We have no right to legislate morality in any area unless God has spoken to that issue clearly and directly. Apart from this, all things are lawful in their substance. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness of it.
We have already considered that all men are covenantal partakers of something. God has embodied covenantal structures deep within the world. The Jews were partakers of Christ in the Old Testament, we are partakers of Christ in the New, and heathen are covenantal partakers with their demons. No man who ever breathed is a non-partaker.
Now we who have this knowledge know that God is the only true God. This means, ultimately, that His table is the only real table. The other table, the table of disobedience, is a disintegrating and vanishing table. Attempts by believers to have it both ways, to shuttle between two tables, is therefore an attempt sit both at the table of food and the table of transient vanities. Our duty is to be strengthened with this food so that we learn to identify those vanities as such.
If it is in the world, the thing itself is of course lawful. The earth really is the Lord’s. But, Paul says, not everything is smart. And here we see that for faithful Christians the issue is heart motive — what we might call allegiance. It does not answer to say that this thing or that is lawful in itself — fine, so it is — but where is your allegiance?
Is the privilege of sitting down at this table everything to you? What you watch, what you eat, what you wear, what you do, where you walk — don’t tell us it is lawful. We know that. Where is your allegiance?