Daily Devotional for Friday, July 18

The Freedom in God

“Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God,”

1 Corinthians 10:31

The great god of our age is the autonomous self. The greatest good in our age is discovering our authentic self and expressing that autonomous self. The great duty of us all is to honor the autonomous self in others. This demonic thinking has led to the craziness of our day wherein we have personalized pronouns rather than personal pronouns, men think they are women and those of us who refuse to live the lie are considered hateful and bigoted. Absolute freedom without boundaries has driven us to madness.

Our extended passage deals with freedom, but it instructs us about the proper use of that freedom. Paul argued about the conscience being free for Christians to participate in eating certain foods, but our conscience is also bound to not abuse that freedom to insult or hurt fellow believers, “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not,” (verse 23). We have freedom, but our freedom is meant to be exercised in serving a greater good than our freedom. Freedom itself is not the highest thing; serving others and serving God in that freedom is.

This leads us to verse 31. In all things, we serve God. We have the freedom to do this. We have the command to do this. We have the duty to do this. Our freedom in Christ frees us to consider others before ourselves and to do all of our activities to the glory of God. We are released from the bondage of self to serve the true God. The god of self must die, and the true God can be worshiped in all of our decisions.

REFLECTION

Absolute freedom suffocates, stifles and shipwrecks our walk with Christ; restrained and Christ-centered freedom gives life, hope and peace.

Jason Rutherford