humbles man. And it delivers from this present ease and indulgence that he holds in faith. The body is turning out in these verses to be a critical part of what our understanding is about how we should live. and how important these bodies are.

We'll find out next week that they belong to the Lord. So let's close. Our dear father, how we thank you for your word, how we thank you for the grace that we live under and how we thank you that you're so careful to explain to us and show us all of this incredible grace, spiritual, soulish in our bodies that you've showered upon us in every every single second of every day. We thank you. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.