WHEN FREEDOM IS TAKEN TOO FAR

1Corinthians 6:12 NET
“All things are lawful for me” – but not everything is beneficial. “All things are lawful for me” – but I will not be controlled by anything.

Dear Believer,

There was once a scarcity of a particular commodity everywhere. I saw the last batch in a supermarket. As I was about to pay for all of it, an elderly woman came in with a little girl looking for just that commodity to meet an urgent need.

Well, it was within my rights to scoop up everything and leave. But in exercising my rights, I would be depriving a family of something that they obviously needed more than I did. I decided to share this stuff with them.

There are things that you have the right to do, but won’t necessarily add to your well-being or the good of others if you do them.

You may have the legal and divine rights to eat some food, but those foods may have negative implications for your health.

You may have the legal and divine rights to put up a structure on your property, but it may negatively your neighbor in some way.

A mature Believer doesn’t just do things because he has the right to do them. He doesn’t say things because they can be said.

Believer, you must balance your rights with your responsibilities.

Some people are addicted to various substances because they think since taking them is not necessarily sinful, they could just feed their body with those things — and they do so until they are controlled by those substances.

My little boy was once witnessing to a man who was smoking cigarettes.

“This isn’t good for your body, sir,” he told the man.

“Show me where the Bible tells us not to smoke cigarettes,” said the man.

‘Show me, sir, where the Bible tells us to smoke cigarettes,” my son retorted.

The Word of God tells us that not all things that are lawful to do are beneficial or necessary. Some of these things eventually hold a man who indulge in them in bondage.

When you exercise your rights and liberty to the extreme, you are seen to be out of your mind. It is like the man in one of the Yoruba proverbs who insists on wearing his expensive clothes until he’d squeezed the last drop of benefit from it. He was soon called a madman by everyone because the clothes eventually became old and full of holes on him. Yes, he fully exercised his right to use his expensive clothes, but he gained opprobrium by doing so.

God has given us liberty in Christ. But…

1Peter 2:16
Live as free people, but do not use your liberty as a pretext for evil…

Do not use your divine rights as an excuse for excessive gratification or to hurt others.

Because you are a Believer!

Have a beautiful day.

Your friend,
Deon.