Expediency

Expediency, in biblical usage, is the principle of weighing what is profitable or upbuilding for others against one's own rights and liberty, especially in matters Scripture leaves open — food, drink, and days. It is not mere pragmatism or "whatever works"; the New Testament ties it to the good of the neighbor and the advance of the gospel.

The text says in Romans 14 that Paul is "persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean of itself," yet immediately adds the qualification that "to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean" (Romans 14:14). Because the kingdom of God "is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Romans 14:17), the argument moves from freedom to restraint: "let's follow after things which make for peace, and things by which we may build one another up" (Romans 14:19). The one who serves Christ in these things is "acceptable to God and approved by men" (Romans 14:18) — that is, the criterion of expediency is not the diner's own palate but the neighbor's conscience and the community's peace.

First Corinthians states the same logic more sharply as voluntary self-limitation. "If food causes my brother to stumble, I will eat no meat forever more" (1 Corinthians 8:13); though "free from all," Paul "brought myself under bondage to all, that I might gain the more" (1 Corinthians 9:19), becoming "all things to all men" for the sake of the Good News (1 Corinthians 9:22–23). The rule is stated positively in 1 Corinthians 10:24 — "Let no one seek his own, but each one his neighbor's good" — and grounded in the psalm Paul cites, "the earth is the Lord's, and its fullness" (1 Corinthians 10:26; Psalm 24:1), which secures the freedom in the first place. Linguistically, the Greek word behind "profit" in 1 Corinthians 10:33 ("not seeking my own profit, but the profit of the many") is sympheron, "what is advantageous," the same term older English versions render "expedient" in 1 Corinthians 6:12 and 10:23. The governing end is doxological and missional: "whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31), pleasing others "not seeking my own profit... that they may be saved" (1 Corinthians 10:33).

Interpretive suggestion: the concept's boundary matters as much as its content. Paul's accommodation is aimed at the gospel's advance and bounded by truth and by the conscience of the "weak," not by a general desire to avoid offense. Christian traditions differ here. Catholic and Orthodox teaching has generally read such passages as warranting corporate and pastoral regulation of things indifferent — fasts, calendars, communal disciplines — as exercises of charity and order. Lutheran and Reformed confessional teaching distinguishes sharply between what God commands and what is free, insisting that conscience not be bound where Scripture does not bind, while still commending voluntary restraint for the neighbor's sake. Free-church and evangelical readings often stress the individual, Spirit-led decision and, in mission and worship, debate how far "all things to all men" (1 Corinthians 9:22) licenses cultural adaptation. One way to read the whole is that expediency names a disposition — freedom willingly spent on others — rather than a fixed list of permitted or forbidden practices.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.