A Spirit of Power, Love, and Self-Control

1 Corinthians 6:12, " 'All things are lawful for me,' but not all things are helpful.  'All things are lawful for me,' but I will not be dominated by anything."

When Paul writes the quotations, he was quoting what the Corinthians were saying in mockery, and then refuting it with wisdom and truth revealed to him through the Holy Spirit.  Paul says this after listing the many sins that will disable one form inheriting the kingdom of God:  the sexually immoral, idolaters (people who worship other gods and other things that they put above God, like money, themselves, or anything else); adulterers, homosexuals, thieves, greedy people, drunkards (people who practise inebriation as if it's a hobby), revilers, and swindlers.  The Corinthians were saying, "All things are lawful for me," using the fallacy that because they are saved Christians, they can still commit any sin they want and still repent.  But Paul writes in Romans, "What then?  Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?  By no means!  Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?  ...For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.  But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?  For the end of those things is death.  But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.  For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (6:15-17, 20-23).

And Paul retorts to this fallacy in his first letter to the Corinthians, saying, "And such were some of you.  But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (6:11).  In effect, he was saying this:  "You were sexually immoral, you were idoalters, you were adulterers, you were homosexuals, you were thieves, you were greedy, you were drunkards, you were revilers, and you were swindlers.  However, having been baptised by the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, these ways are unnatural for you and must never be done.  You were all these things, and now in your baptism God our Father no longer sees you for those things but who you are in the sanctity of Christ, for He has called you to live outside of those sins."  And when they were saying, "All things are lawful for me," Paul pointed out, "Not all those things are helpful."  Some things are lawful to help you, most are not.  The second time, Paul was mocking them.  He was essentially saying, "All things are lawful for me because I can choose to commit any sin I want, but I will not allow myself to be dominated by any sin because of the freedom I have in Christ from those sins."

Because of the sinful condition of the world we live in, Satan berates our minds with tempting sins, which differs from person to person.  However, Paul writes to Timothy that "God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control" (2 Timothy 1:7).  We are given the power of the Holy Spirit to conquer our sins and to have self-control.