All Things to All People

If you would turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 9. We're gonna read the chapter in its entirety as we continue our trek through Paul's letter to this group of Christians in the early church. Paul, as you recall, has just finished addressing a question that they had concerning the eating of meat offered to idols. And in his answer, he established the principle of Christian deference, deferring to those with a weaker conscience. In our text tonight, Paul continues with this theme by using himself and his status as an apostle as an example of Christian deference in action. So let's look at it together tonight. 1 Corinthians chapter 9 beginning at verse 1. I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.

This is my defense to those who would examine me. Do we not have the right to eat and drink? Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk?

Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the law say the same? For it is written in the law of Moses, you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain. Is it for oxen that God is concerned?

Does he not speak certainly for our sake? It was written for our sake because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ.

Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel. But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing these things to secure any such provision, for I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of my ground for boasting. For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting, for necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward, but if not of my own will, I'm still entrusted with the stewardship.

What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel. For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew in order to win Jews. To those under the law, I became as one under the law, though not being myself under the law, that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law, I became as one outside the law, not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people that by all means I might save some.

I do it all for the sake of the gospel that I may share with them in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things.

They do it to receive a perishable wreath but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air but I discipline my body and keep it under control lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you for revealing yourself to us in your word. Thank you that in these words we find life and truth and freedom. Thank you that along with your word you give us the Holy Spirit to regenerate our spirits and open our minds and harness our wills so that your word can do its intended work in us. Lord Jesus, not only have you set the perfect example for us in obeying every stipulation of God's law but you've also paid the price for our failing to do so. And so Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we thank you for the indescribable riches that are ours by grace through faith in Christ. We ask that you would please now take this living and powerful word and transform our minds and character and our very lives with it.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen. So back in chapter eight Paul has just called Christians to yield their freedoms, their rights for the sake of love and deference to the weak consciences of others. But Paul recognizes that deference doesn't come naturally to fallen people. And so he presses the point home a little further here in chapter nine. And he does this first by making himself an example of what deferring to others looks like and then by giving several motivations for this practice of deference to others.

And then he closes with some very practical instruction as to how to go about doing this. What we're gonna see in these verses is that deference to others is not the mark of some weak Christian, rather it is a primary means of identifying with and imitating Jesus Christ. In fact I would go so far as to say we are never more like Christ than when we are voluntarily laying down our rights for the sake of the gospel.

And if that's the case then we ought to be looking for opportunities to do just that and we ought to rejoice in those opportunities when they come. Well in verses one through 12 we see first an example of Christian deference. In these verses Paul demonstrates from his own life what Christian deference looks like. His ministry to the Corinthians in fact was itself a living demonstration of Christian deference. And to make the point Paul begins this section by building the case for his rights as an apostle. He takes great pains to establish the fact that as an apostle of Jesus Christ to the church he has every right to claim the privileges and the perks that come with that status.

Notice he begins with a series of rhetorical questions all making the same point. Namely that Paul deserves to receive material provision from the church. He says in verse one, am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my workmanship in the Lord? And of course Paul knows the answer to all of these questions and Paul knows that Corinth knows the answer to all of these questions.

It's a resounding yes to all of them. He is a legitimate proven and credentialed apostle to the church. Now if that's his status then what are his rights as an apostle? Verse four, he has the right to have his physical needs met by the church. Verse five, he has the right to have his family's needs met by the church. Verse six, he has the right to be freed from vocational responsibilities so that he can give full attention to his labor for the church. But Paul doesn't stop there. He begins to stack up a whole pile of arguments in order to prove his point beyond the shadow of a doubt.

First he turns to arguments from natural law in verse seven. He says, who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Another rhetorical question and the obvious answer is no one.

A soldier who risks his life to protect citizens deserves to be compensated for the services he provides. That should be obvious. Paul continues, who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk? A hardworking farmer deserves to enjoy the fruit of his labor.

Again, that should be obvious. And Paul's point is that just as a soldier and a farmer deserve compensation for their work, so an apostle of the church deserves to be compensated for his labor. It's his right.

It's his privilege. But Paul is still not finished. He goes on to make an argument now from the Mosaic law in verses eight and nine. And this demonstrates to the Corinthians that Paul isn't making this stuff up. It's been a principle that was established all the way back in the Old Testament. Verse eight, do I say these things on human authority?

Does not the law say the same? And then he quotes Deuteronomy 25 four. You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain. Now the point of that law was not primarily to ensure that cows were taken care of.

It was to ensure that laborers would receive a fair compensation for their labor. If God cares about oxen getting what they deserve, then certainly he cares about apostles getting what they deserve. Paul gives one final argument down in verses 13 and 14, this time an argument from the Levitical priesthood. He reminds the Corinthians that the Old Testament priests who spent their time sacrificing animals for religious purposes also got to eat some of the meat that they sacrificed. This was not a sacrilege. It was expected. It was even commanded. And the same principle then applies to those who proclaimed the gospel.

Paul says they should get their living by the gospel. There's nothing crass or inappropriate or unspiritual about a church providing the material needs of those who were providing for their spiritual needs. Nothing wrong with that.

On the contrary, it's very normal. It's an established principle. So the right which Paul claimed to have over the Corinthians was not something he made up himself. It's a principle that's embedded in nature. It's a principle that was observed by the priests of the Old Covenant. And it's a principle that is preserved in the very law of God as it was given to Moses. Verse 11 then is a clear articulation of this principle in the form of a question. If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you?

And so from God's law right down to the very nature of things, no, it's not too much. Paul deserved to be compensated materially for the spiritual blessings he brought to Corinth. Well, after taking all this effort to build this case, we expect Paul to say, so Corinth, pay me what you owe. But he doesn't say that.

In fact, he says the exact opposite. Just as the budget committee at Corinth is getting nervous, Paul voluntarily forfeits his apostolic right to compensation. Verse 12, nevertheless, we have not made use of this right.

And verse 15, but I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing these things to secure any such provision. Why would Paul forfeit what he was owed? What would have motivated such a sacrifice? Well, this brings us to our second heading, which is the motives for Christian deference, the motives. And Paul tells us what his motives were. The first motive was for the sake of the gospel.

Verse 12, we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. You see, Paul is about to call the Christians at Corinth to forfeit their own rights, just like he has done. And so he makes it clear what the proper motivation for such a sacrifice is. It's for the sake of gospel clarity and effectiveness. Your rights as a person, as a husband, as a wife, as a parent, as a son or a daughter, as an employee, as an employer, are not as important as the advancement of the gospel. And so for the sake of the gospel, Paul gladly sets aside his rights. And in so doing, he's calling us to do the same thing, to imitate him. So his first motivation is for the sake of the advancement of the gospel. There's a second motivation that drives Paul to lay down his rights.

We see it there in the latter part of verse 15. He says, for I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of my ground for boasting. Now that's an odd statement, it seems out of place. It seems like Paul has just taken a very self-centered, narcissistic turn here. But don't be thrown off by that word boasting. We tend to think of boasting as only a bad thing, and probably 99.9% of the time it is a bad thing. But there is a legitimate and virtuous version of boasting, and that's the kind of boasting Paul is talking about here. It'd be like a parent who says to their child, I'm so proud of you. We know that pride is bad, but the kind of pride being expressed by that parent is not a self-centered, arrogant sort of pride. It's a good pride.

It's a pride that's others-focused, right? Paul's doing that here. Paul's boasting is simply his way of saying he wants to be able to take proper satisfaction in his ministry at Corinth by being able to say, I gave you the gospel free of charge.

So you have no excuse, no grounds for suspecting me of foul play, no reason to doubt the truthfulness of what I've preached to you. So the second motivation to defer his right to compensation has to do with his desire to receive a compensation, a reward, he calls it in verse 18, that is not material. This reward that Paul seeks is the satisfaction, the sense of a job well done that come from his having preached without pay. He knew that had he insisted upon his right to material compensation at Corinth, it would have put an obstacle in front of their hearing and receiving the gospel. And so there was a certain delight Paul had in the fact that he had conducted himself in Corinth in such a way as to adorn the message of the cross with a beautiful and sincere self-sacrificial love. Paul's delight in making that sacrifice was his reward.

It was his compensation, and he didn't want that to be stolen from him. Let's just pause there for a minute and ask ourselves, do we delight in the gospel like that? Are we able to say with Paul, my reward, my wage in this life is the joy of knowing that my witness to the power and beauty of Christ has indeed been worthy of the sacrifice Christ has made for me? I think of missionaries like Elizabeth Elliot, whose husband was killed by a savage tribe, and yet she embraced that sacrifice and carried on the work of evangelizing the very men who murdered her husband.

Or Adoniram Judson, who endured the deaths of two wives before eventually sacrificing his own health for the sake of evangelizing the Burmese. How petty our squabbles about status and entitlements sound when compared to the sacrifices of the great host of faithful witnesses who have gone before us. Do we value the gospel that much? Now, we're not apostles like Paul was, so our set of rights will be different from his. However, all of us have some point of privilege, some freedom, some claim that is rightfully ours, but that could become a hindrance to the gospel.

It may be our reputation. It may be some temporal convenience or pleasure. Whatever it is, Paul is calling us to purposefully and joyfully lay it down for a far greater and eternal good. Well, this brings us to our third heading, in which Paul explains the practice of Christian deference.

How do we do it? What will this principle look like in action? Well, Paul mentions four prerequisites for Christian deference. Four things that deference requires. First of all, deference requires a servant's heart. Paul's deference demonstrates itself in servant-heartedness, and that servant-heartedness, in turn, wins people over. Have you ever been angry with someone or annoyed with someone, but then they turn around and they treat you with great honor and respect, and they begin to sacrifice for you and serve you? All of a sudden, you find it really hard to remain angry with them. Humble acts of service are extremely winsome and persuasive.

Well, turn that scenario around. Suppose someone is angry at you, annoyed by you, disagreeable toward you, and you begin serving them and meeting their needs, looking out for their wishes, honoring their preferences above your own. Those acts of humble service and deference go a long way toward making a friend out of an enemy or making a Christ follower out of a Christ rejecter. Paul says in verse 19, for though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all that I might win more of them. Deference requires a servant's heart.

Now, this is not a call to be everyone's doormat. It's a call to gladly, willingly, voluntarily subject yourself to the preferences and weaknesses of others, even though by right, you don't have to. And we do it in order to win them over. First, win their affections, then their minds, eventually their spiritual allegiance for the cause of Christ. Martin Luther, a great reformer, said that a Christian man is the most free lord of all and subject to none, and at the same time, is the most dutiful servant of all and subject to everyone.

It's both and. So how do we defer to others? By becoming a servant to all in order to win them over to Christ.

Secondly, deference requires a yielding of my identity, a yielding of my identity. Yielding the rights to my own identity in order to identify with others is often God's means of persuading others to embrace the claims of the gospel. We see this in verses 20 through 22, where Paul describes his practice of conforming to the cultural norms of either Jews or Gentiles, those under the law, those out from under the law, depending on who he's ministering to at any given time. He doesn't want morally insignificant cultural customs to hinder the progress of the gospel, and so he formally states this principle of deferring his identity for the sake of others in verse 22, a principle which, by the way, is often quoted out of context and misapplied. Paul says, I have become all things to all people that by all means I might save some. Someone once claimed that most of the heresies that have been introduced into the church come into the church under the banner of evangelizing the lost, and I think a lot of times there is truth to that.

In fact, verse 22 is often the slogan that's used to justify all sorts of pragmatic and unbiblical methods of evangelism. There is no doubt here that Paul is calling us to accommodate a diverse range of preferences and world views and religious stances. If we just dismiss this need of accommodating others, we run the risk of unnecessarily alienating people to the gospel, but at the same time, if we carry this accommodation too far, there comes a point, doesn't there, where we begin to compromise the very gospel we're called to proclaim. So where is this balance between accommodation on the one hand and unnecessarily alienating people on the other? How do we know where the lines ought to be drawn? I think this is an important question for us as believers. At the very least, this balancing act requires that we wisely distinguish between the moral absolutes of God and the moral scruples of other people or the cultural preferences of other people. We've got to make that distinction at the start. Verse 22 is not a license to contradict the will of God in the name of evangelism.

Paul would never have said to the thief I have become as a thief that I might reach thieves. And so anything that goes against the law of God, against his moral absolutes, is out of bounds. It's not a matter of Christian deference at that point, unless it's something that is morally neutral.

But I think we can take this a bit further. The purpose of this principle of Christian deference is to clarify the gospel, to make it clearer, to make its meaning more clear, to make man's need for it more obvious. That's the purpose of this principle of Christian deference. Paul says as much in verse 23. He says, I do it all for the sake of the gospel.

That's a very important clause, for the sake of the gospel. If my accommodation of others on some morally neutral point doesn't clarify the meaning of the gospel or doesn't drive home someone's need for the gospel, then it's probably an accommodation that's not worth making. Sadly, many Christians, in an effort to contextualize the gospel, have ended up obscuring the gospel so badly that they've ruined their testimony.

When I was in high school, I watched youth pastor after youth pastor in our church do this very thing. They set out, I guess with good intentions, to make the gospel attractive by adapting it to certain tastes and preferences. But they failed to carefully evaluate whether or not their adaptations were actually clarifying or obscuring the gospel. In other words, they paid more attention to the desires of the people they were accommodating than to the message they were trying to proclaim. And one by one, these ministers began to compromise.

And one by one, they morally collapsed and ended their ministries under church discipline. Church, there is a temptation to love the novelty and creativity of contextualizing the gospel more than we love the gospel. I wanna say that again because I think it's a blind spot in our world today, in the church today. There is a temptation to love the novelty and creativity of contextualizing the gospel more than we love the actual gospel. And so it is so crucial that we always ask ourselves if our becoming all things to all people is actually clarifying the gospel we preach or merely obscuring it behind the tastes and pleasures of a lost world. Having said that though, there is also the temptation of not giving adequate thought to how we can wisely accommodate the weaknesses of others. And that's what this text is about. That's what the Corinthians were doing. And sadly, it's often what we do because it's easy, isn't it?

It's comfortable. It comes naturally to just dismiss those weird people out there that are different from us. It would be so much simpler to just adopt a policy of either exclusively indulging the culture or exclusively separating from the culture. But Paul would have us put in the hard work of thinking through how to balance freedom and restraint for the sake of gospel clarity. We don't wanna be too quick to censure nor too quick to embrace.

And the litmus test is always this. Does it clarify or obscure the gospel message? Because in the end, it is the gospel that is the power of God unto salvation.

Not my ability to conform to the culture nor my ability to abstain from the culture. It is the gospel that is the power of God unto salvation. So Paul defers to others by serving them and by yielding his identity in order to meet people where they're at, all in order to bring clarity to the gospel message. Thirdly, we see deference requires perseverance to the finish line. Perseverance all the way to the end, verse 24. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run but only one receives the prize? So run, run in this way that you may obtain it.

Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath but we an imperishable. Paul knows that deferring to weak consciences, limiting our freedom for the sake of the gospel can get exhausting, it can get tiring. But he exhorts the Corinthians that it's worth it so stick to it. There is joy at the end of the journey for those who have not grown weary in well-doing. There is a reward for faithful Christian, for faithful Christian living and faithful witness. There will come a day when faithful followers of Christ will hear the Lord say, well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master. The prize at the end of the race is not something we earn by trying to impress God but it is nevertheless a motivation to labor hard and to labor sacrificially.

The joy at the finish line is worth the perseverance that it takes to get there. So don't give up, Paul says. Finally, deference requires that I mortify my sin, that I put my sin to death. I think we see this in verses 26 and 27. Paul says, so I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air, but I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. Sin just really messes everything up, doesn't it? We can't even defer to others the right way because we, like the ones that we're trying to reach with the gospel, are also sinners. And Paul acknowledges this and so he concludes with an exhortation, a warning really, not to let our sinful tendencies ruin or taint our attempts to reach others with the gospel. We're not saviors reaching down trying to save drowning people.

We're drowning along with them. We need the same cure that they need. And if we would but recognize this, then I think deference would come much easier. In fact, the very practice of deference will go a long way toward helping us to put to death those actions and attitudes and thought processes that so often lead us astray and lead us into the weeds of self-centeredness and self-love and self-absorption. Christian deference, by its very definition, requires death to self.

And that's a good thing. So Paul, in this text, has given us an example of Christian deference in his own life. He's given us some motivations for showing deference and he's instructed us as to how to go about practicing this Christ-honoring, gospel-clarifying and sin-mortifying trait.

It's a glorious, glorious ideal to which we're being called. And in fact, it is this ideal that is at the very heart of the gospel. As I studied this chapter last week, I began to realize that Paul's exhortation in these verses runs a close parallel to Paul's description of the mind of Christ in Philippians 2, 5 through 11.

Let me just share this with you briefly as we close. You're familiar with the passage in Philippians 2. After calling Christians there in Philippians 2 to do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but rather to count others as more significant than yourself, which, by the way, that's an excellent definition of Christian deference, Paul then says this. He says, let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. That sounds like verse 19 in 1 Corinthians 9.

Making myself a servant to all in order to win the more. Paul says in Philippians 2 that Christ not only took on the form of a servant, he also was born in the likeness of men and was found in human form. That sounds a whole lot like Paul's exhortation in 1 Corinthians 9 for us to become all things to all people, to become like the ones we're trying to win that we might win the more. Philippians says that after having endured the cross, Christ was highly exalted and given a name that is above every name.

I think that corresponds to the imperishable reward, the prize that Paul says is a legitimate motivation for everyone who will persevere to the end. But then what about this fourth requirement, this issue of mortifying sin? Christ had no sin to mortify and yet Philippians 2 does tell us that Christ humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross. Christ had no sin in himself to mortify but Christ most certainly became sin on the cross for you and for me. Church, do you see that this call to lay down our lives in service and deference to others to humble ourselves by identifying as much as is humanly and morally possible with the lost, the dying, the blind, the spiritually dead is not some peripheral principle in the Christian life. No, it is front and center in the Christian life because it was front and center in the person and work of Jesus Christ. We are never more like Christ than when we are voluntarily laying down our rights for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of those who most need the gospel. And if that's true, then shouldn't we be seeking out opportunities to show this sacrificial sort of love to others, shouldn't we be rejoicing when those opportunities present themselves? The world may not encourage or value or pursue this degree of radical humility but when they see it in us it often becomes for them an irresistible attraction to the gospel and that's because Christian deference as Paul calls us to here has the aroma of Christ all over it. May that aroma infuse every interaction we have with each other and every interaction we have with the lost and dying world to the praise and glory of God. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, you are not only the perfect and best example of these things for us, you have also absorbed God's wrath against our failure to be and do what Paul is calling us to be and do in these verses. Lord, would you forgive us for our self-centered pettiness, forgive us for our vaulted view of ourselves, teach us to yield our rights for the sake of the gospel, teach us to die to ourselves for the good of others, teach us to proclaim Christ and him crucified through the humility and love we show to those whom you've called us to serve. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.