Sermon 1 Cor 9-10

Evening all!

Tomorrow I am preaching at Sanctuary. As usual, fellow Sanctuarians, no peeking! Everyone else, here's what I'll be saying.

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1 Cor 9,10 –“You can” doesn’t mean “You should.”

There’s an old saying “Out of the frying pan, into the fire.” I feel a bit that way with preaching on 1 Corinthians. It’s fun, actually, because there’s so much meaty stuff in it to come to grips with – but at the same time you spend a fair amount of time asking yourself what on Earth you should do with all this.

In today’s passage (two chapters! That’s all!), Paul covers six distinct concepts. Now, the concepts can (and should) be linked together, but I leave you to imagine what goes through a preacher’s mind when he sees so much material.

But after a lot of thinking, praying and agonizing, somehow I started looking at these two chapters from a different angle; and I could see a clear pattern of the verses.

We’re following on from chapters 7 and 8, and those two chapters were all about freedom in Christ, and how much freedom we really do have. Now, if you take the two chapters we’re looking at today together, they provide the other side of the coin.

Put simply, they say that whilst you are free in Christ, there are limitations to that freedom. Those limitations are not imposed from God under threat of Hell, nor are they imposed by the Law under threat of ritual uncleanness; rather, they are imposed by we ourselves. I have therefore titled these chapters “‘You can’ doesn’t mean ‘You should.’”

Before we get really into this, a brief reminder – Paul is writing this letter in response to one sent by either the Corinthian church as a whole, or by members in it. We don’t have that letter, so it really is guesswork what was said; however, by looking at what Paul has to say we can work out a lot of the questions they ask (or perhaps, in some cases, the accusations they make!).

Last time I spoke on 1 Corinthians, I tried to reverse-engineer the questions they asked Paul. We decided that one of the questions was about marriage, and the other was something to do with whether Christians were permitted to eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols.

Where Paul is going right now is a little hard to judge. He appears to be continuing on with dealing with the question of our freedom in Christ; maybe he’s just expanding further on his answer to the question about sacrificed meat. But I don’t think that’s it, or at least not ALL of it.

Again I’m going to throw a guess out there as to what someone asked Paul. This guess is based on both the text itself and what a couple of commentators say. Notice that Paul defends himself on two counts: 1) He demonstrates that he is most definitely an apostle, and 2) He discusses why he worked for a living in Corinth rather than accepting payment for his Gospel work.

From this, we can suggest that the Corinthian letter accused Paul of not being a proper apostle; the proof of this being that he never claimed the pay or benefits of being one, instead working for his own living!

There’s a little irony here, really – all too often Christians are a little stingy when it comes to paying their workers! I can understand where this comes from, of course; Christian organizations are never exactly awash with money, and there’s the temptation to cut costs wherever possible. In any case, Christians can often mutter and complain about how much the minister is getting paid.

But poor old Paul here is getting kicked around because he is NOT getting paid!

This is actually a little less ridiculous than it sounds. Remember that Corinth was a Greek city, and operated by a different set of social rules than many other places. In ancient Greek city life, the higher classes of society prided themselves on not having menial work to do so that they could participate fully on matters of greater importance – which, as far as I can tell, seemed to have consisted of debating in the parliament, attending lavish drinking parties and discussing philosophy! Remember in Acts chapter 17:21 Luke describes the Athenians as “Doing nothing except discussing the latest ideas”. So it’s quite possible to expect that some of the higher-born members of the Church might look down on Paul and Barnabas because they were working for their living instead of having their money provided for them. To these people, it indicated that Paul and Barnabas were of lower social status – and therefore that they weren’t really apostles!

Paul first tells them very bluntly that he IS an apostle, thank you very much, and he offers two proofs: firstly, that he actually saw Jesus after His resurrection (though the circumstances of this were unusual), and secondly, that the work he had done in Corinth demonstrated his credentials – “You are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord!”

Paul then goes on to explain that, although he had every right to be looked after as Peter (and his family), the other apostles and the brothers of Jesus had been, AS HIS OWN CHOICE Paul decided not to. His reasoning? He gets all the reward he needs when he can share the infinite riches of the Gospel with people for free! See verse 18: What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights as a preacher of the gospel.
But Paul isn’t finished here. He ties this whole thing beautifully back into an understanding of how and why we limit our own freedom in Christ – it’s not because of fear or because of rules or restrictions, it’s because we believe in the importance of God’s mission for us!

We all know about the restrictions that Jews have placed upon them. They can’t eat pork, they can’t work on the Sabbath, they have to keep meat and dairy separate, and so-on. Paul is free to ignore all those cultural taboos if he wishes – but that’s not his plan. Paul wants to win the Jews to Christ; so he becomes LIKE a jew. Although he is free to do what he likes, he faces the same restrictions as those he seeks to win. As he lives like them, he becomes a more credible witness to them. Similarly, he chose to become like those under law, like the weak. In fact it was Paul who coined the phrase, still often used today that he became “All things to all men.”

And here we find the first challenge that I wish to lay before everyone today. As I read this passage, I became very acutely aware that I am in almost every respect a good Christian man.

No, that wasn’t a brag. In fact, in context, it wasn’t even a complement. I couldn’t say what Paul says here – I can’t with all honesty say that I’m willing to be like others to win them to Christ. To be perfectly honest, I expect them to come to me.

In fact, if I’m totally honest with myself, at the moment, my primary evangelism strategy is to sit here, in this room, hoping against hope that some unsaved guy walks through that door so I can share the Gospel with him.

Am I becoming like him? No. In fact, I’m expecting him to become like ME. It’s foolish, it’s selfish, and above all else it simply doesn’t work.

I can remember years ago I used to teach people a good old Student Life acronym – Associate, Befriend, Create an interest in Christ, Declare and Defend the Gospel, Encourage a response, Follow up and Group new believers!

Guess what – at the moment I fail at A!

So here I have to repent in front of you all and ask you to pray for me as I help to put this right. Contrast this with Paul, who became all things to all men that he might win some. Contrast it even more with Christ, who came to seek and save the lost!

I know there are others in this room who can honestly say the same thing as me. I also know there are some in here for whom the reverse is true – I have seen Vanessa doing a really good job of being like the people she is around. Surprise surprise, some of those people are occasionally here at church, and you can bet that some, if not most of them, will one day come to Christ.

Similarly, Kylie often talks to me about the people that she spends time with, including her parents, including friends, workmates and all sorts of others. She lives like them and associates with them so that she can lead some to Christ.

Have you got the challenge yet? The challenge is simply this. Who do you associate with? Are you becoming like those you seek to win, or are you hoping they’ll miraculously become like you?

God can do all sorts of things, but I don’t think He’s going to work it that way, simply because it’s not the way things are supposed to work!

So the first reason we may choose to limit our own freedom is to win others to Christ. What are some other reasons?

Paul gives a second reason, and it’s one that several people here can understand. In verses 24-27 of chapter 9 he gives the example of an athlete in training. Paul is probably imagining one of the boxers at the Olympic games, which in his day were every bit the pinnacle of competition that they are today, except you weren’t allowed to compete if you weren’t Greek. And a male.

On the one hand, an athlete COULD eat anything he likes and do whatever he likes. But by his own choice, the athlete limits his diet to what is good for him, and by choice he spends hours each day training, often after a busy day at work. Now, he doesn’t enjoy doing that; but he DOES believe the result is worth while. So he continues to choose to train.

Paul compares living the Christian life to training as an athlete. He points out that the athletes compete “to receive a crown that will not last” (actually a laurel wreath). Whereas we compete to win a prize that will last eternally. So Paul carefully selects what is good for training him in righteousness.

Well, an athlete needs a good diet, and an athlete needs a program of training disciplines. And both of these have analogies in the Christian life.

The “diet” of the Christian is input from God. Most obviously this would be found in studying the Scriptures, and that is very worthwhile; but God can have input into our lives in other ways too. For example, Geoff last week was talking about how we can individually meet with others – that’s a form of spiritual input. So is meeting together in this context. So are Bible studies and fellowship activities.

The “disciplines” of the Christian life are a little harder to define. Every time you make a choice against your own desires but in line with Christ, you are in a sense “lifting weights” spiriturally. But there are also other disciplines we may take on, most obviously things like fasting and prayer times.

Challenge two for today is this: if you were about to compete in the Spiritual Olympics, would you be taut and limber, or would you be flabby, fat and lacking in endurance?

So the second reason one might choose to limit their freedom is to develop Spiritual discipline.

Finally, there is one other reason to limit your freedom. In chapter 10 verses 1-9, Paul gives us a stern warning against immorality of many kinds, using Israel’s past as a demonstration of what God has done in the past when people opposed him. And here Paul gives a very sharp reminder – Remember that the temptations you face are just the same as others have faced, and there’s no excuse, because there is always a way out! You can’t say it’s stronger than you!

Wow, when you hear that one in context, it’s a bit different to what you expect, isn’t it?

He then goes on to warn against “drinking the cup of demons”, which seems to go against all he told us about our freedom in the last two chapters.

But there IS a key difference. Paul tells us that the examples from Israel’s past are demonstrations to us of what God wants. These demonstrations – though they remind us of the awesome power of God – don’t actually mean that God is out to punish us for getting it wrong.

Yet this passage gives us a really important reason for limiting freedom – we know what God likes, and to behave in that way glorifies Him!

So the last challenge for today is this: What parts of our lives are glorifying to God, and what bits aren’t?

We are free in Christ, but “I can” is not enough reason to use your freedom. Sometimes we have to limit that freedom.

We may limit our freedom so that we can win others to Christ, so that we can develop Spiritual discipline or so that we can glorify God.

One of my friends who was a prison chaplain says that “normally you have to tell people that they’re a sinner. In gaol, you have to tell people they can be saved.

In a similar way, some people need to be told that they are free. Others need to be told “just because you CAN doesn’t necessarily mean you SHOULD.”