NOTES for Co1 10:23
As seen, already in the early Christians era, there were in the Church people sure, that for Christians "all things are lawful ". And the apostle, in his polemic with this widely spread opinion on the spiritual life, answers: "all things are lawful" - yes; but all things are not expedient. "All things are lawful" – of course; but all things are not of use to the edification. The Greek corresponding word means exactly edification or the construction of the house, and it is supposed that it is not only about walls. "All things are lawful" rings as a slogan of a complete liberation of all which connects and limits man in the not transformed world. It appears, people who moved it forward understood and retained only one thing: the Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of the freedom. On what this freedom is filled, they probably did not think much.
Maybe, the situation deteriorated by a sort of "charismatic" views of some converts, who having experienced for the first time the reality of the Kingdom and having felt what is grace, decided that they are now free from sin and can do whatever pleases them, without any spiritual damage for them: because as they were probably persuaded, the world not transformed with all its evil does not have anymore power on them. Paul reminds them that everything is not as rosy as it can seem in the first days after the conversion, or at the moments of spiritual uplift. Forward the way is long, the way of the internal, spiritual edification, this construction of the internal and external life, which implies the notion of the internal Torah. And on this way the fight with sin is inevitable: because the way to the Kingdom is not finished yet, it is only beginning.
And the very edification of the Kingdom (the same edification, of which the apostle says that for it not all things are expedient) still began also only: because it is in fact about the first two generations of Christians. Indeed, the path of every Christian ends definitively only the day of the complete transfiguration of the world, the day of the return of the Savior and the triumph of the Kingdom. And the apostle does not get tired to remind that Christianity is not a relaxed “grace”, but an intense spiritual work and edification of the Kingdom, without which Christian life has no meaning.