- Oct 10, 2022
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Making Room for Sin.
1 Corinthians 10:31
31 Whether, then, you eat or drink or
whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
31 Whether, then, you eat or drink or
whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
Over the five decades I've been a Christian, I've had many opportunities to observe my fellow believers make room in their lives for self-centeredness, rebellion toward God, and sin. I've done the same myself, too. Thank God, He's not left me mired in these things but, through much "chastening" (Hebrews 12:5-11), has moved me into ever-deeper, ever more joyful, holy fellowship with Himself (Revelation 3:20; 1 John 1:3; 2 Corinthians 13:14). To varying degrees, He's done the same for many of my Christian brethren, also.
In my case, at least, two of the effects of the growing communion with God that I enjoy is a corresponding interest in helping others enjoy the same and a natural enthusiasm for God expressed, not in emotional, swaying "concerts of praise" on a Sunday morning, but in desiring to honor and glorify Him in all that I do. How I interact with my wife, what I choose as entertainment, how I invest my time, energy and money, how I comport myself as I drive around town, my service to the Church - all of my choices resolve down to the same question:
Does this glorify God?
This question provides a vital, guiding first principle for Christians that they often ignore because it regularly runs contrary to their personal preferences, and the currents of secular culture in which they’ve been caught, and even against norms of the modern, western, evangelical Church. When I’ve talked about holiness (which is inextricably bound up with properly glorifying God) with fellow believers, especially these days, immediately I’m warned not to be legalistic, and reminded that “nobody’s perfect,” and told not to judge lest I be judged, and so on. I’m urged to remember that Christians are “free in Christ” and that talk of holiness, except in the most vague and flexible way, inevitably tramples on their precious liberty. By these means (and many others), Christians create and maintain room in their lives for sin.
Recently, on CF.net, I had a fresh example of this…incongruous practice of Christians. In a thread on public nakedness, some of the posters wanted to accommodate women going about bare-breasted, defending it as a cultural thing and thus exempt from moral censure. God in His word, however, clearly indicates that public nakedness is shameful and degrading – so much so that it was commonly part of His punishment and humiliation of the wicked. I pointed out from Scripture where this was communicated but the response was a relegation of the matter almost entirely to culture.
The main argument was that an explicit statement in Scripture as to what, exactly, constituted nakedness and being clothed is “hard to come by” and thus must inevitably be left to subjective tolerances. There was much fallacious argument offered in support of this conclusion – equivocation of terms, non sequiturs, false dichotomies, arguing from exceptions to rule, etc. – and then the one who offered the “rebuttal” shut down any further discussion of the matter. Doing so, of course, smacks of an awareness on the part of the one who did so of the weakness of his argument and also a revealed a troubling censoriousness that frequently stifles Truth rather than preserves it.
In any case, it also illustrates the slippery way in which Christians often allow for what God has condemned, stretching and twisting His boundaries to include what they want, sinful though it may be. In the matter of how clothed a Christian should be in a given circumstance, the answer is obtained very simply by the first principle indicated above:
31 Whether, then, you eat or drink or
whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
Does a woman going about in public with her breasts exposed ever honor God? Obviously not. He has said in His word very clearly that such nudity is, as far as He’s concerned, shameful and degrading. It was God, after all, who clothed Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21); it was God who commanded family members never to expose their nakedness to one another (Leviticus 18:1-18); it was God who repeatedly associated public nakedness with sin and who warned that the shame and degradation of public nakedness He would afflict upon the wicked (Isaiah 47:3; Ezekiel 23:18; Micah 1:11; Nahum 3:5); it was God who commanded “modest” (decorous, orderly) dress (1 Timothy 2:9) of women desiring to be godly; It was God who commanded all of His children to “make no opportunity for the flesh to fulfill its lusts” (Romans 13:14) and to “flee also youthful lusts” (2 Timothy 2:22).
What’s more, God has commanded His children to love one another such that they take great pains to accommodate the sensitivities of one another, making significant sacrifices in order not to cause them to stumble spiritually and morally. This, too, is how they glorify God.
Romans 15:1
1 We then who are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.
Romans 14:13
13 … no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother's way.
Romans 14:21
21 It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.
In light of these verses, how does a Christian person justify going about in the nude in public? How, by such conduct, are they doing all they can not to cause others to stumble, or to be offended? Most importantly, how is God glorified by creating opportunity for fleshly temptation by one’s unclothed state?
It’s not a question of how much can I take off in public before I’ve taken off too much. It’s a question of how can I act so that my holy, pure, just, loving God is most glorified? The child of God should be always desiring to lift up their Maker, to extol their thrice-holy, Light-bringing, sin-hating God as much as possible in whatever they do, rather than seeking to approach as nearly as they can the line between sin and not-sin. The guiding principle is not what a particular, God-rejecting culture has adopted as a norm of dress (or undress), but of desiring in one’s conduct and appearance to represent and worship one’s perfectly righteous Creator as much as possible.
31 Whether, then, you eat or drink or
whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
This, then, is how God in His word answers the challenge that “nakedness” and being properly clothed is not clearly defined in the Bible. I don’t consider the burkha of the Muslima, or the attire of the Amish, or Hutterite, or take my cue from popular, secular culture and dress accordingly. No, I simply consider what would most honor and glorify God in my manner of dress.
Obviously, answering the question “How best do I glorify God?” is necessarily dependent upon one’s knowledge of God’s truth; for it is in the pages of the Bible that God reveals to us His holy, pure, just nature, His love, mercy and grace, His glory and power, His commands to us, and His purposes in making us, which we need to know in order to glorify Him in all we do in a manner that actually pleases Him. When I look into God’s word, though there is no list of exactly what particular items of clothing are appropriate for all Christians in all times, there are these other things that greatly restrict my options.
Certainly, I see no ground in the Bible whatever for a Christian gal to go about in public with her breasts exposed. There is no ground in the Bible, either, for a Christian guy to walk about a public beach in a speedo, his genitals bulging grotesquely for all to observe. The young blonde in a skin-tight, red tube-dress, her ample chest barely confined by the low cut style of the neckline of her dress, strutting about in six-inch heels while she belts out a Sass Jordan song during a Sunday worship service is also, from what I see in God’s word, wildly out-of-bounds in her attire (I actually witnessed such a performance in a “seeker-sensitive” church to which I’d been invited by a friend). This is all very plainly indicated in Scripture.
How aggressively, though, some modern Christians resist any restrictions upon their personal preferences, upon that with which they feel comfortable! If they have no qualms with public nakedness, or near-nakedness, what God indicates in His word matters little. Above all, one ought to serve and glorify oneself. This is the oft-trumpeted message of modern, western culture. And, sadly, Christians have bought into this evil thinking, justifying it on the basis of “cultural sensitivity,” or “compassion,” or “tolerance,” or “open-mindedness,” and throwing out the “boogey man” of self-righteous legalism in an effort to stifle talk of holiness, purity, and modesty. To Christians who take this line, God says:
1 Peter 1:15-16
15 but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior;
16 because it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
1 Corinthians 6:18-20
18 Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body.
19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
20 For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.
Ephesians 5:8-10
8 for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light
9 (for the fruit of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth),
10 trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.
