Everything is permissible, but not everything is helpful. Everything is permissible, but not everything builds up. No one should seek his own good but the good of the other person.
(1 Corinthians 10:23) [CSB]
Is there such a thing as Christian liberty and if there is, how far does it go? Can the Christian do anything his old sinful flesh may lust for? Read carefully what Paul wrote in I Corinthians 10:23, “Everything is permissible” that’s freedom; but “not everything is helpful”, that’s restraint. And again he said, “Everything is permissible, freedom, “but not everything builds up” restraint.
Is Paul being contradictory? Certainly not! Paul repeats four times in this one epistle to the Corinthians the statement, “All things are lawful for me.” As far as the Law is concerned, I am free. However Paul did not say that he could do anything he pleased, and there would be no wrong in it. Quite the contrary, what Paul is saying is this: As far as the “Law of Moses” goes, I am not under it any longer. But I am now under the Law of Grace, and my Christian conduct is now motivated by a higher law, the Law of Love.
The Law of Love is much more demanding than the letter of the Law of Moses. The Law of Love is continuously demanding that the Christian evaluate his actions by the effect his decision or actions will have on others. Our goal as Christians should be to help people and build them up in the faith not tear them down and cause them to stumble. Demanding “liberty” to do something that would result in someone being offended or confused would be the opposite of acting in love and grace.
True freedom in Christ is the freedom to be like Christ.
“Love in the Christian sense does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people.” C.S. Lewis