”Everything is permissible”, but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible, but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others. (1 Corinthians 10:23-24)

I want us to focus on the word “constructive” from today’s scripture. This was written at a time when many things were not permissible to the Jewish culture due to Old Testament laws. Paul was pointing out that while in Christ all things, even those deemed as wrong by the law, were permissible. But we went further and said that not all things are constructive.

Now, we do not want to take away from this that Paul, or scripture, is saying that all things are permissible. We clearly have moral mandates prescribed by Christ and supported by Old Testament law. What Paul was trying to get us to focus on is that even of the things that are not necessarily sinful, anything that makes us or another person stumble is not constructive.

Furthermore, many things in this life afford us the ability to partake in, but all of them may not necessarily be constructive in our lives or the lives of those around us. We need to consider the impact of what we partake in so that we can be delivered from even the good things that are not constructive in our lives. Even the best things in life we can turn into a sin based on how we partake.