Seyi had grown up in a church where almost everything was forbidden. Women could not wear trousers or earrings. Men could not wear their hair long. Television was suspicious, football was worldly, and a Christian who was seen near a bottle of beer might as well have been seen at a shrine. He remembered being sent home from a youth meeting at fourteen for wearing a wristwatch with a gold-coloured strap.
At twenty-six, through a friend’s Bible study, Seyi discovered grace. He read Galatians for the first time with open eyes. He understood that he was accepted in Christ because of what Jesus had done, and that the rules he kept had never been the ground of it. It was like a window opening in a room he had been locked inside all his life. He cried for most of a weekend.
Then, as often happens, the pendulum swung. Seyi became a champion of freedom. He posted long threads about legalism. He mocked the rules of his old church to anyone who would listen. And at his twenty-ninth birthday party, at a lounge in Lekki, he ordered drinks for his friends, including a cold bottle for Aliyu.
Aliyu worked with Seyi at the same insurance company. He had grown up in a devout Muslim home in Kano, and two years earlier, largely through Seyi’s friendship, he had come to faith in Christ. It had cost him a great deal. His father had stopped speaking to him. Alcohol had been forbidden all his life, and the church that had discipled him since his conversion taught total abstinence too. For Aliyu, a bottle of beer was not a neutral object. It stood for everything he had been taught a godly person would never do.
Aliyu hesitated. Seyi laughed and pushed the bottle towards him. “Bros, Jesus turned water into wine. We are free in Christ. Take am, nothing dey happen.”
Aliyu drank it. He laughed with the others. He went home late.
He did not come to Bible study that Thursday, or the next, or the one after that. When Seyi finally went to find him, Aliyu said quietly, “I felt I had betrayed God. I felt like I had gone back to being nobody’s child. I did not know if I could come back.”
Seyi had been right about his freedom. And he had used it to wound his brother.
A freedom worth defending
Before we say anything about the limits of liberty, we must be clear about its reality. Christian freedom belongs to the heart of the gospel, and Paul defended it with everything he had.
The letter to the Galatians is Paul’s most passionate letter. Teachers had arrived in the Galatian churches insisting that Gentile believers must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses to be fully accepted by God. Paul saw that this was far more than a small adjustment. It amounted to a different gospel. And he wrote: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5:1).
In the verses that follow, Paul is almost fierce. If they accept circumcision as a requirement for righteousness, “Christ shall profit you nothing” (Galatians 5:2). Those who seek to be justified by the law have “fallen from grace” (Galatians 5:4). What counts is “faith which worketh by love” (Galatians 5:6). He asks who has hindered them from obeying the truth, and he warns that “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump” (Galatians 5:9). A small amount of law mixed into the gospel spreads through everything.
Paul even tells us how firmly he resisted those who tried to impose such requirements:
But neither Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised: And that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage: To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.
“To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour.” When the truth of the gospel was at stake, Paul did not bend. He would not let anyone add conditions to God’s acceptance.
So Seyi’s discovery was real. The freedom he had found was the freedom Paul fought for. Nobody should return to the anxious bondage of earning God’s love by rule-keeping. And nobody should hear what follows as a call to go back there.
Called to liberty, called to serve
Having fought so hard for freedom, Paul immediately tells the Galatians what it is for:
For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.
“Ye have been called unto liberty.” Freedom is a calling. God has summoned you into it.
“Only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh.” The word occasion was used in military contexts for a base of operations, a foothold from which an attack could be launched. Paul is warning that freedom can become a bridgehead for the flesh, the selfish, self-pleasing part of us. The flesh loves the language of liberty. It will happily borrow the gospel’s words to justify whatever it wants.
“But by love serve one another.” The word serve here is the language of slavery. Paul has just spent five chapters telling the Galatians they are no longer slaves. Now he tells them to become slaves to one another. It is a deliberate paradox. Freed from the yoke of law, believers voluntarily take up the yoke of love.
“For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Love does what the law aimed at all along. A free person who truly loves his neighbour will not harm him, steal from him or deceive him. Love goes further than the law ever could, because it looks for the other person’s good even where no rule applies.
“But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.” Freedom without love produces a church where people use their liberty against each other. The strong mock the weak. The weak judge the strong. And the community tears itself apart.
Peter says the same thing in a different letter: believers are to live “As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God” (1 Peter 2:16). Freedom can be used as a cloak, a covering that hides selfishness under respectable language. The free believer is still a servant, and his Master is God.
PunchlineChrist set you free from the yoke of law so that you could take up the yoke of love. Freedom that cannot bend towards a brother has missed its purpose.
Knowledge that puffs up
The clearest example of Paul working through this tension comes in 1 Corinthians 8. The issue there was meat that had been offered to idols.
In a Greek city like Corinth, much of the meat sold in the market had passed through a pagan temple. Animals were sacrificed, portions were burned to the god, and the rest was eaten at temple banquets or sold to butchers. Social life often revolved around these meals. A believer might be invited to a wedding feast at a temple, or a business dinner, or simply buy meat in the market and wonder where it came from.
Some of the Corinthian believers had worked out the theology correctly. Paul agrees with them:
As concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one. For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him. Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some with conscience of the idol unto this hour eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled.
“An idol is nothing in the world.” There is only one God. The carved images in the temples represent nothing real. Meat offered to them is just meat. A believer with this knowledge can eat it with a clear conscience.
But Paul had begun the chapter with a warning: “Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth” (1 Corinthians 8:1). Knowledge on its own inflates a person, like air in a balloon. Love builds others up, like stones in a wall. The Corinthians who knew that idols were nothing were correct, and they were proud of being correct. They looked down on believers who still felt uneasy about the meat.
“Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge.” Some believers had come out of idol worship recently. For years they had eaten temple meat as an act of worship. When they saw it now, their conscience still connected it with the gods they had served. To eat it felt like going back. “Their conscience being weak is defiled.”
Many Nigerian believers know this situation well, even if the meat in question is different. A Muslim neighbour sends a portion of ram after Sallah. A family in the village prepares food for a traditional festival. A relative brings home something from a ceremony at the family shrine. Believers respond differently. Many receive a neighbour’s Sallah gift with gratitude, as an act of friendship, and eat it with a clear conscience. Others feel uneasy and decline politely. Paul’s teaching helps us here. Ordinary food, received as a gift or bought in the market, is simply food, “For the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof” (1 Corinthians 10:26). But Paul also draws a firm line at taking part in worship offered to other powers. “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils” (1 Corinthians 10:21). Eating a neighbour’s gift is one thing. Sitting down at the shrine as a participant in its rites is another.
Between those two clear points lies a wide space where believers’ consciences differ, and that is exactly the space Paul is addressing in chapter 8.
Paul calls their conscience weak, meaning not yet fully informed by the truth, and he never calls them stupid. They need time and teaching. They do not need to be mocked or pressured.
The brother for whom Christ died
Then Paul turns to the strong:
But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumblingblock to them that are weak. For if any man see thee which hast knowledge sit at meat in the idol’s temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols; And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died? But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.
“Take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumblingblock to them that are weak.” Your freedom is real. Your knowledge is correct. And your freedom can still trip someone up.
Paul describes exactly what happened to Aliyu. A believer with weak conscience sees a strong believer eating in the idol’s temple. He is “emboldened,” literally built up, to do the same. Paul uses the word ironically. It is the same root as the word for edify. The strong believer has built up his brother, but in the wrong direction: he has built him up to act against his own conscience.
“And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?” Paul is not saying that the weak brother loses his salvation over a plate of meat. The word means to be ruined or destroyed, and in context it describes serious spiritual harm: a brother who has been pushed to violate his conscience, who now feels condemned, and who may drift away from fellowship. The phrase “for whom Christ died” is devastating. Christ thought this weak believer worth dying for. The strong believer did not think him worth giving up a meal for.
Nugget“But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ.” To wound a brother’s conscience is to sin against Christ Himself, because the brother belongs to Him.
“Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth.” Paul says he would give up meat permanently rather than cause a brother to fall. Nobody is forcing Paul. No rule requires it. Love is freely choosing to limit itself.
Romans 14 makes the same point and widens it: “It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth” (Romans 14:21). And it adds a principle every believer should understand: “whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). If a person does something while believing it to be wrong, he has sinned, even if the act itself is permissible. That is why pressuring someone to act against conscience is so serious. You are not merely asking him to eat or drink. You are asking him to sin.
Lawful is not the only question
Paul returns to the subject in 1 Corinthians 10:
All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth .
“All things are lawful for me.” This was the Corinthian slogan. Paul has already answered it once in chapter 6. Here he answers it again with two qualifications. Not everything is “expedient,” meaning helpful or beneficial. And not everything “edifies,” meaning builds up.
“Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth.” The old English word wealth means well-being. The question for the believer is not only, “Am I allowed to do this?” It is, “Will this do my brother good?”
Then Paul gives practical guidance. Meat sold in the market can be eaten without asking questions, “For the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof” (1 Corinthians 10:26). If an unbeliever invites you to dinner, eat what is set before you. But if someone at the meal points out that this meat was offered in sacrifice, do not eat it, “for his sake that shewed it, and for conscience sake” (1 Corinthians 10:28). The conscience in view, Paul explains, is the other person’s. Declining does not cost you your freedom. You are using it for his sake.
And then the summary:
Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God: Even as I please all men in all things , not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved.
“Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” The ordinary activities of life are brought under a single question. Does this bring glory to God? “Give none offence.” Be careful not to put unnecessary obstacles in anyone’s path, whether Jew, Gentile or fellow believer. “Not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved.” Paul’s freedom was in the service of the gospel. He would adapt anything that was not essential, if it helped someone come to Christ.
Better questions than “Is it allowed?”
From these passages we can draw a set of questions that go beyond whether something can be defended as permissible. When a believer faces a choice that Scripture does not directly forbid, he can ask:
- Is it helpful? Will it do me good, or will it slowly harm me? (1 Corinthians 6:12; 10:23)
- Will it bring me under its power? Paul said, “I will not be brought under the power of any” (1 Corinthians 6:12). Some freedoms become chains.
- Will it build others up? Who is watching, and what will they learn from my example?
- Will it wound a weaker conscience? Is there someone near me for whom this could become a stumbling block?
- Will it help or hinder the gospel? Will this make it easier or harder for someone to hear about Christ?
- Can I do it to the glory of God, with thanksgiving and a clear conscience?
These questions do not produce a new rulebook. Different believers in different settings will reach different conclusions. But they move us beyond the defensive question, “Show me the verse that says I cannot,” towards the question love always asks: “What would be good for my brother?”
On the specific matter of alcohol, sincere believers hold different convictions. Many Nigerian churches teach total abstinence, and many believers hold that conviction gladly. Others believe moderate drinking is permitted, pointing to the wine at Cana and Paul’s counsel to Timothy. All agree that drunkenness is sin: “be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). Whatever your conviction, these chapters ask you to hold it with love, and never to use it to wound a brother or to judge him.
Two errors on either side
Paul addresses both the strong and the weak, and each has a temptation.
The strong are tempted to despise. “Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not” (Romans 14:3). The believer who has understood his freedom can become contemptuous of those who have not. He mocks their scruples, posts jokes about their rules and treats them as less mature. That was Seyi’s temptation. He had suffered under legalism, and he took his pain out on people who still lived within it.
The weak are tempted to judge. “And let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him” (Romans 14:3). The believer with a more cautious conscience can turn his convictions into a test of other people’s spirituality. He assumes that anyone who does what he would not do must be worldly.
There is a third danger that Paul’s example warns against. Some people use the language of the “weaker brother” as a tool of control. They are not genuinely troubled in conscience. They simply want everyone to keep their rules, and they claim to be stumbled whenever anyone does otherwise. That is where Galatians 2 comes in. Paul circumcised Timothy for the sake of reaching Jews (Acts 16:3), freely choosing to set aside his liberty. But he refused absolutely to circumcise Titus when false brothers demanded it as a condition of acceptance. Love bends for the weak. It does not bow to those who want to put the gospel back under law.
Discernment is needed to tell the difference. A new believer struggling with conscience needs patience. A leader who insists that his rules are the gospel needs to be resisted.
Christ pleased not himself
Paul gives the final reason for this way of living:
We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let every one of us please his neighbour for his good to edification. For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me.
“We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.” Strength is given for carrying. The stronger believer carries the weaker one, instead of walking ahead and laughing at how slowly he moves.
“For even Christ pleased not himself.” Here is the deepest root of Christian liberty. The freest Person who ever lived was Jesus. He was under no compulsion from anyone. And He used His freedom to lay down His life. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:5-7).
That is what freedom looks like when it is fully mature. It is strong enough to set aside its rights. It does not need to prove itself by doing everything it can. It is secure enough in God’s acceptance to put another person first. Paul could say, “For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more” (1 Corinthians 9:19).
The believer who can only express his freedom by exercising it is less free than he thinks. The believer who can freely lay it down for love has understood what Christ came to give.
Seyi sat in Aliyu’s small room in Yaba for a long time that evening. He told him about the church he had grown up in, the gold watch, the rules. He told him how the discovery of grace had felt like being let out of prison. And then he said something that was hard for him to say.
Punchline“I think I was so happy to be free that I forgot you were not where I was. I used my freedom on you like a weapon. I am sorry.”
Aliyu said nothing for a while. Then he said, “I thought God was finished with me.”
Seyi opened his Bible to 1 Corinthians 8 and read it aloud. The weak brother, for whom Christ died. Then he read Romans 14:3. God hath received him. “Aliyu, God has received you. Nothing you drank at my party changed that. If your conscience told you it was wrong, then bring it to Him and receive His forgiveness. And I need to ask Him to forgive me too, because I sinned against you, and against Christ.”
They prayed together. Aliyu returned to Bible study the following week.
Seyi made a decision that surprised his friends. He would not drink at gatherings where Aliyu or other new believers were present. He did not make it a rule for anyone else. He did not think drinking was sinful. He simply decided that his brother’s peace was worth more to him than a bottle.
“I used to think freedom meant I could do anything,” he told his Bible study group a year later. “Now I think freedom means I can choose to love, even when it costs me something I am allowed to have. That is a bigger freedom than the one I had before.”
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- What freedoms in Christ have you discovered that once felt forbidden? How has that discovery changed your relationship with God?
- Have you ever used your freedom in a way that wounded someone else’s conscience? What happened?
- Have you ever judged a believer for doing something you would not do? How does Romans 14:3 speak to you?
- How would the questions in this article change the way you make decisions about matters Scripture does not directly address?
- Who in your life might be a “weaker brother” whose conscience you need to consider?
This Week
This week, think of one freedom you exercise that some believers around you would find troubling. Ask yourself honestly: does exercising it in front of them build them up or wound them? If you identify someone who may have been affected, consider reaching out to them to listen rather than to argue. Then read Philippians 2:5-7 each morning and ask the Lord to show you one specific way to set aside your preference for someone else’s good that day.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank You for the freedom You won for me on the cross. Thank You that I am no longer under the yoke of bondage, and that nothing I do can add to what You have done. Teach me to stand fast in that freedom and never to be entangled again. And teach me to use my liberty the way You used Yours: to serve, to carry the weak and to put others first. Forgive me for the times I have used my freedom as a weapon or my convictions as a judgement. Give me the mind that was in You, who pleased not Yourself. Let my liberty bring glory to God and good to my brothers and sisters. In Your name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.